Inescapable (Talented Saga #7) (21 page)

I shook my head to banish the horrifying
conclusion. The only way to help Nydia was to fit the puzzle pieces
together, so I pressed on.

Selby Masterson was the key to it all, I
felt certain of it.

Why was her name instantly familiar to me?
Given the fact she wasn’t UNITED, I’d probably seen or heard her
name back when I was either at the McDonough School or pledging the
Hunters. Did that mean there a link between the Poachers and
TOXIC?

You’re not positive that
Selby Masterson was part of TOXIC,
I
cautioned myself.

Ugh. My brain was struggling with
information overload. There were still too many unknowns. Until I
remembered, or Victoria uncovered, Selby Masterson’s origins, it
was going to be borderline impossible to make sense of it all.

Unfortunately, I needed it to make sense,
pronto. Victoria had been very clear about that. My freedom hinged
on my ability to solve this mystery for UNITED.

The conversation with Victoria instantly
began replaying in my head. The exchange had bothered me all day.
Victoria wasn’t a fan of lying; it was beneath her. But she didn’t
have a problem withholding information. It was obvious that
Victoria had been skirting around something, prompting me to
dissect each and every word for a hidden meaning.

Why did she assign this
particular task to
me
?
I wondered. Without a doubt,
Victoria always had a careful line of reasoning behind every
decision she made.

Standing, I began pacing the cell to burn
off my nervous energy.

Everything Victoria had told me was true; I
believed that much. There were spies in UNITED. Someone was hacking
the organization’s secure databases and disseminating classified
information to the world. The cattle thefts and power outages were
definitely connected to each other, and were almost certainly part
of a larger puzzle. But I also believed there was something
Victoria wasn’t telling me. Some reason she’d been so adamant that
I make sense of the nonsensical.

Ugh. That woman was more cryptic than an
Egyptian hieroglyph, and about as transparent as milk.

Without warning, my cell door opened with a
whoosh of air. Startled, I swung around to face the intruder, the
marker clutched in my fist like a knife.

“
Why aren’t you sleeping,
inmate?” Konterra demanded.

“
I’m not tired,” I shot
back, too caught up in my own head to tread lightly.

Konterra blew out a shaky breath. “I don’t
care whether you’re tired or not. It is time to sleep.

I sighed. “Look, I get it. You’re just doing
your job, adhering to protocol and all that. But, contrary to what
you might think, you can’t force a person to sleep if she doesn’t
want to sleep.”

Konterra’s gray eyes narrowed on my face.
She’d yet to take more than two steps inside the cell—about as far
as she ever dared to venture into my lair. Suddenly, the guard’s
expression turned smug.

“
Actually, I
can
make you sleep,
inmate. That’s why we have sedatives.” Her gaze flitted to the
marker still clutched in my fist. “Warden Cali only promised
Councilwoman Walburton that you wouldn’t be drugged if you were
behaving properly. Aiming a weapon at a guard is certainly not good
behavior.”

She reached for the communicator on her
belt.

I held up my hands in a placating gesture,
dropping the marker in the process. “I’m sorry if I gave you the
wrong impression. Victoria gave me—”

“
Councilwoman Walburton,”
the guard snapped. “The inmate will address her superiors by their
proper titles.”

Yikes. This was not going well. I made a
mental note to ask Victoria about a replacement babysitter. Or
possibly bribing Yocum into pulling round-the-clock duty. Either
way, Konterra had to go. Her knee-jerk reactions and power trips
simply didn’t mesh with my own impulsive tendencies and dislike for
authority.

Taking a calming breath, I counted to ten in
my head and started over.

“
Councilwoman Walburton
gave me that marker to make notes,” I said evenly. Moving my hand
as if in slow-motion—sudden movements seemed like a bad idea—I
gestured towards my bed, where Victoria’s files were scattered
about. “She asked me to do some research for her. It seemed
important, so I stayed up to work on it.”

