by Stasia Black
A fifteen minute window to get the motorcycle out through the abandoned road was small enough and she’d already wasted time she didn’t have. Now with this big deviation, taking Camila with her… they’d just have to move their asses to break the motorcycle out of the workshop in time and—
The back door of Camila’s house banged open and Audrey looked up, ready to wave at Camila to get her attention.
But it wasn’t Camila.
It was her husband, Jeffries, with two more men flanking him on either side. And they were heading straight for Audrey at a dead run.
She barely had time to pull her gun, click off the safety, and fire.
Chapter 21
NIX
Nix jerked awake, shooting up in bed. At first he thought the loud noise was just a remnant of his nightmare. It was another dream about Roxy being chased down through the woods. While Nix was chained to a tree, impotent to help.
But Clark was up too, and he hurried to the window, jerking the curtain back. “Was that a gunshot?”
“Where’s Audrey?”
Nix’s heart stopped at Mateo’s question. Fucking stopped in his chest for the second it took to swivel on the mattress where she’d just been wrapped in his arms.
At least that’s where she’d been when they’d all fallen asleep.
Where.
The fuck.
Was.
Audrey?
Nix ripped the sheet back and grabbed around on the dark floor for his jeans.
“Fuck,” he yelled, throwing a pair of jeans toward Mateo after sticking one leg through and realizing they were far too small. “Where are my fucking jeans?”
Everyone was talking at once, but someone finally lit a damn candle so they could see what they were doing.
Nix snatched his black jeans off the floor, yanking them on as he stumbled out the door and down the stairs.
The others followed right on his heels. When they got outside, they obviously weren’t the only ones who’d heard the shot.
A fucking gunshot.
In the clan family neighborhood.
“Maybe it’s not what we thought,” Clark said, looking around. “Maybe one of the construction trucks just backfired.”
Nix ignored him. That didn’t explain where Audrey was. He was gonna get some fucking answers. He was heading in the direction of the Commander’s house when he heard an uproar from the end of the street.
Nix started sprinting in that direction.
He was running flat out but within three paces, Mateo flew past him. Fucker could run. Good. The sooner one of them got some answers, the better.
“That way. She went that way,” Nix heard Jeffries’ woman Camila saying to Mateo. She was standing in a bathrobe on her front lawn, pointing toward the road that led south out of town.
Mateo was asking her something else but Nix went up to her and grabbed her by her shoulders, giving her a shake. “What did she say to you? How long ago did you see her?”
“Get your fucking hands off our wife.”
Charles and Leo stepped up beside Camila. Leo shoved Nix back and Charles wrapped Camila close to his chest, an arm around her shoulder.
“Your wife shot Jeffries,” Charles said, nostrils flaring in the moonlight. “The crazy bitch is trying to run away from you. So you’ll want to step the fuck back.”
Nix felt the words like a physical blow to the face. Trying to run away…
WHAT?
“What?” Mateo asked, sounding like the wind had been knocked out of him too.
“It’s true,” Leo said. “The doctor’s in with him now.” He squeezed Camila’s shoulder. “Tell them, honey. Tell them what you told us.”
Camila swallowed, glancing up at Leo and then Charles. She swallowed and looked down at the ground. “I was kissing Jeff goodbye on the front porch. You know, because he has night patrol. We saw Audrey walking by…” Her voice trailed off.
“And then?” Leo prompted.
“And when we tried to ask what she was doing, what was in her backpack,” Camila swallowed again, face crumpling, “she pulled out a gun and shot Jeff.” The last words came out barely above a whisper.
Nix wanted to grab her again and scream at her that she was lying. He wanted to shake her until she told him the truth. It didn’t make any sense. Not his Audrey. Not his wife. She wouldn’t leave them. Not after yesterday.
“Thank fuck she’s a lousy shot,” Charles said. “She only winged him in the thigh.”
Nix’s jaw locked. “You said she went that way?”
He pointed toward the road. And saw that Mateo had again beaten him to the punch and already taken off sprinting.
“She said something about a motorcycle,” Camila finished.
Motorcyc—?
Then everything clicked into place. Son of a bitch.
He turned back to Charles. “You said Jeffries was heading out on night patrol?”
Charles nodded, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Nix wasn’t going to waste his breath explaining.
He just ran for the stables. It was two blocks away and he didn’t let up the entire time. When he burst into the stables, the guards jerked to position and grabbed for their guns.
“Captain,” said Henry, the primary guard, lowering his rifle.
“Jeffries’s patrol animal,” Nix barked. “He should be saddled up and ready. I need him now.” When the stable hands didn’t start moving fast enough, he yelled, “NOW or I’ll strip your rank so fast you’ll be enjoying communal bathrooms with twenty other men and have to wait a fucking year to get back on the fucking lottery rotation!”
That got results at least. Only moments later, Jeffries’s horse was being brought to the front of the stables.
Nix didn’t waste a second. He climbed up in the saddle, swung his leg over, and shot out of the stable in the direction of Mateo’s workshop.
