Emmet stumbled across the room and flipped the dial on the huge black safe. He yanked on the door, which held fast. “Damn thing.” He tried again. “Damn old thing!” He kicked the side of the safe, winced and turned to her.
“Sorry, girl.” He looked at her cast, and his good eye filled with pity. “Here, come on. You need to rest.” He helped her hobble over to the cell. “Stay here while I get that blasted thing open.”
He settled her carefully on one of the bunks. He picked up the thin blanket from the end of the bed and used the worn fabric to cover her legs.
“Give me them things.” He held out his hand for her crutches, and she handed them over.
Once on the other side of the bars, he shoved the door, clanging the iron closed. Immediately, his whole demeanor changed. Grinning with the most evil, malicious grin she’d ever seen, he instantly sobered.
“You a damn fool, girl.”
“How can I believe this?” Duster dumped the reports into Michael’s lap. Reams of paper slid off his black cotton dress slacks to the slick salmon silk, then onto the wool-carpeted floor of Mary’s bedroom.
“What do you think, I’m psychic now?” Michael laughed. “I knew this would happen, so I planted that information on my desk for you to conveniently find at this moment?” He shoved the stray reports to the floor and stood. “I didn’t set out to seduce Mary. I was trying to give her one last night of peace before I dropped a bomb on her about her oh-so-loving adopted father.” With a sigh, Michael tucked in his shirt. “And for what it’s worth, we seduced each other. You know as well as I do there isn’t a soul in the Void who could make Mary do something she didn’t want to do.”
Duster smiled, but the smile didn’t touch his eyes. “You have a knack for making things go your way. How do I know you haven’t had this information all along and were just waiting to spring it at the right time?”
“You and Mary are paranoid, you know that? Call Harper. Ask him when he filed the reports.” Michael licked his lips and tasted Mary. Embedded into his skin, her scent and flavor penetrated into the very soul of him. He had to get her back or he would go crazy.
When Duster contacted Harper via his wrist com, Harper confirmed he’d given Michael the reports this evening.
“According to those reports, Emmet Courtland is one nasty piece of work. He’s been abusing Mary since the day she landed on his doorstep.” Michael dropped his gaze to Duster’s gun. “So, are you going to shoot me, or are you going to help me save Mary?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“What are you doing?” Mary flung off the thin blanket and hopped across the creaking wooden floor to the cell door. When she pulled, she found the iron bars locked tight.
No longer weaving, Emmet tossed her crutches aside and strode over to the safe. “You just sit down, stupid girl.”
With three quick turns, he opened the safe and plucked out a small metal box. He flipped the little numbered rollers, popped the lid and took out a sleek, chromed gun. Even from a distance, she recognized the weapon as an IWOG officer’s pistol.
“How did you get that?” On the black market, IWOG officer pistols were practically nonexistent. One had killed her adopted mother, Joan.
“I didn’t get it.” Emmet sneered, lifting the pistol so the light glinted off the deadly barrel. “They gave it to me.”
“Why would the IWOG give you an officer’s pistol?”
“All them books and you still stupid.”
Mary let the comment slide. His words hurt, but he only lashed out when he was drunk. “Papa, I don’t—”
“I ain’t your papa, you damn idiot!” He picked up the pretty ceramic paperweight she’d given him for his last birthday, cocked back his flabby arm and threw the emerald green ball straight at her. It hit one of the iron bars with a resounding crack and the chunks crashed to the floor.
Shocked, she backed off from the bars. In his drunken rages, he occasionally threw things but never at her.
“I got stuck with you! Stuck in this miserable backwater for twenty-six years rearing another man’s bastard!”
His vicious words stung and she stumbled back from his attack, sitting down hard on the prison bunk. Creaking, the wire frame rubbed against the wooden supports, bowing slightly beneath her weight. The mattress reeked of sweat and urine, and the odor rose up to choke her as she struggled to breathe.
