Page 28 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

“Miss, we don’t conduct our investigations based on fanciful teenage notions,” the female agent snapped. “Now, for the last time, I’ll have to ask you to?—”

Gripped by desperation, I ripped off my hood and threw my sunglasses on the sofa behind me, tugging the long-sleeved shirt over my head to reveal the skimpy tank top underneath, and, well?—

I’d at least had a night to get used to the way my body looked. No one else in the room had.

“Good heavens,” whispered the housekeeper.

“Loulou, what happened to you?” my dad exclaimed. “We need to get you to a hospital.” Without waiting for a response, he reached for his phone from where it sat on the ponderous mahogany coffee table.

“Daddy, no. I’ve—I’ve been to a hospital.”

“And they let you out like that ? No, Loulou. You need proper—” He was already dialing.

“Daddy, no .” This was exactly what I’d been afraid of. But what other choice did I have?

This time it was Wheatley who quickly interrupted. “Sir, I’m a trained EMT, and it’s clear to me these burns have already been treated.”

Ironically, the pain, which I had been valiantly ignoring, seemed to swell up all at once. The housekeeper had already sprung into action, reappearing instantly with some cold compresses, which I accepted for some temporary relief. Enough to finish this, anyway.

“Miss Wainwright-Phillips,” Wheatley was saying, having finally turned directly to me.

“I completely get that you think there’s more to this story.

I think there is, too, and I have for some time.

” He flashed his partner a pointed look.

She remained unsmiling. “But I’m afraid that what you were about to say is probably not going to be as helpful as you’d hoped. ”

Blood rushed into my ears. “Why not?”

“Because as Agent Labrecque here informed me a few minutes ago, Mr. Langer is gone.”

“Gone?” My vision blurred; my already wobbly legs nearly gave out completely. The housekeeper, though, was still right there behind me, catching me as I collapsed and guiding me to the leather sofa.

Agent Labrecque, meanwhile, cleared her throat, plainly resentful that her partner was treating me as anything more than an irritant. “His private jet filed paperwork to take off this morning from Tucson.”

“Was—” I gulped for air. “Was anyone else on it?”

The two cops looked at each other.

“Besides the pilot, I mean? Please,” I added in a voice little more than a whisper. “I have to know.”

Wheatley kept his eyes fixed intensely on Labrecque. In the end, it was the female agent who spoke. “Besides the crew, two slaves were listed on the manifest. One of them,” she added, glancing down at her notepad and back up, “belongs to your father.”

In a second, I could no longer feel my body, the burns, or anything else. My father’s face was a blur, and the agent’s voice seemed to drift up as if out of a drainpipe. My senses had collapsed into a singularity: Erica’s words.

Not all slaves turn out to be heroes.

Him

Blinding sunlight. My head throbbed as my vision adjusted. The air was hot, dry, and still, bringing with it the faint scent of sunbaked sand.

I jerked in place, only to have fire rip through my muscles, my joints locked.

Every movement felt like pushing through a thick fog, even the slightest twitch greeted with a chorus of aches and pains ricocheting through my body.

My throat felt like I’d been trying to swallow sandpaper.

One thing was for sure: Rio Dulce was sounding better and better by the second.

Moving also alerted me to a familiar sound. Chains.

All right. What kind were they this time?

Well, I’d been collared, for one, by a thick band of metal and leather clasped tightly around my neck, with a chain trailing off somewhere behind and upward, the perfect length to prevent me from both standing up and lying down. She wanted me on my knees, in other words.

A smaller chain hung from the front of the collar, linked to a bit pushed under my tongue, attached to a mesh cage that fit over the lower half of my face. No talking, then. No screaming for help.

Hands cuffed behind me, which seemed to be Resi’s style.

But it was my throat that concerned me most. It had already started to constrict, thirst clawing at the edges, making swallowing difficult.

The sun’s position suggested early morning, which meant I had a couple of hours or so before I had to worry about being boiled to death by the noonday heat.

If I could survive that, I might just last long enough to die of dehydration.

Or more likely, be tortured to death by Resi, because I had a strong feeling that watching from a distance as I succumbed to the elements wouldn’t be nearly entertaining enough for her.

So this was how I was going to go out. All in all, I would have preferred the serum.

The serum. Cold shot through my body, so much stronger than the heat. I pushed my brain to remember something, anything, from after I’d passed out. Had it worked? Was the chip out? Had Lemaya gotten away? Had Louisa, or her father...?

I’d been at peace when I’d done it. With the fact that if I died, I’d never know. Now, since I happened to still be alive—a minor victory—I had to know.

Just like that, adrenaline pumped through me again. I struggled against the restraints and the pain convulsing my body to try to get a glimpse of my forearm. Fuck. Between the collar and the position of my hands, there was no way to tell. Which I was sure was the point. Well, that and torture.

Collars, man. Some owners favored them, though they were largely considered stodgy and old-fashioned, reserved for either punishment or decorative use, like for high-end sex slaves.

Shit.

Best not to dwell on that. Actually, I’d been chained by the neck before.

