Page 18 of The Vigilante's Lover

I’m sick of sitting with this Dell woman. I want out of here to find Jax.

The doors open again, and the girl Katya enters with a tray of small sandwiches.

Dell stands up. “Katya, you sit with Mia a while. I’m going to check on the status of her release approval.”

Katya nods as she sets the tray on the coffee table. She perches uncertainly on the far end of the sofa.

Dell turns to me. “I’ll be back very shortly. Let us know if you need anything to make you comfortable.”

I glance down at the stilettos. “You wouldn’t happen to have a shoe store nearby, would you?”

Not that I have money. I left home with only a now-destroyed nightgown and my Crocs. Not so much as a driver’s license, I realize. No one would know if I disappeared. No one would even look, other than maybe the neighbor, Shirley.

“You’ll be home soon,” Dell says. “We’re here to help you.”

She exits through the door. To keep track of which one she uses, I imagine I am sitting at six o’clock and the door is at two. Maybe I can keep them straight that way. Katya came in at ten o’clock, so the kitchen must be that way.

“Are you hungry?” Katya asks.

She has straight blond hair that just touches her shoulders. She’s pretty and fresh looking, no makeup, just the white pantsuit. I glance at her feet in white sneakers. I could use a pair of those. They look about my size.

I realize Dell never drank her tea. “A little hungry,” I say. “But I have a rule never to drink alone.” I push Dell’s cup toward Katya. “Dell poured this but didn’t drink any.”

Katya stares at the cup with undisguised concern. She’s not very good at hiding her thoughts, at least not yet. Jax would eat her alive. Now I feel sure the tea is drugged. I wonder how to get out of here.

But she picks up the cup and takes a sip. I watch her a moment, wondering if she is just not aware of what they have done.

Although I guess she probably made the tea.

When several minutes pass in awkward silence and nothing happens to her, I dump three spoonfuls of sugar in the cup and drink it greedily.

I’m starving and thirsty and need calories if I’m going to escape this place.

I don’t know if they told the truth about the bracelet or if it just tracks me.

For all I know it’ll stick me with poison the minute I try to go anywhere.

“So why did you call me special?” I ask Katya, when I figure she’s at her most uncomfortable due to the silence and her awkward position on the sofa.

“Because you are one,” she says quietly.

“How did you know just by looking?”

“You have a zero screen,” she says.

“A what?”

She points above my head. “A zero screen. You can’t see them? They are angled to be visible only for your direct view.” She scoots down the sofa and reaches for my bracelet. “Twist this one.” She turns a crystal on its gold hoop.

Above her, on the glass screen, appears a set of data like the one when Jax and I entered the facility.

Katya Reynolds. Age 18. Phase One Trainee.

Hey. That’s what Jax kept calling ME.

“What’s a Phase One Trainee?” I ask.

“It’s the status of anyone in their first year of training,” she says. “Why don’t you know that?” Her eyes get wide, like she’s just screwed up.

“I’ve been in a safe house,” I say. Maybe I can fake this. “For my protection.”

“You’re not much older than me,” she says. “You don’t seem like you’d be a special.”

“Is that why I don’t have one of those over my head?” I say, gesturing toward her wall screen.

“You do. Yours is just blank except for your name. That makes you a special,” she says.

I turn around to see my screen. Sure enough, all it says is “Mia Morrow,” the same as when we walked in the glass hall.

“But Dell said I just wasn’t in the system.”

“Everybody’s in the system,” Katya says. “From the moment your mother gets a positive pregnancy test.”

I shudder at the thought of someone watching a woman peeing on a stick.

It’s time to figure out where I am and what I’m doing here, before Dell comes back. Katya is infinitely easier to manipulate.

I pick up a sandwich and take a big bite as I think about what to say to Katya. I wonder if our conversation is being monitored. Of course it is.

My neck itches where Jax put that sedative device and I press my hand to it. “This is so annoying,” I say. She knew about the bracelet. Maybe she can deactivate this. “Do you know how to remove it?”

“It’s just a tracker,” she says. “You can pull it off.”

Obviously she doesn’t know what it is. “It will sedate me if I do,” I say.

“No,” she argues. “That’s definitely one of the first things we learn to identify. It’s just a tracker.” She reaches out for me.

I try to smack her arm away, but when I connect, I realize Katya is a lot more than she seems. Her arm is like steel. What we can’t see beneath that generic white suit is a solid layer of muscle.

I feel a sharp tug against my skin.

“It’s best to yank it like a Band-Aid,” she says. “See?” She has the device in her palm.

I slap my hand against my neck, already feeling woozy. I sag against the sofa.

Katya turns the adhesive strip over. “Just a GPS model. An old one. No sedative.”

I stare at it. There’s nothing but a fine wire curled inside.

I sit up. She’s right. I’m fine.

Then I’m mad.

Ohhhh, that Jax. I could have run at any time! I burn with rage. He thought I was so stupid.

Katya sets the adhesive strip on the table. “How long were you in that safe house? This is a really old device. It should have been in your training even if it was years ago.”

A yellow bar on the wall catches my eye. It’s Katya’s screen. There’s now an extra icon at the bottom. It blinks steadily. I have a funny feeling it has to do with our conversation, and that Dell will come back any second to keep me from finding out anything else.

No more sitting around this place, whatever it is. I want to get the layout, make a plan. I stand and head to the door at ten o’clock, the one Katya came through. “Does this go to the kitchen?”

Katya jumps up. “Yes. You want to see the place?” She seems relieved to do something other than talk.

“Yes,” I say. “Let’s do that.”

When I approach the door, the scanner begins its journey, then stops at the bracelet. The doors open instantly.

Excellent. Maybe I am a little bit special.

Now to figure out how to steal this girl’s shoes.