It might have been my patronizing tone. Or
maybe it was the fact that Lynn Konterra feared me enough to wonder
in that moment if she had a change of undies in her locker.
Whatever the case, the agent drew her weapon with one hand and her
communicator with the other.

Before I knew what was happening, the gun
was trained on the center of my chest.

“
Whoa,” I said, raising
both my hands, palms out. “There’s no need to shoot me, it was just
a marker.”

The guard kept her weapon exactly where it
was, indecision warring in her eyes. There were two settings on the
gun itself; one shot tranquilizer darts, while the other fired very
real bullets. While the former wouldn’t be pleasant, I began
worrying about Konterra going off the rails and using the
latter.

“
Really?” I asked,
exasperation lacing the word. “You’re seriously going to shoot me
because I had a marker in my hand? We both know you don’t want to
deal with the consequences of doing that. Just put the gun
down.”

I was beyond tempted to put a little extra
something behind my words, but figured I should avoid using my
talents, if I could help it.

Konterra shot me a steely gaze, the
intensity surprising me. For some reason, my words had given her a
measure of courage. She wrapped her index finger around the
trigger.

“
What consequences?” the
guard asked, smirking. “You only have a few days left,
anyway.”

Before I could begin listing off the
repercussions she’d face for shooting Victoria’s pet—let alone what
Erik’s wrath would entail—Konterra raised the communicator to her
lips. She paused before pushing the button.

“
You raised a weapon to a
guard,” Konterra sneered. “At the very least, that is cause for me
to call in the wranglers.”

The wranglers were Vault’s badass men in
facemasks and riot gear whose job was to battle disobedient inmates
into submission. Konterra snickered, her confidence bolstered by
the thought.

“
Once they arrive, you’ll
be nothing more than a drooling pile of hair,” she continued.
“Then, we’ll get the truth about that girl you’ve been
protecting—Kenly Baker, is it? The wranglers have ways of making
little girls spill their guts. We’ll finally hear all those secrets
you’re hiding in that manipulative mind of yours.”

Konterra’s finger hovered
over the alarm button on her communicator. “Or, I can call a doctor
down here and have you sedated. You know,
make
you sleep, since you don’t seem
to think we can.”

Even without Konterra projecting loudly from
beneath her tightly-braided, dishwater blonde mane, I knew the
second option was how she truly wanted this to end. According to
the angry thoughts flying through her mind, Konterra had been
continuously lobbying Warden Cali to overrule Victoria’s orders and
keep me pumped full of their zombie-inducing cocktail. Konterra was
also well aware that calling the wranglers to my cell was likely to
draw Victoria’s ire, and she had no desire to piss off the head of
the UNITED council.

Yeah, I was definitely going to have words
with Victoria about replacing Konterra.

Since neither of the guard’s options were
tempting, I decided to try reasoning with her, possibly even lacing
my words with a small dose of compulsion. Nothing too serious or
obvious, just enough to calm her down and make her leave me in
peace.

Unfortunately, the guard started speaking
again before the first reassuring word was past my lips.

“
You know what, inmate?
Never mind. This is
my
shift. You are
my
prisoner to deal with as I see fit. I make your
choices for you. All of them.”

Konterra sneered at me again, except I felt
more joy than fear leaking off of her this time. Honestly, it was
rather alarming.

“
You are going to gather
all those papers.” Konterra nodded towards my bed. “Then, you are
going to stack them neatly in the center of the cell. Another guard
will be by shortly to make the rounds of Level Five. When he gets
here, he will take those papers away. And I’m going to stay right
here the whole time, to make sure you don’t try
anything.”

Okay, this isn’t going to
end badly,
I thought.
It’s better to give up the files than be shot, sedated, or
tortured by thugs.

In the morning, once Victoria learned that
the files were no longer in my possession, she’d rectify the
situation. And, if karma was real, the councilwoman would sharpen
her razor of a tongue on Konterra’s hide in the process.

The thought made me smile.

