Page 139 of Carnal Urges

Oh, baby. My fierce little lion. Hold on a bit longer, here I come.

We walk through a labyrinth of passageways, our footsteps echoing on the floor. Marines in fatigues nod at us as we pass. There’s an elevator ride down, then we exit into a small room overlooking the cargo hold of the vessel.

It’s a vast space. Three stories of steel-enforced walls the length of a football field. Metal shipping containers fill the main part of the floor, painted on the top and sides with a letter and a number in white.

“She’s in C-9,” says Grayson, pointing to a windowless red metal container.

“I’ll kill you for this.”

“Man, you know I don’t call the shots. You start talking about making someone an asset, wheels start to turn.”

“Why did you wait almost four bloody days to tell me where you were keeping her?”

“Standard operating procedure. Most people cave during the intake interview. The ones who pass that have to be isolated without food or water for seventy-two hours to see if that’ll break them. Which it almost always does.”

“Without food or water?”

He turns to me with a half smile. “You’re focusing on the wrong shit, here, Dec. She’s legit. Fucking hard core. She didn’t even wobble.”

“I could’ve told you that, you bloody wanker.”

He chuckles. “She broke Cliff’s nose on her way in. Took Aquinas down with a kick to the kneecap during her interview, too. The deputy director is impressed.”

He picks up the receiver of a phone hanging on the wall and presses a number. “Discharge on C-9. Paperwork’s been processed.” He listens a moment, then says, “Copy that,” and hangs up.

He turns to me. “It’s gonna be a while. They’ll clean her up, debrief her, and give her something to eat. After that, she’s all yours.”

I look out over the graveyard of shipping containers with a feeling like a hundred pounds of sandbags are on my chest. “She’ll never forgive me for this.”

“Yeah, she will.”

He sounds confident. I shoot him a querying look. He smiles.

“No woman backs a man like she did you unless it’s true love, brother. Just give her some space when you get her home. She’ll get over it.”

I mutter, “Enough with the ‘brother’ shite,” but what I’m really thinking about are the two words he said right before that one.

One thing’s for sure. If she doesn’t love me, I’ll find out fast.

The minute she buries a knife in my chest.

THIRTY-SEVEN

SLOANE

I’m asleep when the door to my cage opens.

“Miss Keller. Follow me, please.”

A woman stands in the doorway. I can’t see her face. She’s just a dark figure backlit by light so bright, it makes me wince.

Sitting up on the thin mattress on the cold steel floor that passes for my bed, I raise a hand to shade my eyes against the glare. “Follow you where?”

My voice is a rasp. Dry and cracked, like my lips and throat. These bastards haven’t given me any water.

“You’re being discharged.” She steps away, leaving the door open.

Discharged? Maybe that’s a government term for “executed.”