Ania woke with a start to a hand, gentle, yet firm, pressing against her shoulder. She looked up to see Sanders sitting on the edge of the loveseat, a finger to his lips.
She nodded slowly. “Somebody’s here?” she asked in a low voice.
He shook his head, his tone equally low and whispered back, “People are outside, looking around, searching the place. I just didn’t want them to hear us, to see us, or to attract any energy to find us, you know?”
She slowly let out her breath. “I have to get used to the idea that just even thinking about such a thing can attract unwanted attention,” she murmured.
“Sorry to wake you, but you should be up and ready to go, if we need to bolt.” She winced at that but got up and stretched. He handed her a cup of coffee, which she accepted gratefully. “It would be good to wait a bit to use the bathroom, if you can.”
“Right. No toilet flushing to give us away. Any food left?” she asked softly.
“Still one sandwich left over from last night. Riff was here, and he’s gone again.”
“Of course he is.” She shook her head. “I don’t suppose he brought us another vehicle or has a plan or anything like that, does he?”
He gave her a fat grin. “A bit of both.”
“That’s good, but was the interest outside a part of the plan?”
“Nope. We’re not even sure it had anything to do with us, but we’re going on the assumption that any interest in this direction is bad news. Definitely bad news.”
“I won’t argue with that,” she murmured. “Just tell me when we’re ready to bolt.”
“Hopefully we won’t have to, and we can stay here for a couple days.”
“Actually,” she replied, giving him an intent look, “I would much prefer to bolt and to get the hell out of here than to deal with spending a couple more days waiting for somebody to find us. If we can get gone, that would be the best. I just want to get that flight to England.”
He nodded. “I hear you there, but we can’t do it without making sure we’re safe first.”
She knew he was right and wouldn’t argue with that. She just wanted that safety factor balanced with the get-out-of-jail-free-card factor. Not that he would understand that, but she was feeling the pressure in a way she hadn’t really expected.
He squeezed her hand gently. “Just remember that everybody’s on this, and they all have a vested interest in getting us out of here. They’re on it.”
She almost cracked a smile of that. “Do we know for sure that it’s a good idea to go to them?” she asked suddenly. “I mean, is there any reason to worry about joining this group? I’ve not had any experience with them.”
“I haven’t had that much myself,” Sanders conceded, his tone calm and yet reassuring. “But remember that we can tell who these people are just from reading them.”
“I thought I could,” she muttered, “but the drugs are still affecting my results.”
“They will for a while. Still, you trust Riff, don’t you?”
“Unfortunately, yes, I do,” she said, with a soft laugh. “He’s not the easiest person to talk to, but I don’t doubt that what he says is what he means, but so many …” She hesitated. “It’s like so many blank spots are in his world that, although I trust him, I don’t know how far I trust him.”
“Now that’s a very interesting assessment,” Sanders noted, “on the blank spots.”
“I don’t know whether it’s true or not. It’s just that I, … since I can’t see all of him, I don’t know what part of him I can trust. I’m sorry. … I trust what I can see, I just don’t know about the other parts.”
“Good enough,” Sanders said. “I don’t think any of us can trust everyone 100 percent anyway, not until we know them better at least, and we don’t know any of these people all that well. Let’s not make assumptions. But what we do know is that we’ve had, and continue to have, an awful lot of people behind us, and they are here to help us.”
“I guess that’s what I’m still questioning,” she murmured. “I want to trust everybody, yet it seems foolhardy at this point in time.”
At that, his phone vibrated. He looked around the apartment. “This could be the call to get out of here.” He answered it, his tone calm, steadfast. “Hi, Terk. … Yes, I am aware that people are interested in this area. We’ve got the curtains closed, lights off, and are keeping our energy as calm and as low as we can, while we wait for Riff to get back. He was here earlier but headed out to do some recon.”
Ania listened to the conversation a little bit more, and, when Sanders hung up, he turned and shared, “Riff has checked in with Terk, and it appears that the interest was more in our direction. He thinks they’re using a human tracker, who may be having problems finding you, probably because of the drugs in your system, which is also why you’re having trouble reading other people.”
She blinked several times and then nodded. “I guess that’s the only good thing to come from being drugged, at least as far as I can see.”
He chuckled. “But it’s great that they’re struggling to find us. That’s a good thing for us.”
“Absolutely,” she murmured. “Though it’s not that big of a help if it’s preventing us from getting out of here safely.”
