Page 26 of Shelter (The Wanderers 4)

“We’re getting the hell out of here ASAP,” Storm declared.

“Agreed,” Braylon added. “Next on our agenda has to be meeting with Rush.”

Riggs nodded.

“Tomorrow night?” Storm asked.

“Do we even care what the outcome of this test is?” Riggs asked. He didn’t give a fuck one way or the other, but this was a democracy—the first of what he hoped would be thousands in his lifetime. Choices they made as a team. The four of them. Equal votes.

Riggs spun around as Haley stepped back into the room, her long nightgown so demure it revealed nothing. Lorena was one weird matriarch.

As Haley joined them, stepping into the circle so they could all touch her, Riggs thought about his own mother and wondered if she would have been just as brainwashed if she’d lived another decade. He would never know.

He’d been fourteen when his mother had suffered an aneurysm and never regained consciousness. It had devastated him at the time, and he’d paid little attention to what choices the adults in his life made for him in the aftermath.

Now, he wondered if his father had made the right decision when he’d agreed to let his only son move in with his best friend. Before his mother’s death, Riggs had spent nearly all his time at the Hanson house anyway. His own family home backed up to this property, and he’d come through the gate on the fence between their estates a million times.

It had been logical for the boys to share a tutor when Marian was hired to educate them when they were almost six years old. After all, the two families were so close, they were inseparable.

Riggs’s and Braylon’s fathers were joint owners of a private water treatment plant. It had always been understood that Riggs and Bray would join the family business as soon as they were of age. Thanks to the tutorial skills of Marian, both men had been educated beyond what would formerly have been known as a university degree. They had joined their fathers two years ago.

What would their fathers think of them when they disappeared, never to return? Would they let them go or search for them?

Riggs’s chest felt tight more often than not lately. He’d spent a few hours with his father over the weekend, trying hard to memorize every detail and store the memories. The man had loved Riggs in his own way, but he’d loved money more.

Or perhaps it was prestige. Or maybe it had nothing to do with either and he simply did what was necessary in this new world to stay alive and keep his family fed with a roof over their heads.

Except Riggs and Braylon had way more than a roof, nice clothes, and good food. They had servants and bodyguards. They had caviar and champagne. All that in a world where most people didn’t have basic human rights.

Included in that group was Haley. To be honest, so was Storm. And definitely Rush. Riggs hated that two of the people he loved most in the world were lower-class citizens. He wanted no part of this world.

As he huddled with the most important people in his life, waiting for the results of a test that would change everything for all of them, he reminded himself how he’d become a free thinker in the first place.

Marian. It hadn’t been intentional. Definitely not. After all, Marian was also a marginalized member of society simply doing whatever was necessary to provide for her and her child.

Harmony.

Riggs closed his eyes and smiled inside his head as he thought of the sweet girl who’d lived with them and learned alongside them until her twelfth birthday. Where was she now? How long did she have before she too was sold in an arranged marriage just like Haley had been?

It had been an accident the first time Riggs and Braylon had overheard Marian talking to the maid who worked in the laundry room on the second floor. They’d been eight years old and playing hide and seek with Storm.

Riggs and Braylon had hidden behind a giant canvas laundry bin. They were still silently counting when Marian and Linda came into the room. Riggs had tugged Braylon to keep him down and quiet. He’d only been thinking about making sure Storm didn’t find them at the time. But he’d gotten a lot more than he’d bargained for.

The two women spoke in hushed voices, but what they’d said still brought chills to Riggs’s spine. Linda was crying because that day would have been her husband’s fortieth birthday. Marian had held the woman and soothed her while she cried. She’d let Linda purge herself of the story, saying it would help her move on if she talked about it.

Riggs hadn’t breathed while he’d gotten his first taste of what life was like outside of this perfect neighborhood where he existed in a bubble with his friend.

The story of how The Republic had murdered Linda’s husband while she’d been forced to watch and then taken into state custody was horrifying. But when Riggs learned the reason the man had been slaughtered, he’d nearly given their hiding spot away with his gasp. He’d been killed for the crime of keeping his wife instead of giving her up to the State.

That was the day Riggs learned that women didn’t have rights in his world. That they were second-class citizens. That they were used and treated unfairly. That was the day everything changed in Riggs’s world. Forever altering his perfect bubble.

The only reason the two boys hadn’t been caught was because Braylon had had the wherewithal to slap a hand over Riggs’s mouth to remind him to remain silent.

“You okay?” Haley asked.

Riggs jerked his gaze down to meet hers. How much time had passed while he’d stared into space, reliving a childhood nightmare? “Yes.” He slid his hand up Haley’s back and cupped the back of her neck.

Bray stepped closer. So did Storm.

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