Dark Empathy by Archibald Bradford (inspiring books for teens TXT) 📕

Ophelia tilted her head to one side and pursed her lips in thought.

“So, to avoid suspicion, he had his own Lambda attacked?”

“Why that- oh I am going to whack him but good!” Milly proclaimed indignantly before either of the young men could say anything.

This elicited some strange looks from the others.

“‘But good?’” Nina asked.

The Minotaur’s cheeks turned a bit rosy but she put her hands on her hips and stood by her words.

“It’s what Paul would say!”

Despite the situation, Ophelia let out a short chuckle.

“She’s not wrong.”

After the Flutterby bandaged their ashen-faced prisoner’s foot, having determined that it wasn’t broken too badly, Milly and Bruti got them settled in separate cells.

“Now what?” Nameless asked.

Grant’s reply should have been predictable, but he missed it.

“You tell me.”

“Back to the ranch?” He said with some hesitation.

“Is that you telling me or-”

“Back to the ranch.” Nameless repeated more firmly.

__________

Rebecca nosed around the shelves and stacks of boxes in the storage room, her heart still in her throat from being somewhere she knew she shouldn’t be.

At first she didn’t know what she was looking for, her decision to check the place out having been made on impulse, but then she remembered something from several weeks ago.

The crate that Carol’s employers dropped the night she had delivered late… given the anxiety the men had inspired in her that night she even remembered the markings clearly.

She knew, she just knew, that it was that crate, or one like it, that she needed to find.

Just like everything else in her life, Carol liked things kept orderly so even in the dim light it didn’t take Becks long to find the stack of boxes behind a large shelf at the back of the room.

Putting the shelf between her and the door she levered a stolen pry-bar against the lid of the topmost crate.

The squeak of the nails in the wood was deafening in the storeroom and her ears, already low on her head from tension, went even flatter.

In a a panic she all but dove over the stack of crates to hide behind them, her back to the cold metal wall of the place as she squeezed into the narrow space and ducked down to pray that the roar of the crucible and the hissing of the presses was enough to cover the racket she was making.

It was a couple minutes before she was satisfied that no one was coming to murder her, and she got to her feet and lifted the lid enough to see the box’s contents.

Miranda had shown her illustrations of a number of different weapons in preparation for this eventuality, and it was just as well that she had.

Blasters.

At least a dozen of them in a row, as well as a few flamers and another weapon she didn’t recognize sitting perpendicular to them in the box: a large tube with a strangely bulbous knob on the end of it.

“Carrot sticks.” She cursed breathlessly.

A tiny part of her still clung to the idea that this whole thing might somehow have been a crazy misunderstanding, but not anymore, not with the evidence right beneath her nose.

She quickly put the lid back as she looked to the other crates, her body still squeezed in tight behind them.

There were six of them with matching labels: this was what the Aegis had wanted her to find out, what they desperately needed to know.

A weak smile spread across her face when she realized that they weren’t expecting her to find out today!

Then her heart stopped when she heard the door to the storage room open again and she ducked down again, her side now flat to the floor behind the crates as she heard voices coming towards her.

“-followed her like Gregory wanted, the little snot chased me off though.”

“But you’re sure she went to the bathroom? She wasn’t there when I checked.” An unfamiliar voice responded.

The two men were hauling something heavy, she could tell just by their heavy breathing as they drew near to her hiding place.

Her heart was in her throat and she nearly screamed when she heard them heft another box on top of the one she was hiding behind, the rough wood scraping together was almost deafening.

Her grip tightened on the pry-bar as she waited on a reply.

“You think I want to end up in the crucible like that Gardner woman? I’m sure, where the hell else would she go?”

She could smell their sour sweat they were so close, just a few inches of wood and a few hundred pounds of murder between her and them.

“Whatever, I guess she must have left already. I’ll let Gregory know. Come on then. This is the last of the ‘special’ crates.” His words came out loaded with meaning.

“Don’t wink at me, it’s weird.” The first man complained as they left the room.

When the door closed Rebecca let out the breath she’d been holding in a long shuddering gasp.

Then she nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard the storage door lock with a harsh click.

__________

Nameless and his team had arrived back at the Davis Ranch late in the evening, but no one was tired, just eager to settle this.

The house on the hill had a single lantern burning in the front window, but even as they came within sight of it someone inside blew it out.

Grant turned to him before they went any further.

“Alright Probie, what’s next?”

Nameless was expecting the question, and had his answer ready.

“We detain everyone, we don’t know how many of the hands are involved in this.”

“And the protocol?”

“The evidence we have is enough to justify a no-knock entry. But thus far offenders have been