Love and Decay, Episode 10 by Rachel Higginson Read Free Book Online

had been cleared out of the units when they first converted it to an apartment complex.
    We walked through all kinds of trinkets, antiques, baby things and outdated clothing before we got to a solid steel door with about six different locks lined up on the right side. One of the guards pulled out a set of keys I’d seen passed around to whichever guard was in charge of the current shift and set about getting us outside.
    While he worked through his numerous keys, I introduced myself and learned that the three men were all in their mid-forties. Two of them had been here since before Gage showed up and one had arrived three months ago. Their names were forgotten almost as soon as they’d given them to me. I felt bad, but I was too wrapped up in Kane’s overshadowing presence to pay real attention.
    There was a secret-ish entrance out the back of the perimeter wall. A door, carved in the stone, with as many locks as the steel door by the loading dock, only this one was camouflaged to match the stone. I’d used it only three times to go down to the creek for two baths, and once to wash out some clothes.
    The men walking with us, nodded in greeting to the guards walking around the back grassy area, but didn’t attempt to draw them into conversation.
    “Do you have a weapon on you?” One of the guards asked me when the door was unlocked and ready to be pulled open.
    I pulled out a handgun from my large cargo pocked near my calf. I checked the clip, clicked off the safety and nodded. “And a knife.”
    “Good,” he grunted. “We’ll stay close enough to call for help, but we won’t have the normal protection.”
    “Should we wait?” Unease rushed through me at the idea of spending time in these woods without the normal circle of armed weapons. Gage split up bathing between women and men every three days. So the women would bathe one night, the men the next and then the third night we would wash clothes. Whenever it was time to get into the creek, Gage would assign a group of about twenty to make a protective circle while we were occupied in the creek and then twenty of us would take their place while they bathed. It wasn’t exactly an army, but it made me feel better about getting near-naked in the middle of an Oklahoma forest.
    “Nah.” The guard yanked open the door and held it open for us. “There’s just one of him; it won’t take long.”
    “Besides,” another put in. “You’d have a hard time finding anyone willing to risk their life for him.”
    Kane snorted at that. “To credit your own stupidity.”
    “What was that?” the third guard demanded at the same time he shoved Kane in the back with the butt of his rifle.
    Kane stumbled forward and I reached out instinctively to steady him with two hands on his bicep. He winced when I grabbed his cut and I immediately let go.
    Cursing under his breath, he looked up at me and met my startled gaze in the soft afternoon light. “Thank you.” His voice was a low rumble and infinitely gentler than before.
    “I didn’t realize your arm still hurt that bad,” I looked back at the forest floor where patches of rich summer grass mingled with dead leaves and broken branches. We’d been lucky with a relatively cool summer so far, but temperatures were definitely heating up and in my long sleeved t-shirt and jeans I was starting to sweat.
    “I’m fine,” Kane returned his attention to the makeshift path in front of us.
    “Did they…. Has someone….” I wasn’t exactly sure how to ask him if someone had looked at his injuries. After they’d taken Kane away and we settled into the activity room, Gage had sent a former doctor to look at my head wound. I assumed they did the same for Kane; but I’d never bothered to ask.
    Feelings of cruel hope they’d let him suffer and humanitarian sympathy that they hadn’t been as callous as me warred inside my head.
    “They made sure I wasn’t dying,” he answered dryly. “But by now I probably have an