by I. T. Lucas
“No problem.”
32
Wonder
By the end of her shift, Wonder made up her mind.
Tonight, if Dur wasn’t asleep when she got back to the facility, she was going to put him in handcuffs and take him to one of the empty offices. After the visit from his friends, she felt even more compelled to ask him some questions.
Things didn’t add up. He didn’t fit as neatly into the story she’d constructed about her other prisoners. Though maybe she was wrong about them too and had been keeping innocent males caged for months.
Except, her doubts in regards to the other three were not as bothersome as those regarding Dur. She was almost certain of their guilt. Not so about his.
The fake detectives were a problem, though. They could be following her, or they might come to the shelter in the morning and question her roommates. It would look suspicious if the girls told them that she had come in much later than usual.
Most nights the two were asleep by the time she finished her shift at the club, but they were still new and terribly jumpy, waking up at the slightest noise. Wonder had to be very quiet not to disturb them. But tonight she was going to make some noise on purpose, so they would remember her coming in. When they went back to sleep, she would sneak out silently and go to the facility.
If she could communicate with the girls, she could’ve told them some story about meeting a guy late at night, but she barely knew them, and they didn’t speak any English yet.
Not that it would be a problem for Magnus and his silent friend if they decided to visit the shelter. One of the many volunteers would gladly translate for them.
Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that.
Shit on a stick, as Natasha liked to say.
Wonder was probably hoping for too much. In reality, the noose was tightening around her neck. She’d been a fool to think she could keep her prisoners locked up forever.
Eventually, their friends were going to find them. Or the owners of the facility would find a buyer, and she would have to move them. The problem was that Wonder knew of no other place that could hold immortal males.
She would have two options: set them free knowing that she was releasing murderers who would go on harming other women, or she could kill them and have that on her conscience.
After all, she’d killed before.
But that had been an accident. She hadn’t meant to kill her attacker, just to immobilize him.
There was no way she could execute her prisoners. As much as she detested them, except for Dur who she hadn’t proven guilty yet, she had also gotten to know them.
Grud and Shaveh and Mordan didn’t seem like monsters. They weren’t good people, but they weren't evil either. Not entirely.
Besides, she couldn’t completely rule out the remote possibility that they were innocent. Maybe they hadn’t killed anyone?
After all, she’d saved the women she’d caught them with, and there might have not been any others before that. Was the intent to murder the same as murder?
Shit on a stick and then some.
Those kinds of hard questions should be answered by people smarter than her.
As Wonder entered her room, she didn’t tiptoe as she usually did. Immediately, two heads lifted off their pillows, wide brown eyes staring at her with momentary terror.
Poor girls, she felt guilty for startling them. Who knew what these two had gone through before arriving at the shelter.
“Shh, it’s only me. Go back to sleep.”
The girls might have not understood her, but they knew her and reacted to her voice.
One mumbled something in her language and put her head back on the pillow, the other smiled and waved, then joined her sister.
A few moments later, both were fast asleep.
Looking out the window, Wonder checked the street to make sure there were no suspicious cars parked nearby, then tiptoed out and took the stairs down to the first floor.
Outside, she scanned the street again before getting in her car, double checking that there was no one inside any of the parked cars. There wasn’t. Not unless someone was hiding under the dashboard.
Still, as she drove, she kept glancing in the rearview mirror to make sure no one was following her.
Upon reaching the facility, Wonder circled around it twice before finally parking her car across the street and not in front of the building as she usually did.
The place had an alarm, but she never activated it for obvious reasons. Using her key, she entered the lobby and headed for the stairs leading down to the basement.
The kitchenette where she cooked meals for her prisoners was on the first floor, but it was an inside room with no windows and safe to use even at night. Not like the other first floor rooms where anyone could see her if she turned on the lights. After all, she doubted anyone would believe that she’d come to clean the place at two in the morning.
Instead, she used one of the offices in the basement to store her supplies, including the handcuffs and leg restraints she’d purchased with her other prisoners in mind.
That was where she planned to interrogate Dur.
The room didn’t have a reinforced door, but there was a desk with a couple of chairs she and Dur could sit on and talk.
It was a pity the basement bathroom didn’t have a shower. She could have lived there rent free instead of sharing a room with two other girls. The kitchenette was enough for her needs, and she could’ve purchased a mattress and put it against the wall in the office she used.
It was a silly idea.
The facility would eventually get sold, and she would be missing a place to live. More critically, she would have nowhere to hold her prisoners.
A different solution was needed. If Dur and his friends were indeed not part of Grud’s people, maybe she could turn to them for help.
It would be so good not to be all alone in the world, but it was also wishful thinking.
With a sigh, Wonder pulled open the filing cabinet bottom drawer and took out the restraints. She was going to find out if Dur was the answer to her problems or the end of her.
One thing she was clear on. Change was coming whether she wanted it or not.
