Marked (32 page)

"You're
now going to hand Adri the keys to my handcuffs so that she can free
me, and then I'm going to step out of the van and walk away without
any of you trying to follow me."

Again
another nod from Tiffany, and slow, angry compliance from Polly. I
took the keys and unlocked Lori's wrists. It would have been too hard
to get to her legs with only one hand, so I just handed her the keys
to the leg irons and let her unlock herself. While she did that I
pulled out my latest burner phone and handed it to her. She looked at
me with derision.

"Do
you really think I'm dumb enough to accept something that will let
you track me?"

"It's
got the number to my RV programmed in it. You've got no money and no
way of communicating with the rest of the world. You're going to want
a way to confirm that your father is released."

Lori
looked at the phone for several seconds before nodding and accepting
it. "You've got four hours to free him. After that, I'll start
hunting your people down and making them pay for keeping him locked
up."

"I'm
not the one you need to be threatening, Lori. I'm the one who made
sure that the two of you were treated humanely. I'll call and order
his release within the hour."

She
nodded, not exactly satisfied, but apparently willing to give me
enough rope to hang myself if that was what I wanted to do. She
started to reach for the door, but then stopped and looked over at
Tiffany.

"You
three empty out your pockets and give me all of the cash you're
carrying."

Mohawk
looked like she was going to argue, but I stopped her with a look.
"Just do it. I'll make sure you're reimbursed."

Lori
didn't like that. "I don't want your money, just theirs. If you
reimburse them then it defeats the purpose."

"Does
it? The purpose I see is making sure that you have enough money that
you won't have to steal from someone out there. I'm willing to fund
that purpose as long as you're willing to let bygones be bygones with
Tiffany and her people. I don't want you hunting them down at some
point in the future to extract revenge."

"Why
should I care what you want? They imprisoned me and drugged me
senseless. They should have to pay for that."

"Be
careful, Lori. Once you start down the path of justice above all else
you're putting yourself in a very difficult position. What you did in
coming to Sanctuary was just as bad. Tiffany's people took away your
freedom, but you came intending on taking away Alec's free will."

"So
I should show a little mercy to them in hopes that Alec will show me
mercy in return?"

"I
couldn't have said it better myself."

Her
hand was suddenly at my throat, not gripping hard enough to stop me
from breathing, but with enough strength that I knew it would take
very little effort for her to kill me.

"You're
forgetting that your threat is predicated on my believing that Alec
Graves is still alive and able to come after me. He's obviously not
or he never would have allowed you to come here without him."

I
knew I should be scared, but part of me was just too tired to feel
the level of fear the situation called for.

"My
threat is predicated on Alec being alive because he
is
alive, Lori, but even if he wasn't, if you kill me or come after
Tiffany's pack you'd still end up dead. There are more than enough
female wolves and hybrids under our command to see the job done."

Her
grip loosened slightly as she tried to reconcile my surety with her
reading of the situation. "You're an interesting individual,
Adriana Paige. You're either a psychopath, or you really believe what
you just said. I'm actually inclined to believe you simply because I
don't believe that a man like Alec Graves would let himself be taken
in by a psychopath."

"Good.
I'm not lying, so it makes things a lot easier for both of us if you
believe me when I tell you the truth. Do we have a deal?"

"What,
two hundred dollars in return for letting Tiffany's people go
unpunished?"

"No,
your freedom in return for theirs and a promise that you're not going
to do the kinds of things that will make Alec come hunt you down at
some point in the future. If it's all about the money, I can make
sure that you've got enough to really start over. How much would it
take to make you do the right thing, Lori? Five million dollars?
Ten?"

"It's
not about the money! Don't follow me!"

Lori
threw down the cash and threw open her door, stepping out into the
crowd of people—mostly men—who looked at her with desire
in their eyes, but who made no effort to mob her like I half expected
them to. It was the moment of truth and I did the only thing I could;
I jumped out of the SUV and followed after her.

The
further Lori walked the more of her admirers she released—by
the time we turned a corner and were no longer within sight of
Tiffany and the others, she only had two guys still trailing along
behind her.

"I
told you not to follow me."

"I
prefer to think of it as accompanying you—besides, I figured
you were talking to the Del Rio ladies. Given that I'm the reason you
aren't still passing your days in a chemically-induced coma, it
seemed only reasonable that you wouldn't just lump me in with them."

"I
could make you stay here."

"Hurting
someone who helped you? That's pretty dark."

"I
wouldn't have to hurt you. These two gentlemen would gladly hold you
here for the next hour if that was what I wanted them to do. Besides,
you don't know anything about me."

The
two guys following half a step behind Lori were nodding like their
heads were going to fall right off of their necks, and one of them
slowed slightly as though considering acting on her implied desire,
but I shot him a dark look that sent him hurrying to catch back up
with Lori and the other guy.

"I
know a lot more than you think, Lori. I've been listening and putting
the pieces together. Back there they said that you and your dad
didn't have very much money saved up."

"What
of it? Are you feeling the need to lord over me just how much money
your sweetie has squirreled away?"

"Miss
Lori, is this chick bothering you? Do you want us to do something
about her?"

This
was the other guy, the shorter one, and the way that his voice
dripped with the desire to please her turned my stomach.

"Yes,
she's bothering me, but don't do anything about her unless she
physically attacks me."

Both
men nodded as though it was perfectly normal for them to be following
around a strange woman they'd only just met. Momentarily reassured
that I wasn't going to have to fight off several hundred pounds of
angry male, I picked my pace back up in an effort to close the
distance between us.

