Page 32 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

HER

O n land again, I ran. I’d done it before.

Wet, muddy, freezing. The ratty leggings and old sneakers I’d thrown on in haste were waterlogged and squelching.

The remains of the canal’s contents were probably injecting bacteria into every blister on my body.

But still I ran across the bare desert and into the scrim of palo verde and mesquite that shrouded the entrance to the park.

For now, I didn’t look at the phone. I’d look at it once I got inside and could slip into the trees and disappear from the cops, which were all that remained between me and him.

And answers, and time, and peace, and everything else I dreamed of but wouldn’t take the time to torture myself right now by pausing to think about.

Back in the canal, for a few terrifying seconds, I’d thought I’d drown.

The banks had been steeper than they’d looked, and I hadn’t counted on there being no good way to pull myself out.

Plus, my body didn’t have the strength to tread water for long.

I’d groped and kicked violently along the artificial banks, gasping to hold my head up and prevent black liquid from flooding into my eyes and ears until my flailing limbs at last hit a ladder and I could hoist myself gasping onto the sand like a hooked fish.

Another run back toward the overpass, a few more moments of panic when I couldn’t spot the phone I’d thrown.

Finally snatching it up, I was back on track.

I didn’t look back to see if the cops were on my tail. I’d find out soon enough.

The park entrance, though late in the day, wasn’t exactly empty, and I got more than a few shocked looks from hikers and picnickers as I passed, my phone’s blinking blue light bobbing in my hand, my burn-ravaged face no doubt a frightening mask of panic and resolve.

In the distance, the sirens still wailed, sirens some of them could no doubt guess had something to do with me.

I didn’t care. I needed him, needed answers, and I wasn’t stopping to keep up appearances.

Gazing frantically around the parking lot, my eyes settled on a tiny, rusty car parked in the corner near a clutch of cholla, clearly trying to go unnoticed but all the more conspicuous for that.

A blue Datsun. Fuck. Wheatley had been onto something, and I hadn’t even bothered to hear him out.

And now he wasn’t here to help me.

I swallowed, heart pounding. Around me were ramadas and picnic tables and an oversized, glass-enclosed map set on a rustic wooden display stand, one I wouldn’t have time to look at even if I hadn’t been terrible at reading maps, which I was.

I turned in a circle. Around the bend, I saw the sign for a nature trail, arrows pointing every which way.

Desperation surged through me as I looked down at my phone, the blinking light dancing erratically in the sunlight that had already evaporated most of the dampness of my clothing.

I took a deep breath and picked a trail I thought might lead toward his location, though it also might not.

I’d find out when I and the dot grew farther apart, and I had to come back and start all over again.

Thankfully, the trail was empty and so silent that my panting echoed off the trees.

I now couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched, or that someone was following me. Someone besides the police.

But what could I do?

Keep running.

HIM

“It worked, you know, sweetie,” Resi whispered, gently brushing a single lock of hair away from my temple with one manicured vanilla nail, her breath soft and cool in my ear. “The serum. Much as I hate him for it, I guess Max was right to choose you over me. You really are a genius.”

Despite it all—despite my entire world having been reduced to pain, humiliation, and imminent death—my heart leaped a little.

But my brain wasn’t working well enough anymore to decide whether she was lying, or, if not, what she thought telling the truth would gain her.

And even if she was telling the truth, it didn’t mean Lemaya had gotten away clean, or that any part of my insane plan had worked the way I’d prayed it would.

And Resi had no intention of telling me. That was the real torture. That was what she was here to do.

Well, that, and torture me in every other way.

Pain shot through every inch of my body as I hung limp and helpless from the chain.

One side of my brain felt like pulp. Likely multiple ribs were broken.

Some part of my leg was shattered. Arms and hands?

I couldn’t see or use them. Maybe I never would again.

“Too bad I like you so much better as a slave.”

Frankly, I was expecting Resi to continue the torture in some more diabolical form.

But to my surprise, she didn’t. Not yet, anyway.

Her thick, brand-new cowhide gloves were smooth and supple against my skin—the nicest thing I’d felt all day—as she carefully and methodically began to unravel the barbed wire wrapped tightly around my wrists.

