“I kind of like the way she begs, don’t you, gents?”
A chorus of agreement.
“Think you can do it for us tonight?” Miller purred.
I changed tack. My legs found strength, and I turned. They all stared, but Lucas froze. I tripped toward him, and Miller let me, grinning.
“Lucas, please. Kill me. Please.Please.” I fell to my knees. “Death before slavery.”
Except for a flickering muscle next to his mouth, he was motionless as a statue.
“Please,” I whispered. “I’ll do anything.”
Every soldier in the room laughed. Theylaughed.
Someone to my left snorted. “The sluttiest ones always think you’ll save them, Colonel. It must be something in your face.”
The tears poured, but I kept my eyes open to stare at Lucas. “Please.”
“I envy you, Scott,” a faceless soldier said. “I’ve never had a whore beg me like that, and you get at least one a week.”
Miller strolled toward me. “He ain’t gonna save you. He’s a heartless bastard. Ain’t that right, Scott?”
Lucas said nothing.
“You’d be safer with me, sugar,” Miller said. “Better hope I win tonight. Scott’s a killer to the end.”
Lucas riveted those blue-green eyes to mine, the color bright. “To the very end,” he said. “Until I die.”
Miller made some joke about Lucas being indestructible, but I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. Hysteria clawed at me, the oxygen refusing to enter my lungs. I gazed at Lucas, silently pleading, unable to speak or draw in air.
He observed me without any expression, but his aquamarine eyes splintered like gems compressed by tremendous weight. “You have your sentence. I won’t kill you, so you should probably breathe.”
Blackness crept into my vision.
“Do you hear me? Breathe!”
I couldn’t.
“Breathe!”
Their voices faded.
The shadows took me.
29
Rescue Me
…give me liberty, or give me death!
—PATRICK HENRY
When I woke, I was slung over a shoulder.
My eyes opened to find Miller’s backside staring me in the face. Cold air snaked around my bare arms and legs. My bound wrists dangled below my head.
The car trunk popped. He tossed me inside. A fresh heartbeat woke in the wounds on my back, pulling a moan from my lips. I retreated into my mind and lived in a make-believe world where things like this didn’t happen.
