Page 25 of Savage Escape

Fuck.

What did she say to that?

“Why the sudden change of heart?” The attempt at casual interest was not at all working for him, but it saved Caden from trying to form a reply.

“I don’t see Kyott killing me any time soon—turned into a torture fest interrogation of sorts the last couple of go’s.” She shrugged and tried to push the flare of pain to the back of her mind. “And I can’t very well leave a person like you to fend for yourself.”

“A person like me?” His lips pursed and his hackles raised. Caden tried to suppress the smirk, pulling at her lips at the sight of him all defensive and riled. “You mean the well-dressed former Special Ops soldier?”

“That’s the kind.” She couldn’t help but smile back at his stupid, contagious grin. “It was Special Ops, huh? SEAL?”

That’s what was so familiar about his fighting style. But that bit of information did nothing to help her understand how he went from soldier to desk jockey in a completely separate part of the government.

“Hooyah.” He chucked his arm in the air and smirked at her.

“I don’t understand that transition... did you get injured?” She watched his expression morph into one of exhausted guilt. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again.

“No, nothing like that... I couldn’t... do it anymore. The things that we were doing—the things that I did—it was too gray area.” He sighed and rubbed at his face.

That was something Caden could understand. Or, then again, maybe she couldn’t. Despite the big ol’ gray areas that all but blotted out the map of her life, Caden didn’t suffer the same moral compunctions as the ex-soldier.

Sure, she felt guilt; it knifed at her gut whenever she found herself in some dark, lonely corner of the world. And then there were the nightmares of all the things she’d done that ate away at her soul. But that wasn’t the same thing as removing herself from the situation entirely like he’d done. She’d actually done the opposite.

There was nothing Caden had long since proved she wouldn’t do for family.

“Bringing thieves like yourself,” he paused for dramatic effect or to smile at her again, she wasn’t sure which. “to justice... well, there was really no gray area.”

But he’d quit that too. Caden forced herself to shut up and stay on target. Swapping backstories and braiding each other’s hair wasn’t gonna get them anywhere. She needed to focus on coming up with some kind of escape plan that had him at least walking out alive and not on the Lifetime movie special that was Savage.

“What were you doing in?—”

“Nope—no more little heart to hearts,” Caden cut him off and ignored her hypocrisy.

“So you get to ask all the questions?”

A hypocrite was, by leaps and bounds, not the worst thing she’d been accused of being. She could deal.

“Yup—if and when I get your ass out of here, we will go our separate ways. You don’t know me and I don’t know you. Comprenday?”

His lips formed a thin mutinous line, but Caden glared with all her glaring might, which was a considerable amount taking into account people’s reactions upon getting up close and personal with it. He eventually sighed and folded his hands in his lap.

“All right, so what’s the secret? How did you escape Marskib?”

The merc blanked her expression out of reflex, barely suppressed a shudder, and then promptly locked down that madhouse before it really got away from her and released all her pent-up crazy.

Usually, just the man’s name didn’t conjure up long-buried memories of all the things that had been done in those dungeons, but she figured the torture was wearing on her.

“That was a trial an’ error run. With a whole lotta error.” Nonchalance was key in hiding weak spots and, happily, it was something she’d perfected over the years. “But I eventually escaped.”

There were a lot of things Caden was scared of: getting a limb chopped off, airplanes, small talk, old people, contracting some rare disease, and normal people—maybepeoplein general.

What terrified the living hell out of her like nothing else did or could was Marskib. Definitely something to be dealt with later (preferably in the dark, under covers, and gripping her favorite knife) and not in front of Nathan holds-a-drugged-and-lethal-mercenary-like-she’s-an-actual-person-and-not-a-killing-machine-oh-and-look-at-my-perfect-ass Savage.

“All right so, the two golden rules of escaping are: accurate mental lists of everything—times, protocols, guards names anything you can get. Second: know the terrain, building layout, and all the little toys they’ve got to keep us in here.” She watched Nathan take it in like he was engraving it on his skull. “They’vegot the home team advantage. You see any CCTV on your way in and out?”

“No.” He shook his head.

“Me either. No video surveillance means more manpower as well as more guns. This isn’t an actual prison—more like a half-assed upgraded hospital. Kyott’s too small a fish to be getting all land grabby yet. So he’s renting our room, which is both good and bad ‘cause the flunkies running this chop shop aren’t gonna be focused on us. Plus, we’ve got their patterns, times, and routines down. Which makes Kyott the wild card. We don’t want him waltzin’ into an empty cell and having them gun us down before we get any kind of mileage.”

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