Each movement was precise and deliberate, the metal scraping against her gloves as it fell to the ground in a series of dull thuds.

“I was giddy as a little girl on Christmas Eve last night, thinking of how pretty you’d look in these chains,” she whispered as she worked.

“Ah, but that was my fault for letting you go last time. Turns out I was a little bit charmed by you. I guess I wouldn’t be the first one, huh?

” Was she talking to herself now or what?

“Couldn’t do much about your legs, though.

Although I don’t expect you’ll be walking anywhere anytime soon. ”

Her gloved fingers continued moving expertly, carefully unfastening the barbed wire cuffs wound around my clotted, rust-covered, inflamed, infected wrists.

The sharp edges grazed against my skin, but as the metal fell to the sand, I couldn’t help but feel a glimmer of relief.

A relief I felt even though I knew I would regret it later, and even though I couldn’t move my arms more than a few inches. Didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.

Two soft thumps in the sand revealed she’d removed the gloves. “No, no,” she said with a pealing laugh, knowing just from my squirming that I expected her to undo the collar next. “You’d try to get away, and we can’t have that.”

Well. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. But the muzzle?

“I’ve always thought someone should lock up that silver tongue of yours,” she said, reading my mind. “After all, I don’t want you biting. Or worse, have you talk me into letting you go.”

Well, there went plans A and B.

“Of course we all know who ended up with the muzzle last time, not like I want to bring her up. Anyway, I saw this one online and I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and they always say that’s how you know you should buy it.

So I can still see your pretty face, but you’ll only speak what I want and when I want. It’s win-win, don’t you think?”

Yeah. Resi got to win twice.

“Now be a good boy and greet me properly.”

Wait, did that mean the muzzle was coming off? Yes. She unbuckled the contraption and let it clatter to the dust alongside the cuffs. Immediately, the dry, sandy air hit the weeping sores all over my mouth, my lips so weak and cracked I could barely move them.

And now, through the red, crusty film that blocked much of my vision, I could clearly see a clear gallon container dangling daintily from a plastic handle between her long fingernails.

She had water . And on the ground beside her, a first-aid kit. Gauze. Antiseptic. Painkillers. Aloe.

“I know they taught you how to do that , at least. It was the first thing they taught me .”

Mistress Hahn. Ma’am. That’s what she wanted to hear. And if it got me even a sip of water, so what? Not like I hadn’t said it a million times before to women who didn’t deserve it any more than she did.

“Well?” she asked.

Live. Don’t die before you’re killed.

I tasted the word on my lips even before I spat it out.

“Bitch.”

“Okay,” she said brightly, rebuckling the muzzle. “I guess we’ll try this again later.”

Worth it.

The sun had begun to set, the sky tinged pink and orange, whispering of an eerily beautiful desert twilight. I could feel the temperature dropping as the night approached, and despite myself, I shivered in my useless shirt.

And Resi seemed to feel it too, since she dropped down in the dust, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging them to herself excitedly, like we were about to play Spin the Bottle.

But wait. She was leaving now, right? She had to be leaving.

Instead, she beckoned to Noam, who looked none too pleased.

Oh, right. The cuffs.

The metallic scent of my blood mingled with rust, sweat, and fear in the acrid air, and my hands started to shake as Noam used his own bandaged hands—Resi didn’t have any gloves that fit him, evidently—to grumblingly redo his work from earlier.

The goon lazily moved one wire, then another, back into position around my wrists, each sharp thorn digging deeper into my already tormented flesh.

Every twist and turn of the wire contained a thousand claws shredding a thousand bloody trails down my skin.

Tears formed, but I didn’t cry. I held my breath instead.

It’s like trying to die.

“Yeah, I stopped crying, too, after a while,” she said, eagerly watching me silently keen. “But I learned to let it out again. And I can teach you to let it out. Oh, honey, I can teach you so many things, you have no idea.”

Every breath was ragged and shallow until even that felt like torture. And finally, as the wire tightened, it constricted my circulation until I swore I felt my own blood pulsing right up against the hot, rusty metal. And still, Noam kept ratcheting and squeezing. No more. Please. Until:

“Stop,” she said.

