Blacklisted (9 page)

Another set of hands settled atop my shoulders, holding me in place.

“What part does she play in this, do you think?” Mia asked. Fingertips probed at my wound.

Relax. Stay relaxed
.

“Dumb girlfriend, most likely.” Cara. “And it really burns me that he was able to keep her a secret for so long.”

“Yeah, but does she sell?” Phoenix clicked her tongue. “What does she know?”

“Well?” Mia said.

Neither of the girls responded.

“Are you just a dumb girlfriend or do you have a solid role in this?” she added.

My dread and fear tripled. She knew I was awake. A part of me expected to be slapped as my eyelids fluttered open. I wasn't. All three women remained in place, staring at me. Frowning.

I gasped when the mysterious Mia came into view. Nothing would be as expected, I guess. Someone with such a commanding voice should have been tall and stocky, even mannish. Not this woman. She was beautiful. One of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen.

She had black hair and swirling blue eyes framed by long black lashes. A small, delicate body. A sweet, angelic face. And yet even bent over me, studying my wound, she looked completely untouchable, removed by emotion and everyone around her.

“Well?” she prompted.

“Not girlfriend,” I rasped. “Not seller. Not maker. Not dumb,” I added tightly.

“That leaves, what?” Mia pierced me with a fierce stare.

“Innocent.”

Cara snorted.

Mia shrugged, as if my answer hadn't mattered. “Someone wanted you dead, little girl. Lancers are used for rendering death, not warnings. An innocent would not have been shot like this. You were doing something you weren't supposed to, weren't you?”

Rather than answer, I said. “I watch the news. Innocents
are
sometimes shot.”

The left side of her mouth twitched. Into a smile? A scowl? “So who shot you?”

“The tooth fairy,” I replied, not sure where I got my bravado this time.

Mia ran her tongue over her teeth, and I was no longer left in doubt as to whether she smiled or scowled. She scowled at me with potent fury.

Cara stepped toward me, raising her arm with every intention of slapping me as I'd feared. Phoenix held her back.

“I'll tell you what you want to know when my father gets here.”

“He's a lawyer,” Mia said, a statement not a question.

“Yes.”

“He will not be allowed near you
until
you've told me what I want to know. How's that?”

My hands squeezed into fists. “You can't keep him from me.”

“I can do anything I want.”

“Where's Erik?” I asked, trying a different tactic.
Don't cry. Stay strong. You're brave, remember?
“I want to see him.”

“Maybe the tooth fairy will escort you to his cell,” Mia replied. She remained where she was, crouched at my side. “Unless, of course, you want to rephrase your answer to my question.”

Okay, stay strong but don't talk back anymore
. “Let me see him. Please.” If they were this forceful with me, what were they doing to him?

Phoenix released Cara and both girls flanked Mia's sides, crossing their arms over their chests and surrounding me with a wall of feminine ferocity. A tremor swept though me. One at a time, they were scary. Altogether, they were hell on earth.

Mia's head tilted to the side as she regarded me intently. “You claim you're not his girlfriend, but you're sure acting like it. Should I believe your words or your actions, hmmm?”

“Words.” But she was right. Actions
were
more convincing and all of mine had been damning. “Tonight really was the first time I'd spoken to him.”

“Oh, really.” Reaching out, Mia tightened her hand around my arm, causing the torn flesh to slowly pull apart. I winced in pain. “I don't want to hurt you, Camille, but I will if I have to. I'll hurt you slowly and often. Got me?”

Suddenly unable to speak, I nodded. The tears that had only burned my eyes a moment ago now spilled over.

“Good. Now.” Her grip eased and I was able to breathe once again. “Erik has been transporting Onadyn from the Ship to the public. I want to know how he's doing it without getting caught and I think you can tell me.”

“But I can't.” With my gaze, I pleaded with her to believe me. “I don't know anything. I swear.”

“Are you afraid he'll hurt you if you tell us?”

“Erik would never hurt a girl,” Cara said, belligerent.

“Cara,” Mia snapped without looking away from me. “Leave.”

“What?” The girl's mouth fell open.

“Don't make me repeat myself.”

A second passed as shock washed over Cara's face. Then her eyes narrowed on me with absolute hatred, as if it were my fault she'd gotten in trouble. I admit, I did feel a small amount of satisfaction.

I must not have done a good job of hiding it. Hate morphed into rage, tightening her features. She would have attacked me if Mia hadn't stepped in front of me. I jerked back, the corner of my eye catching on the silver tip of a blade. A blade Cara now held. She'd meant to cut me, I realized with shock.

What a violent place this was.

“Cara!” Mia growled. “Last chance.”

She flounced from the room, dark hair blowing behind her.

When the door closed, Mia said, “Now then. Camille. You were about to tell me something.”

I exhaled a long, trembling sigh. “I can't tell you anything because I don't know anything. I went to the club to see and talk to Erik, maybe dance with him. I didn't know about the drugs until—” Horrified, I pursed my lips together. Damn it! I should not have admitted that. Now they'd grill me for details I didn't have.

“Until,” Phoenix prompted, stepping closer.

I looked down at my feet. My boots had been removed, I noticed. So had my socks. My feet were bare. The blue-painted toenails winked in the light. “Until I sneaked past that guarded door,” I admitted. “A group of Ell Rollises attacked me. Erik saved me from them.”

“And that's it?” Mia asked. “That's all that happened?”

“Yes.”

