Page 40 of Bones
In the silence that followed, I mulled over what Trey had said to Lem, my temper growing the more I thought about it. I didn’tbelongto Mac. I remembered Sam saying Madame let the crew leaders govern their own people. Maybe that’s what Sam meant when he said I was in Mac’s safe place. Well fuck that. I wasn’t a nice shiny trophy for them to display. I’d been that before, and I wasn’t doing it again.
“We take care of our own.”
“You’re in the crew now, so if anybody messes with you, they’ll deal with us.
I hated that tiny part of me that thought maybe they said that shit because they actually saw me as a person.
Don’t trust ’em,Wolf snarled.
“This is—” Trey started, gesturing at a large building, but I couldn’t keep my damn mouth shut.
“Mac doesn’townme,” I snarled in a pretty good impression of Wolf.
Trey halted Marigold and looked at me with eyebrows raised. “What?”
“I’m not a fuckingpossession.”
“I know?” Trey’s brow furrowed. “Why?—”
“What you said to that man,” I snapped, hating that my voice wobbled. “I don’t give a fuck what Mac thinks, but I don’t?—”
“Bones,” Trey interrupted, looking exasperated, “that’s not what I meant.”
I pressed my lips together, glaring at him. He sighed and glanced around us as he shifted Marigold even closer to Violet so he could lower his voice.
“Look, the way things work here is…not ideal,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine, “but Mac doesn’t think you’re a possession. You’re a member of his crew, ofmycrew. An' we want people to know that ’cause it'll keep assholes like Lem from harassin' you."
I believed that’s whatTreybelieved. I wasn’t so sure about anyone else.
“We don’t want our precious treasure to get lost.”Madame’s cruel voice ran through my head.
Gods, I was so fucking tired of being athing.
“Bones.”
I glanced up at Trey, trying to stuff down all the emotions clogging my throat. His eyes were serious, but he gave me a small crooked smile.
“I heard you tell Lem no. If somebody won’t take no for an answer, you got me as backup, alright?”
That made my eyes burn with a confusing swell of emotions, and I had to duck my head, letting my hair fall forward and shield my face. Trey cleared his throat before continuing.
“As I was sayin’, this is the garage where we keep the rovers and some other vehicles. We don’t use ’em around the hold. They’re still running on gasoline, so we gotta conserve it,” Trey explained. “We use horsepower inside the walls.”
Once I got myself under control I peered up at the big wooden building. Half of it seemed to be well-maintained and the other half falling apart. In one corner an entire fucking tree poked through the roof. It surprised me to hear they still used gasoline. Finding vehicles that ran on gas and still worked was rare. In the desert, everyone used solar power to avoid paying the outrageous cost of gasoline. The Reapers loved to raid for gasoline because the payout was huge.
Trey turned to go alongside the garage on a smaller dirt road. The horses' hooves kicked up a cloud of dust that coated the nearby evergreen trees and made my mouth taste like mud. As we went around the garage, another large building came into view. This one looked newer with walls of corrugated metal and a tin roof.
“That’s the barracks.” Trey gestured to several training fields where a group of people jogged. “This is where the guards train. The lower level guards sleep in the barracks, but the crews get their own smaller bunkhouse.” He motioned toward the cluster of smaller buildings between the barracks and the garage. These were small old wooden cabins. A couple had boarded up windows, but Trey stopped in front of number four which looked neatly maintained with old glass windows still intact. “This one’s ours. So if you ever need to find us, there’s usually at least one of our crew in there.”
As I glanced up at the cabin, Lana’s face flashed in the window before she dropped the curtain back down. I looked away, my heart pounding.
Trey turned Marigold around and pointed at a cluster of trees in the distance. “The clinic is just behind those trees, so we’re actually pretty close.”
I realized I could see the corner of the clinic roof between the trees. My closeness to their bunkhouse brought me a tiny bit of comfort, which immediately made me irritated at myself.
Don’t let your guard down,Wolf growled.
A handful of larger, nicer homes surrounded the watchtower. I assumed Madame lived in one of them, but I wondered who had the rest. Maybe the council members I’d been introduced to, Nemo and Zana? Madame’s sneer floated through my mind.
