“Gone?” My vision blurred; my already wobbly legs nearly gave out completely. The housekeeper, though, was still rightthere behind me, catching me as I collapsed and guiding me to the leather sofa.
Agent Labrecque, meanwhile, cleared her throat, plainly resentful that her partner was treating me as anything more than an irritant. “His private jet filed paperwork to take off this morning from Tucson.”
“Was—” I gulped for air. “Was anyone else on it?”
The two cops looked at each other.
“Besides the pilot, I mean? Please,” I added in a voice little more than a whisper. “I have to know.”
Wheatley kept his eyes fixed intensely on Labrecque. In the end, it was the female agent who spoke. “Besides the crew, two slaves were listed on the manifest. One of them,” she added, glancing down at her notepad and back up, “belongs to your father.”
In a second, I could no longer feel my body, the burns, or anything else. My father’s face was a blur, and the agent’s voice seemed to drift up as if out of a drainpipe. My senses had collapsed into a singularity: Erica’s words.
Not all slaves turn out to be heroes.
Him
Blinding sunlight. My head throbbed as my vision adjusted. The air was hot, dry, and still, bringing with it the faint scent of sunbaked sand.
I jerked in place, only to have fire rip through my muscles, my joints locked. Every movement felt like pushing through a thick fog, even the slightest twitch greeted with a chorus of aches and pains ricocheting through my body. My throat felt like I’d been trying to swallow sandpaper. One thing was for sure: Rio Dulce was sounding better and better by the second.
Moving also alerted me to a familiar sound. Chains.
All right. What kind were theythistime?
Well, I’d been collared, for one, by a thick band of metal and leather clasped tightly around my neck, with a chain trailing off somewhere behind and upward, the perfect length to prevent me from both standing upandlying down. She wanted me on my knees, in other words.
A smaller chain hung from the front of the collar, linked to a bit pushed under my tongue, attached to a mesh cage that fit over the lower half of my face. No talking, then. No screaming for help.
Hands cuffed behind me, which seemed to be Resi’s style.
But it was my throat that concerned me most. It had already started to constrict, thirst clawing at the edges, making swallowing difficult. The sun’s position suggested early morning, which meant I had a couple of hours or so before I had to worry about being boiled to death by the noonday heat. If I could survive that, I might just last long enough to die of dehydration. Or more likely, be tortured to death by Resi, because I had a strong feeling that watching from a distance as I succumbed to the elements wouldn’t be nearly entertaining enough for her.
Sothiswas how I was going to go out. All in all, I would have preferred the serum.
The serum.Cold shot through my body, so much stronger than the heat. I pushed my brain to remember something, anything, from after I’d passed out. Had it worked? Was the chip out? Had Lemaya gotten away? Had Louisa, or her father...?
I’d been at peace when I’d done it. With the fact that if I died, I’d never know. Now, since I happened to still be alive—a minor victory—Ihadto know.
Just like that, adrenaline pumped through me again. I struggled against the restraints and the pain convulsing my body to try to get a glimpse of my forearm.Fuck.Between the collarand the position of my hands, there was no way to tell. Which I was sure was the point. Well, that and torture.
Collars, man. Some owners favored them, though they were largely considered stodgy and old-fashioned, reserved for either punishment or decorative use, like for high-end sex slaves.
Shit.
Best not to dwell on that. Actually, I’d been chained by the neck before. In fact, it had been one of my first master’s favorite punishments if, after he caned me senseless, he felt the message still hadn’t sunk in. A day and night with no food, no water, no ice for my bruises, kneeling in the garden like a dog, watching his kids play football and slurp on lollipops, sure had fixed my smart mouth, though.
Oh.
Did Resi know that? Know where my mind would go? Know just how toforceme to act and think like a slave again after I’d grown too used to the opposite?
Where was this chain attached, anyway? A rusty, horizontal cast-iron bar with a post on each side and a series of solid rings jutting out. Only one was currently occupied, by the other end of my chain.
Of course. A hitching post. For horses. That figured. It was the West, after all. The Wild West, apparently, which wasnotjust a staple of old black-and-white movies, as I’d been led to believe.
Hanging off behind it was a pathetic-looking building—my best guess was a long-abandoned toolshed, though even that seemed generous. At any rate, its rusty, corrugated tin awning created, at the sun’s current angle, a slight shelter. An almost completely useless one, given the length of my chain. I strained a little anyway, to see how much closer I could get.
Which brought me back to my hands. Cautiously, I tested one, then the other, only to have the muzzle stifle my even more agonized scream.
