Page 113 of Dark Surrender

“Here.”

He sighs in relief. “Thank fuck.”

“Update?” Sola asks her man.

“We’re all here.”

“And?”

“It’s not lookin’ good.”

Fuck.

The toilet flushes.

Plopping her butt on the tile, Kali’s head hangs as she wipes her mouth with a damp rag Sola must have given her. “What’s that even mean?” she rasps, skin sickly pale, hands shaky.

Sola slides to the floor, and all of us end up there together, in a small kumbaya circle with our breasts out, in the middle of a nowhere resort, with what sounds like no plan.

Rot rattles off a whole lot of nothing that does us no good. So, they have no real plan. Not enough backup or firepower. Gotcha. Message received. We’re on our own.

Frowning at the little device, Sola shakes her head, curses, then shuts it off. “They’re useless. It’s time for Plan B.”

Crossing my arms, I nod.

Sure, we set this up just in case. It’s not what we wanted to do, and it could backfire, but you can’t face the unknown hoping someone will save you. You need a way to save yourself.

Getting onto her knees, Kali pulls something out from under her skirt. It’s a baggy similar to Sola’s.

“Did you both shove stuff up your vagina?” I ask in horror.

“Yes. Didn’t you?”

Shaking my head at their crazy girl-pocket ingenuity, I tug off my white tennis shoes, remove the false toes, and pull out what I was responsible for bringing.

They exchange a look of surprise.

We set everything in the middle of the tiled floor.

Poison. Lots of poison. All of it laced with a little extra somethin’ somethin’. Small, easy-to-use vials.

“We’re drug mules,” I joke.

Kali cracks a tired smile, and Sola joins in. Then it’s the three of us quietly cracking up on the bathroom floor, which is so much better than having a meltdown, or worse, dying because we didn’t have the foresight to plan ahead.

“We’re fucked.” Sola cackles.

“The most fucked,” I agree, trying to keep my voice down.

“We need to castrate our men after this.”

“I love that idea.” I snort, smiling so hard my face hurts. “What next?”

“How many men did you count?” Kali asks us.

“Thirty-two, including the guards inside. I don’t know how many are outside,” I answer, recounting the different faces I tracked.

“Damn. I only had twenty-nine,” Sola adds.