Ruthless (Lawless Saga Book 3)

by Tarah Benner

  “If you don’t want to know why their crops were rejected, what do you want?”

  “We want those seeds — with or without the FDA’s stamp of approval.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Lark. “Stage a hostile takeover of GreenSeed and steal them?”

  Reuben didn’t say anything, and Lark got the feeling that her shot in the dark had hit the nail on the head.

  “Seriously?” she said, stifling a laugh. “What? You want information on the prison so your SWAT team knows where the seed is stored when they break down the doors?”

  Again, Reuben was silent.

  Lark laughed. “Sounds to me like you’d have gotten those seeds by now if there were any other way,” she said. “You need the crops that GreenSeed’s been working on, which means you need us. No seeds, no food . . . no USA.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” said Reuben.

  “I would,” said Lark. “You’ve already tried to play nice with GreenSeed and the FDA. We’re your last best option. From where I’m sitting, I’m in a good position to start making demands.”

  Reuben scoffed and rolled his eyes, but Lark could tell that she’d gotten under his skin. He paused for a moment, studying her intently.

  “Even if that were true . . . would you really sacrifice millions of lives just to get what you wanted?”

  Lark shrugged. “No skin off my back.” She gave Reuben a creepy serial-killer smile. “I’m a murderer, remember?”

  Reuben’s jaw tightened. Clearly the conversation wasn’t going the way he’d planned.

  At first Lark thought that he might circle back to his good-cop routine and order another round of food, but then he brought his palm down hard on the table and leaned forward until his face was mere inches from hers.

  His breathing was shallow and very fast. Lark could smell the fries on his breath and the off-putting mixture of cheap cologne and old sweat.

  “Listen to me,” he said in a deadly whisper. “You may think that you’re a big-time criminal because you spent some time in GreenSeed’s little human experiment, but let me tell you something . . . Those were mostly low-level thugs in the women’s colony, hand selected by GreenSeed because they were predisposed to function in that sort of environment.” He shook his head slowly, and Lark saw that he had a spot of dried mustard on his chin. “You have no idea what you’re up against.”

  Lark didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t even blink. She just stared right back at Reuben, determined to match his intimidating expression.

  “Do you really think you’re gonna get the best of me?” he murmured. “After all the human shit stains that I’ve dealt with in my career?” He let out a sinister laugh. “I’m talking about people who would peel off your toenails one by one . . . blind you with hydrochloric acid . . . melt your skin off with a blow torch just for the fun of it.” He shook his head and cracked an off-putting smile. “You’re in way over your head, little girl.”

  Lark stared at him for a long moment, torn between the urge to say nothing and the urge to spit in his face. Her heart was pounding in her throat. It was hammering so hard that she was almost sure Reuben could hear it.

  She couldn’t tell if he was bluffing. All she knew was that her gut was screaming at her not to say anything. She didn’t trust Reuben one bit, and there was nothing to keep him from locking her up the moment she gave him what he wanted.

  From what she knew about the expansion of the National Defense Authorization Act, the Department of Homeland Security was authorized to detain pretty much anyone it deemed a threat or an obstacle in times of national crisis. If he wanted to, Reuben could lock her up and throw away the key. Her only leverage was what she knew.

  “So what’ll it be?” asked Reuben, crushing the soda can between his fingers and throwing it across the room. It missed the trash can by several inches and clattered to the floor.

  Lark leaned back in her chair and met his gaze dead-on. “I’m not saying anything,” she whispered. “Not until you give me want I want.”

  Reuben sucked in a deep, forceful breath. “And what is it that you want?”

  “I want pardons for me and my friends. I’ll tell you everything I know about the prison if you let us all go free.”

  Reuben let out a fake burst of laughter and shook his head. “Come on.”

  “That’s my offer.”

  Reuben studied her for a long moment, as though he found her boldness entertaining rather than offensive. He cocked his head to one side, a grim smile working at the corners of his mouth, and Lark got a sinking feeling in her gut.

