“That was smart of you,” Cipher said. “You would have gotten away eventually.”
“Maybe. He seemed pretty intent on feeding me to the Rabids.” Jeremiah’s cruel words came back to me, and a shiver of terror raced down my spine.
“I’m sorry,” Cipher said and grabbed my hand. “This never should have happened. I should have come home. I shouldn’t have gotten drunk with that psychopath. This is my fault–”
“He gassed our house,” I interrupted. “Brother Larry was in on it. They planned it together. There was nothing you could have done, and I don’t want you to feel guilty because thenI’llfeel guilty and I havenothingto feel guilty for.” I stared at him until he nodded in agreement, the pain in his eyes a reflection of my own.
“Donnie fell asleep during his shift, his first time ever. I think he was drugged,” Cipher said.
“I don’t think I was his first captive.” He’d wanted Teresa. I was glad he’d taken me instead. And now he was dead. Dead as a doornail as Cipher had said. We were safe, for now.
“I’m sorry,” Cipher said again.
“You found me. That’s what matters. You have a lot to be sorry for, but this isn’t it, so don’t say it again unless we’re talking about us.”
“Okay,” he said with caution.
“So, what do we do now?” I asked. We had to keep moving forward. To dwell on the past was too painful. I hadn’t really understood when Artemis had said it. Now I did.
Cipher took my hand and squeezed it as if trying to pump the life back inside of me. “Now, we go back for the rest of our crew and we get the fuck out of Promised Land.”
I nodded. Made sense to me.
TWENTY-THREE
CIPHER
We headed backto Promised Land in Jeremiah’s Humvee. I’d never driven before, so it took me a minute to figure out which levers to shift and buttons to push to get it going. The rig moved slowly, which was probably for the best. Kitten fell asleep within twenty minutes of me taking the wheel. He needed the rest and I didn’t trust myself not to make things worse. The look in his eyes had scared me–dull and lifeless, no light in them at all–and his normally expressive face was oddly blank. This was worse than after his mother had died, after I’d killed her. He’d been angry then and full of grief, but he’d expressed it freely.
Ever since our conversation that morning, there was just… nothing. It reminded me of when we’d first met Teresa, in a state of shock from the trauma. Kitten hadn’t told me everything, but I hoped would when he was ready. One thing I did know, Larry had sold my innocent, trusting boyfriend to a known psychopath without caring that he’d be raped and tormented. And for what?
My hands ached to wrap around the man’s neck and squeeze the life out of him.
By late afternoon, I’d started to recognize landmarks that signaled we were close. I halted the rig a half-mile or so away to avoid alerting the guards. I would have liked to give the other Assholes a heads-up as to the plan, but I didn’t know who might be listening on the other end of the radio. We’d wait here until the town shut down for the night, then sneak in, collect the rest of our crew, and get the fuck out of there without anyone ever knowing.
Well, one person would know. I intended to pay that double-crossing motherfucker a visit.
Kitten was still asleep, so I reclined my seat slightly and tried to do the same. I hadn’t heard any traffic on the radios, which meant that the search party had probably returned to base camp by now. What a fucking joke. Did Larry feel any remorse about going through with the charade, possibly endangering other innocent people while doing it? Probably not. And as Kitten had said, he likely wasn’t the first to be kidnapped, which meant that Jeremiah and Larry must have had some sort of ongoing arrangement.
How could I have been so stupid?
I closed my eyes, trying to temper the rage I felt toward the man I had begun to trust as a mentor and ally. Never again. Larry must have counted on me giving up and returning without Kitten, or maybe he thought I’d be ambushed by Rabids while I was out in the wild. But none of that mattered now. As far as I was concerned, Larry was a dead man.
There was a rustling at my side and I cracked open my eyes to find Kitten, still half-asleep, crawling into my lap. Christ, it felt so good to have him back again. My heart had been returned to my body and along with it, my will to live.
“I love you,” I said into his tangled curls. The smell and feel of him in my arms made me want to cry. “I love you, Kitten, so fucking much.”
He didn’t say anything, but he let me stroke his back and pet his cloud of hair. My throat was thick with emotion. I’d almost lost him. If I’d arrived at Jeremiah’s hideout to find him dead, I’d have burned Promised Land to the ground and myself along with it.
But he was alive, here in my arms, the bullet Jeremiah had meant for me had missed, and now I was going to get my revenge on the man who had caused this destruction.
I was a killer, after all
TWENTY-FOUR
KITTEN
“I’m okay, really, I promise,”I insisted for the third time as Teresa clung to me as if I might suddenly disappear. She peered up at me and I tried to manage a small smile for her benefit. Physically, I was fine. Mentally, I wasn’t so sure. She hugged me hard and whispered in my good ear, “I was so scared you’d never come back.”
