“What are you doing here? Did you—” He strode closer to me, his expression baffled. “Did you follow me here?” He looked down at my phone. The phone that was very obviously not the one he gave me.
“Uhhh . . .” I quickly pressed Send on that partial last message and fumbled for the button to lock it.
I wasn’t fast enough. He snatched it out of my hand and read what was on the screen. I dove for it, but he spun away and swiped through messages, his face contorting with rage as he read.
“Are you serious?” he hissed, turning to face me. His eyes had gone black. “Were you spying on me?”
I said nothing. I was searching for an escape route. If I just took off, I might be able to outrun him.
He grabbed my arm. I’d missed my opportunity.
“What was this, then?” His voice rose with every word until he was shouting. “When you came back to me, you were lying?”
I took a deep breath. The only option here was to try and keep Julian calm. “I was just—I was just scared and confused, and I—”
“You lying bitch,” he spat. “You ungrateful, lying bitch! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I froze. I should have tried to twist out of his grasp—he was hurting me—but my brain wouldn’t listen.
Danger.
“I saved you!” he yelled. “You would have been back on a bus to Dallas if it weren’t for me. And this is how you repay me?”
He was nearly shaking with rage. My breath started coming in short, panicked gasps.
“I trusted you! I told you . . .” He trailed off, eyes widening. He grabbed my other wrist, yanking me closer so he could scream in my face. “You stupid, worthless piece of—I can’t believe I ever thought I was in love with you. You’re fucking pathetic, you know that?”
“Julian, please let me go.” My voice wobbled. I was suddenly replaying every moment of our training in my head. He was incredibly strong and fast, and I didn’t think I could hold my own against him, even if I managed to grab a weapon from my backpack. A scrab I could handle, but Julian? Julian was scary as hell.
“Let you go,” he scoffed. “You really are a moron, you know that? You think I’m just going to let you walk out of here?”
He yanked on my arm and began walking. I dug my heels in, desperately trying to twist out of his grasp. But he held firm, pulling so hard on my wrist that I stumbled and hit the ground.
He tore my backpack off, tossed it out of reach, and then grasped the back of my shirt. The fabric pulled tight around my neck as he began dragging me.
“Julian,” I wheezed, my feet kicking up dirt. “You’re choking me.”
“Too damn bad!” he yelled. “This is what you get for picking Grayson over me. You brought this on yourself!”
He walked faster, heading toward the smaller stables in the distance. I desperately tried to pull my shirt away from my neck, tears welling in my eyes. My vision started to go black.
He dropped me suddenly. I hit my knees, gasping for air.
The world began to come back into focus, and I scrambled to my feet. We were in the stables. Julian grabbed my wrist again.
I screamed for help. I’d take my chances with one of the MDG guys.
A familiar man ran into the barn. It was Webb, eyes wide. “What the hell is going on?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Julian said, roughly spinning me around. The stables were made up of stalls like the ones I’d seen in France, though these were wooden, with just simple locks on the doors. Inside, handcuffs dangled from the walls.
Julian shoved me toward the closest stall and then threw me inside. I stumbled and hit the ground. The door slammed shut. The lock clicked.
“Isn’t that one of Grayson’s people?” Webb asked. “What is she doing here?”
“I’m taking care of it,” Julian said sharply. “We need to get the scrabs out of here now. Grayson and some other idiots are on their way. Maybe the police too.”
“Are you kidding me? I’ve got fifty SACs to load still, and every single one has to be secured properly.”
I slowly got to my feet. My legs were shaking.
“I don’t care,” Julian said. “Just throw them in there.”
“Kid, I cannot just throw them in there,” Webb said, clearly exasperated. “These things get antsy in their crates.”
“Just do it!” Julian yelled. “My dad will kill me if I don’t get this shipment out, and I don’t know how long we have.”
“Don’t panic,” Webb said. “We can fix this. We loaded all the best SACs first. We can spare some to help us take care of this.”
“What do you mean?” Julian asked.
“We’ve got fifty that still need to be loaded, and about thirty that were rejected from the program that we need to kill and dump tonight anyway. Let’s put ’em to use instead. Hey—Drew?” He paused. There was no response that I could hear. He must have been talking on the phone. “Have you finished securing the SACs in container two?” He paused. “No, that’s fine. You can finish in a minute. Do me a favor and grab those reject scrabs and put them at the north and south checkpoints. Half on each side. Just let ’em loose on whoever tries to get through.”
“Julian, don’t let him do that!” I yelled. “You’re seriously going to sic scrabs on your own team? On Grayson?”
“The dude wants to kill scrabs,” Webb said. “Let him do it! Hey—and Drew? Put, like, three good SACs at the front of the house, just in case. Don’t activate them yet.” He paused. “What are you going to do about her?”
“I’ll take care of her in a minute,” Julian said.
I swallowed down a wave of panic.
“What does that . . .” Webb trailed off. “You know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know. I’m just going to go mind my
