Page 91 of Exit Strategy
He was so violent.
Tearing her clothes, slapping her, fucking her face like she was a piece of celebrity-chasing trash.
This was all wrong.
“I want to leave,” I whispered, as I watched Arik pound her furiously from behind. “Turn this off, and I want to leave.”
“Where are you going to go?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“Let me give you my phone number,” she said, and added it to my phone, before handing it back to me. It was almost dead, and I had no charger.
So what?
“Thanks,” I said.
“Let her go,” Calanthe said.
“She could tip them off to our location,” the brunette said.
“Call the New Eden contact number,” Calanthe countered. I handed the phone off to the brunette and she thumbed through my contacts until she found Soren’s, after I mumbled “recents” at her.
“It’s been blocked, or disconnected,” she said, looking up from the phone.
A message blinked across the screen,service terminated, and the phone powered down on its own. The brunette pressed buttons on the screen, and on the side, and it refused to respond. She handed it back to me, and I shrugged. I turned and flipped it into the waste bin near the Englishman.
“I’ve been burned, now,” I said.
“You aren’t a prisoner here, Maddy. You can leave if you want,” Calanthe said. “I think you could also stay if you wanted.”
I looked at them, at this weird unit they had going on, and shook my head.
“No, I want to leave, or at this point just shoot me. I’ve got nothing left.” The sociopath gestured at the brunette, and she took her hand away from her hip where the revolver was and looked annoyed.
Calanthe walked me to the front door and opened it.
“You’re a good person, Madeleine, and I’m sorry.”
I nodded, and when I stepped through the door, she shut it behind me.
Fuck.
25
Kurt…
The captain ran a strange ship and made really questionable decisions. He hadn’t seemed like that back in-country, but then again, in-country was a few years ago. The fancy restaurant seemed like the craziest thing they could consider doing, but then they brought Madeleine Oberisk through the garage door, not knowing what she was.
They meant well, and being both veterans, there was that certain overconfidence that veterans had when dealing with civilians. Maddy was a civilian, and a woman, but she was a zealot. She was the best hand-to-hand fighter I had ever met, and she learned fast. Each lesson was only required once, and after a month of CQC training, she was the one teaching lessons.
When she opened up, the only surprise was when the coffee table didn’t shatter under me.
It felt like my ribs obliged instead.
The good news was that the floor was there to catch me, the wood cool against my face. Maddy and an expensive piece of furniture was like being hit by a bloody tank.
Breathing hurt, especially on the right side.
