The colour drains from his face, turning him ashen at my question. “S-Scourge leader.”
Apparently, this Luke guy is terrifying.
I pull the blade slightly away from his now-bleeding toe. “Did Mark renegotiate?” I’m unable to hide the bitterness in my voice at being used as a pawn in a game I didn’t even know I was playing.
“I-I don’t know.” His left eye twitches.
Fucking liar.
The knife is returned to his toe and this time I dig deeper, feeling the blade scrape against bone. The Lodge scum screams and thrashes, but my foot on his ankle keeps it pinned to the wooden floor.
“Did. Mark. Renegotiate?” I demand, twisting the blade.
“Yes! Yes, he did!” the man cries. “He got a bigger cut of supplies, weapons and any women the Scourge get, including the woman you brought to the Lodge with you! The one Ethan wanted!”
I see red.
I want to take out the rage burning inside me on the guy screaming and crying beneath me, but I pull back. There’s now a small pool of blood beneath his foot, his half-severed toe oozing at a steady rate. My nostrils flare and my hands shake as I wrestle to control myself. Behind the scumbag, I can see Theo struggling with his own rage, his silver eyes flashing dangerously in the darkening room.
I turn my ire back to our captive. My patience is completely gone, my usual steady calm buried beneath a mountain of fury. “You’re going to tell me exactly how you and the Scourge found us, what your plans are, and how many of you there are,” I snarl at him, baring my teeth like an animal. “Otherwise, I’m going to paint the floor with your entrails and leave you for the infected to eat.”
Fear blankets his face, and the stench of piss fills the air. All defiance the Lodge scumbag had is long gone, leaving a sobbing, terrified man who blubbers anything and everything I ask for.
The information he has is scant and mostly worthless since he’s just a low-level thug, but one thing is clear. The Scourge and the Lodge are doing exactly what I expected them to do: create roadblocks on major roads and motorways and wait. Evading them means adding more time to our journey, but it’ll be worth it not to run into any more attacks.
Once the scumbag gives me everything he can, a quick slash of his throat has him dying on the wooden floor.
After returning to thecottage, washing off the lingering anger and remains of the interrogation, I march off in search of Ollie.
I find her curled up in her sleeping bag in the kitchen, surprisingly alone with only Harlow lying beside her. She blinks and struggles to sit up when she catches me entering and closing the door behind me. Dark bags linger beneath her eyes, stark against her pale face. The fight last night has taken its toll on her, just like it has on everyone else.
“Don’t get up on my account, princess,” I tell her, holding out my hand to stop her. “You look exhausted.”
Harlow lifts her head, sees it’s me, and lays her head back down, completely unbothered.
Ollie huffs but does as I say, settling back down against her pillow. “What do you want?” she asks, eyeing me warily as I close the distance and sit on the floor in front of her.
It’s a sucker punch to the stomach to see her acting so guarded around me, but I can’t blame her. Especially since the last time we were alonetogether, I cornered her and then shouted at her for defending me. Like an asshole.
“I came here to apologise for how I acted in the barn.” I hesitate and scratch the back of my head. “And to explain why I acted the way I did.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widen, clearly not expecting me so say that. “Okay.”
I shift, mostly to get comfortable but also to hide how uneasy I am about sharing some of my most private thoughts and fears. Things I’ve never told anyone, not even my best friends. Ollie deserves to hear about them, not only because she’s shared some intimate things with me but because I want her to know the person I am behind the mask I wear.
Here’s hoping she doesn’t laugh in my face.
“You know I was a member of the SAS, right?”
She nods but remains quiet.
“I did most of my work overseas, specialising in intel gathering and target neutralisation. My team and I were in Russia for our last operation and were heading back to the airport to fly out.”
Ollie frowns and slides closer to me. “Russia?”
“Yeah. After the oil shortages hit five years ago, we and several other countries sent covert spec ops teams into various places to figure out what the fuck was going on.” I suck in a deep breath, steeling myself for what I have to say next. “I was operation lead and in-charge of getting us out safely. The route I’d chosenshouldhave been safe; the Americans had cleared it the week before. But it wasn’t.”
I swallow hard. “On the way, we got hit by an IED and it completely tore through the transport truck we were using.” My hands clench into fists in my lap as echoes of the explosion and the screams of soldiers around me reverberate in my mind. “I was the only one who survived.”
