by Bec McMaster
"I'll protect you," McClain said, earnest and raw, as if he sensed how much it scared her. "You're my woman. That's the cover story. And I protect what's mine."
"Why not mine?" Jake interrupted.
He and McClain stared at each other for a long moment.
"Because you and I get along like two cats in a burlap bag," Mia pointed out. "Plus you're in the market for a new slave. Preferably Sage."
"And you're the lucky owner of this one," Ellie said, buckling the collar around her throat. Despite her unwavering voice, her hands shook. "No offence, McClain, but you're a bit too old for me."
The look on his face was priceless. "I'm thirty-four."
"And I'm married," Jake squeaked, as if Ellie had just propositioned him.
"And I'm gay." Ellie rolled her eyes. "Relax, guys. We're playing pretend, remember?"
Jake's eyes near bugged out of his face. Mia couldn't resist a smile.
"How are you going to cope down there?" McClain asked Ellie seriously. "We're going to stop most of the touchy-feely, but we can't play too nice."
"I can bear being touched, McClain." Ellie replied. "To a point. They'll want to see the merchandise too, I expect." Her jaw tightened as she glanced at the three of them. "And I know you won't let it go too far, but you guys need to promise me that you won't break our cover. If you're a slaver trying to sell me in Rust City, then you can't be too protective. There's a lot I can handle. You need to promise that you can keep your mouths shut and let some of it happen. Just enough to get us in."
"It's not going to come to that," Jake growled. "I’ll think of something. But if you think I can just stand there whilst someone feels you up... Christ, you're like my kid sister."
"We might not have a choice."
"Like hell. There are always choices. Apparently you're my slave, and I don't like sharing either. If someone puts their hands on you, then I can rip their heads off without retaliation."
Ellie let out the breath she'd been holding. "Thank you."
"Just one problem," Mia said, realizing something they'd all overlooked. "If this Rykker and his reivers see Ellie, they might recognize her."
That slammed their plans to a halt.
"Shit," Jake said.
"Maybe," Ellie said, with a frown. "They kept me in the trunk of a jeep while we were travelling and it wasn't always good light."
"That blonde hair's kind of distinctive," Mia pointed out.
Ellie ran a hand through her curls, then her expression firmed. "Anyone got a knife?"
"What?" Jake blurted.
"I'll shave it," Ellie said, with pure determination. "We can work some charcoal into my brows and my across my face to make me look dirtier. And I'll keep my head down if I see one of the reivers that hit the ranch."
"Might work," McClain muttered.
"We don't have much of a choice at this point," Mia murmured. They couldn't just leave Ellie here.
McClain drew his knife. "I'll do it. You're not used to shaving with a knife. Better leave you with both ears."
Ellie flashed him a grim smile. "Preferably."
"What about us?" Jake asked, his boots crunching on dry gravel as he turned on McClain.
"You and I are cousins," McClain said, peering toward Rust City. "We're both bounty hunters—it's easier to keep it simple, then we don't have to worry too much about slipping up. Except the pair of us realized there could be some of the finer things to be had in life. We want gold." He curled his lip. "Mia, you're not really a fighter, but you're training to ride along at my side. Sorry to be old-fashioned, but you're basically my woman."
"Do you want me to flutter my eyelashes at you a few times?" she drawled.
"No, but if I slap you on the ass once or twice, try not to jump out of your skin."
"You slap me on the ass, and I will personally grab a handful of your balls."
McClain smiled. "That's the reiver spirit."
"Are we buying or selling?" Jake asked. “Because I don’t think we should bluff when it comes to Ellie.”
"Buying," McClain said firmly. "Ellie doesn't leave our sight. We work in pairs at all times, and don't go anywhere by ourselves. Ellie's a girl who did you wrong, so you took your revenge on her. But we also heard that we can fetch good coin buying up here, and selling to the south. So we're looking for slaves, preferably women. Maybe a boy or two. If need be, then we buy your wife back."
"And the other girls," Mia hastened to point out. "Sara, Sonya, Bethany, and Thea. Plus the Hannaway kid. He's about fourteen."
