Page 18 of Savage Escape

It took a good five minutes to set in properly, which, by Caden’s count, was a whole minute and forty seconds longer than it took the last time some ass-hat had injected her with it. Hell, maybe she was building up a resistance.

Slowly Caden could feel her muscles loosen. The burning pain from all the cuts and slices subside and a sense of ease settled in her head. Like she wasn’t being tortured and maybe Kyott wasn’t so bad. He was trying to make a living like everyone else.

“How are you feeling, Quinn?”

The all-around pain dimmed to a dull roar in the back of her mind and allowed Caden to focus on the man in front of her. Yellow flicked in the corner of her eye.

“Oh, you know peachy.” Weirder than peachy, though. More like her lips had been rusted shut for a while and Kyott had oiled them to working condition again. Like the Tin Man in that creepy ass movie with the flying monkeys and the floating heads. “Fuck, if those flying monkeys show up, ya’ll are on your own. That’s like giving wolves wings—’cept wolves don’t throw their shit. Oh god, could you imagine? Shit raining from the sky whileyou’re getting dived bombed by ill-intentioned monkeys wearing creepy fucking uniforms? Who thought of that? That’s like some twisted Beetle Juice shit right there.”

Yellow flickered again and Caden tried to decide what exactly she’d said aloud and what she hadn’t. And what the hell was that yellow thing?

“Quinn.” Hot hands gripped her face and suddenly she was seeing pores and nose hairs she didn’t want to see. “Focus, Caden, I need you to tell me where Trevor Harrington is.”

“Focused. I am so focused. Well, maybe not as much as you want me to be, but definitely more focused than that time in Belgrade. No monkeys there, no. They had this guy—who only had one arm—on a unicycle juggling flaming knives. Nowthatis some serious skills. I wouldnotwant to meet him in a unicycle fight. Shit would get intense real quick and he’d probably skewer me with a flaming machete. But wouldn’t that be a way to go? I mean how many death certificates read, ‘death by flaming machete lodged in gut whilst fighting a one-armed man on a unicycle’. Not many is my guess.”

This was nice. She’d never gotten to tell anyone about the one-armed, unicycling man before.

“Quinn.”

“As soon as he was off the stage, though, I was focused. Like laser-focused. Well, okay no. First, I tracked the one-armed guy back to his apartment so I could find him later and have him show me how to unicycle. But after that, I focused.” Caden Quinn did have a work ethic after all. Stealing and maiming first andthenthe extracurricular activities. “Completely forgot about that till now. I never actually gotta go back there, either. G-men started popping outta the ground once someone recognized me.”

“Where is Trevor Harrington?”

“I don’t know. Emotionally, he seemed pretty scared when I left. Though he was doing that brave kid thing, too. Putting ona smile and trying to pretend like his palms weren’t sweating. I mean, he didn’t have his dad with him and his momjustdied from a car bomb. That was all nice and protective of Harrington to move his kid, but he was leaving him alone so he wouldn’t have to deal with the kid’s grief. That’s not good parenting.”

“No—physically, where is he physically?”

“Umm, I’d say... like a hundred-thirty, hundred fifty—kid’s got some girth on him. Comfort eating, and no outside time, plus his genes ain’t the best. I mean, you’ve seen Harrington. You know what I mean.” The yellow turned into a head of hair. A yellow set of locks, she somehow knew. “Though he was much less fat when he was younger—more muscle-y. Once he made Bossman, he let himself go. Not a good choice considering his career, though.”

“Trevor Harrington, Quinn. Where the fuck is Trevor Harrington!?”

“Ezzy?” The word was like a punch to the jaw. It sent her reeling and grappling for something to hold on to. “Ezzy.” The owner of those yellow locks. It couldn’t be her, though. “Ezzy!”

But there she was. Standing in the corner. Her head jerked up at the sound of her name and her blond locks fell over her shoulders. Her cheeks were pink and healthy. Like she wasn’t dead and buried. She waved jazz fingers and smiled that smile she used when she was trying to be patient.

“No! Trevor Harrington!” Kyott, not particularly blessed with an overabundance to begin with, lost his patience and slapped her across the face.

Panic set in when she couldn’t see Ezzy for the long moment it took her drugged brain to catch up with her eyes. But she blinked away the haze and turned to watch her baby sister stand in the corner, fingers impatiently plucking at her backpack straps, biting at her bottom lip, and making a concentrated effort not to glance down at her watch every few minutes.

Just like she’d done when they were kids.

Caden would be coming off a shift and Ezzy would be waiting in a corner booth, pretending to read or focus on her homework, but was really counting down the minutes. Caden couldn’t help but smile at the memory of her impatient sister. Ezzy smiled back. Looking all kinds of alive and ready to get going.

“Quinn, where is the safe house?” He moved back into headbutt range, blocking her view of Ezra. Rage lit in her veins and pushed a half-strangled screech from her throat. The merc took a moment to calmly draw a steadying breath, snap her head forward, and break the bastard’s fat nose. He screeched and stumbled back, bringing Ezzy back into focus.

“Fucking,” pissed, Kyott returned with a bone-cracking right hook to her nose, “bitch!” and when that didn’t fully satisfy, he brought the knife back into play.

A muffled sort of burning cut into her side this time. It moved to her thighs and then the soft under part of her arms. She had the presence of mind enough to know that the drugs were softening the pain and that they’d hurt like hell if she woke up again, but it didn’t matter because there was Ezzy, alive.

Like she wasn’t actually six months dead and buried.

She was alive and waiting on Caden’s ass to hurry the hell up.

How did she get out of her grave? Caden had watched the coffin lower into the ground. How was she alive? Why was she even fucking questioning it? Ezzy was alive! There had been some horrible mistake—Ezzy wasn’t actually dead. She smiled again, and Caden felt her heart sink.

Kyott would see her. He would see her and do terrible, horrible things to her. No, she couldn’t let that happen. Caden had never let anything from her dirty world touch her baby sister and she sure as fuck wasn’t gonna start now. She had to focus on keeping his attention.

She had to.

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