“We’ll go, but not until we’re sure it’s safe to leave the building.”
She winced and nodded. “So, we’re sitting ducks until then.”
“Exactly. So, let’s ensure everything’s packed up and cleaned up, even if we have to unpack later. But let’s set ourselves up to leave it in the best shape that we can.”
Following his lead, she got up and washed the few dishes they’d used, drying them and putting them back in the cupboards. Just as she was done, she sat down on the couch next to him and asked, “Next?”
His smile was rueful. “Same as last time, we’ll just sit and wait.”
She winced. “Not exactly my favorite activity.”
“Mine either,” he murmured. “But neither is being hunted.”
As conversation stoppers went, that was a good one. She sank back onto the couch, then scrubbed her face. “You don’t realize what a toll this takes on you when you’re in the middle of it. Then, all of a sudden, you get a couple minutes to breathe, and you can see just how devastating this has been to your system.” She held up her hand, and it trembled ever-so-slightly.
He pulled her into his arms and just rocked with her gently.
“I didn’t show you that to make you feel sorry for me. That is definitely not what I was trying to do. It’s just long-term stress.”
“I get that,” he commented, with a smile. “But you also need to know that we won’t let them get you again.”
“Maybe not, but you were also captured, so you should be just as freaked out.”
He chuckled at that. “I can’t say that I’m just as freaked out, but I definitely don’t want to be. That is not how I want to end up again. So, I put my trust in Terk and his team. I honestly believe in what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. That alone makes it a little bit easier, knowing we have such a powerful group helping us.”
“You have that firsthand experience,” she noted calmly. “I don’t.”
“I get that too. But remember that a lot of effort was made to get you out of that scenario you were in. The fact that you escaped by yourself is huge and should give you a little sense of what you can do on your own, if you have to. Obviously we don’t want that for you, but you’ve come a long way, and that’s just as important. Now it’s a matter of fine-tuning the possibilities, making sure that we don’t have to deal with this ever again.”
“How does that happen?” she murmured. “I mean, short of threatening my father, how do we let him know that he’ll never get away with this again?” When he hesitated, she nodded. “See? You don’t have any answers either.”
“I might not have answers,” he began, “but I also have no problem doing whatever I need to do in order to get them.” When she looked at him quizzically, he sighed. “If threatening your father is what we need to do in order to ensure he doesn’t come after you again, I’m all for it. You may have a problem with it, but I do not.”
“I don’t have a problem with it either,” she declared. “If my mother were still alive, I would be rethinking all of this, but I also wouldn’t be in this position. I don’t know what he knows about me, and I don’t really want to have that conversation with him because I’m quite liable to let something loose in the entire process.”
He chuckled. “It could also be that he has other gifted people on salary, or found other gifted people, and they told him. It may not have had anything to do with your mother’s death, aside from maybe relaxing the morality or the bonds holding him back from testing you. Once you decided that you were fighting and were leaving, then he was in the position of having to do something about it.”
“It’s almost as if you sympathize with him,” she suggested, staring at him suddenly.
His eyebrows shot up. “Absolutely not. I have no sympathy for anybody who kidnaps and detains people against their will, much less kills those who won’t conform. Remember that I’m just as much of a victim of your father as you are.”
Her shoulders sagged. “God, this is making me crazy. It’s also driving me nuts that I can’t tell friend from foe right now. That was something I could always count on, and I hadn’t realized how much I depended on it. It seems that everything is slipping.”
“Why wouldn’t you depend on it?” he asked. “It’s held you in good stead, and, for the most part, you’ve been very blessed to have people you could read. But people like Riff? They’ve spent a lifetime stopping others from reading them. They lock down parts of themselves, and they’re very private and don’t appreciate it if anybody steps inside their boundaries.”
“I’ve probably already done that,” she admitted. “Not intentionally, of course, just not realizing he had put up walls and boundaries to stop me. I was just trying to figure out what I was getting from him, and there were all these walls.”
“He would have let you know, just as he lets everybody else know, exactly how far you’re allowed into his world. When he doesn’t want you in there, believe me that you won’t be in there anymore.”
She burst out laughing. “I’m already at that point, since he butted me out a while ago.”
Sanders grinned. “Me too. And that’s okay. It’s all part and parcel of learning to work with people who have abilities. … If we don’t have any boundaries set, can you imagine what our own personal lives would be like?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows at her. “Do you really want them knowing everything about our world?”
