Page 57 of Ignited

She just wanted to be alone. To feel like an adult, an autonomous person in control of her own life.

Not a pathetic invalid who had to have someone babysit her 24/7.

She went into the bedroom first, opening the closet and pulling out the toybox. DB had set the magical wards so only four of them could get through—himself, Karisma, Boomer and his brother.

She glared at the box. Malibu Barbie looked back at her, smiling her too-perfect smile, standing next to her sparkly pink dream car.

A shiny lie that people told little girls, about how life was supposed to be.

She’d learned it was a lie when she was eight.

But then, the other women at the Ridge didn’t have shiny pretty Barbie lives either. And they were so happy that it really was a little nauseating, like Boomer said. And also nice. Like she’d told him.

She thought about opening up the box, looking at her pieces of the Orb. Yelling into them at Maximilian as if he could hear her, telling him that his ass was going down, and she was taking her life back.

But all of a sudden, she didn’t know if she wanted to. Because once she was free and complete and wholly herself, what then? What if getting her missing piece back didn’t fix her?

What if she stayed broken, someone always alone, someone no one could love? Who didn’t know how to love anyone back?

She shoved the box back into the closet without opening it, and got up. Patting RoomBubba on the head as she went back out of the bedroom, she wandered through the silent house.

At the back of the living room, the door to the workroom beckoned to her, dark and mysterious. She’d only been inside a couple of times—Boomer hadn’t been working much, and his brother mostly hung out in there cleaning guns and being antisocial.

Suddenly she wanted to know what was in there, what it could tell her about who Boomer was.

The room was mostly tidy—Boomer apparently wasn’t one of those people who worked well in a mess. The mattress where his brother sometimes slept was neatly made up, with folded clothes stacked on top of it.

She saw the Christmas lights on the back wall and turned them on. Their colorful glow was cheerful, and gave just enough light for her to see by. She began idly opening drawers and cabinets—nuts and bolts, rolls of wire, various casings and components.

Flat shelves held drawings and blueprints, with rows of mathematical calculations, and there was a bookcase full of books on physics, electronics, construction and engineering.

She began to realize just what was involved in Boomer’s job—how much knowledge, intelligence and dedication it must take to do it well.

The explosives cabinet was clearly labeled, and she decided not to mess with that.

Instead, she opened one of the shallow cabinets above the workbench. On the inside of the wooden door was a corkboard with a spiral of pictures thumbtacked to it, several layers deep.

Karisma sucked in her breath. She suddenly realized that there were no photos anywhere else in the cabin—no mementos of people from the brothers’ past.

But here they were—dozens of them. Young, old—all races and ages. She flipped one over, and saw a name and a date. The others seemed to have them too.

She swiveled some of them around on their tacks to get a look at the pictures beneath them, until she found the one in the center, underneath all the others. The first one.

It was her.

The picture of her tiger from the carnival poster in Colorado, looking out defiantly at the camera.

And then she knew. These were the people from Boomer’s missions—all the ones that he and his team had helped or rescued, over the years. The people he’d saved.

And all the way at the bottom—the foundation—her.

Was that what she was to him? Just one in a series of good deeds, something to make him feel better about himself?

She was so deep in thought that she didn’t hear anyone coming until they were already in the doorway, gun aimed at her.

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

Boomer.