AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chuck pushed it aside. He struggled to sit upright and then got to his feet, wavering. ?
??I walked into a tree?”
“I was in front of you, heard you yell.”
“No.”
Zeke shrugged. If Chuck made something of it, he’d deal with it. It was time to find out if he could act like ET and phone home.
“Come on, hustler. If we miss our ride home, you’ll wish all you walked into was a fucking tree.”
He let Chuck lead them out, a hand to the egg on his forehead and a sway in his gait and didn’t feel an ounce of remorse for being the cause of that.
Chapter Sixteen
Standing in her kitchen corner, Rory was in a battle between anticipation and boredom that was shredding the lining of her stomach.
The long cons she usually worked were far more predictable and part-time than this and between events she went back to her regular life. To her beloved apartment, her state-of-the-art gym, her local coffee place, lunches with Tres and Sherin, and the quirky bookstore on the corner that she was frightened to stop shopping at in case it closed. She spent so much there she might as well offer to pay their rent.
All she had at Abundance was regularity. It was stunning in its monotony. She woke early, ran till her legs shook, showered, showed up for the taxing work of standing in a corner, breakfast, lunch and dinner. She could’ve done that naked for all the attention she was paid. Not even the kids were interested in making faces at her anymore.
She’d expected a reprimand from Macy for her meal delivery stunt and the fact it didn’t come was all kinds of disappointing.
She wasn’t even worth scolding. She should be cool with that, except she couldn’t learn enough this way. Every day she didn’t gather evidence was another day this was her home.
She was an island of one in a sea of Continuers and the tide was rising. And it was getting to her. Making her frustration more and more difficult to tamp down. This was a game of chicken now. Orrin had told her to find her peace, but what he really wanted her to do was break like an egg and the moment she did, he’d be there to mop her up, aiming to make it impossible to resist him.
Impossible if she was Rosie Woods. Aurora Rae Archer had to find a way to keep Orrin guessing.
She patted her back pocket for the umpteenth time, looking for her phone as the dining room emptied and the cleaning crew arrived and there was still no sign of Zeke.
It’d only been five days since he’d been gone but it felt like five years.
The consolation prize was that Cadence was hanging about, waiting in the dining room to walk back to their cabin together.
“Zack is late. I’m worried,” Rory said, sliding into the seat opposite her roomie. It wouldn’t look so desperate to meet the truck Zeke was coming in on if Cadence was with her. And she was currently made of the elements that defined desperate. Hypervigilant, jumpy, teetering between feelings of hopelessness and the need to do something, anything to have Zeke safely back in her sight again. And very aware that she had to lock those feelings down. If she let him see she wasn’t cool, he’d worry she wasn’t handling things. It was an unspoken rule of this job that either one of them could call it done if the other was knocked too far off-balance.
Cadence didn’t look up from the mending she had in her lap. “No reason to be. Late is just late out here.”
Zeke was beyond late, which didn’t help her equilibrium loss. If they didn’t make contact with Tres tonight, she’d be preparing to send in an extraction team and this whole sting would be a bust. “What about bears?” What about men who were convinced the world was about to end and suspicious Zeke didn’t feel that way?
“Bears eat the ugly ones first. They have more flavor. Everyone knows that. So that’s Mike, Ted and Chuck. Unless there were a lot of bears, Zack will be fine.”
Rory grinned. Cadence had loosened up a lot since her panic attack. “I’m still worried. Will you wait with me for the truck?”
“It’s not like it’s not safe for you to wait on your own. No one is going to hurt you. This isn’t the city, remember. What is with you tonight? You go running everywhere on your own in the dark. Hardly ever sleep as far as I can tell.”
The lack of sleep was starting to tell. Every night this week she’d raided HQ, going through the file cabinets looking for anything electronic or incriminating. Every night she missed Zeke being there to boost her through the window.
“I thought it would be nicer if I didn’t have to wait alone.” And it’s not like there was an array of social events Cadence would be missing out on. Abundance didn’t exactly have a thriving nightlife.
“You’ll be fine.” Cadence’s head shot up. “Oh wait. This is you trying to do a girlfriend kind of thing.” She put the shirt she was mending on the table. “Okay, okay. It’s weird but I’ll wait with you.”
They were the last ones out of the dining room and there was still no Zeke. They sat on a garden-retaining wall in the town square in the dark and waited. It was two days since she’d turned the cell jammer off. Rory leaned back on her hands and looked at the blanket of stars above. She’d gotten used to how close they looked. Like you could ask a tall person to pluck a few down for earrings. Come on, Zeke, come home. Hold on, Tres—just a few more hours.
“Well this is exciting,” Cadence said after ten minutes of nothing doing.
“It’s what all the hot chicks do on a Friday night in Abundance.”
