Page 198 of Johnny

next level.

She’s all business now. Like spilling all those secrets to me last night was the purge she needed

and now she feels… well, I’m guessing not clean, exactly. But… unburdened. Like Gilgamesh after he

wrote his story down on a stone.

“Ya know,” Logan says, once Megan has disappeared, “she’d make a good partner in crime.”

“I know,” I say, then sigh. Because it’s not that simple. Wanting her and keeping her are two very

different things. And I have to make a choice tomorrow when we go back to Prison Island. I glance up

at Logan and say, “Thank you. You’ve gone above and beyond for me.”

“I want those assholes. I want them bad. No one fucks with my friends.”

I nod, getting it. “It’s… kind of delicate at the moment. So…” And I’m about to tell him he should

be prepared to adjust his expectations, but I stop myself. He won’t want to hear that. Logan has only

been out of the mob for two years and he’s already starting to forget what it’s like to be owned. “I’ll

come find you when I’m done here. You don’t have to wait.”

“OK.” He sighs. “I’ll be up top planning a war.”

He’s not joking so I don’t smile. Just nod back and open the door.

The girl is hunched up in the shadows in the room’s far corner, sitting on the floor with her knees

pulled up to her chest. There’s a plate of uneaten food on the side table near my side of the bed and

the only light is the reading lamp built into the headboard, which shines a spotlight down onto the

pillows.

The room isn’t big because we’re on the crew level. There’s no chair and I’m not going to sit on

the bed, so I lean up against the head door and cross my arms to take her in.

She’s small, and by that I mean both short and slight. Her blonde hair was pulled back earlier, I

remember that much. And it still is now, but in a very I’ve-been-through-hell-today way that comes

off both disheveled and kinda cute. In a little-kid kind of way. Because now that I see her out of that

hazmat suit, that’s what I realize she is.

A fuckin’ kid.

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen,” she says. She’s already talked to Logan. That’s why I’m here. She told him some

serious shit. So she’s not confrontational and she’s not mean. Which I appreciate more than she

knows.