In fact, it had been one of my first master’s favorite punishments if, after he caned me senseless, he felt the message still hadn’t sunk in.

A day and night with no food, no water, no ice for my bruises, kneeling in the garden like a dog, watching his kids play football and slurp on lollipops, sure had fixed my smart mouth, though.

Oh.

Did Resi know that? Know where my mind would go? Know just how to force me to act and think like a slave again after I’d grown too used to the opposite?

Where was this chain attached, anyway? A rusty, horizontal cast-iron bar with a post on each side and a series of solid rings jutting out. Only one was currently occupied, by the other end of my chain.

Of course. A hitching post. For horses. That figured. It was the West, after all. The Wild West, apparently, which was not just a staple of old black-and-white movies, as I’d been led to believe.

Hanging off behind it was a pathetic-looking building—my best guess was a long-abandoned toolshed, though even that seemed generous.

At any rate, its rusty, corrugated tin awning created, at the sun’s current angle, a slight shelter.

An almost completely useless one, given the length of my chain.

I strained a little anyway, to see how much closer I could get.

Which brought me back to my hands. Cautiously, I tested one, then the other, only to have the muzzle stifle my even more agonized scream.

These were no regular cuffs. They seemed to be constructed of barbs of pointed, unforgiving, glass-sharp wire, wire that ate deeper into the already mortified flesh of my wrists with every futile movement, the same way the weight of the collar crushed against my windpipe, making every breath and swallow a struggle, too.

This was what happened, I supposed, when they thought you were an escape artist. They just made stronger and harsher restraints.

“Fuck you, bitch,” I screamed as best I could into the muzzle bit, just to make myself feel better.

Okay, enough of that. I took a deep breath. Figuring out things was kind of my thing. Problem was, the hotter it got, my synapses would start being cooked to death along with the rest of me.

Well, let’s continue to assess. Honestly, they’d kind of dropped the ball on my legs, having only looped some thin rope around my bare ankles.

They’d kept the rest of my clothes on me, including the torn, dusty, unbuttoned shirt—the same stupid feather-print one Lemaya had bought me, apparently as a joke—exposing only my chest, where the sun’s rays continued to sear, layer by layer, into my already-inflamed skin.

That skin was mostly dry, like the air, but some sweat mingled with the dust on my face, forming a gritty layer that only got worse as I tried to swallow or move my tongue.

The muzzle and collar were already hot. In an hour or so, without shelter, they’d be like aluminum pots on a stove.

Adding that to my list of things not to dwell on, I maneuvered myself enough in the collar to give me a 360-degree view.

The sand was dotted by the low tufts of sage and barrel cactuses that seemed to be a thing everywhere.

Except out here, they were the only thing.

And in the distance, a line of telephone poles, or saguaros, or both.

A highway? Beyond that—in the opposite direction—soaring, reddish rock formations with ledges seemingly carved out of them, along with small arches and spires of the kind I’d also only seen in cliché depictions of the Wild West. They were real, though.

For some reason, I felt kind of happy about that.

It was a place—like the rest of the desert, really, though I’d never admit it—I would have liked exploring, under different circumstances.

I’d prefer a Porsche to a horse, though.

A beautiful girl next to me, her hair bouncing in my face as she laughed with her entire mouth open.

Stopping everywhere and anywhere. Chasing the mountains.

Chasing the sunset. Getting lost on purpose. Getting lost forever.

Sure, okay. Of all things to start daydreaming about now, by all means, let’s make it something that boasted roughly ten million reasons why I would never, ever have it.

Back to reality, which was that this quaint Western panorama was slowly killing me. Following the sun and the mountains, all I could estimate for now was that I was somewhere south and west of the city.

Too far to be found, maybe.

Unless the serum hadn’t worked and my chip was still in, in which case Louisa, or her father, or both, would track it here. Which would ostensibly mean I’d be rescued. Except it didn’t because Resi would be waiting for them.

And this time, I wouldn’t be talking our way out. I wouldn’t be talking at all. Nobody was walking, or running, away from this one.

And then I’d really have something to feel guilty about, if I didn’t have enough already. But maybe even that was better than letting Resi or her goons find and kill Louisa where she was. And if preventing that meant I’d be a slave forever, well. It would still be the easiest choice I’d ever made.

Bottom line, my one chance was to figure out a way out now . Giving up on my other senses, I strained my ears. Maybe I could catch a sound for a clue. But all I heard was the distant keening of the wind and the occasional scuttle of sand against the shack’s wooden walls.

I was relieved at the breeze, until, instead of cooling me off, it blew sand into my eyes and down my throat.

And worse, it didn’t die down. Weakly, I curled in on myself and closed my eyelashes against it, the tiny particles hitting against my skin and skittering beneath the splintered wood behind me.

When the sand died down. That’s when I’d start escaping again.

After all, someone was counting on it. One person in the world who didn’t want me to die. Two, actually. Maybe even three .

Which, all in all, was weirder than being chained to a hitching post in the middle of the desert.

Forcing myself to swallow, grit raking my parched throat, I raised my eyes to the vast, clear dome of sky overhead. At least there would be stars tonight.