Page 109 of The Last True Hero

But not for long.

Mia shook him off, touching the bare skin across his abdomen. For a second he didn't know what she was doing. Her movements slowed as her warm fingers traced the oiled skin there. Where he'd been shot.

He swallowed again, his voice coming out rougher than he'd intended. "I'm whole."

And he was back in that cell again, seeing the look on her face when Colton took the medallion off him.

"Sorry to interrupt," Zarina drawled, "but we've got to get out of here before my mother rouses the rest of the reivers."

Adam looked up.

"She's with us," Mia explained. "She wants to escape, and she's been helping us."

"Sorry to disappoint you, but your mother's getting the hell out of here," Colton said. "The last I saw, she was heading for the helipad."

"What?" Zarina stiffened.

"Let her go," Mia murmured, still looking at him with dazed eyes. "She can't hurt us now."

"No. You don't understand. That helicopter was a gift from one of her contacts in the Confederacy. She supplies them with women—or men—so they can keep them in hidden facilities to use as sex slaves whenever they want. There's an entire consortium of rich Confederacy citizens who owe Vex a lot. She can't make it over the wall the Confederacy are building, but she can head straight for one of their military outposts. She'll spin it so that you guys attacked the town, and tried to take all of her slave trade. They've got weapons and tech we can't even dream of, and if she gets her way, she'll come after us, and she'll bring the enforcers with her. General's already on his way."

"They don't have any sway in the Wastelands," Colton argued.

"Who needs sway when you've got tanks and enough guns to blow your little towns to pieces?" Zarina replied bluntly.

It wasn't the words, so much as the fact that Zarina Cypher—stone-cold killer—had paled, that got his attention.

"Then we stop her," Colton said.

"Which way is the helipad?" Adam asked.

Mia reluctantly let go of his shirt. Adam wanted to grab her hand, anything to keep her in close proximity, but Zarina was right.

This wasn't over yet.