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The Nevada desert is full of ram's head thorns that feel like thick needles when stepped on, full of foxtails which are like the tops of wheat when it's growing, but all hard and sharp and designed to catch on things.
Every growing thing wants to spread itself around, get planted somewhere new where it can thrive, and so every growing thing develops ways of transporting its seeds. In the high desert, that usually involves becoming a thorn.
So running barefoot over the desert floor, everything hurts. But Cole has hurt me more than this and I'm desperate to get to him. The only time I succumb to the pain in my feet is for one thorn too big to run with.
Then I cover two miles of trail-running in just over twenty minutes. I'm flying by the time I come around to the front entrance of the compound where it faces southeast, and the only reason I stop is the guards who draw down on me instantly, assault rifles at the ready, as if one slim, five-five female could fuck them up.
I could. Black belt Survival-trained. Hand to hand combat. And having ridden with the Brotherhood in Seattle when I was undercover with Jesse, the leader of the gang. It was that assignment that led directly to my opiate addiction, after Jesse was killed and I was out from under the assignment, back with my fiancé (ex- fiancé, he has no idea how much it's ex). That was when I found the roll of bills in one pocket of my jeans as home, theoretically, and safe and sound, I started to do laundry. One roll of bills from the pocket of a pair of jeans, and the first sample free, everybody! Baggies of fentanyl.
Everything that followed seemed almost preordained.
Except Kie. Fucking Kie.
The men with the guns trained on me are not backing down. That means they're here with her. They could just have been new guards for Cole's compound. He doesn't get attached to the help. There's a lot of turnover. The most loyal are with him the longest. I'd recognize them, like Jason who laughed at me the first time Kie hurt me and we were under Cole's roof. Cole had him beaten so bad he was hospitalized. He came back, though, and Cole handled all his medical bills. Or like the guards who always stared at me whenever Cole did something to humiliate me in front of whoever was there. Those are the long-term guards and they're exactly as long term as they do what Cole wants.
Everyone else comes and goes.
That wasn't what I was facing, newbies unprepared for my arrival, and my arrival at her demand wasn't a ruse. Kie was truly here, alive, inside, with Cole.
Slowly, I put my hands up.
It only took an instant for the men with guards to pat me down. Clearly I wasn't carrying much. So far no one had spoken, not a word had been exchanged. There was no reason to. Their guns said Stop where you are and that the situation was out of my control and out of Cole's. The very presence of these men said both Your enemy is inside and You're fucked.
They started for the door and I didn't move. When the largest of the men turned to look at me – of the four, he was the only one who had to be six-six or taller – I put my hands gingerly against the siding of the main structure and leaned up onto one leg. The other I crossed over my knee.
"Stickers," I said, and then, "Fucking ram's heads." There were a neat half dozen in that foot. At least they came out easily. Moving slow so as to not freak out the men who were now circling me from behind – not my favorite place to have people with guns – I did the same with the other foot.
The whole time everything inside me screamed to get to Cole. But I had to be as ready to face Kie as I could. I couldn't be hampered by sudden, intense pain from a thorn when I went up against her.
Kie. And not Vincent. Facing Vincent might have made me fall. He had hurt me when he kidnapped me and dragged me to Paris. There was nothing soft about Cole, and his sexual sadism was no joke.
But Vincent. Vincent was pure psychopath. There was not an ounce of kindness in him. So it was important for me to understand that Vincent was dead. Cole had shot him in the head at the same time I had used the palm heel of my hand to drive the cartilage of his nose up into his brain.
Still, digging thorns out of my feet, I took a second to whisper a chant to myself, tenets of TaeKwon-Do – courtesy, integrity, perseverance, strength, indomitable spirit – and when I found that didn't help, because none of them fit for facing off against Kie, well, maybe all but courtesy, which she didn't deserve – I murmured to myself, Kill the bitch.
I stood and nodded thanks to the guard who had given me space to clear my head as well as my feet. Maybe he'd been ordered to do that. I didn't know. Kie was trained in something. Maybe she wanted some kind of grudge match.
If so, bring it.
I nodded again and the guard unlocked the compound doors.
For no good reason, I had some kind of weird post apocalyptic image in my head. I'd go through the doors and Kie would be sitting at the top of some high perch, like high school gym bleachers. There would be guards in weird clothes and the weapon held on Cole would be indescribable.
Or there'd be vast wastelands inside the house. Or wild animals. Clearly I'd been watching too much SyFy in the hospital.
The compound’s main house was exactly the same as it had been. Through the front door, down a short hall on the left was the spacious dining room. The dining room was a normal huge, formal, belonging-to-a-billionaire dining room. It was where once, Cole had sold me in a charity auction to Vincent Geddes, $5.5 million for two weeks of me, then refused to honor the bid because he himself was afraid of what Vincent would do to me.
To the right was the large but comfortably appointed living room where once, in the midst of an orgy with billionaires and their subs, Kie had made me scream and set off the chain of events that brought us here.
Across the living room, Cole was tied to a hardback chair. Kie stood behind him, a razor to his throat.
Other than that, the living room looked pretty normal. I sucked in my breath and held it. I hadn't seen Cole in weeks. Just seeing him alive was a relief.
Nothing else was. There were armed guards in the house. There was the living dead girl who had hurt me.
There was Cole who looked like everything was lost because I'd come.
I wrenched my gaze away from him before I made myself weak and looked at Kie. "You were supposed to be dead."