"Do we have enough coin?" Jake asked bluntly.
There was a lump in her throat the size of the Wastelands. What would she do if the choice came down to Sage and Thea, or the others? "I don't care if we have enough," she told him firmly. "We're not leaving any of our people there."
A jingle sounded as McClain dumped a small pouch of coin on the rock in front of her. He opened it up, coins dripping through his fingers. "I've been hunting an old friend of mine, but along the way I took the time to do a few jobs. One of them paid big."
Jake tossed another leather purse next to it. "Twenty gold. It's all I've got on me. Thwaites gave it to me when we were saying good-bye."
"And I've got this," Ellie said, untying the gold locket around her neck. "It was my mother's."
Mia hadn't even thought about bringing extra money. All she'd grabbed was her duffle, a few spare clothes, her medical kit, and her gun.
"What happens if they don't want to sell?" Mia asked, staring at the haze in the desert and the glittering scrap city in the distance.
"Plan B," McClain said, pocketing the money. "Shoot everyone, burn the joint, and get the hell out of there with our friends."
Mia couldn't stop a faint smile from forming. “I like that idea.” Slavers needed to know that their kind couldn’t be tolerated.
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Jake added grimly, dropping the cigarette he'd been smoking, and grinding it under his heel. "I don't think I've got enough ammo."
"And I'm a terrible shot," Ellie added. "We'll deal with that when we get there and sound the place out," McClain replied. "Let's go shave that head, then roll. The sun's starting to set. I'd like to be in there before the gates close for the night."
"To keep the wargs out," Jake said, and the two men looked at each other for a humorless moment.
"To keep the wargs out," McClain gently echoed, then hauled his ammo belt over his shoulder and headed for his motorbike to fetch his shaving kit.
"Yeah," Jake muttered, rising and dusting off his jeans.
"Anything you want to tell me?" she asked, regarding the sudden hostility between the two men.
He hesitated, glancing behind him at Ellie and McClain, as they started for the river. "Just be careful. I've got your back."
Their rescue party had dwindled down to four, and she had to hope that was enough.
Especially when two of them were barely speaking to each other.
Adam's first glimpse of Rust City soured his stomach.
Riding directly for the gates in the barbed wire fencing, he examined the place. There were gun turrets on top of the towers on either side of the main gates, with several guns mounted at odd spots along the walls. The walls looked like they were hewn out of solid rock and the city nestled in a small canyon, with sheer cliff faces rising above it.
This wasn't just some reiver town, cobbled together out of scrap.
"You okay?" Mia called in his ear, giving his waist a squeeze.
He tried to ignore the way her thighs straddled his own, her breasts pressing into his shirt. "I don't like the look of this place," he called back. "It looks more organized than I'd have expected, and they have some serious hardware mounted on those walls."
He should know. It was similar to the setup at Absolution when he'd been running the town. Enormous chain-wire gates loomed ahead of them. Rolls of barbed wire crowned the perimeter fences. Anything clearing that fence would then have to contend wit
h the stark walls beyond it—where they'd be sitting ducks for the turret guns.
"One way in," Mia noted.
"There's always a back door," he said. "We just need to find it. You ready?"
Men stared at them, dressed in reiver brown with padded vests over their chests and rifles in their hands. One wore a leather face mask. Adam eased off the throttle, dust spewing out from beneath the bike as he began to slow. Six guards. Two more in the gatehouse by the look of it.
Whoever was running this place, they had military experience, he'd bet on it. Which suggested someone from the Eastern Confederacy who'd escaped the heavy-surveillance state, or maybe one of the road warriors from the Nomad bands who drove up and down the coast, hiring out as small mercenary armies.
Adam pulled in as a guard stepped forward, his hand on his shotgun. There were nails sticking out of the reiver’s helmet, and he had an old gas mask hanging around his throat. Typical reiver, in a faded pair of much-patched pants, a vest, and a grotty shirt underneath that might have been white once upon a time. A bandolier slung across his broad chest, with little shiny caps on the ends of each shell. Freshly made by the look of them.