  “Consider your offer declined,” he murmured, throwing Lark a filthy look and pressing a button on the intercom. “Take her away.”

  Lark’s stomach dropped to her knees, and a surge of panic rushed through her veins. A second later, the door to the interrogation room flew open, and two men appeared on the other side. One was a svelte black man with a bald head and a thin mustache. The other was the blond guy who’d brought Reuben the burgers.

  They piled into the room without a word, and the blond grabbed Lark by the shoulder. He dug his thumb into the depression below her collarbone, and a sudden jolt of pain shot through her chest. He’d found a pressure point.

  Lark tried to fight the pain, but her body buckled over the table almost immediately. The man yanked her arms behind her back while the other agent cuffed her. They hoisted her into an upright position and marched her out of the room. The whole ordeal took less than ten seconds.

  The men led Lark down a long hallway with bare strips of florescent lights hanging from the ceiling. Exposed metal pipes and steel trusses snaked above their heads, and Lark had the odd feeling that she was somewhere deep underground.

  She shivered. Reinforced steel doors flanked her on either side. There were no letters or numbers on the doors, and they were all secured with padlocks.

  They rounded a corner and reached a set of thick double doors. The mustachioed agent swiped his keycard, and the doors swung open to reveal a wide chamber about double the width of the hallway.

  The tile floor ended, and the clean white walls gave way to a sweeping concrete archway. The rough-hewn walls of the chamber looked as though they’d been hacked out of solid stone, and everything was slightly damp. Hundreds of feet of metal pipe wound up toward the ceiling, which disappeared into darkness fifteen or twenty feet above their heads.

  Lark could hear the persistent hum of an HVAC system rattling somewhere above them, but there was a damp chill in the air that confirmed her suspicions that they were deep beneath the earth’s surface. A foreboding airlock door was situated at one end of the chamber, opened to reveal yet another dimly lit hallway.

  Her captors led her through a set of sturdy double doors, and Lark began to lose her bearings. It felt as though the agents were leading her into the heart of a maze, and when the agent on her left swiped through the last set of doors, she knew they’d reached the end of the line.

  They’d turned down another hallway, where each door had a small safety-glass window cut into the top and a slot at the bottom just wide enough for a tray of food. Each room was roughly six feet by nine and equipped with a narrow cot and a metal toilet.

  All of a sudden, Lark felt as though a cold vise had clamped down around her throat. Her lungs fluttered hopelessly in her chest, and she found herself struggling to breathe.

  The rooms were cells.

  The agents led her to one at the very end of the hallway and swung the door wide open. Lark opened her mouth to utter one final plea, but the blond agent tackled her from behind and slammed her onto the cot. Lark’s hands were cuffed behind her, so she couldn’t throw out an arm to break her fall.

  White-hot panic shot through Lark’s entire body, and she instantly went into fight mode. She screamed and twisted to get out from under the agent, but he was too big. She could feel his forearm digging into the back of her neck, his weight crushing her cuffed hands between them.

  Lar
k kicked and flailed, but the other agent seized her by the ankles and forcibly removed her boots. Lark wanted to be sick. Her lungs were heaving, and hot, angry tears were trailing down her cheeks.

  She screamed again, but she already knew that no one was coming to her rescue. She was lying in a cell in some secret underground prison. Soren and Axel were missing, and no one else knew where she was.

  Lark had been in this position before — alone and helpless and out of control. Only this time, she was outnumbered. This time, she wouldn’t get away.

  But just as the terrifying realization crept through her body, the blond agent pushed himself up and unlocked her handcuffs. Lark rolled around so fast that she almost slipped off the edge of the cot.

  She sprang to her feet and threw out an arm with lightning-fast speed. The agent hadn’t been expecting it. Her fist caught him right in the nose, and she heard a slight crunch as she made contact.

  His partner reacted immediately, but Lark had anticipated his movement. She threw out a sideways elbow that caught him cleanly in the jaw and brought her fist around to strike the blond agent again.

