Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
And those fighters could be freed with a single press of a button. The control panel appears so simple. It sits on the desk, the flat gray interface helpfully labeled in black Sharpie.
My gaze settles on one. “#13”—that’s Matt’s. One push and his door would open. But there’s also a button with “All” written over it.
I don’t know if I’d ever press that one. Not with Tusk right across the aisle. The giant fighter has survived eight rounds in the Cage—more than any other fighter in this or any other stable—and loves to remind me that in two more wins, my virginity will be his reward. But it’s clear that Tusk thinks he’s already earned that prize. If I free him, he’d take what he believes is his. So I’d hit every button except the one that opens his stall. It might be cruel to leave him locked up. But that cruelty could save my life—and maybe some of the other fighters’ lives. Tusk hasn’t saved his killing for inside the Cage. That’s why he exercises alone.
“Pull up last night’s video,” Victor tells Charlie, the guard seated in front of the monitors, then looks to me. “Was Lissa in her stall at lights out?”
Trying not to be too obvious, I drag my gaze away from the temptation of those buttons. “She was.”
“Start at twenty-two hundred hours,” he instructs Charlie. “What time did Bravo enter your stall?”
“Around midnight,” I tell him, watching the monitors as Charlie fast-forwards through the footage. The video isn’t just of the interior of the barn. One camera outside covers the entrance, and another has a wide-angle view of the empty desert behind the barn. Nothing covers either side of the barn—also good to know—though they might have more cameras around the property. A farmhouse serves as a base for the guards and the whole compound. No doubt they have more security monitors there.
“There!” Victor barks. “Slow it down again.”
The playback resumes normal speed. To my surprise, it’s not at the moment Lissa emerges from her stall. Instead Victor focused on two guards standing in the aisle—Bravo and Hotel, who must have been on duty manning the control booth last night. No sound comes through the video, but it’s easy to read their interaction via their gestures.
Or maybe it’s easy to read because I already know how all of this happens. Lissa’s told me. Bravo offers to keep an eye on the control booth if Hotel wants to go outside for a cigarette. Hotel always does. And there he is, giving Bravo a grateful fistbump before exiting the barn.
Hotel appears on the exterior camera, leaning back against the yellow vinyl siding next to the door, his lighter flaring through the dark. Bravo disappears into the control booth, but only for a moment. Even as Lissa’s stall door inches open, Bravo races out of the booth and across the aisle, his hands yanking at his buckle. By the time Lissa arrives at the guards’ break room, he’ll have his pants down around his ankles and his dick ready to go, because Lissa has to return to her stall before Hotel finishes his cigarette. So Bravo always gets a head start with his hand.
“Goddammit,” Victor mutters, and Charlie adds something like “That stupid fucker.”
And there she is. I catch my breath as Lissa slips out of her stall, my fingers tightening around the edges of the tray. The monitors capture her from six different angles: a slender, painfully beautiful woman with long, flame-red hair, sneaking her way past the fighters’ stalls, crouching as she passes their doors so the wooden panels along the bottom conceal her progress. Even without any sound available, I know she’s moving silently—afraid that if one of the fighters discovers her deal with Bravo, he’ll expose the arrangement to the other guards or force her to trade sexual favors for silence.
Anxiety grips my throat and I silently urge her on, as if I’m watching her escape in real time, instead of witnessing something that happened six hours ago. Outside the barn, Hotel exhales a cloud of smoke. My gaze flickers to that monitor before returning to Lissa, my heart thundering.
Hotel’s the problem. If not for him, Lissa would have bitten off Bravo’s dick weeks ago. But she has to get past Hotel, too. The current plan is to steal Bravo’s stun gun and zap Hotel with it on the way out. But that plan can go wrong in a million different ways, so she’s been reluctant to try it, hoping a better opportunity comes along.
And a better opportunity must have. Because if she had attacked Hotel, Bravo wouldn’t have needed to ask me where she’d gone.
She slinks past the stall across from Handlebar’s. I begin to shake, tension and excitement battling for control of my nerves. My gaze bounces from Lissa to Hotel. I keep expecting him to walk around the side of the barn for a piss or because he heard something that drew his attention, or any reason that allowed Lissa to slip past him. Because she’s not far from the exit now and—