“
Okay, sure,” I agreed.
“Do you want me to start gathering them now? Or, how does this play
out in your head?”

“
Do you know why this is
how I’ve chosen to punish you?” Konterra asked, answering my
question with a question.

I shook my head, not truly caring anymore.
From the way Konterra’s communicator was angled, I was able to read
the time on the display. It was 12:47 a.m., so Erik’s meeting would
be over any minute. He’d be back in our apartment soon. Then, I
could lie back on my bed and talk to my boyfriend for the rest of
night, without having to make excuses to Victoria about not getting
her work done instead.

Best. Punishment. Ever.

“
I want you lucid and
fully aware, so that you can truly appreciate what I’m about to
tell you,” Konterra sang, drawing my thoughts unwillingly from
Erik. “I want you to sit inside this cell, with nothing but time to
think about your fate. It will drive you mad.”

The guard was fully grinning by now, and the
first tinges of concern began to edge in on my happy thoughts.
Truthfully, I just wanted her to stop talking and go away.

“
Then, right before shift
change,” Konterra continued, “when your buddy Yocum returns? That’s
when I’ll sound the alarm. That’s when I’ll tell Warden Cali you
threatened me with a weapon. That’s when you’ll be drugged and
thrown in a minuscule cage downstairs. Maybe I’ll even shoot you
with a tranq dart myself before they arrive, simply so that my face
will be the last thing you see. You’ll not only miss your daily
visit with Councilwoman Walburton….” Konterra paused dramatically,
her grin bordering on maniacal. “There will be no reunion with
Prince Charming.”

By this point in the woman’s diabolical
diatribe—she was such a clichéd villain, spelling out her plans
ahead of time—my temper was beginning to overshadow logic. I was
already past bothering to invade her mind to learn whatever it was
she was dying to share with me. The urge to attack Konterra was
verging on insurmountable.

Deep breaths, Tals, deep
breaths,
I coached myself. I had to regain
control before I did something stupid.

Because, unfortunately, the guard was
correct. If she told the wranglers that I’d pointed a weapon at
her, they wouldn’t wait to hear my side of the story. Before I’d be
able to get a word out, the felt-tipped marker would be turned into
a samurai sword that I attempted to behead my guard with.

And, no matter what, I refused to miss my
visit with Erik. Mental communication was great and all, but
nothing in the world compared to seeing him in the flesh.

“
Is there a problem here,
Lynn?”

A male guard, one I recognized from my
outings to the exercise cubicle, appeared behind Konterra in the
open doorway to my cell. His expression was more puzzled than
anxious or suspicious. He even offered me a small nod.

“
Lyons, is there a reason
you’re out of bed?” he asked. “I know we don’t give you something
to sleep, but you still should be getting some rest.”

Ugh, here we go
again,
I thought, my anger dampening some.
At least the newcomer seemed reasonable, not at all like my own
personal tormentor.

“
Everything is fine, Les,”
Konterra replied. “Actually, you’re just in time. I was about to
explain to the inmate what’s in store for her.”

Les’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“
Okay,” he said slowly,
drawing out the syllable. Les seemed as lost as I was.

“
Start collecting the
papers,” Konterra barked at me.

Turning my attention to Les, I pointedly
ignored Konterra. “Victoria gave me these files to—”

“
Don’t call her that!”
Konterra screeched, her tone so shrill that Les recoiled. “The
councilwoman isn’t your friend, inmate. She doesn’t even
like
you. That’s what
I’m trying to tell you.”

“
Lynn…” Les began
tentatively. “You can’t—”

But the irate guard was like a speeding
train with no brakes. Konterra simply cranked up the volume on her
voice to max, until I could no longer hear Les speaking.

“
She plans to execute
you!” Konterra hollered. “Yeah, in four days, you’re
dead
. Just like you
deserve. Enjoy thinking about that, without any distractions. While
you’re at it, enjoy thinking about ‘Victoria,’” she used air-quotes
when she said the name, “betraying you. Because she’s the one who
wants you dead.”