Page 179 of Red Rooster

“I…” he started, and then cocked his head, eyes going to the ceiling.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think something’s happening.”

~*~

Of all the ways in which this job was worse than deployment, Jake had to give it to the bastards that the accommodations were decent. Well, lavish, actually.

Jake left his own sumptuous suite, with its four-poster and giant gilt mirror and real Oriental rugs, and walked down the hall to rap on the door of Ramirez’s room. When he didn’t get an answer, he looked first one way down the hall, and then the other. This was one of the windowless passages on the second floor, and though the hall was wide, the dark paneling and flickering sconces gave the impression that the walls were slowly closing in on him. Despite its richness, the manor had the air of a haunted house about it, and he suppressed a shudder.

“Ramirez,” he called, and knocked again. “Adela. You alright?”

“Fine,” she barked from the other side. Which wasn’t like her. She was coy, infuriating, and superior. But she wasn’t snappish.

“Can I come in?”

“Asshole.” But that wasn’t a no, and he was starting to worry.

He cracked the door and peeked in, then eased it open the rest of the way when he saw that she was sitting on the side of the bed in workout gear, her head in her hands.

“Hey,” he said, taking an uncertain step forward. “Is it your leg?” She wore shorts, and he could see the heavy bandage on her thigh. “Do you need to go back to medical?”

She sat up,pushedherself up, hands on her knees. Her hair, tied back in a loose knot, looked damp, like she’d just had a shower. She was very obviously not wearing a bra under her Nike tank top. And she was glaring at him. “Boundaries, dude.”

But what snared his attention was her foot. The right one. Because it…wasn’t quite the same as the left. And then he jaw the faint pink line of a scar around her calf.

“Hey. Eyes up here, asshole.”

He jerked and lifted his gaze to meet her furious stare. Not just angry, but desperate, spooked. Self-conscious. “Sorry–”

“What do you want?”

“You got hurt. I wanted to check on you.”

She sneered and dragged the folded blanket over from the end of the bed, up into her lap; it shook out over her knees, hiding her bandage…and her mismatched feet. “Right. ‘Cause you’re such a nice guy.” When she angrily tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, he saw that her hand was shaking.

“Because you’re part of my team, and I was concerned,” he said. “What happened with Vlad?”

She made a face, but not fast enough. He saw a ripple of shock, even fear, before she shuttered her expression and just looked sour. “Nothing.”

Jake waited.

“He’s creepy as shit.”

“Yeah.”

She glanced up at him, finally, some of the fear peeking through her façade. “Do you know what’s in the injections they give us?” she asked.

He shrugged. They’d told him it was an experimental drug, and he hadn’t cared what was in it or what the side-effects might be. There were people capable of living without sight – capable of thriving, even – but he didn’t have the grace or the temerity to be one of them. He’d signed – as best he could without being able to see the pen or paper – and never asked twice about the shit they were pumping into his veins.

“Why, do you?” he asked.

“I think–”

The walkie on his belt crackled to life. “Major Treadwell,” one of the guards said. “We have a situation.”

~*~

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