“I don’t understand.” She fought back tears. Being accustomed to his attacks wasn’t the same as liking them. “I thought you adopted me because—”
“Because what? You just so sweet?” He pursed his lips, mocking her. “’Cause I wanted to spend my life as mayor of Moronville? Spend my good years shacked up to a fat, simple wife who wouldn’t even spread her legs without a fight?” Shaking his head, he withdrew a slender IWOG com unit from the box. “I adopted you ’cause I had to. Damn payment prison is what Taiga is.”
She wanted to speak, wanted to say something, but found herself struck mute for the first time in her life. Emmet hated her. He despised her. He loathed her. She’d always felt his malevolence but refused to acknowledge the truth until this very moment. She couldn’t admit that she’d wanted love so much she blinded herself to the truth. Just as she had with Michael.
Flatly, she said, “You killed Joan with that gun.” Over the years, Emmet had blamed everything on the IWOG. Under the guise of caring, he’d taught her to blame them too. Hate them. All for something he’d been responsible for all along.
“Well, looky here, you got a bit of brain in you after all.” He grinned at her, showing crooked yellow teeth. “Your real papa would be so pleased.”
“You know him?” All these years he’d known the secret she’d been chasing.
“He don’t want you any more than me. Damn fool should have just drowned you at birth and been done with you. Sentimental shmuck. Pretty damn funny, though, watching you scrambling around trying to figure out who he was. I got a kick out of sending you on one wild goose chase after another.”
“You posted that list in the tavern, just as everyone said.” Rumors had hidden fact. She felt like a fool for defending him, protecting him, when he’d been the one hurting her all along.
“Yep.” He practically giggled at his own joke. “Remarkably Average Mary. You should have seen your face!”
She had seen her face, chapped red by hours of tears. After that, she didn’t spend much time looking in mirrors. Why bother?
“You started that rumor about me and Bobby Jameson too, didn’t you?” She didn’t really need an answer at this point, but she asked anyway. Maybe in an effort to punish herself for being so foolish. Emmet didn’t love her any more than Michael did.
“Yep. Paid him twenty flat to keep his mouth shut.” Emmet cocked his head to one side as if remembering. “Bobby went me one better, though, and told the tale himself. His was better than mine, so I paid him fifty flat to keep talking.”
“And the football team tale.” Each revelation killed another piece of her heart.
“You finally getting it, ain’tja? I done started all those tales, just to watch you squirm.” Emmet stared at her for a moment, fuzzy gray eyebrows drawn together, one making a checkmark over his swollen eye. “Never could figure out why you didn’t just up and kill yourself. Anyone else would have, but not you, stupid girl, not you. You just wouldn’t stay broken.”
That fact infuriated him, and caused the walls around her heart to rebuild. All along, she wondered why the nasty tales never stopped. As soon as one rumor died down, another took its place. An endless slew of vicious gossip marched across her life from her earliest memories.
“I never did anything to you.” Brick by brick, she rebuilt her defenses, determined not to let anything Emmet said hurt her further. She imagined building walls a thousand feet tall around herself.
“You was born, weren’tja?” He picked up the stapler on his desk and threw it at her. It missed by a mile and skittered across the wooden floor. “Because of you, m
y life turned to shit. I had no choice but to stay here and watch over you. I would have killed you, but he would have known. So I kept you alive and made your life a living hell, just like mine.”
“Why did my parents dump me on you?” What could a baby have done that would drive both her parents away? Worse than that, why would they use her to deliberately inflict torment on another person by making the task of rearing her payment prison?
“Wasn’t your parents.” He glared at her. “You a bastard, girl. Your momma never married your papa. Nope. WAG whore died giving birth to you, and your IWOG father didn’t have the balls to throttle you, like he should have.”
The nasty comment bounced right off. “Why you, Emmet? Why didn’t my father just dump me in an orphanage or sell me on the black market?” Her mind raced. If her father really was an IWOG officer, he would have tried to make money off her. Maybe he was. Maybe all the stuff she stole went to him instead of Emmet.
“’Cause he’s a damn fool!” Emmet shook his shaggy gray head as if he couldn’t understand her father’s actions either.
