Page 65 of Uncontrolled

I go.

Allie

“Again,” I demand. Sweat drips from my chin as I high kick into the padded glove Talia’s holding at chest level. She stumbles and then shifts the glove to her side to catch my punch. We’ve practiced these training routines since we were children, the repetition burned into our bodies and bones.

“Nice,” she says before we reset our positions. “One more time.”

Last night, I called every resurrectionist in the notebook as soon as I closed the door behind Christopher, warned them all, including Talia. No one’s going anywhere alone, and until I deal with the hunters, jobs are on hold. Talia didn’t ask about my swollen eyes when I rolled into the gym at a quarter past noon. She didn’t ask what happened between Christopher and me last night, only confirmed how he’d found the information, and let it go. It’s a reaction that has me on edge.

I kick. She blocks and then deviates from our routine with a series of punches. I come at her, not holding back. After forty-five minutes of this, she’s slowing.

“Okay, you’ve gotta give me a second,” she says. She drops to the cushioned floor with a soft thud and then leans her palms on her knees, which I’m grateful for because I wasn’t about to tap out first.

I plop beside her and gulp as I lay back, my sweaty hair coiling underneath me, hands flopped to my sides. For a long moment there’s only the sound of our staggered breaths.

“No more routines.” I gasp at each syllable and make a mental note to work on cardio. I’ve been way off track the last couple months. Now, my distractions are gone. “No more scripted crap in the next round.”

“Wow, you’ve got a shit ton of misplaced anger,” Talia says.

I grumble a non-answer as I rise into a sitting position.

“Pissed about your double-crossing boy toy or that I was right about him?” she asks.

“Little of column a, little of column b,” I admit.

Talia softens. “Hey, you were right about him, too. You knew he was hiding something.” There’s a pause. “How did you get him to admit it without things blowing up?”

“I didn’t. I confronted him with what you saw. He spilled everything, told me about how they sold a resurrectionist, how CJ was next, how his lies to me were worth it. He insisted he infiltrated them all for me,” I add in a garish singsong.

“So what’s Ploy’s next move?” Talia asks as she strips off her gloves.

For a moment, I’m sure I misheard her. “There is no next move. He’s not our problem anymore.”

She bolts upright, staring at me. “You killed him.” What should be a question is a statement laced with too much hope. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Because I wanted to get him clear of you, I think, but don’t say. I cut him loose in the cruelest way I could and then gave him well over a twelve-hour head start. Except he left his damn pack behind, which means he hasn’t left town yet, isn’t safe. Like everything else, I screwed this up.

My palm presses into the mat as I force myself to stand. With every word, it’s getting harder to hold on to the anger. Instead, a dull ache settles inside me. I want to punch things until my knuckles bleed, until my muscles quiver, until I’m as empty as my apartment will be without him when I go back there.

“When did this happen?”

“Last night,” I say. “Half an hour after you left.”

She’s still sitting on the mat, her dark arms glistening with sweat and locked around her knees as she stretches her spine, studying me.

“You were the one who said I had to make big moves.” Rolling my neck, I hear a sharp crack, and the stiffness that’s been there since Talia landed a kick to the side of my cheekbone dissipates. “I started by taking out the garbage.” It’s cruel enough to feel wrong in my mouth. I have to blink to clear the sudden sheen of tears glossing my vision. “He’s gone.”

His look when I told him I wished Talia had shot him is going to haunt me forever, but I had to make sure he’d never forgive me. It’s the only way to save him.

When Talia doesn’t comment, I offer her a hand. She clamps her fingers around my wrist and gets to her feet. She rotates slightly, a subtle tell to get into position.

I’m so concentrated on the move I know is coming that I miss the shift in her hips. One second, I’m ready for her jab, the next, she sweeps my legs. I land hard. The hit steals the air I have in my lungs. Her heel slams into my gut.

Instead of getting in a worse blow, Talia staggers a step. “You’re saying he’s gone like he’s dead. But you didn’t kill him, did you?”

Twisting over, I punch the ground in frustration as I fight in sufficient air to speak. “Jesus, Talia, what do you want from me?”

“I want you to think about the cluster first,” she says. “I want you to realize you could have used him the way we talked about. I want you to do what’s best for the rest of us instead of what you want. You have no right to risk the resurrectionists in Fissure’s Whipp over your love life.”

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