Within a few minutes he passed up the sprinting Mateo. Maybe stopping to pick Mateo up would have been the team-player thing to do, but Nix was only thinking of getting to Audrey as quickly as possible. And he wanted to confront Audrey on his own terms.
To beg her to tell him it wasn’t true.
He tightened his thighs around the horse, urging him faster still. The horse hooves sounded like a drum beat against the asphalt.
Nix squinted, searching the road ahead. It was empty, but just there in the distance, he could make out the silhouette of the engineering workshop against the moonlit sky.
The motorcycle. He was so fucking stupid. Of course she’d seen it. And seen it as her ticket out of there.
Maybe she’s not running. You might not have the full story.
But just as he rounded the back of the workshop, he saw a small figure slipping in one of the back loading bays.
Son of a bitch.
She was running.
He gritted his teeth and urged the horse even faster. He didn’t bother dismounting when he got to the back of the workshop.
A guard was laid out by the entrance. What the hell had she done to him? Was he dead? Jesus fuck, she’d been conning them all along, pretending to be so sweet and innocent.
The bay door was open, which meant it was tall enough for him to go in, horse and all.
Audrey’s shriek of surprise only confirmed it was her. Up till that last moment, some part of him had still been hoping…
A flashlight shot his direction, momentarily blinding him until he urged the horse to the wall where he knew the light panel was. He reached down and flipped the lights.
Every other time he’d been here, he’d marveled at the ridiculous luxury of having light at the touch of a switch, but at the moment, he was only glad that it let him see Audrey in all her deceitful glory.
She had one leg swung over the motorcycle. And in her hand she held a gun. A fucking gun. Aimed right at Nix.
He gave a mirthless laugh. “You gonna shoot me sweetheart. Damn, I guess until death we do part is gonna come sooner rather than later, huh?”
Chapter 22
AUDREY
What was Nix doing here?
The gun shook in her hand. Everything had gotten so screwed sideways. She was trying to salvage this disaster of a night the only way she could think of.
Go back to the original plan. Forget her stupid momentary insanity and do what she’d planned all along. Take the out. Go to Nomansland.
“Get out of the way, Nix.” Her voice was strong in spite of the tears pouring down her cheeks. “You have to let me go. It’s the only way.”
God, she could still feel their hands on her. Camila’s men had been running straight at her and she’d squeezed the trigger. She barely realized what she was doing, but then Jeffries screamed and fell sideways.
But his two other thugs kept coming for her. She tried to jump the fence and escape them but she’d barely gotten her hands over the top before they yanked her roughly back to the ground. Jeffries lay in the grass just feet away from her, cursing to the high heavens.
Until he saw she was beside him.
He’d lifted the hand not clutching his bloody thigh to her throat. “I swear I’ll make you regret this, little girl. You better run far and fast and pray I never catch you.”
He’d let go of her, his face a mask of disgust.
And Audrey had dragged herself to her feet and run. As she passed by the back of the house, she saw Camila standing in the back door, watching silently as she ran past.
But none of it mattered now. Audrey forced her arm steady as Nix stared her down.
“Told ya. I’m not moving. You gotta shoot me.”
Damn him.
This town obviously had secrets. Secrets Nix either didn’t know or didn’t consider important enough to bother with.
Neither option was comforting. She’d been right in the first place. She should have listened to the signs and gotten the fuck out of town. Do not pass go, do not collect one hundred dollars. She shouldn’t have gotten involved with Camila. The woman obviously didn’t want her interference. Audrey couldn’t be absolutely positive, but she was pretty sure Camila had gone directly inside and informed all her husbands that Audrey was in the back yard.
Bringing her to this inevitable moment.
She raised her gun higher and lifted her second hand to help brace it. “Don’t think I won’t,” she said in the hardest voice she could muster. “Get out of my way. I’m going to Nomansland and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to stop me.” She wouldn’t shoot him but she had to make him believe she would.
“Oh yeah?” Nix asked, face hard and voice mocking in a way she’d never heard before. “Because from where I’m sitting sweetheart, it looks like we’ve got ourselves a good old-fashioned Mexican stand-off.”
Wait, what?
And then she saw it. Underneath his left arm that was so casually draped over the saddle, he had a long-barreled black handgun pointed in his hand. Pointed at her.
She’d seen that particular gun before. Her eyes widened right as he raised it.
“No wait!” She lifted her hand. “Wait, you don’t understand—”
Before she could finish her thought, Nix had pulled the trigger.
The last thing she saw before losing consciousness was the silver colored dart sticking out of her chest.
Chapter 23
AUDREY
Audrey woke up confused.
But it only took a few moments of groggy blinking before she remembered where she was and smiled.
She was in her bedroom.
Their marital bedroom.
She rubbed her legs together, smiling in spite of the ache she felt there. She rolled over to get up so she could use the bathroom.
Which was when she was jerked backward and realized she was cuffed to the bed.
“What the—”
And then the rest of the night came flooding in. Her escape. Changing her mind. Almost coming back but then seeing Camila and—
She looked up and realized she wasn’t alone.