“He had something on you,” Mary guessed, feeling the truth deep inside. “My IWOG father blackmailed you, which means you must be IWOG too.”
“You shut your face, girl, or so help me.” Emmet shook his fist at her.
“You’ll what? Come in here and paddle my butt?” She fought down an urge to laugh at the empty threat. “You locked me in here because you’re afraid of me.” In a fight, she’d take him down no sweat, even with a broken ankle. All she had to do was give him one good blast in that swollen eye of his… It shocked her how fast thoughts of protecting Emmet turned to ways to defeat him.
“That’s right, isn’t it? I turned you into quite the little fighter. I filled your head with all kinds of ideas with those books. Can’t wait for your papa to find that out.” Emmet put the gun on the desk as he pawed through the metal box. “I took his little girl and turned her into an outlaw! IWOG or WAG world, ain’t none that’s gonna ever accept you. Remarkably Average Mary, the Bandit of Taiga.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help herself. All her life had been one cruel joke after another, one vicious rumor after another. What Emmet said was like all the rest, truth or not. Like Commander with his report that turned out to be a blank piece of paper. Like his identity turning out to be her long sought hero with a harsh dose of reality. Truth became what she knew in her heart, not what other people said.
Day-to-day existence so brutal, she survived by reading anything she could get her hands on. Books mostly supplied by Emmet. Losing herself in them, she’d not only escaped but also educated herself, found strength in herself. She did her best to make the best of what she had. If Emmet thought he destroyed her, he fooled only himself. And he had her permission to do so.
Her gentle laughter infuriated him.
“What you snickering at, girl? You gone crazy?”
“I’m laughing at you.” She grabbed the pillows off the top bunk and sat back down on the lower bunk.
Red suffused his face. “You best stop.” He picked up the pistol, aiming the barrel at her face.
“You’re not going to kill me.” She propped the pillows below her now-throbbing cast-bound leg to relieve the pressure.
“Think so, stupid girl?” He sighted along the barrel, as if lining up a shot.
“Know so.” She lay back on the stinky mattress, cupping her hands behind her head. If she’d learned nothing else from Michael, she learned that deliberately relaxing one’s stance to a threat inevitably unbalanced the other person. “You kill me, and my father will hunt you to ends of the Void just so he can strangle you with your own intestines.”
Color drained from Emmet’s face. Well, except for that pulsing purple eye.
She nodded to the gun. “That’s if you kill me right now.” She tapped the side of her head. “I wonder what my real papa’s like to do when he finds out what you’ve done to me all these years?” With a dismissive toss of her head, she turned her gaze up to the cross pattern of wire that secured the urine-stained bunk above her. After weeks of staggering opulence, she found herself on the other extreme. “You’re dead where you stand, Emmet. One way or another.”
After a long moment, she looked back.
Emmet broke into a wide grin that caused his split lip to ooze a bit. “You think you all kinds of clever, don’t ya?” He tossed the pistol to his desk. “I don’t need you no more. ’Cause of your dumb luck, I got Overlord.”
Mary fought down any visible reaction, but her heart took a sickening lurch. Emmet found the one chink in her thousand-foot walls. Her anger at Michael’s betrayal wasn’t great enough to overshadow her concern for his safety. She couldn’t bear the thought of him in IWOG custody, even though she wanted to kick the crap out of him herself.
With a voice cool as Ice Lake, Mary said, “He won’t come for me.” In a rush, she wanted that statement to be true so Michael would be safe, but she also wanted her words to be false, because a silly-girl-romantic part of her heart wanted Overlord to rescue her.
“He won’t come for you, girl. He’s done gotten what he wanted from you.” Emmet uttered a dirty snicker that made her skin crawl. “Evil bastard’ll come for his dead lover’s ship, though. 20Mil and I’m out of this backwater forever.”
Her chest tightened, but she held her ground, even knowing that Emmet was probably right. Michael would want Whisper back. What seemed like a good idea at the time backfired.
“I’ve stolen plenty for you. You don’t need money.”