  For one glorious moment, Lark felt as though she was winning. She was on her feet. She was fighting back.

  But then the blond agent launched himself at her torso and slammed her bodily against the wall. Lark’s head flew back and hit the concrete — hard — and tiny stars erupted in her vision.

  She swayed on the spot, teetering on the edge of a total blackout. Her head was pounding, her legs felt like jelly, and her torso was numb with panic. They’d confiscated her boots so she couldn’t hang herself with the laces, which meant that she might want to kill herself very, very soon.

  But Lark’s mounting sense of dread was put on hold as the agents filed out of the cell. The blond threw her one last menacing look and then slammed the door shut with a bang!

  It reverberated in the tiny space, and then silence folded in around her. Wrists aching, neck throbbing, Lark shook her head and scrambled to the window. Both agents were standing on the other side of the door — the blond sporting a bloody nose and the bald guy rubbing his jaw where she’d struck him.

  Lark felt a perverse swell of satisfaction that she’d managed to inflict some damage, but her moment of triumph fizzled out as they turned and walked back down the hall.

  She was trapped. She’d hit a dead end with Reuben. She was hundreds of miles away from anyone who could help her, and she was an escaped convict with twenty years left on her sentence.

  Legally, she was a ghost. She was completely and utterly alone, and she was out of options.

  two

  Soren

  Soren had been in custody for less than six hours, and already he felt robbed of his dignity. He was sitting in a frigid interrogation room with nothing on his feet except a pair of dirty socks.

  He and Axel had been frisked after their arrest, and their boots had been confiscated. Axel had been stripped of his knife and revolver, and the agents had taken Soren’s handgun. Soren hadn’t been without a weapon in years — not even in prison — and he felt naked and helpless without it.

  “Now we can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way,” said the man across the table.

  The man’s name was Special Agent Killigen, and his life seemed to be one big police cliché. He was a sloppy thickset Irishman with freckly skin and untidy red hair. In front of him was a blank yellow notepad, a coffee thermos, and a pack of spearmint gum.

  The man sitting next to Killigen was at least twenty years younger — no older than thirty-one or thirty-two — with sandy-blond hair and an athletic build.

  His name was Agent Cole, and he, like Soren, only seemed to be half listening to Killigen’s questions. He kept fiddling with his earpiece and getting up to leave the room.

  Each time he reappeared, Killigen’s bloodshot eyes would roll to the side and rest on Cole for a full five seconds. He’d furiously work a piece of gum along his back molars with the air of someone desperately trying to stave off a cigarette craving. Clearly it bothered him that Cole wasn’t riveted by the interrogation.

  Axel was sitting on Soren’s left. He could sense the rise and fall of Axel’s chest and hear his heavy mouth breathing. Soren didn’t have to look to know that Axel’s arms were crossed over his chest and that he was wearing a bored, doltish expression.

  Soren could hear the wet smack of gum rolling around in Killigen’s mouth, the heavy rasp of Axel’s breathing, and the barely audible hum of air conditioning.

  Ordinarily, the disgusting wet sound of Axel sucking in air through his mouth would have annoyed Soren to no end, but focusing on the sounds around him was the only thing keeping him from leaping across the table and strangling the agents.

  His brother was dead. His mother was dead. They’d been killed in the superstorm that had decimated his hometown.

  “Look,” said Killigen finally. “We don’t care how you escaped San Judas or what laws you might have broken to do it. All we want to know is what went on inside that prison.”

  Soren didn’t bite. Agent Reuben had already told them that they weren’t going back to San Judas. He’d said that the Department of Homeland Security was after GreenSeed’s patented crops, but Soren didn’t trust Reuben or Killigen as far as he could throw them.

  “Property” was the word Reuben had used. They were the government’s property. Nothing Soren or Axel could say would get them out of their current predicament.

  “Why did you escape?” asked Killigen. “Can you at least tell me that?”

  “What’s in it for us?” said Axel loudly.

