Page 8 of Rough Trip

“They said… Tyler said he just needed something… anything…”

“And?”

“And I’ll be free from the Omens, forever… all my debts… erased.”

Sage sighed. “And you believed him?”

Mia was stupid enough to believe the Omens, believe Tyler Sedotal. All he needed was one single piece of information. Give them something… anything… Maybe something real, not fake so they wouldn’t accuse her of lying, something so vague that there was no way they could get anything out of it. The Omens were a bunch of idiots.

So she gave them the number Sage called to arrange Fiona’s flight. There was no way they would find out anything from a number, right? She was wrong. Dead wrong. The Omens not only found out Fiona’s flight plan from the number she provided, they took her, embarrassed her and tortured her.

Not only had Mia betrayed Sage’s trust by spying on his phone when he was in the shower, she betrayed Fiona, Grier, the Demons.

She tried to fix it. She wanted to make everything right. It was by luck that the very limited information she knew led the Omens to Fiona. The Demons had to understand that her true loyalty lay with them, not the Omens. She’d made her choice long ago to stay with the Demons. But she still owed the Omens and she had to clear her debt and make a clean exit, cut them out once and for all. That was the right thing to do, at least that’s what she had thought.

Hamilton’s death though wasn’t completely her fault. She didn’t mean to hit him. She had to. Dick, Sedotal’s second, pointed his gun at her and signaled for her to do something. She knew what kind of person Dick was and that he’d shoot her without hesitation if she didn’t do anything. At that moment, she chose her own life and Hamilton paid the price.

Soon enough, she realized that she had chosen wrong. She should have known there was no way the Omens would let her off so easy. Being tortured by the Omens was ten times worse than having a quick death. A shot in the head and be done with it. Mia closed her eyes and images of her torment flashed through her eyes. Could she ever forget what the Omens did to her? She was beaten, raped, shot and left to die. She should’ve picked death when there was a choice.

Just as she was drifting off again, the sound of a loud crash and gunfire suddenly snapped her back into a moment of lucidity and she realized someone had come for her—the last person in the world she had expected.

She laughed at the thought of being saved by Fiona. Doesn’t God have a very twisted way of fucking with people’s lives? Mia was never religious. She tried when she was a little girl to please her parents by going to church every week and doing what a good Catholic girl was supposed to, but she never truly believed. She had never asked God for anything in her life. But now, lying and shivering in a pool of her own blood, all she wanted was a quick death.

“God! Can you please hurry the fuck up?!” Her voice was weak and shaky but that was exactly what had led Fiona to her.

“Over here, Grier!” shouted Fiona.

“Fi… o… na…” Mia couldn’t help thinking God must be a woman.

* * *

“I made a deal with the Omens that I would be their spy, and I was sent in to try to infiltrate the Screaming Demons so I could pass on any information,” Mia said.

“So what do they know?” Fiona asked.

“Just the number… the one Sage called to arrange your flight.”

“I nearly died…”

“I’m sor…” Mia would say that a million times, or more.

“Hamilton died because of you.” Fiona wanted someone to blame for Hamilton’s death.

“Fiona, they had a gun pointing at her,” Sage moved closer to Mia, just in case… Fiona was the kind of woman who would shoot first and explain later.

“I’m sorry… I should’ve let them kill me instead…” Mia took the courage to say what she was thinking.

“Maybe you should!”

Grier shot Fiona a look, signaling her to let Mia finish what she had to say.

“What… what they did to me at the warehouse… that was worse than death,” Mia continued. The room went quiet for a few seconds.

“I know,” Fiona sighed and gave Mia a look, as if to say she knew exactly what she’d gone through.

“Can we trust her?” Grier asked Sage.

“Yes,” Sage replied.