I spun about. She stopped in her tracks and I stared at her. Her face was lit by the sun and the snow. Her cheeks were red, her eyes wild, her hair blowing sideways away from her face.
“Supposed to be? Thalia, you were buck naked in the shower with him.”
She grinned then. Not because we were friends, but because I was her enemy. “So you saw us, did you?” Then her smile fell away and a narrow gazed hatred took its place. “You saw him reject me. Tell me you were the only one he wanted.”
I didn’t see the hit coming. I’d been too stunned by her words to block the blow to the side of my head. I stumbled, fell to my knees.
“Fuck,” I groaned. I’d been in fights before, cat fights really, with other women. Stupid drunken bar shit. But this? This wasn’t the same thing. She was armed and she was pissed and she’d just cold-cocked me in the side of my head with her pistol.
My entire head exploded with pain and my vision blurred. I tasted blood in my mouth and I was pretty sure my jaw was broken. And through it all I felt suddenly warm.
Rager had turned her away? They’d both been naked. She’d told him to give her his cock. But I’d run out. Missed the last. She wouldn’t lie about Rager rejecting her. She had no reason to lie now. Not out here. If he’d fucked her, as I’d thought, she’d be gloating. Preening.
“Get up.” She kicked me in the ribs with her boot and a sharp, stabbing pain had me crying out as I felt one of my ribs crack with a crunching sensation. “Keep moving.”
She kicked me again and I grunted, but stood, holding one hand to my head. It pulsed and throbbed, but I ignored it as I began to tingle all over. Thank god for endorphins, or whatever this was, as my pain faded to a dull roar. Knowing Rager hadn’t fucked her made me feel…better. But I was still confused. If he rejected her, why would he be helping her?
We walked another few minutes and she ordered me to stop moving. We were in the middle of nowhere, like North Pole nowhere. I couldn’t run; there was no place to hide or avoid being shot. We were in the middle of a large flat area, the snow hard and flat in an unbroken plain beneath our feet. Looking out from here, it appeared to go on for miles and miles. An ocean of white.
I glanced over my shoulder when she stopped. She looked at her wrist communicator and slung a bag off her back, let it drop to the hard-packed snow. I hadn’t even noticed she’d been carrying it. Of course, a big old space gun provided plenty of distraction. With a push of her boot to the back of my knee, she forced me to my knees.
I remained silent as I watched her set up some weird poles, metal bars, in a square around me. She placed her weapon on the ground beside her as she worked, but she was too far away for me to have any hope of taking it from her. It looked like she was putting up the corners of a tent…or a cage. I glanced around, shielded my eyes with my hands. I couldn’t see the IQC anymore. I couldn’t see anything but snow and dark, ragged rock. And machines, some kind of snow vehicle was moving toward us.
As I watched, I saw someone jump down from the vehicle and my heart thumped against my broken ribs. Hard. My heart pounded with hope as I watched them approach. I was being rescued. Thank god.
I shivered then. Adrenaline was making me feel weird. The sweat had stopped and now I was cold. So cold. I couldn’t feel my hands or my feet. I tried to smile, but my lips didn’t want to work. I thought that I should get up and run toward them, zig-zag around and let Thalia take her best shot. But the idea was like fog in my mind and my body refused to move.
“Incoming.” The voice came from Thalia’s communicator carried to me on the wind, and I frowned.
Thalia looked up from her kneeling position. Her heavy pants took the brunt of the cold from the ground, unlike my cream-colored ones. Yes, they were fur lined, but the fur wasn’t thick, and even that wasn’t doing much to keep the frigid air from me any longer.
Thalia stood, grabbing her weapon as she did so, waited as the two men—their size was a dead giveaway—to approach.
Oh. These weren’t rescuers. These were her partners-in-crime. They wore heavy pants and boots like Thalia, their coats the color of their Sector, but heavy and coated in something shiny that, I assumed, blocked the wind. I couldn’t see their eyes because they were shielded behind reflective glasses. Even their hair was covered by hats.
“You could have taken a rover, Thalia,” one muttered. “No one will pay for a corpse.”
What? Were they talking about me?
“She’s fine. Trust me. The little bitch is tougher than she looks.”
Holy shit. Yes, they were talking about me. They were selling me? Someone was going to pay them money for me?
Seeing the men in their thick coverings made me realize how cold the tips of my ears were, how my lips were going numb. I tucked my hands under my armpits, slumped my shoulders to curl in on myself, but nothing I did helped. I couldn’t stop shaking.
“Stealing one would have been obvious. Tracking one even easier,” Thalia countered. She shook her head as she eyed their vehicle. “Stupid. You should have walked.”
“No one was supposed to be looking for us, Thalia. By the time we got word from you, it was too late to turn back.”
“Fine. I don’t want to argue. Let’s do this and get the hell out of here. Help me finish setting this up.”
It was obvious who was in charge. The two men took the metal pieces, put it together with remarkable ease. The one time I’d gone camping—I was a comfortable-bed-and-bathroom kind of camper—it had taken me an hour to figure out how to set up my tent and I’d somehow had an extra pole leftover.
When they stood back up, I took in what they’d made. I blinked, looked again. It wasn’t a tent. Why was I so focused on a tent? I was losing my mind. There were four poles at the four corners with weird black boxes on top. They were positioned about ten feet apart, in a square shape. Most of the time had been spent aligning them at perfect angles and securing their bases in the hard ground. Four poles. That was it. No nylon cover. No tent.
“Where’s the tent?” I asked. I wanted to close my eyes, take a little nap. Whatever these guys planned, they weren’t going to get much accomplished out here.
All three turned to me. They weren’t shivering. They weren’t huddled together for warmth. “Tent?” Thalia asked. She looked at her two cohorts with a shrug.