My stomach turned over—way to crank up my tension.
His lips tugged up in a grin. “Don’t worry, baby. They won’t win. I just don’t want to give Carter any extra work fixing them up.”
Opening the door, he hopped down.
Carter muttered, “Asshole!” Before he did the same.
The door beside me opened, and Blaine closed his hands around my waist to help me down.
“You going to be okay with Carter and Nora?”
I nodded.
Leaning in, he took my lips in a swift kiss.
I was so damn deep into this man.
Then he was drawing me out of the way and slamming the door shut. “Taylor will expect me to be with him. I’ll come find you after.”
He left, heading up the stairs we’d parked near at a jog, while I followed behind with Carter and Nora.
Guards with automatic weapons were stationed at the entrance. They vetted Carter via a scan of his brand, repeating for Nora and me. Inside, I found a vast, softly lit auditorium, close to capacity.
We took our seats near the back as the doors closed and the lights dimmed, illuminating a low dais.
I knew instantly that the man standing there was Taylor, the self-proclaimed king.
Standing right beside him was Blaine.
The speech went over my head. I was so distracted by Blaine’s presence on the stage. My first venture beyond his apartment had offered a plethora of revelations.
Sitting here, one might imagine the collapse had never happened. On the surface, it was civilized. A select crowd gathered, attentively listening to their leader talk through the changes that were happening within the community.
It wasn’t normal, though, and a sense of discord enveloped me. The man on the podium was a dictator. None of us had a choice in what happened to us or any aspect of our future. I remembered my parents bemoaning politics before civilization imploded. The saying, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely was manifested in the man who held our enrapt attention. It wasn’t terrible here, but it wasn’t a democracy, and nothing suggested it would change for the better soon.
Blaine’s place of prominence within this kingdom remained the biggest shock. I’d realized his luxurious home spoke of more than a soldier, but not to this extent. As Taylor finished, Blaine gave an update on the operation that had handed Sanctuary, and the surrounding city, to the king.
There was safety in the arms of a man who wielded his own brand of power.
But was there enough?
My mind turned, as it was wont to do at weak moments, back to my uncle’s community. Martin had taken my mother as a partner after my father died.
His brother—my father—dead because Martin had killed him.
And the monster wanted me.
While there, I’d been living under a cloud of desperation, watching my mother fade, and knowing the only thing that kept her going was the knowledge that she was shielding me.
And then he’d killed her.
My hands were shaking. I wrapped them around my waist and fought to bring my mounting horror down.
I blamed myself. Hated that I’d watched on while Martin destroyed her. Hated that I hadn’t been able to do anything to help. But I mostly hated that if I’d dared to go to him, he might have freed her from this terrible fate, and she might still live.
I was weak, selfish, and a fool.
I missed my mother so much.
I missed my father, who was different from Martin in every way.
My focus returned to the proceedings. The king was once more speaking about a new alliance in negotiation. Then he was welcoming his new dictator buddy to the stage.
I blinked, sure that my memories had conjured the man who rose from the front to join Taylor from the darkest recess of my mind.
Cold sweat popped across my skin. He’d aged a little, but not enough for me to be confused.
It was him.
My tormentor and my uncle.
The man who had killed my father.
Who had also killed my mother… the catalyst for me finally fleeing with Jodi that fateful night.
And he was now standing beside Blaine.
I’d never been one for second-guessing myself. If life had taught me anything, it was that at times you needed to act and act fast. Inside, I felt sick with fear, but outside, I was cold and determined.
Blaine would be furious with Carter, and I felt bad about that, but not enough to deter me. My hands shook as I gave my excuses, grateful that no one accompanied me. Despite my best attempts to keep my expectations realistic, a part of me had died realizing that I must leave.
I’d been so close to trusting Blaine.
How could I have been so stupid?
Fleeing the conference center was easier than I thought. Head down, hood up; security was more concerned with those seeking entrance than leaving.
My uncle had fitted me with a tracker, and I’d already checked and found one under Blaine’s brand.
That went first.
I’d hacked into Blaine’s datapad days ago and had installed a hotkey combination on my cell that would redirect the tracking location to Blaine’s cell. It would have been better to cut the brand out altogether, but I didn’t have a knife nor the nerve to try and hack into my skin to remove it.
The redirection would be sufficient for now. I had bigger problems to deal with.
My cell was my only point of contention. In the end, I erred on the side of caution and tossed it.
A bonus was the proximity of the river. It had been years since I’d swam, but it would be the fastest way to remove myself from the area. After a few minutes of assessing the tide via the floating rubbish, I could see it was incoming.
Not for the first time, I thanked my genetics as I slipped into the filthy water, letting it carry me for a distance before striking out for the far shore.
I was shivering by the time I heaved myself onto the muddy bank. Scrubby, stunted, leafless trees lined this side of the river, tangled with plastic, tattered rags, and other refuse. Setting off at a brisk pace, my only thought was to get as far away from Taylor and my uncle as was possible before exhaustion took me.
So I walked.
Tomorrow, I would work out where I was and figure out how to get to a rendezvous point agreed with Jodi.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Blaine
WHEN TAYLOR’S UPDATE was finally over, there were a dozen messages on my cell.
All of them were from Carter.
I hit dial even as I was jogging along the corridor that circled the auditorium, the mother of all bad feelings roiling in my gut.
“She’s gone,” he said as the call connected, and I swear the blood drained in a flash before surging right back.
“The fuck are you talking about?” I growled into the cell. “Where are you now?”
I reached them a few minutes later. The main room had dispersed into clusters as the select crowd was given leave to mingle. Carter and Nora were waiting in the corridor outside the main entrance, soldiers beside them on their communicators and looking shifty as hell when I stormed up.
“Where the fuck is she?”
“We don’t know,” Carter said. “She said she felt sick and went to the bathroom, maybe thirty minutes ago. We didn’t realize anything was off at first.”
“She can’t be that far away.” I pulled up the tracking app on my cell. Her first fucking time out of the apartment, and she had run. I couldn’t see her getting far, given she was fitted with a tracker, but her attempt still pissed me off.