"I'm
not trying to lord anything over you, Lori. I was actually trying to
give you a compliment. You could have made out like a bandit at any
point, but you chose not to. You could have easily crashed some
high-profile society party and convinced half the billionaires in any
given state to hand over half of their net worth, but you didn't. I
think that says something good about you."

"Not
as much as you think. I considered doing something like that, but it
would never have worked. Guys like that love their money more than
just about anything else. As soon as they left my presence they would
have started questioning their decision to give me money. I would
have been looking at a massive set of lawsuits from each and every
billionaire I conned. Not only that, it would have blown my cover
wide open."

"Interesting,
and did you consider conning people for smaller amounts? I'm sure you
could have figured out a way to fleece a few billionaires for a
million here or there? That wouldn't have left them as likely to
second-guess their decision to give you money…"

"Yeah,
I thought about it, but my dad didn't like that idea. He said it was
still too risky."

My
gun was shifting around more than I wanted it to. It was too late to
shove it down my pants now, and I couldn't keep up with Lori's
current pace with both of my hands in the sling currently supporting
my left arm, so I jammed the gun underneath my left arm and just did
my best not to let my left arm sway too much as I walked.

"What
about the trip out here?"

"What
about it?"

"You
could have gotten away from Tiffany and the others at any point—why
didn't you?"

Lori
turned right, seemingly at random, and headed past a pair of banks
and a bakery. "I don't know. Maybe I was waiting to see what you
would be like in person before breaking out."

"Maybe,
or maybe you knew that getting away from your captors would have
involved a lot of innocent guys getting hurt or killed. You didn't
act to get away until it looked like Mohawk and Polly were going to
kill me, and even then, your first concern seemed to be making them
back off. You didn't decide to make a run for it until you realized
just how completely you had control of the situation."

Lori
stopped and rounded on me, sticking her finger into my sternum with
enough force I was going to have a bruise later. "Why are you so
determined to paint me as a decent person when every other person in
the world is convinced that I'm too far gone to save?"

"Because
I need you to be a decent person. I think you've been on the fence
for a while. I think you enjoy manipulating guys and making them do
what you want, but something—either your father or some
inherent goodness—stopped you from becoming completely
narcissistic. More importantly though, I think what happened in Nephi
scared you to death and you're afraid of what you might become."

"I
should have known. This whole time you were just hoping that I would
fight your battles for you. You're just like everyone else, just in
it to see what you can get from me."

"I'm
not going to lie to you, Lori. I do need you, but you need me too. I
need you to help me fight off the Coun'hij, but you need me to let
you stay close enough to Alec that you'll always have someone around
who's capable of stopping you from becoming the monster we both know
you're capable of becoming."

I
expected her to go storming off, but she didn't. "You're not
talking about just lurking around in the background, are you?"

"No,
not if you need more than that to avoid going off the deep end, Lori.
If you prove that you're competent and trustworthy then Alec will
move you into his inner circle."

"You
shouldn't make that kind of offer, not to me."

"Why?
Aren't you trustworthy?"

Lori
looked away from me, unwilling to meet my eyes. "Haven't you
stopped to wonder how Del Rio ended up with so many female hybrids?
As much as you or I might wish things were different, statistically
speaking it's a man's world. There are women hybrids, but we're only
half as common as male hybrids. In a pack the size of Del Rio we
should have had two or three female hybrids tops."

"Actually,
I didn't think about that at all."

"I
guess you have a few blind spots too. Daddy has been actively
recruiting female hybrids and wolves into the pack for the last six
years. Before that we had roughly the same ratios of females to males
that you would have seen anywhere else."

"Six
years ago? Was that when…"

"Yes,
that was when I first manifested my ability. Once my father realized
what I was capable of, even
he
took steps to try and make sure that he could stop me if I ever got
out of hand."

"Maybe
there was another reason…"

"I
doubt it. Our lives would have been much easier if all of the main
players in the pack were male. The only reason to bring in people I
couldn't manipulate was because he needed them to serve as a
counterweight to me. You can see how it might be a little hard for me
to trust that you have my best interests at heart given that even my
own flesh and blood doesn't trust me."

I
shrugged. "Trust is one of those things you have to build up
piece by piece, Lori. I'm giving you the opportunity to start winning
our trust, I can't make you take it though."

She
sighed. "What I did in Nephi bothered me, but not as much as you
think. The Coun'hij enforcers deserved what they got, even if it felt
a little wrong to completely take away their free choice like that.
Mostly I just felt bad about the innocent wolves who got hurt or
killed taking the enforcers down. Next time I won't make that
mistake. I'll use the enforcers to kill each other, but not all of
them. I'll keep a few around so that I always have resources to throw
at whatever else might pop up."

She
looked at me again and cocked her head to one side. "You still
want to give me a job now that you know that?"

"Yes,
I do." It wasn't a lie, but I was going to be very careful about
who I put in her power. Lori was sounding scarier by the second, but
I needed her if I was going to save Alec.

"Fine,
I'm willing to entertain the idea. No more guards, and no more drugs.
I go where I want to go when I want to go there."

I
shook my head. "If you're signing on with us then you're signing
on under the same terms as everyone else. You take Alec's orders and
go where he wants you to go, when he wants you to go there. When Alec
isn't available you'll be taking my orders as if they were Alec's.
You'll be treated with respect, but you will have an honor guard of
females responsible for both protecting you and making sure that
you're behaving yourself. I'll give you your own RV and a generous
stipend, but you'll be expected to mostly keep to yourself and avoid
any interactions with males other than Alec."

"You
offer me a very pretty cage, but it will be a cage nonetheless."