The Scarlet Empress (26 page)

Ty hunched his shoulders against the dampness and kept up his punishing pace toward the fort. A group of teenagers waving American flags collided with him. They spun away, but not before he glimpsed the unease in their faces. He knew what he must look like by now, after a couple of days living on the streets, but it must be worse than he thought. Better to disguise him from his father’s henchmen, he thought.

After leaving his parents’ home the night he’d learned
of his father’s plans to execute Bree, and wanting to avoid the lonely familiarity of his small flat in the city, he’d slipped between the cracks and disappeared. He was good at it, disappearing. As a SEAL specializing in covert ops, he had the skills needed to assimilate into a culture, any culture, especially his own.

Ty took a side street he knew led to the fort’s rear gate. Rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw, he paused to ascertain the best place to await his contact. When he was on active duty, he could pass in and out of the gates with ease. However, a man in his situation—and with his intentions—didn’t dare enter in the usual way: submitting to a DNA scan that would set off alarms from here to his father’s office. Luckily, he had help.

Ty didn’t wait for more than a few minutes before he heard someone approach from behind.

“Yo.”

Ty turned slowly. A hulking man whose family hailed from the colony of Northern Mexico stood in the shadows. He wore the uniform of a UCE major. “Chico,” Ty murmured back.

They grasped each other’s hand. Neither said a word, but Ty was certain gratitude was written all over his face. He hadn’t known when he’d contacted him if Chico would support him or his father, and would have respected his decision either way. But Chico had seemed almost relieved. “It’s time to choose sides. For the sake of my wife and kids, I want to make sure I’m on the right one.”

“Then get me inside. You run the place.”

“I can get you in,” Chico had said. “But I can’t promise you’ll get out.”

Ty didn’t care what happened to him. It was Bree he wanted out safely. That was where the other blood debts came in. As a backup to his and Chico’s high-risk plan, Ty had called on one debt that would ensure Bree’s swift transport in a private magcar straight to the collection of another debt: a safe house in the form of a cattle ranch in the deserts of southwest Central, the Arizona region, with an ex-SEAL and his family. If the revolution came, Bree would be safe. If it didn’t, she’d be safe, too. Where Ty factored in after tonight didn’t matter.

And that was the way he needed it to be.

“Your father’s coming for the execution,” Chico said. “By heli-jet. He’s going to land on the roof. I’ve got to meet him or he’ll know something’s up. It’s bad enough as it is, most of my guards calling in sick. I’ve got a skeleton day shift reporting to work in a couple of hours, if that. But Armstrong will bring his own people. No matter what, stay away from the roof.”

Ty nodded gravely. The last thing he wanted was a runin with his old man in the midst of stealing away his prize prisoner.

The men walked to a late-model magcar parked in the street outside the prison gates. A folded uniform sat in the center of the backseat next to a chewed-on stuffed bunny. Chico’s private car. If the car was ever searched, DNA evidence obtained would confirm that Ty had been there, solidifying Chico’s guilt. Chico didn’t have to take such a personal stake in this. Leaving a uniform somewhere Ty could find it would have been good enough. But he’d done more, so much more.

“
Viva
Mexico,” Chico murmured in response to Ty’s thankful gaze.

Now it was clearer why Chico was willing to put so much on the line. If the UCE unraveled, other colonies besides Central would have a chance at freedom. Chico wanted his birth colony to be free.

Ty changed clothes in the backseat of the car, cloaked by the dark, wet night. When he climbed back out, he stood for Chico’s intense inspection. Chico checked for the presence of a transponder embedded in the uniform. The transponder would get him through the gates. What happened once they were inside the prison would depend on how much of what Chico had promised actually materialized.

It had better, Ty thought. Options were few, and time was short.

“You need a shave,” his friend told him, a trace of a smile playing around his lips. “What happened to the picture-perfect SEAL I knew?

“He found some buried treasure.” Ty stroked his chin. “Do I need to clean up?”

“Don’t sweat it.” The prison chief reached into the car and retrieved two helmets, one for each of them. With a dark face shield capable of night imaging, it would hide his features. Ty could see his own dark and sinister reflection reflected in Chico’s mask.

