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Thank god she’d nestled her own arm beneath mine so I didn’t have the mound of her breast there, under my hand.
Okay. I couldn’t check the room yet, but I could find out about her. But I waited and I watched her for a while. She was breathing so gently. Quiet at last. At peace in my arms and so little and sweet.
I barely stopped myself kissing the top of her head.
The last time I’d felt this way, it’d been a stray cat wandering into my yard in Cape Town. There was something about her I couldn’t quite define that roused my protective instincts more than my other partners had, including Elenor.
It must have been half an hour, at least, before I said softly, “You awake?”
“Uh huh.”
“Tell me about yourself. Where you come from.”
Her answer was drowsy. “Sydney.”
“Job?” I’d ask the easy ones first.
Pause. “A librarian.”
“Interesting. And the baby?”
“No. No –” She stiffened.
“You told me you had a sick baby.” Clearly that had been a lie. I thought about it. Whatever she said, I didn’t really blame her for trying.
“I...don’t. I said it to get you on my side.”
“Ja. I figured that. Don’t worry. I’d probably have done the same. So. Not married?”
Another longer pause. “Maybe you can tell me about yourself instead?”
I lifted my head and stared. I was annoyed that she wasn’t willing to tell me more. It screamed lack of trust when here I was trying to save her life. Then again, could I blame her?
She shrugged and looked back at me. Her mouth screwed up. “I’m sorry. But you were with Scrim. I don’t know you, not really. Why you were doing what you were. You were a slaver. You have to give me leeway. I’m not going to instantly give you the address to my house and the key to my grandmother’s chastity belt.”
I chuckled. “I think I’ll skip that last one, and I don’t know you either. That’s what this is for. If you want my help, I need information. Plus, I think we have to learn to trust each other.”
She was getting my help anyway. I wasn’t going to give up on her, no matter what she said. If I didn’t do my very best to get her out of here, I’d feel so wrong. But it wasn’t just that it’d be yet another notch on the big stick that recorded all my failures.
What the hell was it that I meant?
I ran through my thoughts and feelings. If I couldn’t get her out, it’d be like stamping evil worthless bastard on my own existence.
“Okay. I’ll go first. I’m South African. I’ve got family going back to the original Boer settlers hundreds of years ago. My country is still a very conflicted one. High crime rate. I was a policeman.”
“Was?”
Shit, now she was asking me the wrong damn questions, but I felt compelled to tell her my truth, such that it was.
“I was in a special part of the police that got called out to control super-violent situations.”
“But you left?”
“I did.” I shut my eyes. “Due to a stupid mistake I made, my brother was killed by officers of my unit during a political demonstration. That’s when I left.” And my wife left me. I deserved it, though. “I joined mercenaries in a neighboring country. Fought for a cause I thought was right, for a while. Then I came here, worked here and there for a year or so then a friend introduced me to someone else. They flew me over to Australia and that’s how I ended up doing what I was when you first saw me. I didn’t know what they wanted of me until I got there. I thought it was to do with people being flown in, not out. Happens all the time.”
“Then why didn’t you leave?”
I sucked in a breath. “I did. With you. I wasn’t with Scrim long. That was my first trip.”