She flushed, then shook her head. “God, no, good point. I hadn’t really considered it from a boundary perspective, but you’re right. It’s not what any of us want to have or to see from others.”
“It’s an easy line to cross. It’s just one of those things to be aware of and to spend a little more time making sure we don’t upset people over it.”
She sighed at that. “I think we’ll make a lot of mistakes.”
“I don’t think they’ll hold any mistakes against us though,” he suggested. “This isn’t like some testing.”
“Are you sure?” She sent him a sideways glance.
Just then, a knock came on the door. She bolted to her feet, feeling the fear, then her feet slid out from under her, as fear sent her crashing back down onto the couch, with a fist shoved into her mouth. He gave her a hard look, his hand squeezing hers, and shook his head. When nobody answered the door, another hard knock came. When nothing happened, she started to relax, until she heard somebody working at the lock.
She looked over at Sanders and saw his jaw firm up, as he slowly stood. With a finger to his lips, he leaned over and whispered, “Go into the bedroom. This guy will come in, even though he’s not welcome, and I’ll take care of him.”
And, with that, he nudged her toward the bedroom.
*
With his ear up against the nearby wall, Sanders listened to confirm whether just one or two people were trying to work their way inside. He heard a conversation farther down the hallway, and the work on the lock stopped for a moment. Then it quickly resumed, and faster, as if somebody was out of time and panicking. He was definitely out of time because, as soon as this guy opened the door, he would get a fist in the jaw from Sanders.
He cast a glance back to ensure Ania had listened and was out of sight and out of the firing line, in case this guy had a weapon. Sanders knew it wasn’t Riff because he would have gotten in much faster. So, this was somebody else, unfortunately with shitty timing because Sanders didn’t have a way to get Ania out of here just yet. Just then he heard a man calling out.
“Hey, what are you doing? That’s my apartment.”
The tone was hard, yet the man’s voice was completely recognizable, as he shouted down the hallway.
A momentary stillness came from the person working on the lock, then another voice close by said, “This isn’t your apartment. It’s ours.”
“Like hell,” Riff declared, his tone furious, as he raced toward them. “You get the hell away from my place, or I’m calling the cops.”
Other apartment doors started to open, but Sanders didn’t hear anybody else joining the conversation. Those doors closed as quickly as they opened, as if people recognized trouble when they saw it. Most people were quick to bounce right back out of any confrontation, not having anything to do with it. They were right in most cases, and these weren’t the guys who civilians wanted to argue with either. However, Sanders and Riff had no choice.
Riff seemed to be right there, arguing with one of the guys, so Sanders quickly pulled open the door, grabbed the nearest guy, and dragged him into the apartment, giving him a solid right hook and dropping him to the floor.
When the door opened a second time, Riff brought in the second man and nodded approvingly. “That’s a good trick. I’m getting damn tired of running,” he muttered.
Sanders agreed with a nod. “I figured we better get some answers and fast.”
Ania was suddenly at his side. She threw her arms around his neck, hugged him close, and then turned to face Riff. “What’s going on out here?” she asked, trembling, almost in tears. She was beyond pale.
He just smiled. “We caught these two trying to break into the apartment. Smart move on Sanders’s part to bring them inside. Now they are captives for a change.”
She looked down at the men, with evident loathing. “These men work for my father,” she stated. “Why would we want anything to do with them?”
“What we want is answers,” Sanders replied. “We can’t keep running.”
She shuddered but nodded. “Or we could just lock them up, still unconscious, and leave.”
“We could, but how long would it be before they or some of the others were right on our tails again?”
Her shoulders slumped, and she went and sat down on the couch. “What do you expect them to tell you?” she asked, the curiosity in her tone finally overriding the fear of facing these men. “I mean, once they realize there are three of us and that Sanders is involved again, it won’t go well for you, if they capture you again.”
“It won’t sit right with me anyway,” Sanders replied, a sense of reassurance filling his tone. “Anybody who’s escaped already won’t have an easy time if recaptured. That includes you and me. They won’t hold back, no matter what, now.”
She didn’t say anything but glared at the two goons, both still unconscious. “What could they possibly tell us?” She looked over at Riff. “That we don’t already know?”
“Maybe that’s what we need to find out,” he suggested. “The real issue here is, how do we stop your father from coming after you and not giving a damn? They already know that Sanders has some abilities, and the fact that we’ve come and rescued you will likely mean—at least in your father’s mind—that you have something worth being rescued for.”
