“We’ll take a fleet out tomorrow.”
“No, you’ll get over yourselves and take me back home right this instant.” Carmen stares hopefully at Carter. “Cut the bullshit. You don’t care about protecting me. You just want me to yourselves.”
“That’s not true, Carmen. There are dangerous people out here.”
“And you suddenly decide to give a fuck about me, because?” She rakes a hand through her messed up hair, attempting to tame it. “Let’s face it—none of us know one another. I have a life, and I can’t afford to be all the way out here when I’m needed in the real world.”
“This is the real world,” Carter says.
Carmen takes a deep inhale, getting ready to prepare her counterargument when a burner phone rings.
Carter grabs his phone and stares at the screen with confusion.
“Who is it?” I ask. “Anyone we know?”
“Unknown number,” he mumbles, too busy trying to work out the order of the digits. “I don’t recognize it.” He accepts the call and presses the phone to his ear with a curt “Hello?”
In the year that I’ve known Carter, I’ve come to realize that he’s good at keeping a straight face. He doesn’t show happiness, the same way he doesn’t show sadness.
I always thought that was because he was one of the lucky ones, immune to feelinganyhuman emotion.
Tonight, I’m proved wrong.
His face goes green. And then gray.
He ends the call without even saying goodbye, and launches the burner out into the room. It crashes into the wall, the plastic covering splitting open.
Looks like it’s gonna be great news.
Carmen stares, not at the broken phone on the floor, but at Carter’s bicep.
Skipper wafts his hand over his face. “Earth to Carter?”
“We’re fucked,” he says plain and simple. “That was Conrad.”
“I take it he was the driver of the black car?” I say.
“No, Conrad wouldn’t be caught dead out in the middle of the desert. The driver was an associate of his.”
Brilliant.
Carmen takes a seat, hand on chin as she anxiously waits for Carter to cut to the chase.
“He wants you,” he tells her.
I scoff. “He made that pretty damn obvious from the night of the auction.”
“No.” Carter dismisses my comment, still looking at Carmen. “Hewantsyou. If we don’t bring you to the O’Neills in the next few days, there’s going to be war.”
I expect Carmen to explode, but instead she remains still.
Eerily still.
Her eyes are frozen on Carter’s face, like she’s trying to wrap her head around this. In a matter of seconds, she’s gone from being a human being to an ice sculpture.
One that looks like it’s about to crack.
“Carmen?”