“Not money, idiot, but proof I’m a good, solid IWOG consumer. Delivering Overlord will secure me a new place in the IWOG world.” Emmet tapped his index finger against the com unit as he flashed her his crooked, yellow teeth. “And that’s whether you’re alive or not.”
“Visual confirmed,” Rourke, the pilot of Elusive Grace, informed Michael. “Whisper is in geosynchronous orbit to Taiga. No other ships in scanner range.”
“IWOG activity?” Michael asked as he stood on the bridge and checked the scanners. From the bridge window, he had a grand view of the terminator line sweeping across Taiga. The small silver dot in the distance must be Kraft’s ship.
“None in this sector.” Rourke tapped at the main console. “Tasher reports indicate a recent message sent from the vicinity of the Taiga Pine Glenn Courthouse to the nearest IWOG post.”
“Time to respond to a distress call?” Michael kept his posture and voice formal.
“Thirty hours, barring interruption,” Rourke informed him, checking other components on the console.
“Elapsed time since Emmet placed the call?”
Rourke hesitated for a moment. “We haven’t confirmed Emmet Courtland sent the distress call to the IWOG outpost, Commander.”
“I know he did, but I appreciate your professionalism. How much time since the call was placed?”
“Five hours.” Rourke quadruple checked the scanners. “We have twenty-five hours to accomplish our mission, Commander.”
“Good work, Rourke.” Michael nodded to his most trusted pilot.
Rourke respectfully turned his attention back to the main console.
“You’re really gonna do this?” Duster asked from the copilot seat.
“Even if Mary gave Emmet a detailed description, he still doesn’t know what I look like, and that’s to my advantage.” Michael scanned the console again.
“Mary knows you.” Duster frowned.
“Because of my wrist com, we know she’s being held in the Pine Glenn prison.”
“Or at least your wrist com is.” Duster grumbled. “It could be a trap.”
Letting his professional posture fade a bit, Michael argued, “I’m telling you, that’s where she is, and my plan will work.”
“Risky.” Duster let out a deep sigh.
“Matters of the heart usually are.”
When Michael echoed the words Duster had said in his office, Duster climbed to his feet. “If you’re do
ing this to prove to me that you love Mary, I’m going to commit mutiny right now and stop you.” Arms crossed, Duster glared at him with a combination of anger and disbelief.
“I’m not doing this to prove anything to you.” Michael frowned and checked the console. “Get over yourself, Duster. This isn’t about you.”
“Fine.” Duster had the grace to look contrite, but he didn’t stop trying to change Michael’s mind. “This plan of yours is riddled with more holes than a shooting range.”
“Indeed.” He checked his meager possessions again. Well-worn brown homespun pants, a battered tan shirt, decimated cowhide boots, and an empty holster. Michael had two bills in his pocket and an ace of spades up his sleeve. Just enough to get himself into trouble in a Taiga tavern. “Give me the first alternate plan.” Barely had the words left his mouth when Duster launched into what would amount to a full-scale invasion of Taiga.
“We dispatch a team of thirty men to surround the Pine Glenn Courthouse—”
“With guns drawn, tempers high, and maybe Mary gets blown away by friendly fire.” Michael shook his head. “No way.”
“Trained men against—”
“We don’t know what firepower Emmet has in that place.”
“He can’t have much,” Duster argued.
“Yes, he can.” Michael cleared his throat and calmly said, “Mary has been stealing for five years. Not just from me, but from Fringe players all along the black-market route. Smarter than hell, she only took a little bit from each ship. We noticed by a fluke, an accounting error. You thought it so strange, you turned it into a game.”
Duster straightened. “It’s not a game now.”
“Granted. Hear me out.”
Duster reluctantly did.
“Now, you add that up, my 20K times fifty or sixty ships, and Mary has swiped a fortune. She’s given everything to Emmet, thinking she could save her world from an IWOG invasion. Emmet, that prick, is a disgraced IWOG officer forced to watch over her by blackmail. Right now, he’s filling her head with a truth that will destroy her.”
Overlord: The Fringe, Book 2 Page 25