Page 43 of Never Broken

Outside, the desert sunrise was starting to brush the fronds of the distant coconut palms with purple. The housekeeper would be in any second to start breakfast.

But all of a sudden, the sound of heavy footsteps coming from the service door—definitely not the housekeeper’s—sent me scrambling to my feet, shoving the phone and aloe into a forgotten bag of semi-rotten potatoes at the back of the shelf, and hastily picking up a broom.

The gardener loomed large in the doorway, shovel in hand, choking off the room with the smell of sweat and dirt and something minty, probably the homemade rotgut alcohol everyone knew he had stashed in various places around the garden. There was no telling how long he’d been standing outside the window, watching me through his yellow-rimmed, squinty eyes.

“Watcha doing in here, boy?” he demanded.

“Just cleaning.”

“The hell you are. You were hiding something,” he accused, beady eyes scanning the room. “Didja forget about our agreement?”

“What agreement?” I asked, though I knew. I also knew that I could deliver an entire flash drive full of hardcore snuff porn to this perv and he still wouldn’t leave me alone. I still had the microcamera, though, hidden as artfully as I could without a lot of good options. “The one where you grow some teeth?”

He slammed the door and stalked toward me. “I know what you’ve been up to, and I know about her little crush. And so will everybody else if ya don’t get me those pictures.”

“Let’s see,” I replied, my voice even. “What did I tell you the last time we had this conversation? Oh, right. Go fuck yourself. Well, consider that still in effect.”

He grabbed me by the arm and yanked me close, his grip tight, his dirty fingernails digging painfully into my skin. He brought the shovel up, pressing its metal edge sharply against my throat like a knife. “Tell me, boy, is a free girl’s pussy as tight as I’ve always heard it is? Or aren’t you her first? Maybe she’s been open for business all along.”

“Say that again, asshole.” I twisted out of his grip, grabbing him by his dirt-encrusted shirt and slamming him up against the opposite shelf, sending jars of sun-dried tomatoes and olives smashing to the floor. I’d been dying to do it since yesterday, and now that I wasn’t bleeding and chained to a post, I saw no reason not to. “I fucking dare you.”

He gurgled, his neck sticky and greasy to the touch, like a pig might feel.

“You’re not as tough without a whip in your hand, are you?”

“Fucking idiot kid, defending that spoiled slut,” he choked out. “For what? You know she doesn’t give a fuck about you, right? She’d sell you out for a pair of fancy new shoes.”

“Thanks for the relationship advice, dickhead. Have you ever even seen a girl naked without having to hide behind a bush?”

He twisted his face into some ghastly bastardization of a smile. “Oh, I got a mind to do a lot more than see.”

Revulsion hit me like a punch to the stomach. To think of that—to think ofher—the perfect, glossy pink lips and huge gray eyes, full of confusion and compassion and curiosity even as I was shoving her away like an asshole—made me want to either vomit or slit his throat. Instead, I had to settle for watching him squirm as I squeezed tighter. “You do and you die. And after I kill you, I’ll rip all your extremities off and throw them to the coyotes to play tug-of-war with.”

“That’s real funny, boy,” he managed to gasp. “I figured your killing days was over, since from what I hear, you seen enough cages for a lifetime.”

Fuck. Wasthatall over the house now, too? I tried to keep my voice even. “For killingyou? They wouldn’t cage me for that. They’d throw me a fucking ticker-tape parade.”

In a flash, the gardener growled, reached over his head, and grabbed a jar of pickles from the pantry shelf behind him, then hurled it at me with all his strength. I ducked just in time, and the jar smashed against the opposite shelf, sending brine and shards of glass flying everywhere.

“And just what is going on in here?!” the housekeeper demanded as she threw open the door from the kitchen, flicking her careworn eyes, behind her bifocals, from him to me to the puddle of pickle juice spreading rapidly over the floor.

“Crazy kid just hauled off and attacked me!” he said, his voice rising in pitch.

“And may I ask why he had theopportunityto do that? You have no reason to be in here.”

“But I ran out of … salt,” he said. “To, uh, kill the slugs.”

The lie was painfully bad and I rolled my eyes, saying nothing, content in the knowledge that the housekeeper was the only one here who loathed this motherfucker more than I did. Ten years of ass pinching would do that to a woman.

“Quiet,” she said firmly. “I don’t have the patience for this nonsense on a day when the master has a dinner party planned. I want both of you out. If I see any trace of either of you in here again before noon, the master will hear about it. I’ll get the maid to clean this up,” she continued. “Since you’ve already drunk your breakfast”—this to the gardener—“I’ll assume you don’t need any food, so out with you, now. As for you”—she turned to me—“I’ll have breakfast ready in a minute, and then you can start on cleaning the guest bathrooms, the dining room, the entrance hall, and putting the extra wings on the table settings. Oh, and all the silverware and crystal need polishing. And don’t forget, we’re all wearing uniforms tonight. I hung up yours downstairs. Donotget it dirty.” She glared at the gardener again. “Youare not to set foot in the house all evening, much to the relief of us all.”

His face turned purple with rage, but he had no choice. He snatched up his shovel and slinked out of the room, muttering about how he should have slit my throat with a pickle jar shard.

Meanwhile, the gears in my head were turning as I choked down a bowl of lumpy reheated oatmeal, the housekeeper clearly keen to expend zero effort to feed us slaves on a day when she had important people to cook for. She would be watching the pantry with laser eyes for the rest of the day, but I felt confident that she wasn’t going to rummage around any more than she had to. The gardener, on the other hand, would no doubt be back to sniff around for the phone the second he thought he could get away with it. And if he found it, he wouldn’t bother with blackmail this time. He’d take it straight to Wainwright-Phillips, guaranteed.

That, I couldn’t let happen. The earlier computer printout, I could maybe be clever enough to explain away, but not the phone with Maeve’s messages. That was as good as evidence that I planned to take off. And if my master was involved with Max Langer’s plot, I might find myself accused of even worse.

And Louisa couldn’t help me anymore. That thought put a strange lump in my throat, and it wasn’t the oatmeal.

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