Page 7 of Captive Omega

Vaughn answers on the second ring. “Problem?”

“Just checking if you’ve left.”

“I’ll be at the meeting.” Vaughn pauses for a beat. “As long as nothing holds me up here.”

I stop beside my car. “The way things held you up at the last meeting and one before that.”

“I’m not dodging them, Garrison.”

I know Vaughn, and I know when he’s lying. “It’s important. Not just for you or for me, but for Blaine.”

“I’ll be there,” he insists.

I hang up and shoot off a quick text message before I climb into my Audi and start the engine.

Home is a forty-minute drive away, maybe a little less with the quiet roads. I should get home around 10, just before Vaughn. If he’s later than that, I’ll know why.

Vaughn spends all his time out of the house, and Blaine is more closed off than he’s ever been. He isn’t just retreating from the world. He’s retreating from us. Pack. If we don’t find a way to reach him, we’ll lose him, and I’ve lost too much to want to lose more.

We all have.

Chapter 3

Resa

Igrunt as I slam into a branch. Another whips me across the face and I wince, but I grapple desperately to hold on.

Don’t look down. Don’t look down.

I curse when I break a nail, briefly lose my firm hold on the tree I’m clinging to for life, and ridiculously slowly fall down the tree, branch to branch. I get whipped in the face, break nails, scrabble to hold on and wonder whether the next thump will be the thing that kills me.

It lasts forever. Or maybe it only feels that way.

My back thumps to the ground, fortunately a drop of only a few inches, and I lay stunned as I struggle to believe I’m not dead. I blink my eyes open.

And I grin. “I did it.”

Feet away, Rupert’s blood soaks into a patch of grass, and high above me, standing in the center of the shattered window I jumped out of, is a tall, dark figure.

O’Brien.

I can’t read his expression, but I can see the whites of his eyes. From his teeth glinting white, he has his mouth hanging open.

I can’t blame him. He just watched me do the impossible.

But this is no time to relax.

I push myself to an upright position as he lifts something to his mouth. Probably a walky-talky. Had he thought I was dead?

After a jump like that, I should be.

I get up and start hobbling away from the factory and the pitch black, overgrown park on the other side of a twisted metal fence. I need to be near buildings with plenty of dark corners to tuck myself in. Any open space is an invitation for O’Brien or one of his men to take potshots at me from a distance.

So I hobble into the warren of old factories, dead buildings, and I move fast. Well, as fast as my screaming feet let me. My soles burn with every step, and I try not to think of how I’m pushing the shards of glass I stepped on deeper into my skin.

My face, stomach, and my arms burn from being slapped around by the tree I fell down.

I have no idea where I am.

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