Nix, Mateo, and Clark stood at the bottom of the bed like sentries, all solemn faced and staring at her like she was an exhibit at a pre-Fall zoo.
“Unhandcuff me,” she said, yanking at the cuffs attached to the bedframe by short chains. Her ankles were shackled too. “Look, I can explain everything, if you just—”
“Explain what?” Nix snapped, cutting her off. “Explain how you snuck around the Commander’s house on the morning of your own wedding so you could steal a pistol from his personal arsenal?” His voice had a cruel, mocking edge to it that Audrey had never heard before. He leaned both fists on the bottom of the mattress. “Or maybe you mean explain how you played us for weeks pretending to be something you weren’t, manipulating each of us to get what you needed. Or do you mean how you whored yourself out last night just so we’d let down our guard and you could finally get your way and escape? Do tell me. Did I miss anything?”
How could he— If he would just let her get a word in edgewise— Audrey felt seconds away from busting into flame she was so furious.
“Don’t forget the bit about how she shot the township’s Security Squadron’s second in command,” Clark piped in, arms folded across his chest. “That went over really well with the Commander.”
“I guess we should feel lucky not to have all been murdered in our beds after she fucked us,” Nix said coldly.
Audrey yanked at her chains, wanting to jump on him and punch and scratch his eyes out for how he was talking to her. “Well I guess you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you? You’re Mr. Security expert. Nothing gets by you.” She let disdain drip from her voice.
As far as she saw it, this was all their fault. They were so sure their high and mighty township was so perfect, they missed the monster right in front of their faces. Or should she say, the five monsters, because there was no way any of Camila’s husbands didn’t know what was going on between Jeffries and her. Hell, maybe they got in their hits and slaps when they could too.
And Nix, Mr. Self-Righteous himself—did he even check in on the women after they raffled them off? Did anyone?
No. They just took the men’s word that they were treating the wives so well. How many other women were living in hell, imprisoned in these pristine gilded cages?
“Wow,” she laughed bitterly. “Well at least your true colors have come out at last. No more pretending all of this isn’t against my will.” She rattled the handcuffs.
“No.” Mateo stepped forward, deep furrows in his eyebrows. “We’re protecting you. Audrey, leaving the township is no laughing matter. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you—”
“Oh, so you’re locking me up for my protection,” Audrey said, eyebrows at her hairline. “Well, that makes it so much better.”
She turned her face away. She couldn’t even stand looking at them anymore.
“It’s not like that—” Mateo started but Nix cut him off.
“You want to go get yourself killed?” Nix suddenly shouted, slamming the wooden footboard with the flat of his hand. “You want to wave a gun around and fucking shoot someone, then you’re gonna whine about the fucking consequences? Boo hoo. Poor you. Safe and sound when there are a thousand women out there being raped and mutilated and then raped some more until they lose their fucking minds!”
Audrey jerked back at the vehemence in Nix’s voice.
He stormed out of the room without giving any of them a second glance. The door slammed behind him.
Audrey bit the inside of her cheek hard to keep from crying. And then she glared at Clark and Mateo. “So? Let ‘er rip. Lemme have it. Tell me what an evil bitch I am.”
Clark just sighed and shook his head at her in clear disappointment. “It’s been a long night. I’m gonna go get some sleep.”
Audrey stared at the wall while he left. She could see out of her periphery that Mateo was still there.
“What?” Audrey asked. It was harder and harder to keep hold of her bravado. It was going to
crack any second and she couldn’t bear anyone seeing that. “Just leave,” she bit out. “I don’t want to see any of you. Don’t you get it? I was trying to run away. To leave you. I would have rather risked dying than staying here with you all.”
She regretted it the second it came out of her mouth. But she kept her chin jutted out because otherwise she’d just absolutely fucking lose it. Please go, just go, she begged in her head.
Mateo didn’t say anything back for a long, long moment.
She dared a glance his direction, having to blink rapidly to keep the tears back. He was still there. Hadn’t moved a muscle.
Finally he did, and she sucked in a breath when he came close to the bed.
“I made vows to you yesterday,” he said, voice quiet but clear, “and I meant them.” Out of her peripheral vision, she saw him drop to his knees beside the bed. “Vows to love, honor, and protect. I’m sorry I’ve already failed you.”
Audrey’s lip trembled so badly that she had to suck it into her mouth and bite down hard. And still, her chest shook with the silent sobs trying to escape. She wanted to say he didn’t do anything wrong. That he hadn’t failed or done anything he needed to apologize for. But she didn’t dare speak a word because she knew she’d start blubbering. And if she gave into it, she didn’t know if she’d ever stop.
“My life is your life,” he went on. “I’m bound to you for eternity, and I will do anything to serve you, help you…” He lifted up only far enough to place a kiss on the top of one of her feet and then the other.
“…and love you,” he whispered before rising silently and leaving the room.
After that it was impossible not to give in.
She turned on her side and bawled into her pillow to muffle the noise.
How had everything that had been so perfect the night before gone so horribly, horribly wrong?
And where did she go from here?
Chapter 24