Page 39 of Dangerous Silence
She shook her head, forcing a smile. “You said it yourself,” she said. “I’m not much of a captive if I don’t try to escape.”
“You know I’d kill you.”
“But would you?” She tilted her head. “I guess that’s the question. You promised my dad you would keep me alive. Killing me would break that, nulling that promise.” She gave a small smile, then shook it away.
She stared at me then, her hands holding that book tight. The pages were already worn, as if she had held them so tight her sweat had damaged it.
“What happened?” she asked again, her voice soft. “Who hurt you?”
For once, I thought she deserved to know the truth.
“We tried to take down Muro’s army,” I said. “Someone told them that we were coming.”
She sighed to herself. “Those mother fuckers.”
I laughed, and she startled, looking up at me, her eyes wide. My laugh wasn’t anything that sounded natural; I didn’t have much use for it. But it was amusing to hear her be upset at someone she had absolutely no control over. To hear her pretend to be on my side.
Or maybe she was.
“You’re defending a criminal,” I pointed out to her.
She put up a hand. “Okay, good or bad, evil, all of that aside, someone hurt you. That’s what I know. You didn’t do that yourself.” She glared at my ear. “And someone hurting you isn’t right.”
“What if that person was trying to defend themselves?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe you’re defending something too.”
There wasn’t much in my life that I did to protect others. I worked for my family, bled for my family, but did I feel anything for them? Loyalty. Trust. Would I do anything for them? Yes. But was that love?
Perhaps it was a certain type of love.
Demi’s gray eyes stared into mine, and I swear she was searching for something, but I didn’t know what. I told myself that whatever I was feeling, was because of that promise to Shep. I kneeled down, brushing my fingers along the open spaces of the cage. She put her hand against mine. Her skin was colder than the metal bars.
“What are you defending?” she asked.
Family was the easy answer, the answer that I knew and held onto, but how did that explain my relationship with Demi? I wanted more of her, and at the same time, I wanted her away from me. If I feltanythingtoward her, that put me in a weaker position. Made it so that I was vulnerable. Demi could die too, at any moment, like I could.
But that didn’t mean I needed to accept that fate.
I leaned against the side of the cage, my back to her, looking at the door. She turned her back to mine too, leaning against me. Her book crinkled; she was back to reading it. Life was simple to her back in Pebble Garden. College gave her options. She had to go back.
But we had other problems to deal with first.
Once Muro was out of the picture, I could figure out what to do with Demi. Could focus on protecting her and finding an alternative situation in which she could live the normal life she dreamed of.
Which meant seeing if Zaid, from Veil Security Services, was still around. If he was willing to band together one last time. It meant a trip to Vegas.
I could leave Demi in the cage for the next couple of days. Or I could bring her with me.
One of those options seemed more entertaining than the other.
CHAPTER 12
Demi
As I gazed up at the giant resort, it was crazy to think that this morning, we had been in Sage City, and now, we were in Las Vegas. After waking up from another dream about my dad, Axe had told me we were going to Las Vegas. He had driven through the day and into the night, and because I had been having fitful sleep in the cage, I slept through most of it. But at ten o’clock at night, the Sin City was still bustling.
The sign for the Opulence Hotel and Casino was in gold cursive, glowing like a mirage. I couldn’t decide if the building looked futuristic or tropical—it was a three-sided structure that stretched into the sky, but the front looked as if it had been swallowed up by a tropical forest and regurgitated palm trees. The water from the massive fountain in the front sprinkled my skin with dew. A few people eyed me—was it the hair, or my baby face, advertising that I was only eighteen in a place for twenty-one-and-up-year-olds?
