Separation

“Come out, you cretin. She has done nothing as yet and we have all the time in the world.”

Mildred looked at Markos, whose eyes were intently trained on the scene.

“Now we’ll see who his accomplice is,” the sec boss whispered, cradling his H&K.

From the brush, peering out as though disbelieving of his compatriot, Chan cautiously emerged.

Mildred braced herself, watching Markos’s face. The sec boss appeared to pay the revelation no heed whatsoever—although if she could have seen in clearer light, Mildred would have noted a hardening and tightening around his jaw.

“This is too easy,” Chan said in a voice that, although not loud, carried across the space between himself and his brother in hiding. “She must have said something, if not to her pale friend then to that cretinous Sineta and my fool brother.”

“What? You dare to mock your wonderful brother?” Elias chided.

Chan spit on the ground. “He pretends to love me, but he is like the others. He cannot see me as anything other than freak because of this. He is the hero, stupid as he is, because he has a black skin, and he is the one who would have a chance of marrying the baron’s daughter, even though they would produce brainless cretins.”

“Markos, no!” Mildred hissed as she felt the sec boss brace beside her, his calf and thigh muscles propelling him upward, the catch on his H&K snapping off.

“Let him,” Sineta said, also scrambling to her feet, her tension unleashed by his action.

“Shit, this is not good,” Mildred muttered to herself as both Markos and Sineta broke cover, running for the riverbank.

SILENT IN THE CAVE, Jak watched as Elias and Chan bickered on the bank and then Markos and Sineta— without Mildred—broke cover and walked openly toward the two bandits.

Although no one could ever have told as much from his still-impassive expression, Jak was amazed at what was happening. Mildred hadn’t broken cover, which suggested that the other two hadn’t listened to her. That was their choice, but it was a choice that was likely to get them chilled. Jak couldn’t see for sure, but it looked to him as though only Elias was armed. That cut down on the odds, but it still meant that both the sec boss and the baron’s daughter were offering the giant a clear shot on either or both of them.

Cursing inwardly, Jak uncoiled from his position and began to move toward the lip of the cave.

It looked as if he’d have to make his move before he would have wished.

MILDRED WATCHED them walk into the open in sheer disbelief. She, too, had moved out of cover, but was keeping low. Something that Markos and Sineta were failing to do. She would have expected this from the baron’s daughter, but not from the sec boss.

“Stop right there. Don’t move a muscle or twitch an eyelid, unless you want to join our ancestors.”

Markos’s voice was firm and carried over the distance despite not being loud. It made his brother turn and gasp, falling to his knees as the shock and his accumulated fear finally got the better of him. Elias, on the other hand, was made of sterner stuff.

On hearing the voice, the giant whirled and fired. The shots echoed across the last few words uttered by the sec boss. He laughed maniacally as he fired, falling sideways to avoid being a sitting target for any return fire.

One of the shots hit Markos in the shoulder, throwing him backward, his H&K falling from nerveless fingers. He stared wide-eyed at his shoulder, the shock of seeing his brother followed by his rash action and his injury throwing him into a paralyzed confusion.

“Oh, fuck it,” Mildred muttered under her breath as she moved forward, breaking into a run. The tableau in front of her eyes presented her with two distinct problems. First, Chan was scrambling toward where Markos’s H&K had landed, with the intention of laying hands on it. That would make him a threat, which he hadn’t been up to that point. Second, Elias was standing with a blaster in his hand, sizing up a shot at Sineta. For her part, the baron’s daughter was facing the same dilemma as Mildred. She stood between the two threats, not knowing which one to go for. Her Glock was uselessly pointed somewhere between the two. Mildred could make a snap decision and act. In fact, if she had been standing in Sineta’s position she would have had no hesitation in taking out Elias first, then pivoting and taking out Chan with a second shot. But she wasn’t in that position. From where she was, running, there was no way she could do both. And Sineta, for all her raw courage, had no idea of which to go for first, and no experience to guarantee a good shot.

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