Page 33 of Kristoff

Rondell throws open the kitchen door, searching for her. “Tell me, you ignorant bitch.”

“What the fuck,” Harlan protests.

My gut tightens. This is going to end badly if Celia ends up caught in the middle.

“Ron!” Franco barks.

“I know she’s here.” He ignores his partner. “And I’m going to be the one to take her back.”

“She’s not in the village, Rondell,” I say as calmly as I can manage. “Talk to Gerald. He can verify, since he did the search.”

He scoffs. “I don’t need to deal with that idiot.”

I scramble to come up with something to buy time. Brianna has to have heard them, not that she’d find anywhere to hide. But maybe we can lure him out of the building and sneak her out the back. If we’d only finished the crate earlier, we could’ve put her in there.

“What does this woman look like?” I make a last-ditch effort for a few extra minutes.

He pauses. His gaze darts from one person to another then his expression goes slack. He has no idea. Perfect.

“She has dark hair. And…she was wearing a dress…a white dress.” He blinks, his forehead furrowing.

“And?” I ask, bobbing my head, as if I’m expecting to hear more. For a second, I can almost feel sorry for Rondell. If we were back home, I would have easily destroyed him on the stand.

I switch to my courtroom voice. “You’re talking about this woman as if she’s a ghost.” I pull from the stories we used to read as kids. “All anybody can tell us is she had on a white dress. But no one has seen her face. At this point, she’s been in Germantown, here, and past the checkpoints at the same time.”

His shoulders sag. Doubts are creeping in, leaving him unsure. Exactly how I want him.

“You understand, that’s impossible. There’s no way a human can be in all those places at once,” I add. “What you’re saying is crazy.”

His features tighten. His gaze cuts to me and darkens. I went too far.

“I know she was here,” he declares. “I’m going to find her and take her back to Faust so I can get my bonus.”

Bonus? That’s why everybody’s on the hunt. Faust offered a reward. Anybody who’s been in a situation where the family offers a reward for tips quickly learns they made a mistake. Greed wreaks havoc. People jump in with anything, including a lie, assuming they can still claim some money.

Unless the bonus means more of whatever he’s on. If so, I don’t have a chance in hell of competing. Nobody even knows what these guys are taking, much less where to find it, other than with Faust himself.

Either way, I fully expect to have dozens of people traipsing through over the next few days. Now, more than ever, we have to move Brianna out of here tonight. He pushes past me to the hall.

Rondell launches himself toward Harlan, ripping him away from Celia with a sweep of his arm.

“Hey!” Harlan’s expression of disbelief matches my own. Now we’ve confirmed the Faust drug gives a man incredible strength.

Rondell snatches Celia’s wrist. She screams, leaning away as she steps back.

Harlan moves.

I move.

Rondell pulls a gun, pointing it at Harlan’s face.

He stops.

I stop, my heart in my throat.

“No!” Celia screams. “Don’t shoot him.”

“Ron,” Franco soothes. “Hold on. You don’t want to do this.”

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