Page 80 of The Sin

My jaw dropped.

The guards milling around the hall hurried to our corner, batons raised and hands cupping the Tasers strapped at their hips.

“Sisters,” Geneva called in a silken-iron command, “Come to me.”

Thorpe loosened a string of curse words, which had nothing on what came out of the general’s mouth when Mrs. Bickens went to stand with them. A moment later, Lisa joined them, and then, more slowly, three, four, five, six, seven other women broke free from the huddle of guests to align themselves with the Sisters of Capra.

My heart pounded.

Shivers spread over every inch of my skin.

Pride, and a feeling of solidarity, honor, glory… so many foreign feelings, unlike anything I’d ever experienced, flooded me.

Before I could even think of joining them—I wanted to, but I didn’t want to leave Roman on this side of the divide—Bickens seethed an order and his Guard surrounded me and Roman, bracing us against the wall.

24

Once again, I had a guard on each arm. Two in front of me. Three between me and Roman. The five councilmen and General Bickens formed a wall between me and the Sisters.

Otter addressed them first. “Geneva Carmichael.”

“Freddie,” she drawled.

“That’s Councilman Otter to you.”

“You know this woman?” Langley hissed.

“She attached herself to me in the ball rotations of our graduating year,” Otter confided in a snide tone. “No doubt she hoped to snatch herself a prize. But I know a shark when I see it.”

Thorpe took a daring step forward.

Geneva lifted her rifle and pointed it at him, the butt cradled in the hollow of her shoulder. “I wouldn’t take another step if I were you.”

Thorpe called her bluff and took another step. “Am I supposed to be worried that you know how to shoot that?”

He made a valid point. I’d only ever seen a rifle, any weapon other than what the Guard carried, in the documented screenings of the Fertility Plague. There’d been a lot of violence once people realized their world was dying.

Geneva shifted her aim at a drop of banner hanging from the ceiling and pulled the trigger. My teeth snapped together and my head jerked to the side, away from the deafening cacophony that eclipsed my senses. I couldn’t see, hear, think, as a ricochet of explosive echoes and screams bounced throughout the hall.

When I could think again, when I could hear, the thunder had been replaced with shocked silence, mixed with the odd gulping sob from across the room.

“My aim may need some practice,” Geneva said casually, bringing the long barrel around again to Thorpe. “Care to volunteer?”

My gaze darted to the wall hanging she’d shot at. The material was shredded, but there was no blood, no dead bodies on the ground.

Thorpe had dropped into a crouch, palms clamped over his ears. He shuffled backward to the safety of his group before he rose to his full height.

Geneva looked at him, waiting. When it seemed he had nothing more to say, she issued, “Release Georga West. She belongs with us.”

“Lay down your weapons,” Julian called out, “and you can have her.”

“Or I can plow through all of you to get her,” Geneva counter-offered.

“You do that, and you risk a stray bullet striking her.”

Geneva’s eyes hooded as she stood there, straight and tall in stylish black pants and a jacket, this outfit matched with a white cotton blouse. She made an impressive figure, and she looked slightly bored. “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

I believed her.

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