She glared. “My father doesn’t think I have any value at all. He’s just worried I’ve got some monetary value or status that he’s afraid he’ll miss out on. So I really don’t think your technique will work.”
“We’ll find out soon enough then, won’t we?” Riff noted, with a cheerfulness that Sanders didn’t feel. Riff looked back at Ania. “You might want to go into your room. It could get ugly.”
She shrugged. “I’m not worried about it getting ugly. I’m worried about them coming after us in retaliation for this. If we could just get away, I don’t think they would care.”
“Do you want to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life?” Sanders asked. “I sure don’t.”
She frowned. “But this won’t help.”
Riff turned and smacked the guy nearest him, bringing him around quickly, now screaming in Russian. Riff dropped a hand to his throat and squeezed tightly. The gurgling noises coming out of his mouth were enough to make even a hardened specialist in this field wince.
Sanders looked over at Ania. “You probably should go into another room.”
She shook her head. “No, we’ve started this now. I may be a mess, but I’m not walking away.”
Sanders cast a glance at Riff, who just shrugged and replied, “That’s fine. It’s always better to know what the hell’s going on than to hide, which hasn’t worked very well so far.” He released his grip on his captive’s throat.
The man switched to English. “We will kill you for this,” he warned, his tone calm, almost too calm.
Riff smiled. “You’re assuming you’ll live long enough,” he replied.
The other man glared at him. “My boss will not take kindly to having me killed. I am far too important to him.”
At that, Ania laughed. “Not even you are that stupid,” she muttered. “You know perfectly well that my father will just hire somebody else, anybody else. You’re a commodity to him.”
He turned and glared at her. “You are a bad daughter.”
She started to laugh. “Oh my, of all the things I was expecting to be accused of, that was not one of them.” She shook her head, but then she got up and walked closer and kicked him hard. “You are a bad man. You kidnapped me, held me captive, helped my father to keep me drugged, and for what?” she asked, spitting the words in his face. “I didn’t do anything to hurt you or him.”
“You are his,” he stated calmly. “You’re young, and you’re nothing but a woman.”
“Wow, there we go again,” she muttered, slowly rotating her neck. “Sometimes I just hate everything my father stands for.”
His glare deepened. “Your father is a good man.”
“No, not even in my wildest dreams, would I even begin to believe that crap,” she muttered. She looked over at Sanders and Riff. “I suggest you get whatever information you want, and then let’s get out of here.”
“I have no information,” the one conscious man stated, with a shrug. “We’re here to do a job. We don’t go home without the job done. That is all to know.”
“Ah, now that sounds more like my father.”
He nodded. “It’s expected. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly.”
“He doesn’t suffer fools at all. He’s got one goal and one goal only, and that’s to make a name for himself,” she muttered. “I don’t know how he thinks having me around will raise his status.” She stared at the goon, and then, as if something snapped, she glared at him. “Why does he want me?”
He looked at her in confusion. “You’re his daughter,” he said, as if no further explanation were required.
“Yet he hasn’t given a crap about me in years. Why now?”
But obviously from the confusion on his face, he didn’t understand the question. Or he understood the question, but he didn’t understand the nuance behind it. He shrugged and repeated, “You’re his daughter. It’s his right.”
“No, it’s not his right,” she snapped. “I’m an adult. I can do what I want.”
He sneered. “If that were the case, your father wouldn’t be doing this, would he?”
With that, she got up and, without a word, turned and walked out of the living room, heading back to the bedroom.
Sanders was glad for that, and he looked over at Riff, one eyebrow raised.
Riff nodded and reached down and squeezed the guy’s neck again. After he choked him for several minutes, Riff released him and said, “Now we want to know the truth. Why is he doing this? What does he want Ania for? How do we stop him?”
“No stopping him,” he gasped. “What he wants, he gets. He’s a very important man. He can order whatever he wants, and, if that means killing her, then that means killing her. As I said, she’s a bad daughter.”
“I don’t believe that.” Sanders glared at him. “He’s ignored her all this time. What has changed?”
“Now he has a purpose for her, so, of course, he wants her,” he replied, with a shrug. His gaze narrowed. “He wants you too. You escaped. That is not something he’ll forget.”
“Of course not. It’s not about having me or wanting me for any particular reason. It’s about revenge for beating him at his own game.”
At that, the other man stiffened and declared, “You did not beat him.”
“Really? So, he just let me go, did he?”
He nodded and smiled. “If you got free, he let you go.”