That was interesting. A lot of people knew how to make ammo, but getting your hands on critical components like gunpowder wasn’t so easy.
"New to Rust City?" the reiver demanded, spitting on the ground beside Adam's boot.
Adam glanced around. The other guards looked curious, but not suspicious. "Heard you could get a good time here. Thought we'd check it out." He let a slow smile bloom. "Just finished a job and I've got coin to spend." He jerked his head behind him as Jake pulled up beside him in the jeep. "So does he."
"Bill of sale?" the reiver asked, strolling in a slow circle around the jeep and eyeing Ellie.
"Who said I bought her?" Jake replied, meeting the reiver's eyes.
A nod. The reiver stepped closer to Mia, whose hands trembled faintly on Adam's waist. He reached out but Adam caught his wrist, and not gently.
"Don't touch the merchandise?" the reiver asked.
The click of the safety on a pistol being removed echoed in Adam's ear. Mia pointed the barrel directly in the reiver’s face. "I'm not merchandise, you piece of shit."
"She's with me," Adam drawled, sweat licking his spine. "And I wouldn't piss her off if I were you. She bites."
"I only bite you," Mia pointed out. "Everybody else gets a bullet. I don't know where they've been."
"Aren't I special?" He clapped a hand on her thigh, and Mia laughed.
The reiver stepped back, hands in the air. "You should play nicer."
"You should wash, and I might consider it."
"Oh, Cypher's going to like you." The reiver’s sly leer at Mia made Adam's hand itch.
He wanted to punch those dirty teeth out and see if the bastard would pick them up. "Like I said, she's with me," Adam reminded him.
"We'll see." The reiver shrugged.
Adam couldn't quite tell what the reiver meant by that—had he just brought Mia within the realm of a man who took all that he claimed? But at least the reiver nodded and waved at the guards to open the gates.
"First rule of Rust City: everything here belongs to Cypher," the reiver said, patting the hood of the jeep. "So you three need to pay your respects first. We don't take too kindly to strangers here. But if Cypher says you can stay, then you can stay." The reiver grinned. "But if Cypher says that the girl ain't yours, then that's the way it falls. As for your slave... well... Cypher insists on taking a cut of all profits."
"We're not interested in selling," Jake cut in. "Heard you could buy good product here. My man—and the lovely lady at his side—are looking for something similar to share."
The gates began to slide open with a grinding noise. The reiver walked backward through them, gesturing them in. “Market's open in the morning," he called. "You can look then. Tonight's the start of the War Games. Three nights of action. We’ve got reiver packs coming from everywhere to spend their coin. You don't want to miss it."
"War Games?" Mia whispered.
Adam gunned the bike and zipped through, a squirt of red dirt pinwheeling through the air behind him. Shit. Just what they needed. More reivers to contend with.
"Moko!" the reiver bellowed, gesturing to a one-armed man with scars slashed up his cheeks as if by a razor. "Come and show our guests where to park, then take them to Cypher."
Moko ambled over, moving oddly, as if his foot had been smashed at one point. His head gleamed bald, and his gaze kept lifting to Adam's then shying away, somewhat like a kicked dog. "Yessir. This way! This way! Hurry."
The electric gate kicked into gear behind them, and all the hairs on the back of Adam's neck rose, but he rolled the bike after Moko. They passed between the two gun turret towers and under a makeshift arch decorated with an old cow's skull and a pair of rusted wheels.
"That was easy," Jake breathed.
Adam couldn't stop himself from checking everything out. Ten, twelve reivers in the marshaling yard behind the gate towers... more strolling through the dusty streets beyond. Looked like a market back there, scraps of faded tents strung here and there, with street kids holding trays of food running through the crowd, trying to hawk their wares. Could be a couple of hundred reivers in the shanty city. Jesus.
"Getting in's the easy part," he muttered, idling the engine as he pulled up where the reiver gestured. A dozen bikes of various conditions waited there. "Getting out...."
"We'll deal with that when we get there," Mia whispered. "We're in. That's the first step."
