by Jody Klaire
Renee looked up at me in a mix of genuine shock and confusion. Some deeper feeling pulsed from her fingertips. Warmth tingled across my skin from her touch. It felt like . . . like . . . hope?
I couldn’t explain it but before I could ask, her fear flared up. Her anger ignited and her gray eyes hardened. “Let go.”
Her reaction jarred me. I was so sure she’d understood I wasn’t going to hurt her. Now, I wasn’t so sure. I relaxed my grip, confused by the panic in her eyes.
She snapped her hand away and fled.
“Samson?”
The sound of Jäger’s gruff tones made me thankful that I’d produced that reaction from Renee. He’d have seen through anything else. I tried to push away the fact I’d scared her, that I’d made her panic. I wasn’t like Yannick. I’d never hurt her like he had. I hoped I wouldn’t hurt her at all. Only, I felt like I had.
“S’up?” I turned and plastered a smile on my face and tried to ignore that he was looking at me in a way anybody else would have been punched for.
“Professor Worthington and you know each other?” He strode toward me, his steely eyes pulling me in.
“She came looking for her sister.” I laughed. It sounded mean. “She thinks I might have done something to her.”
His gaze flicked over my face. “The psychiatrist?”
I didn’t move from my relaxed position against the doorjamb. “You know who she is and you did your research on me.” I smiled as nonchalantly as I could. Frei had covered everything. I just needed to cut out the names. Same stuff, different place. “I ain’t ever been to Austin.”
“You have issues with psychiatrists?”
“I was locked in with them.” I narrowed my eyes, knowing that my dislike was genuine. “What do you think?”
“I’d say you have a problem with their family too.” Jäger smiled. “At least based on the way you just scared her.”
I shrugged like I didn’t care when all I wanted to do was go after her and make sure she was okay. “She’s fun to tease.”
He frowned and tucked his thumbs into his belt. “Professor Worthington is needed, so no fun.”
I sighed as if he’d taken away my favorite toy and wondered how I’d become this convincing. “Relax, I was just warning her.” I folded my arms. “I won’t hurt her.”
He motioned for me to walk with him down the corridor. “She thinks that she knows who you are. That’s a problem.”
He looked out the window at the quadrant. Renee was hurrying into her building to the right of mine.
“Anybody who goes looking can find out about my time inside, the fact I weren’t happy staying there and pretty much what I ate for lunch.” I shrugged. Frei had said I’d escaped. She gave me too much credit. Escaping took sneaking ability. I was no sneak. “She just wants to know what happened to her sister. With all the stuff said about me, I can’t blame her for trying.”
“You told her you didn’t know?”
I glanced his way. “Now where would the fun be in that?”
He wagged his finger at me. “Tease all you want but if she feels threatened she could leave. We need her.” He said it in such a way that I almost saluted.
“Point made, I’ll taunt her gently.” I gave him my best charming smile. “So what do I owe the honor?”
He nodded to the list in my hand.
“You gave me a load of duds.” I handed him the list. “If you want me to make them worthwhile, I want them treated.”
He smiled, reading down the list. He’d known they had medical conditions. “It’ll come out of your cut.”
Lovely, I got a cut for selling kids, how heartwarming. “Done. I can make a load if they are healthy.”
He cocked his head.
“I was a weedy loser like them.” I grinned and flexed my biceps at him. I was pretty sure that would put him off. Yasmin, from back in Serenity, had always told me that guys didn’t dig women with muscles. They were into “busts and butts,” or boots, I was sure there’d been something to do with boots.
Noticing Jäger watching me, I flexed my muscles again, hoping Yasmin was right. “Amazing what a little exercise can do.”
He spent a few minutes examining me before smiling. “So I see.”
Yeah, Yasmin, way to go. Jäger seemed pretty into muscles and all the rest of it. I kept my mouth shut. Taught me right for listening to Yasmin. Dimwit.
