Page 44 of Salvation
Chapter Fourteen
Nick released a sigh and slumped against the back of the couch. That was not how he’d pictured the conversation, or the rest of the evening, going. Clearly, he had touched a nerve, which only confirmed his suspicions. Some worthless son-of-a-bitch had used her. It might take a while, but he would find out who, and then he’d hunt him down and seek retribution on her behalf.
He would have to move slowly from now on until she came to him of her own free will. Pressuring her would kill any chance of cultivating a long-lasting relationship. For now, all that mattered was that Saku’s door was shut tight, and would be for the rest of the evening. Guess it was time to give it up and call it a night. If he was really lucky, no one would come pounding on the cube door to announce a new case of the illness before morning. He levered himself off the couch and shuffled toward his room. Time for a shower and then call it a night.
Ten minutes later he slung a pre-warmed towel around his hips, and stepped out of the bathroom, rubbing his dripping hair with a second towel.
“How did you know?” A small, pain-laden voice jerked his gaze to the woman curled in his reading chair. Saku had pulled her legs up and rested her forehead on her knees, her hands tightly clasped around her legs. The white of her knuckles told him she must be squeezing them together pretty hard.
“Um, Saku?”
“How did you know?” Her voice was so low he strained to hear her words.
That was a dicey question, but one he’d expected he’d have to answer eventually. And she deserved an answer. “Random things you’ve said or done.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “For a long time you didn’t let me touch you unless there was no other choice.” The only man she’d never shied away from was Dante. Could that be because Dante was older, more a father-figure than a younger man like him would be?
She peered up at him, her red-rimmed eyes damp and puffy. Then she nodded in a resigned sort of way that indicated she’d already figured it out on her own. “I was sixteen when the Anferthians attacked.”
“You don’t have to tell me.” Giving her an out seemed like a good idea. The last thing she should feel was pressure to confess anything.
“No,” she said. “You have every right to know. It was five in the morning, and I had spent the night at my best friend’s house. We lived in a small village in the mountains. The closest city was Nagano, and that was miles away.” Her fingers fluttered. “Sorry. This probably does not mean anything to you.”
“No, but it does sound pretty remote.” Which was probably why she was alive. The Anferthians had hit heavily populated areas hard, wiping out all they could. Most of the Terrian prisoners had come from small towns or villages.
“It was.” Her gaze seemed to focus on the wall behind him. “The main ship did hit the village, killing many, but they did not do as thorough a job as they had on Nagano, Tokyo and other larger cities. The ground patrols came to collect survivors days after the main ship passed overhead. By then my friend, Yukiko, and I were in the mountains. Her parents had told us to run, so we did.
“We hid there, and met people from our village and other nearby villages. We formed a camp, a lot like your Camp One, I think. That’s where I met….”
Her gaze dropped to her hands, and a sharp ache welled in his chest. Patience. She had to continue doing this on her own. If he interrupted, said or did anything, he would take that free choice from her.
“That is where I met Kenji,” she whispered.
Nick’s jaw tightened. Kenji. The mother-fucker’s name was Kenji. Keeping his mouth shut now was infinitely more difficult. Almost as difficult as not punching the wall.
“He seemed nice enough, at first. Made himself our ‘protector’. Since we were only sixteen-year-old girls, and he was twenty-one, we were enamored by him. We loved the attention he gave us, and he never crossed the line. Not once. Then, one night, at least a month after the invasion, I went into the bushes to relieve myself, and he…followed.” A small, high-pitched sound eeped out of her.
Nick curled his fingers into a fist at his sides. Shit, shit, shit.
“He told me how lucky I was he would do this for me. That no one would ever want me because I was plain.”
Jesus, fuck. He would find this Kenji bastard and shred him for what he’d done to this beautiful woman. By Matiran law, which had been conveniently adopted by Terr years ago, a rapist could be brought to justice by the males in the woman’s family. Saku didn’t have any living male relatives to carry out this sentence, but she did havehim, and he was more than capable of delivering justice. “Where is he now, Saku?”
“He was killed five days later by an Anferthian patrol.”
“Do you know that for a fact? Did you see his body?”
She met his gaze. “I was there.”
Apprehension quivered in his gut and he drew his brows together, frowning. This would make it infinitely more difficult to exact the revenge he’d planned.
“Five days after he started using me, he took me on patrol with him. He would not let me out of his sight because he was afraid I would tell someone what he was doing.” She huffed a dry laugh. “I would not have, I was too scared because he told me if I did it would be my word against his. He also threatened to hurt Yukiko too.
“We discovered a patrol of six Anferthians.” She shook her head. “No, that’s not exactly right.Idiscovered them and hid behind a bush. Kenji was busy with his gun, not paying attention when they found him. He fought back viciously, and the Anferthians quickly decided he was not worth the trouble to capture. I waited until I was sure he was beyond help, then came out from my hiding place. I wanted to see his eyes as they ended him. I wanted him to know I had not run away, and I was not going to do anything to save him.”
Nick’s heart lodged in his throat at the thought of tiny Sakura Yamata walking up to a double patrol of Anferthians in full blood-lust. “They could have killed you, too.” The Anferthians called it shredding, and that was what happened, literally.
“They could have, but they did not. And, if they had, I would not have cared.”
I care. But he bit back that response to hear the rest of her story.