The question was how she was going to handle it. Was she going to let it unfold passively and suffer the consequences whatever they might be, or was she going to do something about it and hopefully steer it in a better direction?
The second option was obviously preferable.
33
Anandur
“Go to sleep, Dur,” Grud grumbled. “I’m tired.”
Anandur had spent most of the evening trying to get more information out of the Doomers, but apparently, they’d had enough of his questions. Or at least Grud had, and he was the only one who seemed to actually know anything. Not that it was much.
Besides, phrasing questions to sound like they were part of a casual conversation was draining. It seemed Anandur wasn’t as good of a spy as he’d believed he was. Or maybe he just lacked the proper training. Were there manuals on how to casually ask questions without sounding like an interrogator?
If there were, he should get some once this fiasco was over.
With nothing else to do, Anandur lay down on the mattress, crossed his arms under his head, and stared at the ceiling. “Toss me another book, will you? Do you have anything with detectives in it?”
“Tomorrow. Read the one I gave you already.”
Grud was not in a cooperative mood.
But that wasn’t the reason Anandur had learned so little. The men just didn’t know much. Doomers were trained not to ask questions, or seek answers. In short, they were quite dumb—simple soldiers who did what they were told without understanding the bigger picture or even being curious about it.
If they’d been told anything, it was that Mortdh’s teachings preached this and that and therefore were beyond contestation.
Turning to his side, Anandur propped himself on his forearm and reached fo
r the book Grud had given him. But as he started flipping through the pages, he heard the door open.
He hadn’t expected Wonder to return tonight.
What he also hadn’t been expecting was for her to take him up on his offer, and yet she was holding handcuffs and leg restraints.
“Are you going to Taser me?” he asked, eyeing her holster.
“Only if you misbehave. Go to the back of the cage and stand against the wall.”
Bossy girl.
It shouldn’t have turned him on. He was not into the type of games his brother liked to play, especially not as the one being restrained. But there was something very sexy about a powerful woman with a bossy attitude.
A very beautiful, powerful woman with a bossy attitude who was also very young and naive and inexperienced and who shouldn’t see him getting horny. Which was impossible to hide since the nylon pants she’d given him did nothing to conceal his hard-on.
She might change her mind about letting him out.
And that wasn’t the only problem. If any of the Doomers noticed, they would have a field day at his expense, and he might lose their respect—never a good thing with people who were followers by nature. As long as they respected him, they might listen to him.
As he walked to the back of his cage, Anandur summoned the most gruesome images he could think of in the hopes of deflating the troublesome boner by the time he had to turn around. Luckily, or maybe regretfully, he’d seen enough crap in his long life to fill a library of horror movies.
“Why are you letting him out?” Grud asked. “He is no better than us.”
Wonder pinned him with a hard stare. “I can do whatever I want, and I don’t owe any explanations to a murderer.”
That’s my girl.
Right. Wonder was his jailer, nothing more.
Maybe in a few years when she got older…
Yeah, as if she was going to wait for him.
An immortal female who was not Annani’s descendant was going to get snapped up faster than free ice cream at an amusement park.
Grud huffed and picked up one of his books, pretending to read. Shaveh and Mordan did the smart thing and kept their mouths shut, but the hostility in their expressions betrayed their envy.
He should thank Wonder for putting each of them in a separate cage. If they were all in one, he would’ve not lived long enough to see the next morning.
Wonder threw the handcuffs and leg restraints inside his cage. “Put them on and lock them.”
“I assume you want my hands behind my back,” he said as he picked the cuffs up.
“Obviously.”
“That is going to be a bit of a challenge.” Anandur sat on the floor and put the leg restraints on, then got up and leaned his back against the neighboring cage. “Shaveh, do me a favor and lock the other one in place?”
He was taking a chance on the Doomer not shackling him to the cage’s bars, but Anandur was banking on the respect the guy had for him as a member of the Brotherhood’s upper echelon. Not that it would have stopped Shaveh from killing Anandur at the first opportunity, but only as long as he didn’t get caught. The thing was, down here the Brotherhood or its retribution was not a factor. Thankfully, though, the cages and their jailer were.
When he heard the click, Anandur pushed away from the bars. “That was the easy part. But how are you going to remove those after we are done with our chat?”
Wonder unlocked the cage and took a step back. “Easy. I’ll throw the keys in, you’ll unlock the cuffs or Shaveh will do it for you, and then throw the keys back out.”
“Clever,” he said as he exited the cage in a shuffle.
Wonder took another step away from him. “Walk ahead of me toward the door.”
“Yes, ma'am.” He pretended it was more difficult for him to keep his balance than it actually was.
The safer Wonder felt around him, the more she would open up.
He stopped in front of the door. “Do you want me to open it for you?”
“No. Step back and to the side. I’ll open it.”
“As you wish.” He did exactly as she instructed.
Wonder pulled the door open and held it, preventing it from auto closing on Anandur’s face.