Jäger folded up the list and placed it in his pocket. “Good as done. For the record,” he nodded to Renee’s building, “taunting women like her isn’t the greatest idea.”
I raised my eyebrows. “How so?”
His smile grew wider and he rubbed his chin with his large hand. They were hairy where they met his wrists. That was a lot of fluff on one person.
“I know women like her.” He laughed as if enjoying a forgotten memory. “They bite.”
He had Renee nailed with that one. She was feistier than a rattler with a headache.
“That’s the fun part,” I shot at him, then turned and walked away. I could sense him gazing after me. “Means it’s only fair that I get to bite back.”
Chapter 16
THE KID WHO kept passing out, Miroslav, did just that in front of me as I headed toward the villa Frei and I were sharing. Again, although I weren’t meant to have my burdens, I could feel him and was there to grab him before he hit the dirt.
“Thank you,” he mumbled at me in a thick Polish accent. I knew it was Polish because the word Poland popped before my eyes. I rubbed at them, wondering why it had happened. Just like my attempt at making up a vision, which had become eerily like I was describing a vision.
“You always been like this, kid?” I asked. My heart clattered away in my chest in tandem with his and I remembered Renee’s words.
If she’d told me what helped, that would have been good.
“No, Miss Samson.” He looked up at me. His deep eyes were pale, real pale skin and a smile that could have been a cosmetics commercial. “I have not been so well since I lost my parents.”
There went any hope of me being mean. “What happened?” I helped him over to a bench at the side of the fake grass in the quadrant.
He took a couple of breaths and I felt my heartbeat calm.
“Don’t know,” he whispered. His long slender fingers looked like a woman’s hands had been sewn onto his skinny arms. “I came home one day and the police told me that they had died.” He screwed his hands up into fists. “My uncle sends me here. I dislike him.”
I weren’t fond of him either if he’d sold his nephew. Chump. “You been here long?”
“Since I was fourteen.” He looked up at me expectantly. “Three years.”
“I thought you guys went off to other places at sixteen?” I hoped he knew that or I was in big trouble.
“I lie about my age.” He shrugged. “Something happens when students reach sixteen. They leave and no one ever hears from them again.” He stared at the fountain in front of us. A naked dude with muscles. “My old school had great students. The school was happy to tell anyone who would listen of their success.”
“Caprock doesn’t?”
“Nothing.” He flashed a gentle smile at me. I was a sucker for him already. A total goner. “Especially the clever ones. They get hurt a lot. Things happen to them.”
“Hurt?” I needed to ask Frei.
He sighed. “I probably do not make much sense to you. I say too much.”
“Lesson one about me, kid. I ain’t somebody you can guess a lot about.” I flashed him a charming smile back. Frei would kick my butt for getting personal with him but I didn’t care. “Why do you think they get hurt?”
He nodded at the block on the west of the quadrant. That was Sawyer and Jones’s place. “They hurt people sometimes . . . others go missing.”
He looked so miserable, so burdened by it, I wasn’t surprised it was blubbering out of him. He was lucky it was me listening. “You tell other kids this?”
He sho
ok his head. “I stay silent. I try not to draw attention.” He rubbed his hand over his chest. “With my problem . . . no one sees me.”
“I’m gonna help you with that.” I said it like I knew how to fix him. I did, but there was no way I could stick my hands on his chest. I knew that burden had gone. My hands didn’t even heat up like they did before. I wished I’d still had that burden to help him.
“I don’t want them to notice me.” He was still looking at Sawyer and Jones’s place.
“I ain’t planning on telling nobody but it’s in your best interest to look useful.” I could have tried to cover that with threats or promises but I could feel he was far cleverer than anybody had realized. Renee had, like always, but nobody else. Besides, he kinda reminded me of myself. “What’s your name again?”
“Miroslav.”
It suited him.
“Miroslav,” I said, mimicking his pronunciation as best I could. “I ain’t planning on letting you get hurt but you also got to understand that to do that, I have to make your talents shine through.”
