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Each wrecker slowly lowered his weapon. She didn’t mistake the look in their eyes as they jumped the two-foot distance from the darkening grid to Duncan’s bedroom floor.
“What do you want?” she asked, a hand to her chest. It was the question all victims asked, as though it wasn’t obvious what the perpetrators were after. She trembled as much from the terrifying nature of facing warriors with guns in hand as from her fear they wouldn’t fall for her ruse.
In this case, the left wrecker smiled at the other. “This should be fun, but I’m going first.”
The other laughed. “Second works. She’ll fight harder.”
Sometimes, men were idiots.
Rachel wanted to distract the men a little more because she needed enough time to get the gun to her shoulder before they understood what she was doing. Without that extra second or two, they’d each have enough time to raise their weapons and return fire. “Do you like the lake?” she asked. She gestured toward the windows.
Both men fell for it and shifted slightly to look out at the dark body of water, lights glimmering from the homes on the opposite bank.
She lifted her gun at the same time and fired, taking the first wrecker down. The second man was raising his gun when she unloaded the second barrel. He flew backward several feet, but didn’t get his shot off.
Despite the huge spray of blood and flesh, she scrambled to find their weapons. Gathering them up, she laid hers and theirs on top of Duncan in a row, then slid into her dress. She could hear footsteps running along the grid. Maybe it would be the Third Earth clean-up crew, or more wreckers, but she wasn’t going to wait around to find out.
She stood next to Duncan and as before, she folded both of them back to the Apache Junction Two landing platforms.
~ ~ ~
Endelle stood in her private suite of rooms, off the main palace rotunda, and narrowed her eyes at Rachel. “I see you’re not completely useless. I’ll give you that.”
Rachel had taken out a couple of enemy wreckers and had brought back two new wrecking guns for Luken’s black-ops team.
Well, la-de-fucking-dah.
She had on the same pristine white gown she’d worn earlier, but she also had the look of a woman who’d recently gotten well-laid. With one leg crossed at the knee over the other, she sat in a chair at the foot of Endelle’s couch, sipping her coffee. And the whole time that she’d related her recent adventure, Endelle had wanted to bitch-slap the organic princess for still refusing to join Luken’s team.
Endelle decided that Rachel simply didn’t know who she really was despite her incessant pining for her garden and her simple carrot-growing life on Mortal Earth. Rachel had a steel rod in the middle of her personality, along with a helluva lot of quick thinking, a sure sign she was a warrior at heart.
She was a lot like her brother, Gideon, after all, even though she ran with clenched fists away from her obvious abilities.
Endelle shifted her attention to Duncan who was laid out on her couch, once more caught in Yolanthe’s snare and sunk in a trance. She’d had him brought back to her palace to keep an eye on the situation, insisting that Rachel come with him. Duncan had work to do on Third and somehow Rachel needed to realize she had to go with him.
His eyes were open, but from what he’d said at the villa, Yolanthe had him focused on her now through a Third Earth voyeur window. But it would be up to Duncan to once again break the bitch’s hold on him. In the meantime, she intended to keep the pair close to her and safe beneath the palace security system.
She sat down adjacent to Rachel and across from the couch. “So, what would you have done if the wreckers hadn’t shown up? Would you still be at Duncan’s home?”
What surprised Endelle the most was how sad Rachel suddenly looked. “As soon as I got myself toweled off and dressed, I had planned on returning to Mortal Earth, back to Seattle One. And in case you’re wondering, I would have taken a wrecker gun with me as well as some ammo.”
Endelle shook her head because this didn’t make sense. “So, you would have left, but you didn’t. Why not?”
At that Rachel sipped her coffee, afterward releasing a heavy sigh. “I didn’t have time. I found Duncan in this condition,” she waved a hand at him, “Then I heard the rumbling. That’s the sound the grid makes when it gets close to its destination.”
Understanding dawned and a slow smile curved Endelle’s lips. “You were buck naked when they blasted through the grid inside Duncan’s room, weren’t you?”
Rachel lifted her chin. “I thought it would give me the advantage. And it did.”
“Jesus H. Christ. Just when I’ve decided you have bacon for brains, you improve my opinion. That was some damn good thinking, something I would have done back in the day.”
Rachel shrugged. “I knew from my experience before that if they weren’t otherwise distracted, they’d fire the split-second they saw me.”
She settled her coffee on the table next to her and with her elbow on the arm of the chair, she leaned her forehead into her palm. “But for the life of me I can’t figure out how any of this is going to work. More than anything I want to get back to my life, but it looks like Yolanthe is serious about hunting me down and she’ll never stop.”
“That’s my take on it as well.”
Rachel shot her gaze to Endelle. “That’s not very helpful.”
