Page 79 of Never Lost

“We got?—”

“What are you doing?” Resi demanded.

I might have been tempted to say the old gardener looked like shit, but that would be redundant. His security uniform was rumpled and ragged, coated in sweat and dust, but characteristically, he just stood in the door, leering and cackling at Resi as she angrily dove for her clothes and threw them on in a fluster. She clearly hadn’t planned for this, having become fartoo accustomed to humiliating others and forgetting what it felt like tobehumiliated.

If it was the last thing I ever saw, maybe the prayer had worked after all.

“Where the hell have you been, looking like that? I thought I told you to?—”

“It’s the girl.”

“What?” Resi’s eyes flashed, surprise and annoyance she couldn’t hide. Just like that, the tables were turning. “What about her? You were supposed to?—”

“I tried.”

Fuck. I should have known all along. Resi had lied to me, of course, but it was worse. She hadn’t even considered Louisaworthluring here. Instead, all along, she’d planned to send this motherfucker to rape her, slit her throat, and dump her body in a canal or something before she ever got close. For some reason, this made me want to murder Resi more than anything she’d done tome.

“Maybe try calling off your batshit brother who’s been waving his goddamned gun in my fucking face for the past three hours.”

Brother?That didn’t make sense at all. Because Max Langer was gone. He was in Rio Dulce, with Maeve, and?—

“They’re on their way here, aren’t they?” Resi demanded. “Max and the girl?”

To my surprise, for the first time since we’d met, her deceptively angelic blue eyes looked slightly feral. This clearly wasn’t part ofherplan, either. Problem was, if she ended up with Louisa on her hands despite her best attempts to dispose of her, I had no doubt she wouldn’t hesitate to lie in wait and give the girl who’d just leveled up to serious thorn-in-side status everything she’d threatened and more. AndIwould have a front-row seat.

And Obadiah’s face gave away the answer. I jerked against my chains, eyes flying frantically to the rigged gas valve.

Because there was also athirdoutcome, one I’d really hoped I wouldn’t have to use. But since I hadn’t figured out the microchips and we were all as good as dead anyway, I could at least do the world one favor and bury this fucking place under ten tons of rubble, so that not only Louisa butno onewould ever have to look at it.

Meanwhile, Obadiah had dropped all pretensions of respect for Resi. His frustration with her was popping out all over his bloated purple grotesquerie of a face.

“Will ya shut your big yap, woman?” he demanded, just as I went for it. I made one last desperate leap forward, my good leg poised to kick over the lamp whose spark, when it reacted with the acetylene, would blow this whole goddamn mine to kingdom come.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to say.They’re already inside.”

22

HIM

What?

Max and Louisa, here?Inside?I wasn’t sure how or why. Only that I’d been milliseconds away from killing the one person I’d spent the past twelve hours killingmyselftrying to save.

In that fleeting moment of chaos, I aborted the kick. It became a fall instead, the chain on my neck jerking me down and back to collapse in a naked, mutilated heap at Resi’s feet. Smooth.

At the sound, still facing Obadiah, she froze and started to turn.

Prey. Predator. Play dead. Make yourself small.After all, there was still a tiny sliver of a chance she hadn’t noticed what I’d been trying to do.

Yeah, right. Like any predator, her instincts were razor-sharp. Her eyes locked onto my shift in focus, and in two swift strides, her hand latched onto my battered, broken, bandaged wrist.

“Watcha doing there, Starling?”

“Nothing, ma’am,” I lied, pulse thrumming. Look, if Louisa was doomed to end up here no matter what, I was sure as hell going to selfishly try to live long enough to see her again, even if I had to watch her beautiful eyes as she inevitably found out what had just happened between me and Resi. And then watch whatever Resi and the goons chose to do to her after that.

Some reunion. I was going to try for it anyway.

“Yeah? Nothing?”