“Right.” The complete blind faith in this man was enough to make Sanders want to kick him too, but he’d seen it time and time again. When it came to powerful men, they somehow managed to engender loyalty, even in spite of the obvious lies being fed to them. “You really have no idea what he was doing then, do you?”
“No, and it doesn’t matter. My boss says to do something, I do it. That’s what loyalty is all about.” He glared at him. “You? … You know nothing of that.”
“Of course not,” Sanders noted, with a mocking smile. “I was just a prisoner, after all. It’s not as if I had any rights.”
“No, and you won’t again,” he declared. “It will be far worse for you this time.”
“If I just kill you now, it won’t make a difference, will it?” Sanders asked, with a casual tone. “And since that’s what you were planning on doing to me, why would I ever let you go?”
“It matters not if you let me go free,” he replied, his tone stiff, but his gaze flashed wildly about. “Killing me won’t stop them.”
“Them?” Riff pounced. “Who is them?”
The goon glared and didn’t say anything, until Riff squeezed his neck once more. Upon Riff’s release, the goon took a breath, then muttered, “Wait, wait, wait. He has other men, lots of other men. Even if I fail, they won’t.”
“Why is that?” Riff asked curiously. “What? Do they have some special skills that will find me somehow?” he asked, deliberately using a mocking tone.
That seemed to make the goon even angrier, and he nodded. “We have much better skills. We have people.”
“You mean one particular person?” Riff asked, and that garnered a response.
The goon shrugged and nodded. “But he’s good, very good.”
“And yet he gives you the wrong information half of the time, so how good can he be?”
He didn’t like hearing that and snapped his mouth shut and just glared.
Sanders looked over at Riff and said, “Knock him out.”
Riff started to squeeze his neck again, just enough to have him go unconscious.
Sanders checked the goon’s pockets, grabbing his cell phone.
The other goon finally jerked awake, backtalking again. “I will kill you for that.” Looking over at Riff, he added, “I will kill you.”
Such a promise filled his words that Riff just smiled. “You’re welcome to try but not until I’m done with you. Then you can have your chance.”
His gaze narrowed again, and he went to say something, except his phone rang just then.
Sanders looked over at Riff with a question in his eye. Sanders just shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine on this one.”
Riff sat on this goon, one hand to his mouth, while his other hand grabbed the goon’s phone. He answered it with a gruff voice.
A male spat out Russian, obviously irate and pissed off at his goons having either slowed something up or not having completed something on time. Riff just looked at his prisoners on the floor, one eyebrow raised, then deliberately hung up.
At that, the goon’s features paled to pasty white, and he looked up at him.
“See? I don’t care to talk to your friends,” Riff stated, “and I really couldn’t care less who they are. And, if they come here, all the better.”
The goon shook his head wildly. “But they will kill me,” he muttered. “You don’t understand. They will kill me.”
Riff just laughed, turning to Sanders.
“Actually I understand,” Sanders replied. “So sorry about that. Yet you were quite happy to kill me and Ania, so what do I care if they kill you?” he asked, with real curiosity. “Don’t you realize that her father killed her mother and her aunt? So why wouldn’t he kill you too, if you are not doing as Ania’s father says?”
That was something the goon didn’t like to hear. He just clammed up and didn’t say anything more.
Both goons were now tied up, while Sanders searched one and went through his wallet, with Riff searching the other for his info.
Sanders found some ID, some documentation, but not a whole lot. Also a little bit of money, but again, not very much. “He doesn’t pay you very well, does he?” Sanders noted, shaking his head at the two goons.
“It is enough. It’s an honor to work for him.”
The stiff pride made Sanders shake his head again. “Such freaking idiots,” he muttered.
“You don’t understand anything,” the goon snapped. “You are not loyal.”
“Oh, I’m loyal. I’m loyal to the people who count. I’m definitely not loyal to assholes who kidnap and torture and drug young women,” he shared, giving this goon a hard gaze. “Whenever you think that that’s an okay deal, boy, have you got it wrong.”
“It’s his daughter.”
“And that makes a father’s abuse and control all okay? Just because it’s his daughter means she doesn’t have any right to live her own life?”
“She has no rights,” he cried out. “None of them do.”
“Right, of course. We are in Russia after all,” he stated, with an eye roll.
The other man obviously didn’t understand what the problem was, and that was something Sanders would have to reconcile later. He didn’t have time for that now. The fact of the matter was, Ania was here and was still in trouble.