  Killigen looked surprised but gratified that Axel had finally taken the bait. He glanced over at Agent Cole and leaned forward in his seat. “Well, for starters, you have information which could help us mitigate the current food crisis. You could help save millions of lives and —”

  Axel gave a huge yawn and fanned out his arms to stretch, carelessly knocking over the agent’s thermos and sending it crashing to the floor. The lid flew off and clattered away, sending coffee splashing all over the speckled white tile. Agent Cole jerked to the side as if he wanted to clean it up, but Killigen stopped him with a small shake of his head.

  Axel raised his eyebrows.

  “Well, if you aren’t interested in the survival of the human race,” said Killigen dryly, “I suppose we could work something out.”

  “Why should we trust ya’ll?” asked Axel.

  “You don’t have to trust us,” said Killigen. “We both want the same thing. We both want to see GreenSeed shut down. The enemy of my enemy . . .”

  He trailed off, and Axel let out a hearty guffaw that he reserved for times when he really wanted to sell the wooden-headed hillbilly act. “No disrespect, but I think ya’ll’re underestimatin’ how little I give a shit.”

  Killigen paused, studying Axel closely. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

  At those words, Axel sat up a little straighter in his chair. Soren sighed. He knew that this was their chance to strike a deal, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

  His mind kept drifting back to the horrific scene they’d found in Kingsville — crumbling houses, streets filled with rubble, cars flipped onto their tops and crushed like tin cans.

  The house where he and Micah had grown up was unrecognizable: a pattern of mud and mold creeping down the walls, furniture ruined, and their belongings reduced to pulp. Worse than witnessing the wreckage had been the smell. It hung thick in the air and permeated the walls. It was wet and putrid — the unmistakable stench of decaying bodies.

  “There has to be something that you want,” Killigen probed, his voice reaching Soren from very far away.

  Axel scrunched up his face, deep in thought. “Eighteen million dollars and a sexy blond chick who likes doggy style and four-wheelin’ . . . She’s gotta be hot, though.”

  In his periphery, Soren saw Axel stick out his hands in the universal sign for “big boobs.” Soren fought bac
k an eye roll. Now Axel was just fucking with them.

  Cole cleared his throat and averted his gaze. Killigen looked less than amused. “Why don’t we focus on something I can actually deliver,” he said in a cool voice.

  “Like what?” asked Axel.

  “How about a reduced sentence for you and your friend?”

  Axel seemed to consider this for a moment. “How far reduced we talkin’?”

  “That depends on the quality of information you can provide.”

  Axel scoffed, but Soren had already checked out of the conversation. He felt cold and tired and empty inside. Micah was dead, and no amount of negotiating could change that.

  It hardly mattered if Soren was sent back to San Judas or simply thrown into a cell and left to rot. He’d escaped prison with the sole intent of getting his brother out from under their mother’s abusive boyfriend, and he’d failed spectacularly.

  Soren’s last few letters to Micah had gone unanswered, and judging by the state of the outside world, Micah had never received them. He’d probably lived the last few months of his life being beaten and abused by Clint. He’d probably thought that no one cared — not even his own brother. That thought tormented Soren more than anything.

  “What do you say?” asked Killigen.

  There was a long pause, and Soren realized that Killigen was looking at him.

  “Can we make a deal?”

  Soren didn’t answer. He just stared at the agent, zeroing in on Killigen’s smug dark eyes and the white Oxford shirt that was turning yellow around the collar. Killigen had rolled the sleeves up to the tops of his forearms, and he was wearing a tungsten wedding band on his fat hairy finger.

  So Killigen was married. He probably had a few kids to boot — all of whom must have been safely tucked away somewhere.

  Killigen didn’t care about Soren and Axel. He hadn’t cared about Soren’s family. No one in the government cared about the lives their decisions affected — at least they hadn’t until it was too late. All they really cared about was getting back to business as usual — back to their suburban paradises, their SUVs, and their weekends spent perfecting their golf swings.