Page 19 of Exit Strategy
It was frustrating. I knew I wasn’t the same person I had been before Arik Rex, but by the same token, I couldn’t for the life of me identify what had been lost, which maybe, in its own way, was a mercy. I don’t know.
I sighed, a heavy thing, and Kurt misinterpreted it.
“We’ll stop soon,” he said, and I tore my gaze from the rocks rising to either side of us and looked over at him.
“I’m just tired all the time right now,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright,” he said. “That was quite the beating you took. I’ve known grown men who couldn’t take half as much in Her Majesty’s Service.”
“You were a soldier, then? Before all of the bodyguard stuff?”
He laughed to himself.
“Aye.” He nodded. “I was a soldier.”
I didn’t say anything. I mean, what was there to say?
“What about you?” he asked a moment later. “What were you before Arik Rex and New Eden?”
I shrugged and sighed. “My mom joined New Eden when I was like six or seven,” I said. “I honestly barely remember a time that wasbefore New Eden.As for what I was before Arik Rex… I was a high school student… valedictorian… um…” I trailed off and shrugged lamely.
It was all Kurt could do not to slam on the brakes. He certainly took his eyes off the road.
“Just how old are you?” he asked.
I blushed and looked away. “Old enough,” I said defensively.
Which was a lie.
I had just turned eighteen, but no one was supposed to know that, and I didn’t want Kurt to know. I mean, I trusted him, but I was ashamed. Deeply. It just didn’t seem like something I should tell the truth about yet and so with a deeper shame than what I could previously fathom, I had to keep Arik and New Eden’s secret a little longer and felt sick for it. Guilty even.
“That’s not a number,” he said.
“No, it’s not,” I replied testily.
“Oy,” he said. “It’s no reflection on you! I’d just like to know what a fifty-year-old man is doing marrying a girl that looks as young as you.”
Getting himself some nubile pussy,I thought to myself, but I could never say it out loud. It wasn’t even my thought. It was Arik’s. Something he had said to me once about how he never expected getting himself some nubile pussy would cause him such a headache.
I closed my eyes against the wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm me.
“You gonna be sick?” Kurt asked me and I felt the truck lurch as he took his foot off the accelerator.
“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth.
He pulled over, and I threw open my door just in time for the contents of my stomach to paint the side of the road. It wasn’t nearly as pretty as the way the earth and universe had painted the Utah rocks.
I couldn’t blame my head injury for throwing up. I just had that much to be sick about.
7
Kurt…
The miles rolled by under the wheels of the truck. It was a pain the first few hours, getting out of California and the bloody awful traffic. Back on those roads that were a half-dozen lanes or wider, and the cars crawled bumper to bumper. Progress was torturous, and I spent more time on the clutch and brake and fighting the urge to shout and throw rude gestures, than actually getting anywhere. Now that we were free of California, the road was much narrower, two lanes in most places. And it was desolate. Desert and rocks; it was the stuff of Americana.
If I was going to possibly go to jail for the things I had done, I was going to throw a few bucket-list items down before it all possibly went sideways. There was also the fact that Iknewwho was going to be tasked with finding us, finding Callie, and bringing her back. Madeline Oberisk, and she was nothing if not professional and efficient. I hadn’t picked her to be my second by accident.
She wasn’t my first choice, but anyone who was going into the security detail had to be approved by the New Eden inspectors, and several of my first-round choices had been quickly vetoed. But Maddy had been a New Eden acolyte, and her chops had looked solid – non-combat deployment in the U.S. Army, short stint in law enforcement after that, changing careers after coming up crosswise with the boys in blue in an internal affairs’ matter that she wouldn’t talk about, but whatever had happened spoke to me of her character.
