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“I don’t hear from you for two years, and when I finally do, this is what you have to say to me? Next time, do me a favor and don’t call me with this crap. I’ll read about your mutilated corpse in the paper.”

I sucked in an impatient breath and let it out a hiss. “After they kill me, what do you think they’re going to do? They’re going to start asking why I was still alive, they’re going to wonder who betrayed them... and that’s going to lead back to you. Way I see it, we’re in this together, whether you like it or not.”

He cursed quietly. “You stupid fucking idiot.”

“Yeah, now you understand. Look, I’m sorry. I never meant to drag you back into this.”

“Yet, you did. Where are you?”

“My safe house. In three hours. Like I told you, you should have let me die.” I hung up the phone.

Lana

I woke tonausea and a pounding headache.

“Uggggh,” I groaned as I blinked my eyes open. I lay on my side, my body swaying with the rocking of the ground. My cheek pressed against the cold metal floor.

So disoriented.

I tried to reach out to rub my forehead, when I realized my hands were bound behind my back.

That’s not right.I should be back home by now.

Fidel. Asher. I’d been marooned.

Not just marooned.Captured.

Captured by that filthy oathbreaker.

The floor continued to rock back and forth. Beneath my ear I heard the familiar roar of the metal machine Asher drove.

Son of a traitor. I was in another blasted car.

If only that were the worst of my problems.

I was bound, my daggers gone, and a slow, painful death surely awaited me. Asher would enjoy killing me too—I saw it plainly on his face when he threatened me.

Can’t die.

I pinched my eyes shut. My nostrils flared as I breathed in that horrible scent the female natives loved wearing, the scent I now wore to blend in. Beneath it, I smelled something even more cloying.

Blood.

I bit back a cry. Fidel had lain right here, caged in this unnatural machine, his hands removed. Asher had left them close to him.

Left them close to torment him.

The car bounced, and I couldn’t hold my rising sickness down. I retched, feeling a hundred different sorts of miserable.

My fate would be the same as Fidel’s unless I escaped.

I rolled my forehead against the metal floor. I wasn’t going to beat this bastard at his own game.

This was amounting to be a gods-awful day.

Can’t die.

That thought alone was enough to drive me to action.