Mia studied my face for a long while, her gaze deep and probing. “What did he give you? And don't tell me a blank napkin.”

“If I tell you anything else, I'll be lying.”

“We'll see, little girl. We'll see. I'm going to run some tests on that napkin. And I'm going to interview a few people. Pray they support your accounting.” Without another word, Mia strode from the room, the door opening for her automatically.

Phoenix looked from the door to me, from me to the door. She ran her tongue over her teeth in a perfect imitation of Mia, then followed the same path the beautiful woman had taken.

Alone again.

My arm hurt badly. I wanted to go home; I wanted my parents to keep me safe. But more than anything else, I wanted to save Erik the way he'd saved me. If he really was a drug dealer, I wanted to save him from himself. If he wasn't, I wanted to save him from these agents.

Sometimes good people have to do bad things
.

Was he or wasn't he? And did it matter to me anymore?

Whether he was selling or not, he wasn't doing it for the money; I knew that. Not when his house was falling down around him. And Erik wasn't a user, a
flyer
. His skin wasn't tinted blue or flaky, two telltale signs.

Did someone he loved need Onadyn?

The thought caught me by surprise and I blinked. Maybe. That was definitely a possibility and would explain so much. If an Outer needed it, but couldn't get it, a dealer could get it for them. But then, that raised the question of just who Erik knew that needed it. A friend? Silver, perhaps?

No. I shook my head. Morevvs were oxygen-tolerant and didn't need Onadyn to survive on our planet.

Who couldn't get it on their own? The poor? Wait. I shook my head again. I think they were given a free supply from the government. Predatory aliens, then? My mouth fell open. Yes. Predatory aliens, those who had been suspected or convicted of a crime, were denied access so they'd have to leave the planet—if they managed to survive being hunted by A.I.R.

Not an easy task, I now realized with a shudder.

Erik could have all kinds of law-breaking friends. Or at least,
suspected
law breakers. I was living proof that A.I.R. sometimes made mistakes. Big mistakes. I was living proof that actions were sometimes misinterpreted.

A holoscreen materialized on the wall in front of me, air dappling like clear jelly. Erik's image appeared on the screen. Seeing him, relief and shock filled me at the same time. He had a black eye, a cut lip, and drops of dried blood on his chin. He'd been beaten, that much was obvious. But he was alive, and that was the most important thing.

Like me, he was tied to a chair.

I watched as Cara stepped into Erik's room, her expression determined. Erik spotted her and smiled wryly.

“Bradley's been notified,” she said. “He's on his way here and wants to speak with you.”

“Nice move, bringing him in.”

“We think so.”

Who was Bradley? I hated not knowing. He had to be someone important because a look of sheer torture had passed over Erik's face. A look he'd quickly masked. Had I not been studying him so intently, I would have missed it.

“Trying to break me, Cara?”

“Of course we are, Erik.” She paused, studied her blood-red nails. “You deserve to be broken in body and in spirit.”

“Well, you'll have to do better than this. I stopped caring what Bradley thinks of me a long time ago. You, too, for that matter.” He smirked at her. “It wasn't smart of A.I.R. to send in the ex to interrogate me. I truly don't give a shit what you think of me, babe.”

Cara popped her jaw. She turned away from Erik, away from the camera, hiding her expression. “I still care about you, Erik.”

“Still?” He snorted. “You never cared about me, or you would have stood by my side when they kicked me off the squad.”

She spun around, rage flashing over her face. “You really want to go there?”

“Yeah. Why not? I've got good memories of you sneaking into my cell and—”

“Argh!” She reached out as if she meant to slap him, but stopped herself in time. She backed away from him. Deep breath in, deep breath out. “You're as good a manipulator now as you were then. ‘I'm innocent, Cara.' ‘You have to believe me, Cara.'” She pounded the wall. “I let you trick me once, but never again.”

“Trick you? Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night, babe.”

Steps clipped, she paced around his chair. “Why are you acting this way?”

“Because I can,” was Erik's response.

“Are you trying to hurt me further? To cut me inside?”

A part of me felt guilty for being part of this intimate conversation. Another part of me eagerly listened, wanting to absorb every detail I could.

“At one time, I would have killed anyone who hurt you,” he said. He ran his tongue over his cut lip. “Even myself. Now, I just don't care. You're hurt? So the hell what. Nothing I do to you will equal what you did to me all those months ago.”

Once again, she turned away from him. “What do you want from me?”

“I don't want anything from you,” he said without emotion.

“Did you expect me to quit A.I.R for you? To plead your case when it was obvious you were guilty?” She laughed bitterly, as if she almost wished she would have had the guts to do it. “That's stupid.”

“Yeah, maybe I
was
stupid for expecting the girl who claimed to love me to defend my name.” He didn't sound emotionless this time. He sounded torn up inside. “I expected the girl who claimed to love me to believe there was a good reason that I was caught with Onadyn.”

“There are no good reasons,” she snapped.

He looked away from her, disgusted.

A moment passed while Cara composed herself. She straightened her shoulders, turned, and squared her chin. An air of determination fell over her; she was all business now. “You've been evading us for a long time, Erik.”

Slowly he grinned, the action a little mocking. “Is that a big surprise? You're out for my blood.”

She waved a hand in dismissal. “We don't care about you; we're after bigger fish. We want to know where the Onadyn is being made. We want to know where it's being stored. We want to know how it's getting to the streets undetected. You give us those details, and you can go free.”