He frowned at me. “But other—”
“Unless you’re hiding you’re a genius or something, don’t worry ’bout it.”
He blushed. A proper blush that had me wanting to go, “awwww.” Renee would be a sucker for him too, I knew she would.
“You just need enough that they’ll think you’re good is all.”
Good enough not to sell for parts.
“I can do this.” He was like an older version of Zack, the kid I’d wanted to adopt back in St. Jude’s. I was a sucker for puppy dog eyes. It was a pattern that seemed etched out before me. Sam, Jake, Zack, and now Miroslav. Kinda weird but as I hadn’t ever had a brother, I didn’t get exposed to what trouble the owners of those eyes could make. Unless you counted Sam and that was unfair. Not every handsome kid was a serial killer.
“We need to get the whole face plant thing under control too. When I can figure out what to do, we’re going to stop it happening.” I doubted anyone would find a thug useful when he passed out on guard duty.
“I would like that.” His slender shoulders relaxed.
“Good, now get gone. I’m meant to be mean and vicious and you’re ruining my cred.”
Miroslav laughed, despite the fact he was seventeen his voice hadn’t broken yet. His laughter was sweet and cute. I half-didn’t want that to change. Most of all, I didn’t want him to forget how to laugh.
“I can’t see how anyone could think you were mean, Miss Samson.” He zinged another smile my way. Man, I was putty. “You’re too pretty.”
That just made me chuckle and thumb at the wheelchair over by my door. It was his and he was supposed to use it, but didn’t. “Stop making holes in the floor and push yourself home.”
He nodded and I brought it over for him. I left him there to wheel off to his dorm and wandered back toward the villa.
I wondered how Frei had coped when she was his age. I wondered how it had molded her. Serenity had changed me beyond recognition. For the better, in some ways.
Frei, having been through all she had, was still cool. How much of that was for show?
I wanted and needed to know her better. That feeling built as I walked. When I’d met her, I’d disliked her. She was frosty, arrogant, abrasive, and gave Renee such a hard time. She was always curt and cutting, sat straight like she had a pole up her butt. She would dress like she held untold riches, always looking like she should be in a catalogue or on the red carpet.
She drove like she didn’t care, her eyes masked with those aviators. When she took them off, there were those icy blues staring straight back at you. The barrier was impenetrable around her. Spending time in CIG with her hadn’t helped me see much further beyond what she presented.
So what else did I know about her? I thought it over as I walked. I knew she liked black coffee that looked like it could strip walls. She drank stuff that I swore did strip walls. She had a strange connection to the jacket she wore, to the ring on her finger. She kept a broken padlock in her pocket and she was an ex-slave. She had a sister. She was a leader, a general, an agent . . . and she had awesome taste in motorcycles.
Was all that truth?
When I met her, I’d grabbed her out of desperation and seen the fake cover she was going by. She wasn’t from Detroit, I was pretty sure she wasn’t born in the US either.
Like Renee, she believed her cover to the point it became real. They had to. That was the way agents like them survived.
Strolling through the mirage around me, I wondered where the real her began. She knew Renee better than I did and I knew she had me figured out too.
Somehow, I doubted either Renee or I were that close to the truth of her.
Like Miroslav, she’d done what she needed to survive. I hoped that reminding her of that would help her to keep true to whoever she truly was inside, even if I never got to know her.
Chapter 17
WHEN I GOT back to the villa, Frei was on her cell phone to someone that was getting right under her skin. I say guessed because she was speaking fast in what I assumed was German.
I leaned against the kitchen counter, watching as she talked, her hands flicked through the air as if oblivious to my presence. I’d never seen her so animated before. It was fascinating.
She shot some words into the mouthpiece, hung up, and muttered something that sounded like a very rude cuss word up at the ceiling.
She raised her hand like she was about to hurl the phone at the wall so I covered my head and cleared my throat.