When the goon’s phone rang again, it was in Riff’s hand. He answered it calmly, but, instead of somebody yelling and screaming at the other end, a cold voice said, “Put my man on.”
“Why should I?” he asked.
“Do it.”
Riff laughed. “I don’t take orders from you. And we’re not done causing pain in your world yet either.”
“I will have you killed for this,” he snapped, his voice firm with conviction and deadly with promise. “Nobody crosses me like this.”
“When we take you to court for having kidnapped and drugged your daughter, and for kidnapping a British citizen and holding him prisoner for six months against his will, I wonder just what will happen to you.”
“It wasn’t against his will,” he declared, with a laugh. “Is that what he told you? We were simply working on testing some special skills he has. Obviously he went a little crazy, but, if I’d realized he was as unstable as he was, I wouldn’t have gone there in the first place.”
“Nice try,” Riff replied. “Don’t worry. I have them here, safe and sound.”
An ugly silence came on the other end of the phone. “I want my daughter back.” His tone was harsh.
“Not happening, so I don’t really see the point of continuing this conversation, particularly since you have nothing that I want.”
“I want my daughter,” he repeated. “I can go to the government and get help against British citizens who kidnapped my daughter.”
“I wonder if she’ll have a different story to tell,” Riff said, with a laugh, “considering that we’ve already got her side of the story. The fact that she had to run away and to live on the streets in order to evade you, … that is just sad. What kind of a father are you that you would hurt her so much?”
“My daughter has mental problems,” he stated. “She’s on medication and needs another dose. Obviously we have to adjust it in order to better suit her condition.”
“Yeah, so you can keep her compliant, unthinking, and there for you to abuse however you want?”
An ugly silence ensued, and then her father snapped, “That is disgusting. I would never abuse my daughter.”
“Maybe not sexually,” Riff clarified. “But abuse her you did, and just because we’re not right in front of you at present doesn’t mean that we don’t have the ability to ensure you pay for this.”
“This is foolish. Let me talk to my daughter.”
“No, not happening,” Riff declined cheerfully.
“Then I don’t know that you have her, do I?”
“Doesn’t matter if you know or not. We’ve got your two men, and we have your daughter. Believe it or not, I really don’t give a crap.” And, with that, Riff quickly hung up, then looked over at Sanders. “I don’t think we’ll get much information from these guys.”
“No, I don’t think so either because I don’t think they know. Like any dictator, he keeps everything close, just hoping that eventually he will find a way to break them.”
“He doesn’t have to say anything to us,” snapped the one goon, who still was conscious. “He is a very important man. He can do what he wants.”
Sanders snorted. “That’s the thing about the democratic society of the Western world. Nobody gets to do anything that they want. There is such a thing as making sure people’s rights aren’t violated.”
He laughed. “In Russia, your right is only as big as the rights that you’re entitled to keep. She is a woman, and, when her father wants her to do something, … it’s the law.”
“Right, so we’re back to that power and control.” Turning to Riff, Sanders said, “They don’t know much, and they won’t share what they do know, so why should we even bother keeping them alive? It would be much more convenient if they were just gone.”
Riff nodded. “Good point, then at least we won’t have to worry about these two coming after us.”
“There will be others,” stated the goon.
“Maybe, but you won’t be worrying about it.” And, with that, Riff gave him a hard chop to the neck, and he went out cold. He heard a noise behind him and turned to see Ania standing there, looking horrified.
She dashed forward. “Did you kill him?”
“No, I didn’t kill him. I didn’t need to. Men like these are just followers. They aren’t important. They don’t have much information. Seems your father isn’t so much determined to keep you as much as he’s determined to not lose you.”
She blinked at that, and then nodded slowly. “Yes. The minute you cross him, and, particularly if you win, he has only revenge on his mind. He doesn’t forgive easily,” she murmured.
“He won’t forgive you for leaving, so maybe you should remember that too,” Riff pointed out.
“I know, but what am I supposed to do?” she asked bitterly. “Stay there as a perfect victim for the rest of my life? He would make my life miserable, … if he even lets me live at all.”
“If you didn’t perform the way he wanted you to, he probably wouldn’t let you live.”
“Exactly,” she agreed, rubbing her arms. “We’re all packed up. Can we leave now?”
“I think we should,” Riff noted. “I want to hide these two in a couple different places, where they can’t be easily found. That’ll give us a good head start at least.” And he carried the first man outside.