Noam did. He stepped back, glaring at me as if it were somehow my fault. And Resi, at last, rose in one graceful, fluid motion. But she paused to drink me in, pleased.

“I read your file, you know,” she remarked.

“And I think all your owners were wrong. You can be good.” She leaned in and rubbed her clean, manicured thumb against my bloody, macerated one and kissed the top of my head.

Her clothes were the same monochrome color as the sand: leggings, a complicated leather belt, and a flowing blouse, which blended into the pink-tinged sky and swirled in clouds of dust as she strode back to the SUV in her heeled, lace-up boots.

“You just need what I got too late,” she said. “Someone to give you a chance.”

HER

My heart pounded against my ribs with every step. Each time the trail split off into different directions, I quickly chose again and kept going. The trees offered little shade, and the desert sun beat down, quickly coating the residue from the inky canal water in dust and sweat.

The trail wound uphill, deeper into the desert.

My lungs screamed for mercy, but everything else screamed louder.

I stumbled over rocks and roots, tripping but never going down, closing in on the blinking dot, losing ground as my trail broke off in a different direction, panicking, but always regaining it.

I knew where I was headed now. I’d been there before, this place on the hill.

At the top was a pyramid-shaped monument, a cenotaph for a territorial governor from centuries ago, and the best place in the park to A) inspire children to learn about history or B) teenagers to get high and chug beer.

Had he picked this place, this blast from my past? Or had someone else?

It didn’t matter. My spirits buoyed and I picked up my pace.

But as the monument rose before me, concealed by another clutch of palo verde and marked by an escarpment on one side, I let my guard down and slipped, tumbling to my knees in the red dust, my phone flying from my hand and bouncing away into the scrub.

I reached out, fingers splayed, and just managed to catch it before it skipped away into the rocky canyon.

I nearly retched at the thought of losing my only connection to him now but forced myself to stand.

Breathing still ragged, hands trembling, I closed the phone’s map app.

It lit up the screen, the glowing blue dot indicating my location, a larger one indicating his.

I looked at the memorial, and then back at the map.

I saw nothing and no one at the top, but this had to be it.

This had to be him. The GPS wouldn’t, couldn’t lie.

Could it?

Smoothing my shirt and running my fingers through my bedraggled mess of curls, I took a deep breath and set off again, still stumbling across the uneven terrain, my shoes kicking up plumes of dust with each step.

The going was strenuous, but eventually, I reached the cenotaph base. The monument loomed over me, its stone structure rising tall and imposing against the sky. I gulped some air and began climbing up the sandstone steps carved out of the hillside, each footstep echoing hollowly in the stillness.

Finally, I made it to the summit, gasping, legs trembling. The panorama seemed to suck the air from my lungs as I turned in a desperate circle, surveying the vast expanse of desert and lake. My phone screen was empty, reflecting the empty horizon, already purpling. The end of another day.

“Hello?” I called weakly.

My fingers shook with weakness as I opened the map app again, staring at the two dots.

One for me.

One for him.

The dots were practically on top of each other now. It was here. I was here.

And it was official. He wasn’t.

After all that.

I dropped like a ragdoll on the stone. The temperature kept dropping, reminding me that my clothes were still damp. I hadn’t cried in almost three hours. Probably a record. But right now, I didn’t have the strength to do anything else.

Through my tears, my eyes settled on the plaque at the base of the cenotaph, glinting in the waning sun, its brass text rubbed smooth by blowing sand.

“Though we may stand alone, we are never alone in spirit. May the path of justice and truth guide us through the darkness.”

A bit melodramatic, all in all, and not the sort of words I’d ever paused to meditate on during a school picnic, or a little later, chugging a cheap beer. But I did now. And also because there was an envelope lodged at the base of the plaque. I dove for it.

But instead of reaching it, I and the envelope were wrenched violently backward.

In my ear, a hot, throaty chuckle and a toothless, goaty grimace. An arm squeezing the breath out of me, and the tip of a knife at my throat.

Of all the?—

“Don’t cry, princess. Yeah, it’s not the reunion you wanted,” said the voice. “But it’s a reunion.”