“Much appreciated,” he said as he stepped out.
“You’re welcome,” Wonder answered automatically. “Keep walking,” she added in a sterner voice. “It’s the second door on your left.”
“Yes, ma'am.” Anandur's lips lifted in a smile.
Wonder was a good-natured girl pretending to be tough. Not that he had any illusions about her being soft. Her spine was made from titanium, but she was softer on the inside.
If given a chance, she would’ve been a giver, a pleaser. Unfortunately, life had forced her into a role she could pull off, but one she was not comfortable in.
34
Grud
As soon as Dur left with the woman, Grud pulled out the rod he had hidden under his mattress, moved the stack of books aside, and went to work.
The wall was made of cement blocks which were about sixteen inches wide and eight inches high. If he could remove four, he could probably squeeze through.
Shaveh got up and stood next to the bars separating their cages. “Why aren’t you digging when Dur is here? He wants out as much as we do.”
“I don’t trust him.” Grud kept scraping.
He wished he could’ve attacked the wall with all his strength, but that would’ve made too much noise. He didn’t know where Wonder had taken Dur. It might have been the next room over to the one he was trying to get into.
“I don’t trust him either. I don’t trust any of the elites. They think of us as disposable. But at this rate, it will take you forever to be done.”
Grud kept scraping. “I’d rather take my time than risk our only chance of escape.”
Mordan put down the puzzle booklet and sat up on his mattress. “Grud is right. There is something fishy about Dur. I don’t buy his spy story.”
“Who do you think he is?” Shaveh asked. “A Guardian?” He snorted.
“He could be.”
Shaveh waved a dismissive hand. “A Guardian would have never let himself get caught with his pants down.” He snorted again. “Get it? His pants down?”
“Who says? They are not invincible.” Mordan rose to his feet and watched Grud work from the other side. “If she got us, she could’ve gotten a Guardian. If you ask me, Dur is too polite and knows too many fancy words to be a brother.”
“First of all, no one asked you,” Grud said. “But just for your general knowledge, not all of us are raised the same. Do you think Navuh’s sons are getting the same schooling as the rest of us?”
“Dur isn’t Navuh’s son. They are all dark-haired, and he is a redhead.” Mordan jumped up, grabbing one of the horizontal bars, and started to do chin-ups.
Grud pried out a decent-sized chunk of cement block and threw it inside Shaveh’s cage. “Crumble it as much as you can and then dump it down the grate.”
Grud kept scraping as he talked. “Our exalted leader, Lord Navuh, could have fucked a blond or a red-haired Dormant and gotten himself a son that looked like Dur. Not that I’m saying he did. Just that he could.”
For several minutes, the other two kept quiet, letting him work in peace. Then Mordan jumped down and leaned against the bars. “How are you planning on getting us out?”
“I told you, easy. I get out through the hole and go around. She never locks the door to this room.”
“I meant the cages. How are you going to get us out of the cages?”
Coming back for them hadn’t been part of Grud’s plan, but if he didn’t offer them a viable solution, they were going to tell on him. There was no way they would let him go and leave them behind.
“Unlike you morons, I observe the woman’s every move when she is here. She keeps the key under the stack of papers over there.” He pointed. “I saw her reach under it before she let Dur out.”
The guy would never make it as a spy, that was for sure. “No, you didn’t. What you saw Wonder put in her pocket were the keys to the handcuffs. She put the cage key back under the stack of papers. Wonder likes order, if you didn’t notice. She always does things in the same way.”
Mordan snorted. “Stupid woman. Even with his hands behind his back, he can knock her out and take the keys. That is what I would’ve done.” He snorted again. “And then I would have had me some fun.”
“Who knows? Maybe that’s what he is doing now?” Shaveh asked.
“If he does, I hope he comes back and gets us out after he’s done with her.” Mordan dropped down to the cement floor and started doing push-ups. “I’m sick of humping the floor.”
35
Wonder
So far so good.
Dur was behaving perfectly, but Wonder wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t try something later. She was well prepared, or as well as she could be under the circumstances. She had him all tied up, kept her distance, and her right hand hovered over the holster of her Taser gun. One wrong move and she would fry his ass.
Yeah, she was fooling herself with all that tough talk, not to overcome nerves or fear, but the feelings of guilt that had assailed her as soon as Dur had left his cage. She hated to see him like that, barefoot because she hadn’t given him shoes, and shuffling those bare feet because the chain was too short for a man his size.
He had very nice feet, though, and it was almost a shame to cover them with shoes.
The secondhand T-shirt she’d given him was stretched to the max over his broad chest, emphasizing every muscle, and it was also too short, riding up and exposing his midriff.
He had a very nice midriff too.
And yet, she liked the memory of him free and wearing clothes that fit him. It had been nothing fancy, just simple Levis and a plain T-shirt, but the clothes had been new and clean and the right size.
