Untouched The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,76

don’t turn you loose and bring you to him. He already blew up a town west of here to prove he’d do it.” Scott delivered the news I didn’t want to.

I watched Kat as she took it in. She was always pretty; enough to make me jealous, at least. She was like the cheerleader everybody loved because she was just so sweet and perky and innocent. Even despite her somewhat unwashed appearance, she was still pretty. That annoyed me.

But I watched her face crumple as Scott’s news hit her. Her green eyes lost their glow immediately, turned hollow. Her face fell, her eyes dropped to the floor and her shoulders slumped. She took a step back, staggered, as if she had been punched in the stomach, and she dropped back to the bed. When her voice came, it was no more than a whisper. “He did that...? For me? Because...because of me?” She looked younger than eighteen years old, and as I watched the emotions played across her fine features like the ravages of age. I felt a tightness inside that I didn’t really care to explain. It was all too familiar.

“He’s going to blow up Minneapolis if we don’t get you to him.” Scott closed the distance between them and knelt down. “But it’s okay. Sienna and I will protect you from him.” He looked at me. “He doesn’t want to hurt you, Kat. Sienna can take him out; you’ve seen what she can do.” He smiled. “And you know what I can do. He’s not going to try and hurt you, but even if he did, we can protect you—we can stop him.”

“I...I don’t want to go.” Her words were choked. “I don’t want anybody to die, but I...I don’t want to go.”

“It’ll be okay,” he said. I watched her eyes; the soothing wasn’t working. “We can stop it.”

“It may not be okay.” I said the words before I could stop myself, drawing a startled look from her and a venomous one from him. “Aleksandr Gavrikov just killed thousands of people to convince us to bring you to him.” I took a deep breath, and watched the horror in her eyes. “He’s a monster in his way, but I know him—or rather, I’ve gotten to know him. You’re the only thing that matters to him. He thinks you’re caged, tortured, and he wants you free. There’s something in the past between the two of you that happened that he desperately wants to make amends for. I think he needs you to forgive him for something. It’s all he cares about.”

“Why would you tell me this?” The first hint of tears broke through onto her face, sliding down her cheeks, sparkling in the overhead light. “I don’t want to face him, he’s a monster!”

“He is. But if you don’t, a whole city of people will die.” I took two steps forward and reached out to Kat, putting my gloved hand on hers. “When Wolfe was tearing up the city, I sat back because I was afraid, because no one could fight him, no one could face him, and I didn’t think there was anyone that could stop him. I was wrong. I could stop him the entire time, but it required a sacrifice that I wasn’t willing to make. I sat by as more and more people died until I couldn’t stomach it anymore.” I saw the emotion flicker behind her eyes. “People are already dead, and it’s not your fault, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I don’t blame you for not wanting to go. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to run and hide, because Aleksandr is broken inside, and powerful, and that is a dangerous combination.

“But I’m going to fight him,” I said. “Whether you go or not, I’m going to try and stop him. I doubt I’ll be able to do much because he’s fast, and could vaporize me from about a mile away before I even got a chance to take a shot at him. But I’ll be there.” I set my chin. “Because I know what it’s like to stand by, to hide and to have people die, to have those deaths on my conscience. And I won’t do it again.”

She stared me down, her eyes brimming, full of emotion and the flickers of guilt and fear, and I wasn’t jealous of her any more. All I felt was sorry for her, sorry that she had to experience the same