Page 2 of The Rebel King

“I can’t see,” I tell him, choking back tears.

“They put a bag on your head. On mine, too.”

I turn toward the sound of his voice, and coarse fabric brushes my cheek. A stale scent clogs my nostrils. I’m entombed in burlap and uncirculated air.

“Shit, Lenny,” Wallace says, relief and torture in his tone. “I thought he was gonna drop you.”

Drop me?

The memory rushes back up at me like the ground when you fall, inevitable and jarring. The horror of a masked madman dangling me over the side of a mountain. The feel of his fingers slipping around my throat. The sight of him straining and struggling to keep me aloft. The utter indifference in his eyes about whether I lived or died.

The images set my heart on fire in my chest, the burning, pounding muscle beating so fast my head starts spinning.

“How long have I been out?” I ask.

“I don’t know. They shot us up with something that put us out. I just woke a few minutes before you did.”

“So you have no idea how long we traveled? Where we could be?”

“No.”

“Ahh, you’re awake,” a disembodied voice says, coming at me suddenly, an unforeseen intrusion into the darkness sheathing my eyes and ears. I hear the crunch of booted footsteps, sense a presence in front of me and tense, my muscles braced for a blow or a bullet. I have no idea which.

The bag is yanked off my head. We’re in some kind of cave, and the light flooding in from the opening, though dim, hurts my eyes. It’s just Wallace and me and the madman who brought us here. I squint up at him, masked as Abraham Lincoln, the grinning monster with wild blond curls who dangled me over the side of a mountain like an insect trapped between his fingers.

“I thought you could do with a nap while we traveled,” he says. “For your own comfort, of course.”

“What do you want with us?” Wallace asks, his bag removed, too.

“You’ve created something extraordinary, Dr. Murrow,” Abe says.

Wallace frowns. “Extraordinary? What do you mean?”

“Oh, don’t be modest.” Abe places the barrel of his rifle on the ground and leans his elbow on the butt. “You’ve made a thing of beauty in your lab, and there are many people who will pay a lot of money for it.”

“Wall, what’s he talking about?”

Wallace looks back to me, fear and horror dawning on his face, and shakes his head. “Oh God, Lenny. I’m so sorry I got you into this.”

“Into what? What the hell? What’s going on?”

“What’sgoing on, pretty lady,” Abe interjects, “is none of your damn business since it has nothing to do with you.”

“If it has nothing to do with me, then you won’t mind letting me go.”

His low chuckle rumbles, and interest flares in his eyes. “I like a little spirit in a woman.” His laugh dies abruptly. “But not that much. Keep it up and you’ll die even sooner than I’ve planned.”

“Planned?” Wallace echoes, his eyes wide, his brows bent.

“Oh, yes. Everything is planned,” Abe says pleasantly. “There’s actually no way for you to come out of this alive, lady, but you’ll go when I say you do.”

His words are a loaded gun, pointed to my head, waiting for the trigger to be pulled. I feel the pressure as surely as a barrel at my temple.

“But firrrrrrrst,” he says, eyes shining with anticipation, “let’s have some fun.”

He points the gun at us again. “Get up. It’s time for the show.”

CHAPTER 2

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