“Ready, man?”

Ty replied with a curt nod. They were going in.

Bree jackknifed up in bed, blinking in the darkness until her vision was as clear as it was going to get. Her heart pounded as if she’d just finished a 10K race. Impending death had a way of getting the blood going.

What was she doing sleeping with so little time left?

The drugs
. . . They’d given her something strong after dinner, and it had put her out cold. She hadn’t wanted to waste what could be her last hours sleeping; she’d begged the hated guard she called the commandant not to knock her out, but the cold woman had. How long had she slept? What time was it?

Why was it so quiet?

Bree concentrated, listening. The hall was as hushed as her cell. No one else was imprisoned in this section, but usually she could hear the guards—talking, coughing, laughing, and generally making a racket, even at night. Now there was no sound at all except for the faint hiss of air. Where was everyone?

“Hey,” she whispered to her collar. “You with me?”

The Voice didn’t reply.

“Hello?”

Nothing. She jammed a hand through her lank hair. How could she justify waiting any longer for the Voice of Freedom to get back to her when her life was on the line?

She pushed off the bed and went to the door, clinging to the bars. It was quiet. Too quiet. Then she heard a thumping noise coming from the section of the hallway she couldn’t see. It grew louder. A guard.
Damn it.
And he was running full speed, by the sound of it.

The guard turned the corner and lumbered to a stop outside her cell. One look at the shock of salt-and-pepper hair and breasts the size of watermelons told Bree who it was: her nemesis the commandant, the terrifying guard who had so efficiently assisted in the mechanics of her torture.

“You must come, come now,” the guard grumbled. It was the same greeting she always used when coming to
fetch her for the interrogations. Surely they weren’t going to try to fit in a torture session this close to her execution. Unless the guard had come to
escort
her to the execution.

Like hell would she go easily. Bree stepped back from the bars. This revolution, like any other, was going to have its share of martyrs. Given a choice, Bree would rather not be one of them. If she had to be killed, she wanted it to be in action. She wanted to go out in a blaze of glory.

Bree took a couple of steadying breaths, pumping her arms to get the blood flowing to them.

The door slid open, and the guard stepped inside the cell. “You will come. Come now—”

“Make me!” Bree threw a punch. Her fist impacted under the woman’s hairy jaw. Pain shot up her arm from her knuckles.

Bree rubbed her knuckles as the guard took a single staggering step backward and growled—actually growled—like a childhood version of a monster. But then, lowering her head, the guard launched her big body forward.

Bree thrust a leg out and tripped her. The impact spun her around as the commandant crashed to the floor. A pistol attached to the guard’s belt flew across the cell, ricocheting off the back wall like a hockey puck.

Pushing up on thick arms, the guard swept her gaze around to find her lost weapon. Surprise registered on her face, then desperation. Before she could snatch back the gun, Bree whirled in a roundhouse kick, knocking away her hand. Then she used her momentum to swing around for another go.

The kick caught the guard on the side of the head. A grunt of pain and the woman went down again. Down,
yes, but still not out. How many freaking times was it going to take for David to topple Goliath?

Bree hefted the pistol into her hands and aimed. The surveillance viewers embedded in her cell and all through the corridor were recording every second of this, she thought. By now, someone in a far-off room could have already thrown the alarm switch.

Her body fidgeted, screaming at her to run. If she didn’t get the hell out of this section soon, more guards would be on the way. She hadn’t seen a single one besides this woman, but it didn’t mean they weren’t there. However, armed or not, no way could she leave the place dressed in a fluorescent-orange jumpsuit that screamed,
I’m an escaped prisoner.
She opted to delay five more minutes to trade clothes with the commandant.

Bree aimed the gun at the woman’s head. “Take off your uniform.”

“No! You must come with me now.”

“I don’t think so.”

The guard was halfway to her knees. The whites of her eyes had turned almost red with rage, and she foamed at the mouth like a rabid dog.

Bree aimed. “Sit. Stay!”

A sound rumbled ominously in the guard’s throat.

