Soulless The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,43

the rooms. She and I each grabbed one of the unconscious members of my team and dragged them into the building while Reed walked ahead to make sure we didn’t run into anyone. Fortunately, the hotel seemed quiet.

We made it to our rooms without incident, and after depositing Kat and Scott onto the king-sized bed in their room, Charlie grabbed the key for her room and left. Reed lingered, watching the door to the room until it shut. After it did, he remained silent for almost a minute, listening. When I started to say something to him, he held up a finger to his lips and then opened the door, looking up and down the hall. He shut it and walked back to me, stopping only inches from my face. “How well do you know your aunt?” he asked in a low whisper.

“Not well.” I looked into his concerned eyes and felt a tremor within. “I met her about six months ago when she tracked me down, and we’ve been in contact on and off ever since, meeting whenever she’s been in town.”

“Do you trust her?” He didn’t break eye contact.

“Only a little,” I said. “I don’t exactly know her well.”

“She didn’t come on the mission with you?”

“No.” I shook my head. “She said she tracked my cell phone GPS.”

“Uh huh.” He licked his lips, thinking. “Sounds a little funny.”

“Why so suspicious? You think she has something to do with Omega?” He stared back at me, as though waiting for something. “What? What am I missing?”

He turned a slight smile, and looked at me with expectation. “Come on,” he said. “You know.”

“Come on, what?” By this point I was just annoyed. Kat and Scott were passed out on the bed behind me and who knew when they’d be coming back to consciousness. I had to report to Ariadne that we’d gotten in a violent clash with Omega forces, ending with two people not associated with the Directorate getting involved to save our bacon, in an incident that would certainly have drawn more than a little attention.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m gonna go...recover for a bit. Let me know if anything major happens.”

I shook my head, feeling my annoyance fade at the remembrance that he’d wrecked his car to save me from the Omega sweep team. “Reed...” He looked back over his shoulder, almost out the door. “Thanks.”

He nodded, a little smile breaking on his face, and left.

Chapter 13

I tried to reach Ariadne, but her cell phone went straight to voicemail. I tried her office, but her assistant told me she was out and unable to be reached for several hours. When I asked her to connect me to the Director, she informed me that he, too, was unavailable. I sighed, told her to have them call me urgently, that I had run afoul of Omega, and left it at that.

I stayed in Kat and Scott’s room, watching the light fade outside the beige curtains as the day ended. I looked at a clock when the last rays of sunlight were still visible, and it was just after 9 P.M. Neither of them had moved, but their pulse was regular, they reacted to prodding and other stimuli; they just...didn’t seem to want to wake up.

There was a knock on my door and when I looked through the peephole, Charlie grinned back at me, her smile overlarge and distorted by the glass as though I were looking at her in a funhouse mirror. Her cutoffs and tank top were gone, replaced by a red dress not unlike the one I had seen her wear when we first met, something with very little length and quite a bit of cleavage exposure. I tried to smile, but inwardly grimaced as I opened the door. “Hey.”

“Hay is all around us; this whole damned place is a farm town.” She made a slight gyration, as though she were dancing to music only she could hear. “What do you say we go find a couple cowboys to while away the dull hours with between now and morning?”

“Sounds like a great idea,” I said. “Because we don’t have enough carnage on our hands already without killing a couple of poor locals that are just out for a good time.”

“It’s not about killing,” she said in a soothing voice, “it’s about having some fun. Unwinding.” Her smile was oddly infectious. “You’ve been watching these vegetables all day. You need to get out and let loose. Have the other guy watch