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She leaned on the word “he,” and everyone heard it. Collins watched their faces and nodded. Her expression was like that of an alligator. Cold, smiling, heartless, and confident. “He knows enough to confuse you all ten times as much. But, believe me or not, Max doesn’t have a real clue. No one else in the lab or the base had the full picture.”
“Just you??
? asked Gutsy.
“Just me.”
“What’s your price?” asked Sam.
Collins gave another shrug. “I walk.”
“You,” said Ford, “are completely out of your mind.”
“Why on earth would we even consider that?” asked Gutsy, truly perplexed.
“Because I know what you need to know.” Again the emphasis.
“And what is that?” asked Urrea.
“I know who the Raggedy Man is,” said the captain. “I know you haven’t killed him. I know what he can do. And I know what’s coming.”
“Why are we even listening to her?” demanded Alethea.
“Shut up, fat girl,” sneered Collins. “No one cares what you have to say.”
“Hey!” growled Spider, taking a threatening step forward, but Alethea stopped him.
“She’s just trying to be mean,” she said. “I’ve been dealing with mean girls all my life. She’s nothing.”
“Keep saying that,” said Collins. “You might even believe it after a while.”
“Okay, enough,” growled Gutsy. “What are you trying to say? What is it you think is so important that we’d ever consider letting you go?”
Collins smiled. “Do you idiots think that you actually won last night?”
“Um . . . yeah,” said Chong. “Lot of toasted zoms out there.”
“Then you’re as big an idiot as the people in this town,” said Collins. “That was the Raggedy Man testing you to see how tough you were.”
“If that’s true,” said Urrea, “then he knows we can beat him.”
“Oh, is that what he knows?”
Ledger walked over to her. “Listen, sister, let’s have a perspective check here, okay? You’re tied to a chair after getting your butt handed to you by a fifteen-year-old kid. So you talking smack doesn’t carry a lot of weight. That’s point one. Point two is that if you have information that we need to have, do you want to look me in the eye and tell me I can’t make you talk?”
“And who are you?” she said with contempt.
He smiled. “Ever heard of the Department of Military Sciences? Ever heard of Rogue Team International? Yeah, I can tell you have. You’re career military, so you definitely heard of both groups. Good. Then you’ve also probably heard of the guy who ran point for those teams. Psychotic kind of guy who looks a whole bunch like someone in this room.”
The sneer faltered. “Joe Ledger . . . ?”
“Joe Ledger. Nice to be recognized, Captain. Now think back on every story you ever heard about me. There were some real doozies floating around back in the day. Yeah, I can see you remember some of them. Good. Think about what you heard me do when I went up against the bad guys. Now . . . go another step down that road and think about what I would be willing to do to protect the people I care about. Go on, let your imagination run wild.”
Gutsy glanced at the four teen strangers. She could see from the looks in their eyes that they knew some—but probably nowhere near all—about what this man was saying. They knew enough that it turned their faces to stone. Sam Imura, the other soldier, met her eyes and gave her a single, small nod.
Captain Collins licked her lips. It was the first genuine sign of nervousness.
“I still want a deal,” she said quickly.
