UnSouled (Unwind Dystology 3)

Roberta can’t help but take pleasure in her victory as she watches the grin finally leave his face.

66 • Connor

Connor opens his eyes to the same room and the same bed he had been traq’d in. He knows this can’t be right. They came for them, didn’t they? No, he thinks. Grace knew better. They came for Cam.

“Welcome back from Tranqistan.”

He turns his head to see Sonia sitting in a chair beside him. He tries to push himself up, but feels dizzy, so he lets his elbows slide out from under him, and his head hits the pillow, his brain clanging inside him like the clapper of a bell.

“Easy now. I’d think with all the times you’ve been tranq’d, you know to take it slow.”

He’s about to ask where Risa is, but then she appears at the door. “Is he awake?”

“Barely.” Sonia grabs her cane and rises with a grunt, vacating the seat for Risa. “It’s almost noon. Time to open up shop, or the crowds may bust the door down.” But before she leaves the room, she pats Connor comfortingly on the leg. “We’ll talk later. I’ll tell you everything you want to know about my husband. Or at least what this fool brain of mine still remembers.”

Connor smiles at that. “I’m sure you remember things back to the Stone Age.”

“Don’t be a wiseass.”

Then she waddles out, and Risa takes the seat. She also takes Connor’s hand. He squeezes back, and unlike the day before, he does it wholeheartedly.

“I’m glad we let you sleep it off without waking you. You needed it.”

“You don’t get rest during tranq sleep. You just go away.” He clears his throat, to remove a persistent frog. “So what happened?”

Risa explains how she and Grace were never even found under the bed and how Cam was collared, then taken away. Connor is amazed with their luck—but maybe he shouldn’t be. If the mission of that task force was to simply capture Cam, they couldn’t care less about his travel companions. Get in, get out. Their mission was accomplished, and they had no idea the forest they had missed for the tree.

“Cam could have turned us all in, but he didn’t,” Risa says. “He sacrificed himself for us.”

“He was going down anyway,” Connor points out. “It wasn’t exactly a sacrifice.”

“Give him some credit—by turning us in he would have bought himself some serious bargaining power.” She thinks for a moment, her grip on Connor’s hand loosening slightly. “He’s not the monster you think he is.”

She waits for Connor to respond to that, but he’s still too tired and cranky from the tranquilizer to agree with her. And he might agree—after all, Cam had given them the information on Proactive Citizenry. Still, his motives seem to have too many layers to be anything but cloudy.

“Cam saved us, Connor—at least give him that.”

r 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.