Certainly, their first plan to get out of here had been a miserable failure.
If you can’t trust the cops to do the right thing, he wondered what was left.
Whose responsibility is it to watch after the cops, anyway? If they’re the enemy, then who else is there?
Maybe his dad was coming to get him right now. Maybe they were fueling up the Little Bird helicopters at this very moment, and they were waiting to swoop down and take everybody out. That’s what the Unit did for perfect strangers, right? Was it too much to ask for a little of the same consideration for family?
No, it wasn’t too much to ask.
But it was too much to answer.
The fact was that Ryan and Christyne Nasbe were flat-ass out of options. This prison he was in now was impenetrable and inescapable. And even if there was a chance that lightning would strike the guards whose shadows he could almost see walking around in the strip of light that infiltrated in under the door, what was he supposed to do with a broken wing?
Jesus, it hurt. Reaching over with his left hand to explore his wounded right, he could feel how his fingers had swollen to the size of sausages. His wrist had swollen, too, making the cuff of his jacket and his sweater way too tight, but it was so freaking cold in here that he didn’t want to take them off.
His eyes began to sting as he thought through the stink pile that his life had become, and he felt his lip tremble. There had to be a way out of here. There had to be a way for him to be more than a simple victim.
His breath caught in his throat.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered aloud. He didn’t want to give them that kind of satisfaction.
Movement outside his door brought his eyes up and put him on full alert. He heard the sound that could only be that of a padlock being manipulated in its hasp.
He tried to prepare himself for a fight, but his wounded arm simply would not let him.
The lock slid clear, and then the horizontal seam of light was joined by a vertical cousin. Someone was entering his space.
“Just stop it,” a voice said. It was Colleen. “I’m going to do this.”
“They said to leave him alone,” another voice said.
“This is the right thing to do,” Colleen said.
“I’m not covering for you.”
“I didn’t ask you to,” she said, and then she entered his little space. The light behind her in the hallway was dim, but it still made Ryan squint. “Hi, Ryan,” she said. Her arms were filled with items that he couldn’t quite make out.
“What do you want?” Ryan asked.
“My name is Sister Colleen,” she said. “I’m here to splint your arm.”
Ryan drew himself up tighter. “That’s okay, I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” Colleen countered. “Your arm is broken and it needs to be splinted. It’ll make it feel better.”
“What do you care?”
She moved to his side and set a gym bag on the ground. When she opened it, he saw gauze and scissors and a piece of wood. Suddenly, he was back in Cub Scouts playing with first-aid stuff.
Colleen didn’t look at him as she said, “Brother Michael shouldn’t have treated you like that. That was wrong.”
Ryan couldn’t help but chuckle. “Aren’t you the one who killed a bunch of people in their cars?”
She shook her head. “That was different,” she said. “They were the enemy. You’re our guest.”
Holy shit, did she just say guest? He opted to keep his mouth shut.
“I know you think we’re bad people,” Colleen said, spreading out her gear like a surgeon would spread out his instruments. “But we’re not. This is what happens when you go to war.”
“War?” He’d blurted out the question before he could stop himself. “Who are you at war with?”
“The Users,” she said.
The word rang a bell as one she’d used earlier.
Colleen leaned forward to get a better look at his arm, then shouted over her shoulder, “Turn on the light.”
The voice from the hall said, “Brother Michael said no.”
“Then rat me out later,” Colleen said. “Right now I need light.”
It probably took ten seconds, but ultimately, an overhead lightbulb jumped to life, bathing them in incandescent white light. As he’d suspected, his wrist and hand-the only parts he could see-were purple and swollen, the discoloration extending all the way to his knuckles on his first two fingers. The angulation of the bones wasn’t as disgusting as he’d feared, but that probably had as much to do with the bulk of his clothes as the actual arrangement of his anatomy.
“I know what I’m doing,” Colleen said. “I’ve treated injuries here on the compound for years. You can relax.”
Instinctively, Ryan protected his arm and scooched backward on his butt.
“Really, I’m not here to hurt you.”
“No, you’re just here to kidnap me.”
Colleen paused as she considered those words. “Different things,” she said. As if that was an explanation. She picked up a pair of scissors, the kind you only see in doctors’ offices, on which one of the jaws is blunted so it doesn’t cut flesh. “We need to get your coat and sweater off.”
He tried to move farther away, but he was up against a hard stop of stuff. “I’m really fine the way I am.”
She cocked her head in a look of feigned patience. “Do you know what can happen if a broken bone is not mended?”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “It stays broken.”
Colleen rolled her eyes. “Well, that, yes. Of course. But that’s the very best case. The worst case is that you move the wrong way and a bone end pinches a blood vessel or maybe punctures one. They you either bleed to death or you get gangrene and they have to cut off the arm. The alternative would be to die. Which one of those do you like?”
He didn’t know what to say. He offered his arm.
She slid the blunted side of the jaws under the cuff of his sleeve, and with a gentleness that surprised him, she moved an inch at a time, pinching a bit of fabric and then snipping it, going through all the layers simultaneously. “If I hurt you, let me know.”
“Sister Colleen,” Ryan said, tasting the phrase. “Are you a nun or something?”
When she shook her head, he caught a flash of fiery red hair from under the scarf she wore. “No, I am not a nun. I am, however, a child of God.”
“Aren’t we all?”
He’d meant it as a throwaway line, a space-taker, but Colleen didn’t know that. “Not all of us,” she said. “Not the Users.”
Colleen’s thumb found a sensitive spot on his arm and he jumped. “Ow!”
She stopped cutting and pulled the scissors hand away. “I’m sorry,” she said. She looked like she meant it.
“That’s okay. Hit a nerve or something, I guess.” As the flesh of his arm was exposed, he discovered a sense of relief. His arm was swollen, and the area from the middle of his forearm to his wrist looked like it had been bruised, but it didn’t look as bad as it hurt. He’d been expecting something L-shaped, but it was nothing like that. As the scissors passed his elbow, Colleen gently placed his forearm back on the pillow, and then used both hands to cut his clothes away to the shoulder.
“You have good muscles,” she said, stroking his biceps.
The words startled him. Her touch inexplicably turned him on. “Um, thanks. A few weeks in a cast should take care of that, though.” As soon as the sarcasm escaped his mouth, he wished that he could bring it back. She was being nice to him, for God’s sake. You know, after she’d kidnapped him and threatened to kill him.
“Who are the Users?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.
“They’re most of the world. They’re the people who take all of God’s gifts for their own and give nothing back. They live for money and not for goodness. They forget about Him and refuse to pay Him His due.”
