Page 13 of Chaos

I’d do almost anything to get out of here. I dislike Renata intensely since she promised Ben would be a sitting duck at the gym, but instead it was an ambush. But I’m not so far gone to hurt a child. I do however, skirt closer to the stairs and take a peek up at the top to see who’s up there.

Sebi’s there with a gun, glaring down at me, camo hat and scowl in place.

I turn back to Charlotte Rose. Her dandelion-fluff hair is pulled into a pair of pigtails, her baby-fat cheeks pink. She’s clutching a graying blanket covered in pink roses.

She gazes at me with her big, trusting baby eyes. “Smelly.”

My cheeks flame.

“Dirty,” she adds, and not in a judgmental way, just an evaluation, the stating of a fact.

“Yeah.” I cross my arms, backing away and hiding my hands since my fingers are particularly revolting, covered in scabs and blisters and broken nails. “There’s only enough water to drink. I …”

… am explaining myself to a baby.

Renata returns with fresh buckets, the door closing sharply and firmly behind her, locking us back inside this hellhole. “Ben’s away for a meeting. The others are sitting outside. We need to talk.”

I leave the wall. “I don’t want to talk. Let me go. I’ll sneak out the back.”

“Too risky. I have a plan.”

“I don’t want your plan. That asshole with the beard is …” I send Charlotte Rose a long look. “Criminally escalating. He …”

My brain won’t touch up against it.

Renata’s lips twist disdainfully. “Ben won’t allow that … yet.”

Yet.

I eye the gun on her hip. Could I take it before she called out? Get a shot off at Sebi up the stairs before he realized I’d taken it? Would the others outside hear it go off?

No.

Even if I push for the most optimistic variation of that outcome, it’s doubtful.

I’m better off trying to get information out of her until she gets around to telling me why she’s here.

“What does that mean he won’t allow it? Why not?”

“It doesn’t matter. Ben’s plans are pointless. They won’t come to fruition.”

“Why? Is it my necklace? Did you get it to Yorke?” The thought of him knowing where I am has my chest tightening up like someone just sat on me. He must be so worried. I push past it and scoot a little closer to Renata. “Are you working with someone inside Thornewood?”

“No, Frankie.” She folds her arms. “Who would I be working with inside Thornewood?”

“I don’t know.” I think of the worst people there. “Duane? Mitsy?”

She shifts the blanket in Charlotte Rose’s arms so the ends don’t trail on the floor of my cell. “A therapist would clock Duane firmly on the spectrum’s ass for antisocial personality disorder, and Mitsy is a mercurial whore for power who believes her only value lies between her legs.”

Unkind, but astute. Mitsy’s probably cornering Yorke every chance she gets with her stupid eyelashes.

“And what are you?” I ask.

She ticks her tongue off the top of her mouth like I just touched a nerve. “Neither of those things.” She smiles tightly. “You should know I was operating in good faith with our deal before that day at the gym. But the Raiders reported in on your army moving into position. What was I supposed to do? I could hardly tell Ben the truth. He’d have K-I-L-L-E-D me. It was too late to warn you by then.”

“Whatever the f—flark—lets you sleep at night.”

Charlotte Rose’s pudgy hand pats the rough brick walls. “Flark?”

---