Page 81 of Senseless
“Oh, I don’t know.” Mari frowned. “I’ve never tried to see through him. He just kind of pulls me in.”
“Can you try?” I gave a light squeeze to her knee. “We’ll be going in blind otherwise.”
“I don’t know how, Shadow.”
“Try what Doc did with me,” I suggested. “Close off your senses and take some deep breaths. Let your consciousness take a backseat and remember what it felt like to be a bird.”
She didn’t seem convinced, but gave me a tight nod. “Count me down?”
“Sure.” I waited until Mari’s eyes closed and she grew eerily still, only her chest moving with steady breaths. “Instead of descending into yourself, you’re going to float. Lifting up from your body, higher and higher until you’re flying. Ten…nine…eight…”
I counted all the way down to zero and didn’t even blink as I watched her. Gunner lost control of his body, twitching and going limp when he went into Horus. Mari’s eyeballs moved under closed lids as though she were dreaming, but she held herself upright in the seat, calm and still.
She stayed like that for several minutes and I had no idea if it worked, or if she had just been put in a hypnotic state. How long should I wait until trying to bring her back?
More minutes ticked by and I started growing anxious. I knew Doc’s sessions with me lasted roughly a half-hour, but he knew what he was doing. What if this was harmful to Mari’s brain?
Just as I was about to touch her, start talking to give her external stimuli to bring her back, her eyes flew open and she drew in a big gasp of air.
“Mari!” My hands shot out to grab her arms and keep her from falling. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” She brought a hand to her chest, panting like she was out of breath. “I saw, and border security is tight. Their army is well-stocked, just like the one I saw last night.”
My chest deflated at that. “So we’re dealing with the same thing up here?”
Mari shook her head. “No, not exactly. They’re not in a long line.” Her breaths slowing, she focused her gaze on me. “I think…I know how we can get in. There’s a…can I get something to draw with?”
“Yeah, left saddle bag.” I watched her dig to the bottom where my sketchbook was stashed, a strange kind of excitement building in my chest as she flipped to a blank page and started sketching out long lines. “Got a plan in mind?”
“I do, just give me a second.” She paused in her diagram, looking up at me with a smile that was both coy and endearing. “Would you be upset if I said it involved helping people?”
“Not at all.” I leaned in and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Are we going to need a lot of guns?”
Mari’s grin grew wider. “We probably will.”
“Even better.”
I hopped out of my seat and went to load my weapons while waiting to hear her plan.
Twenty-Five
MARIPOSA
“They have these six towers here, and fenced-off, open areas in between.” I pointed them out to Shadow using a pencil on my crude drawing. “The fences converge up here, to these buildings.”
“Those are prison yards,” Shadow mused, his mismatched eyes carefully inspecting my diagram. “So they have a prison complex right at the border.”
“That’s what I thought it was,” I said. “And what are the chances you think the people in those yards are actually criminals?”
“None. Last time we were here, providing protection to Gunner’s uncle, we found out that he kept a lot of his citizens in prison. Women, mostly.”
Shadow checked the magazine of yet another gun and inserted the weapon into his holster. He may not have had a Steel Demons cut, but was just as intimidating with a tactical vest loaded with weapons and ammo.
And just as hot.
“So you’re planning on a prison break?” Shadow asked as he slapped a reloaded magazine into my little .40 caliber pistol and handed it to me.
“Uh, yeah.” He must have caught me staring, and grinned while I blushed. “At the very least, we can create a diversion to move through the territory undetected. And then free some people as a bonus.”
