Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
“Would you like a drink? On the house.”
“Yes. And if you’re willing to give me two, I’ll let you win this game.” On the edge of hysterics, not even sure what was making her hyperventilate, she wiped at her cheek. It was wet. “You can brag to all the guys how you beat me.”
“In that case, I’ll give you three. But no one else gets to win for at least a month.”
“It’s a deal.”
That was the game on the ship after all. Deals, tickets, pretty Korean-American girls who got to leave and who should not go south… or north… or east… or west. Because the entire world was a fucking nightmare, and she only had one thing to trade.
Three beers did help. And her chess partner beat her in a show that drew a crowd to cheer for his victory.
When she went to the captain’s room for the third night, he was waiting. Tub full in his massive bathroom. A clean set of pajamas—his pajamas—waiting. A fluffy towel too, shampoo, conditioner for curly hair. A bar of hand-milled soap from a fancy pre-bombs boutique.
And zero conversation.
Though he did watch her bathe. Not that she so much as noticed he was in the room.
He didn’t gain her attention until he took her to bed, pulling her close—arm and leg draped over her body. Which was utterly against the rules, as she was covered from throat to ankles.
Held a little too tightly, she slept with him. Woke with him. Dressed with him.
And even stood next to him when Brooke disembarked. Something special in the woman’s pack Eugenia had asked for in the awkward morning hours.
“When you found my pack. Did you keep the map inside?”
“Yes.”
“I want to give it to Brooke.” She failed to add why. There isn’t much drinkable water around here, and if Brooke didn’t know where to find it, she’d die all the sooner.
The captain had granted her request. No tickets required.
A map that had cost Eugenia an astounding amount of trade. A map where the ship floated on a dirty lake in no man’s land.
One she’d given to a giddy and distracted Brooke, hugging her so hard the petite thing squealed. And then left with a grin, waving as the ladies cheered and some of the men cried.
“She looks too clean and too healthy.” It had to be said. And it seemed a fair question for the maker of rules and giver of pajamas. “What happens when she tells someone we’re here?”
It wasn’t unkind, but it was unsettling. “No one ever tells. Not when they see what the world is really like out there.”
“As if you’d know.” The captain had been running his kingdom. She’d been the one on the outside.
“Then tell me about it tonight.”
Oh, she’d tell him, tell him all the ugly. “You won’t like anything I have to say.”
But he did listen to her say it. How she had tried for the first two years to find a town with a doctor who needed an assistant. How the men just acted like beasts. The times she’d been caught, the ways she’d escaped. The lives she’d taken with surgical precision, because everyone underestimated a pretty, young redhead.
“And John, tell me about him.”
“Found him lost on the side of the road. Thirsty. It’s easier to avoid the dogs in a larger party, so I gave him some water. He thought we should fuck in all the downtime. One knee to the crotch ended that. And then we discussed the map, always trying to get us closer to City. I would never have come this way if I’d known you were here.” And that map had been fucking expensive. Whatever the captain did to keep knowledge of his creepy oasis out of the mouths of City, it worked.
“I’ll answer that unspoken question.” The man looking too goddamn proud of himself. “We watch the roads. Kill those who don’t pass muster. Stage the bodies along the way. We knew you were coming about twenty miles up. I watched you myself, carrying that ridiculous backpack of textbooks. Had the lights turned on for you and everything.”
A welcome home? To know it had all been staged was so unsettling. “And because there was a woman in that party of two, you didn’t just approach or attack.”
“Transition is easier if you come to us.”
“Was John in on it all along?”
“No. He tried to sell you fair and square.” The man looked down at his nails. Nails far cleaner than they had been that first night. “And fair and square, I cut out his tongue. I don’t mind the occasional over-exaggeration, but repetitive lying is against ship’s rules.”
For some reason, that sparked an unwanted yet comforting sense of justice. “Because he bragged to the men about what a great ride I’d been?”
“That’s not all he said…”