Thorne’s response doesn’t come, and it’s only when my lungs burn that I realize I’m holding my breath waiting for it. I release, creeping off the sidewalk while Thorne marches down the path. He shoulder-checks Sawyer as he passes.
As soon as he’s gone, Sawyer looks at me. “Don’t worry too much about him. His bark is worse than his bite.”
“Are you two enemies or something?”
Sawyer shrugs. “I think he just doesn’t like outsiders. The guy’s had it in for me since I got here a few months ago.”
I peer down the path where Thorne disappeared. “Oh…”
“Come on.” Sawyer gestures toward the opposite direction, blinking away the wet shine clinging to his lower lashes. “We’re almost to the Bastion.”
I let him lead me, expecting him to continue what he was saying. But he doesn’t, and I’m not sure I wanted to hear the answer anyway.
CHAPTER 7
SAWYER
My hand settles midway up the girl’s back as the Bastion comes into view.
TheBastion, home of the Keepers, named like it’s a ballroom instead of glorified dog kennel, complete with a communal shower to hose off the prisoners… I’m assuming, if it’s anything like the Cultivators home—theGrove. Nothing here is nearly as exotic as it sounds.
The girl’s pace quickens as her spine arches to run from my hand, only for me to stretch my legs in time with hers. She relents after a few moments, arms crossing as she begrudgingly accepts my touch. Her feet, once walking the sidewalk’s edge, now fall flat on the concrete, ankles aligned with her hips.Progress, real measurable progress.
“Look.” I nod to the all-black, cinder block building with a few Keepers lounging out front. Lounging—not guarding. No snipers peek from the roof, no bars cage the windows.
They aren’t guarding the money here.
“That’s where the Keepers live,” I go on just to keep talking as if this is a leisurely walk instead of a scouting mission. Since I arrived, I’ve found every excuse to walk this path alone, but if I hang around here much longer by myself, the Keepers are bound to get suspicious.
Peeking at the girl, I find her sizing the Keepers up from fifty yards away, her mind swirling with all the same questions I had twenty-four hours ago.How many are there? How well are they guarding the exits? Wherearethe exits?
Part of me finds it adorable. The other part wishes she wasn’t sotuned.
“What do they guard?” she asks with the slightest hitch to her tone. Her pitch sweeps upward on the last syllable—not quite as sly as she wishes.
Nowthatis adorable.
I fight a smile. “They haven’t given me a list, but all sorts of things, I imagine… The fence, of course. The elders. The cult’s fortune.”
“Fortune?” She turns her squint toward me.
My hand slides down her back and tucks inside my pocket. “The property sits on a rhodium mine. There’s approximately fifty million in cash hidden somewhere around here.”
I watch for interest to lighten her scrupulous eyes, but she just goes back to peeking at the Keepers. No cares for money. Too focused on escape? Or born rich?
My tongue slips over my bottom lip.
Born rich, I think. Which makes her successful but not self-made and certainly not greedy. She’s not a lawyer or a sales rep or a corporate exec. She’s probably too young to be at least one of those even if it did fit her.
I’m going to say athlete. Final answer—lock it in. That explains the focus, the tolerance for adrenaline, the attention to detail, and the body. Interested in passion, not money.
She’d make a terrible accomplice.
After returning my hand to her back, I steer us off the path toward the front of the Bastion. Luna’s heels catch on the ground like little beats of friction that slow our pace but don’t stop us. Not refusal, just reluctance.
“What are we doing?” she whispers like they can hear her thirty yards away. Cute.
“I just need to ask about something.”