Bree released the safety on the pistol. The guards didn’t carry stunners; they packed the real thing. These guns had one setting: kill. “I have no problem blowing your head off,” she warned. “Take off your clothes and give them to me.” Bree stared down the sight of the pistol. Sweat ran down her forehead and made her eyes sting. She swiped at her face with the back of her hand. “The weapons belt first. Slide it to me.”

The big woman unbuckled her belt, her eyes never leaving Bree. She stood there, the belt dangling from her hand.

“Slide it!” Bree snapped.

The belt scraped over the floor. Bree kicked it outside the cell, into the corridor. “The rest. Now!”

The commandant tugged off one boot. Then the other.

“Faster!”

The commandant continued to undress at a maddeningly slow speed until she finally sat on the floor in a massively constructed bra and panties: regular boring white panties. Bree was almost disappointed not to see the jockstrap she’d expected. “Give me the uniform!”

Finally the commandant threw the wadded-up clothes at Bree. The guard was a large woman. The size difference suited her needs perfectly. She couldn’t get rid of her prison jumpsuit—it was how the Voice of Freedom contacted her. The guard uniform would have to go on top of it.

Bree backed out into the corridor and removed the handcuffs from the commandant’s belt. She slid them across the cell floor to the woman. “Put them on.”

The guard glowered at her, dangling the handcuffs from an index finger.

“A battle of wills is pretty stupid when someone’s got a gun pointed down your throat,” Bree said calmly.

The commandant seemed to think so, too. She opened the cuffs.

“Lock one on your wrist and the other on the bars. That’s it. Good.”

The woman was now locked to the bars inside the cell. Bree had the key.

She closed and locked the cell door. “
Hasta la vista,
baby,” she said, and took off running.

The halls were empty, eerily so. Where were all the guards? The prison was large, the floor plan like a maze.
Which way out?

What was it the Voice had told her to do?
Look above when things grow darkest. Get as high as you can. Look to the sky, and you’ll know.

Look above? Bree did, and saw only the ceiling.
Get as high as you can.
Bree’s heart jumped. The roof! That was where she needed to go.

She remembered a ladder she’d seen leading up firehouse-style to the next floor, and returned to it. She didn’t know where it led, but it went up. That was a good start.

She clambered up the ladder. Once on the next floor, she flattened herself against the wall, peering up and down the corridor. No one was around.

The ladder continued up to the next higher floor. She took it and repeated the drill five more times before she hit a brick wall—literally. But carved in the brick wall was a heavy porthole-shaped door. And it was open.

Bree hesitated before going through it. Was it a trap, leading her onto the roof and certain capture? Or was someone like the Voice facilitating her escape?

What are your choices? You can backtrack and try to get out another way. Or you can trust in the Shadow Voice and see what waits on the roof
.

What was the worst that could happen to her, anyway? Execution? The way she saw it, that was already on the schedule for today. She gazed moodily at the lightening sky. And not too far off, by the looks of it.

“Freeze!” someone shouted from the floor below. “Stay there. Do not move.”

Bree peered down through the ladder opening, her pistol gripped in two hands. Two armed UCE prison guards dressed in riot gear were climbing the rungs.

Bree yelled at them. “Throw down your weapons, or I’ll shoot!”

“Bree!” One of the guards lifted his face mask. “It’s me—Ty.”

A strangled sound that said far more than she was able to verbalize slipped from her throat. His hair was cut short again, but it looked as if it had been days since he’d shaved—or slept, judging by the shadows under his eyes.

She wanted to run to him, to throw her arms around him.
No.

She steeled herself against all emotion. What if the drugs were still circulating in her system? The last time she’d had this dream that Ty was wearing the uniform of a UCE officer, he’d walked away from her, leaving her to die. “I’m getting out of here, Ty. Don’t try to stop me.”

“Bree, no. Don’t go out of the roof. General Armstrong’s heli-jet’s due to arrive any minute. He’s come to watch your execution.”

She inched toward the open porthole. “I’m supposed to go outside.”

“On whose orders?” Ty appeared distraught. And who was the man standing with him? He was big and very quiet. A stranger.