“Problem?”
She spun on her heel, fixed me with a look of pure rage, then slammed shut her eyes.
She took long deep breaths but then so did I to try and calm the panic pounding through me. Man, she was scary. Note to self, never rile up Frankenfrei.
“How did it go?” she asked, opening her eyes, all trace of emotion gone from her face and voice.
“I guess a lot better than your conversation with . . . er . . . Huber? Or at least somebody to do with him.”
She glared at me but I shrugged. I had no idea how I knew but I did.
She sighed. “Your talents are meant to be offline.”
Now I was being referred to like a computer, nice. “Hey, you fire off that amount of emotion and I don’t need to be online to pick it up.” I waved my hands about like she had. “Something up?”
“It’s Huber’s mistress.” Frei slid her phone in her pocket. “She doesn’t like me and she hates Renee. She’s livid we’re involved.”
“Why?”
“Quick version, she is jealous because Huber loves me.” She shrugged. “Huber hasn’t made as much money since I left.”
“Ah, so she’s mad Renee stole you?”
Frei raised her blonde eyebrows. “Yes.”
Women were way too complicated for me. “So why is she a problem if she’s just a mistress?”
Frei shoved her hands on her belt like she was about to duel at high noon. “The deal was that Huber would cover us. Megan is powerful in her own right. She knows people.” She sighed. “Jäger has Huber’s word that you and Renee are trustworthy.”
“And?” I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Megan is threatening to let Jäger know Renee isn’t.”
Now I was panicking. “But Huber promised.”
“He did and his word is worth a lot more to Jäger than hers.” She met my eyes. “Megan likes to push my buttons.”
“Sounds like my mother.”
Frei laughed, a burst of shocked laughter that made me jump. “You might be right.”
“She called just to threaten you?” I headed to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. It was so dusty here.
“Smyth got the letter threatening the kids.” She tapped a piece of paper on the breakfast counter. “So naturally, Jäger has issued a warning.”
That didn’t sound pleasant. He’d said nothing to me. “So you were trying to get hold of Huber?”
<
br /> Frei sighed. “And reacquainted myself with Megan, yes.”
“Is she going to be a problem?”
Frei slumped onto the stool at the breakfast bar as I offered her a bottle. “Yes.”
I cracked open mine and downed it, thankful for the cool liquid. How were we going to get out safe?
“As long as Renee doesn’t start digging, we’ll be fine.” Frei put her hands on the countertop and I noticed she had a lot of nick marks. Faint scars that seemed to cover her arms.
“Why would she?” Yes, I knew these guys were slave traders but Renee didn’t. Frei wasn’t telling me something.
“I walked away and Renee got hurt.” Frei sighed. “I stuck up for someone who she didn’t understand. I got them to safety, which she threatened to arrest me for.”
Loyalty. I could hear it in her voice. I took a seat next to her and we both stared at the fridge.
“In Serenity, I knew this girl called Lynne. She’d done things that made Sam look like a gentleman.” I shook my head. “She was the most volatile, nasty piece of work you’d ever wish to meet. Everybody was terrified of her.”
It felt like such a long time ago now that even talking about it made it feel so far away.
“This skinny, scared little runt got locked up in a cell with her. Nobody expected me to last the night.”
Frei looked at me. Her eyes tracked over my cheek but I focused on the fridge.
“I liked her. She liked me. She was so nice and funny. She taught me to look after myself, to lift weights. She protected me and even took care of me when I was sick.” I smiled at Frei. “A vicious lunatic she was, that was something neither of us could change, but there was enough good in her to help out a lost and lonely kid.”
“What happened?” Frei leaned on her fist. Gone was the bored nonchalance.
“She decided that she didn’t like the color of a guard’s hair one day. She’d get in them moods sometimes.” I sighed. “She took out eight of them before they sedated her.” I shook my head. “Never did know where they moved her.”
“She was never bad to you?” Frei studied me like she needed to know something.