Page 50 of Sloth
“I can take care of the guards.” She shifted from foot to foot, antsy. “I can get to Barry.”
“Finish here.”
She dipped her head and unplugged her device from the main computer before turning it off and jogged up to him. “Done.”
“Alright.” He gave a furtive look outside. “All clear. Let’s get back to the rendezvous.”
Opening the door, he stepped out cautiously. Before he could stop her, Sloan was gone, rushing quietly down the dirt path toward the warehouse. He froze, watching the distance grow between them. Alarm pricked his senses. Chase her. Stay? His finger hovered over the microphone, ready to alert Parker, but he eased off at the last minute.Trust her.
The closer Sloan got to the guards, the more their heads drooped until both slumped to the ground.
His heart leaped into his throat. She did it. Whateveritwas.
Max trotted over, gun still held at the ready, checking his six. “What did you do?”
She turned toward him with humor in her eyes. “If there’s one feeling I know well, it’s sleep.”
“What now?”
“Now we find Barry and the reason his sloth is off the charts.”
Thirteen
Rubbingthe sleep from his eyes, Barry Pinkerton continued down the elevator in the underground. In his opinion, it was unconscionable to get up so early in the morning, but when the lady of the house called, he answered. He had to. It wasn’t only his life on the line if he failed to respond.
The terrible clunking metal grate elevator zoomed down levels, giving him a brief glance at each floor. So brief, that if he blinked, he’d have missed it. Weapons, biological experiments, soldiers, tanks. The lower he went, the louder the sound of feral animals. Growls, snarls, barks. It all grew to cacophony proportions until the elevator jerked to a halt. Usually this was the point he put earplugs in, but this time he couldn’t. She waited for him. He yanked the grate door open and stepped out into the cold concrete hallway with nothing but flickering lights as his companions until he reached the lab shared with a botany geneticist.
When he entered, he found Despair staring at a wall of cages. Not the wall he expected. On one side of his overflowing lab, warped animals ran circles, chasing their tales in their small homes. On the other side, the cages held a range of flora. Relentless tendrils and leaves of all shapes and sizes spilled from any gap they could find, trying in vain to reach the heat of the hydroponic lights outside. If he didn’t know any better, he’d feel calmed by the green beauty.
Dressed in a simple white tailored suit, Despair had her hands behind her back as she watched the plants with an impassive expression.
What’s going on in her mind?
To find an answer, he studied her as she studied the plants. He couldn’t see her face, but from the drop of her shoulders, and the tilt of her head, he believed she was intrigued with the plants. She almost appeared relaxed. Calm. Even happy.
But what did he know? The woman confounded him. And after he’d met her sister, who in all efforts appeared to be not only managing her sin, but thriving, he was even more confused. Maybe, deep down inside, she was redeemable. Maybe she could help him stop all this nonsense.
Movement near the plants snapped his attention there. A tendril unfurled its vine, coming for her. She reached out to meet it, finger to tendril. Horror formed in his mind as he watched the event unfold. She should know better.
Heart leaping into his throat, he searched for a weapon. Anything. On the lab table that separated the two sides, instruments, tools and equipment were scattered everywhere. Scalpel? Knife? Hammer?
He darted across the room, collecting a blowtorch as he ran. He aimed it at the plant, ready to release the fire, but as he approached, as the vine wrapped its deadly arm around her finger, Despair was on him in an instant. Her free hand snapped around his wrist, angling until he cried out and dropped the blowtorch.
“It’s poisoned!” he shouted. “It will kill you.”
Despair’s violet eyes flicked down to her wrapped finger. “No, Mr. Pinkerton. It won’t kill me, but you would have killed it, an innocent creature that had no say in its creation.”
When she unwrapped the green length from her finger, a red puckered shadow remained. Sickness churned in Barry’s gut. If she fell ill…
“You’ll get sick,” he said. “Is that what you want?”
“I want for nothing.”
“I don’t believe it. You shouldn’t be without hope. Without—” he bit his words off before he betrayed his true desires.
Staring vacantly at the plant, now easing its vine back into the safety of the cage, Despair murmured: “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”
He gulped. Did she want to die? Did she feel anything at all? But then something about her unsettling words plucked at his memory. He’d heard them before. In a movie, a book… then it hit him.Anne of Green Gables. His daughter had an obsession with the red headed heroine, and she had forced him to watch and read the series many times over. If Despair knew that line, then she too had read the books. Perhaps hope wasn’t lost on her. He opened his mouth to plead, but she turned to him, hardness once again in her eyes.
