UnSouled (Unwind Dystology 3)

“I’m just going to the bathroom.”

“No, you’re not.”

Risa hesitates, then stiffens a bit. “I have to.” Then adds, “It’s not your business anyway.” But Grace knows she’s wrong about that.

Risa leaves, and Grace closes her eyes, hearing the door to the boys’ room creak open. She knows what will happen in there.

Risa will sit on Connor’s bed, gently waking him up, if he’s not already awake. Cam, who sleeps on the floor will not be asleep, but will pretend that he is. He’ll hear everything.

Risa will whisper something to Connor along the lines of “We need to talk,” and Connor will try to delay it. “In the morning,” he’ll say. But she’ll touch his face, and that will make him look at her. They won’t see each other’s eyes but for a pinprick on their pupils of the reflected streetlight outside. It will be enough. Even in the darkness, Connor’s facade will fall away, and Risa will know. They won’t speak, because, after all, it was never about words, but about connection without words. A connection that can’t be denied. They’ll step just outside the door. Close it, but only partway, so that it doesn’t make a sound.

Connor will initiate the kiss, but Risa will return the passion twofold. Any questions about their feelings for each other will be gone in a moment that they think only the two of them share. Just one kiss, and Risa will leave and sleep like a baby for the rest of the night, satisfied.

But Cam will know. And he will begin to make plans.

Grace has no idea what those plans will be, but she knows they won’t help anybody. Not even himself.

She sees no hope for a winning outcome—until something drastic comes into play. It begins with a lack of shadow. A dark ceiling without the squirmy tree shadow . . . and yet there is the deep rumble of a car. No—two cars—but no headlights. Why would they be driving this time of night without headlights?

She looks out of the window to see a dark van and a dark sedan idling by the curb. The back doors of the van open, a team of armed men pile out, and without a sound they steal across the lawn toward the house.

Grace feels her heart kick into high gear. Her ears and cheeks grow hot from an adrenaline flush. They’ve been found!

She hears voices—whispers—and she locks onto them, hoping something they say can give her an advantage.

“You three around back,” the team leader whispers. “Wait for the signal.”

Then someone else whispers, “He’s here. I can almost smell him.”

Suddenly Grace knows all she needs to know.

She bursts out of the room to see Risa and Connor in the midst of that kiss she knew they’d take.

“Grace!” says Risa “What are you—”

But before she can finish, they all hear the double crash of both the back and front doors being kicked in. She pushes them into Cam and Connor’s room, closing the door behind her. Cam leaps to his feet fully awake, as Grace knew he would be. She takes control, knowing they don’t have much time. She knows this particular brand of salvation is only a fifty-fifty chance at best.

“Risa!” she whispers. “Get under the bed. Connor—facedown in your pillow. Now!” Then she turns to Cam. “And you—stay exactly where you are!”

Cam stares at her in disbelief “Are you nuts? They know we’re here!”

Pounding footsteps on the stairs. Only seconds now.

“No,” Grace tells him, just before she squeezes beneath the bed with Risa. “They know you’re here.”

64 • Cam

Two men in black armed with silenced tranq Magnums burst into the room. One aims his weapon at Cam, and Cam reflexively puts his hands up, furious to be caught so easily, but he knows that resisting will only get him tranq’d.

The second attacker doesn’t hesitate, however, in tranq’ing the kid on the bed. Connor flinches from the shot and goes limp.

“You’re a hard man to find, Mr. Comprix,” says the guard with the weapon aimed squarely at Cam’s chest. It almost makes him laugh.

“Me? Do you have any idea who you just tranq’d?”

“We don’t care about the SlotMongers you’ve been slumming with,” he says. “We’re here for you.”

Cam stares at him in amazement—and suddenly he realizes the awful and awesome power he’s been handed. The power to save and to destroy. He instantly knows now that even in capture he will be a hero no matter what he does. The question is what kind of hero does he want to be? And to whom?