A young man. Blond hair, sullen expression, a face and a body language that jolted into recognition… the warehouse.
Corinthian.
Christian.
Brother.
“Alive, after all,” Christian said. “So happy to be here. I can tell.”
“Happier to be out of here. What’re my chances?”
“Hey. You’re already lucky. Pump drugs into a body, you don’t know, you woke up. I don’t know what’s your bitch.”
He didn’t think he liked Christian Bowe. But there was some cause, he could see that, for Corinthian not to like the situation. Christian Bowe said it—he was alive: point on Corinthian’s side.
He looked his half-brother up and down. Pretty boy, he thought. Papa had good genes.
“So why’d you bring me here?”
“Hell if I know.”
It was more and less answer than he expected. A disconcerting answer. “So what do you want for me to get out of here?”
“Idea of the moment, bringing you here. Don’t ask me. I don’t do long-range planning.”
“Am I the only one?”
“The only what?”
Temper flared. “The only one, the only one you brought aboard, you know damned well what I mean.”
Pretty-boy made a motion of his fingers. “No. I don’t know. What do you mean?”
“Screw you.” It wasn’t getting anywhere. This wasn’t a friend. He walked back to his bed and sat down.
“You mean your mama?” Christian asked from the other side of the bars.
He meant Marie. He was scared. And mad. He tucked his foot up into the circle of his arms and the cable dragged across his shins. He didn’t look at Christian Bowe. He didn’t expect any help, or any honest answer.
But if they’d caught Marie, he thought Christian would be happy to tell him so.
Machinery whined, sharply, suddenly. The cable jerked tight, jerked him off the bed and up against the wall, his arm drawn up and up.
The whine stopped. His arm did, the bracelet cutting into his wrist, his feet all but off the deck. It hurt, from his chest to his wrist. It scared him, what they could do, what his half-brother could do.
“Want down?”
“Son of a—”
The cable yanked him half his height up the wall. It made him think, at that point of rest, what the winch could do to his wrist once it hit the exit point.
“Want down?” Christian asked.
He had a choice. He knew he had a choice. He’d never backed down in his life. He couldn’t manage to say I give. Couldn’t find it.
The winch took up another spurt. There wasn’t another inch left.
“Want down?”
He couldn’t get the wit to talk. He couldn’t frame an appeal to reason. Or kinship.
“Good day,” Christian said, “good luck, good bye.”
“Christian!”
“Please?”
“Damn you!”
Christian walked off. He hung there, against the spin of the whole of Viking station, telling himself he’d been a fool, he had nothing to win, he’d nothing to lose, he just wanted down before his arm broke or his hand went dead, which could happen, and he didn’t know how long it could take.
“Christian, damn you!”
He’d been a fool. But he wasn’t sorry. Hell, he wasn’t sorry. He’d seen more of Corinthian already than he hoped to see in his lifetime, he didn’t like it, he hoped for papa’s curiosity, if nothing else, to draw him down to wherever his prison was, and he hoped to hell they hadn’t caught Marie.
God, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think of anything but that his wrist or his shoulder was going to give.
He heard Christian’s footsteps going away.
“Help!” he yelled, “help! dammit!” and couldn’t get the breath to call out, after.
Christian didn’t come back. Not right away.
Eventually—he measured the time in the clunk and thump of the loader hydraulics—Christian’s shadow darkened the bars again, and Christian hung a casual forearm through the grid.
“Want down?”
Damn you, was what he wanted to say. He’d said it to his cousins. But his cousins wouldn’t kill him, and something said Christian might, given the right moment.
“Yes,” he said through his teeth.
“Pity,” Christian said. And left him.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelled, and ran out of breath.