"Hey you! Moko!" Jake called, resting his arm on the edge of the jeep's shattered window and peering directly at the bald man. "Will these be safe here?"
"Nobody will touch 'em," Moko replied.
"Yeah, well, I'm holding you personally responsible if my jeep goes missing. You understand?" Jake slammed his door shut, dragged his duffel and rolled sleeping kit out of the back of the jeep, and slung it over his shoulder. He jerked Ellie's hand, and she slid passively across the seat, slipping out of the car.
The scent of nervousness and determination rolled off her, but she kept her eyes lowered. Talk was cheap. Now she stood here in the heart of the reivers’ shantytown, Adam hoped her nerve held.
"Nobody steals in Rust City," Moko replied. "If they do, Cypher feeds them to the arena."
What the hell was the arena? Mia slid off the bike behind him, and Adam eased the engine off. The bike sighed into silence as he rested it on its kickstand.
"Got to hurry," Moko called, limping toward a small arch that led into a wire fence tunnel. "Cypher's got to start the War Games, so we don't have long. Doesn't like to be late."
Adam exchanged a long look with Jake.
"Nothing for it, I guess," Jake replied, eyeing the mesh tunnel with distaste too. Once inside they'd be sitting ducks.
Jake took the leash from his pocket and hesitated before he clipped it to the collar around Ellie's throat. "Sorry."
"Just do it," Ellie muttered. "The sooner we pay our respects, the sooner we can start looking for Thea and the others. I can be practical."
Mia's hand stroked the small of Adam's back. "Stop looking like you want to kill everyone here. We've got this. But if you greet Cypher with that look on your face, I'd expect fireworks. To rule this place he's got to think he's got the biggest dick around. You need to prepare to back down a little."
Adam let out a slow sigh. It was good advice. "Sorry. Just on edge."
"We all are," Mia murmured, and again she caressed his hip. "Think about how good it's going to be to set this place on fire."
Adam smiled. Yeah. That would be nice.
Mia slapped his ass, then shot him a wink. "That's better," she said loudly, in her reiver voice. "You look prettier when you smile, McClain. Maybe if you're nice I'll give you a rubdown later?"
Hell, if she wasn't the one thing that could make this ordeal better.
She'd intrigued him from the start with
her no-nonsense attitude and stubbornness, but there was a gentler side to her too, a nurturing side that he hadn't expected. As if she were just as concerned with his feelings about this whole situation as her own.
And he had little defense against that.
He wanted to kiss her right now, to tell her with his mouth just how much she amazed him. To silently vow that he would get her out of this safely—no matter what he had to do—but there was no time. And he couldn't get her hopes up. Nothing could happen between them. Jake's discovery of his secret yesterday only reminded him of that.
It wasn't fair to her to start something he had no intention of finishing.
"Let's do this then," he murmured.
He didn't like it—hated it in fact—but he followed Mia into the tunnel, focusing on her ass. She'd put a strut into her stride that drew all eyes, and he figured it was safer to think of how much he wanted her, rather than give rise to the feral feelings inside him. Adam rubbed his chest, the cool pewter of the amulet beneath his shirt. Every day felt like the warg grew a little bigger inside his skin.
The tunnel led to a huge adobe building with steel doors. Moko waited for them nervously. Inside the doors, the building opened into a huge courtyard with dirty walls, yet there were lush plants everywhere and water trickled from somewhere. On a balcony overlooking the courtyard stood a man in flowing white robes, a neatly trimmed beard, and a pair of loose pants around his waist. His bare chest was oiled, and his blond hair was pale.
Cypher?
The man didn't look dangerous. Adam watched him as they strode up the stairs, but... he wasn't getting the right vibe.
"Newcomers," Moko said, pausing at the top of the steps and not daring to venture any further. He reeked of nervousness all of a sudden. "Here to pay their respects to Cypher."
The man's blue eyes looked glassily uncurious. "I'll take them."
He gestured the four of them toward the canvas curtains blowing in the arch. Behind them, Adam could smell faint traces of motor oil, gunpowder, and blood.
