“Barrett!” Mallory calls out for me in my dreams, and I sit bolt upright, instantly awake. I turn to reach for her, but she’s gone.

Of course she’s gone. I tried to kill her in my sleep again.

But this time she’s really gone. Not just in the corner of the shelter, curled up on her blanket. She’s—

Fuck, she could be anywhere.

I pull my shirt on and shove the hatch open, then stand aside so I don’t get smacked by the ladder. Mallory said she wouldn’t go far. She said she’d come back in the morning, but I can tell from the quality of the sunlight and the position of the sun that half the morning is already gone.

I overslept. Which is no surprise, considering I was up half the night, and Mallory isn’t here to wake me up by kissing her way down my chest or nibbling on my ear.

How did I ever live here alone? I can hardly remember what my life was like without her.

I skip every other rung and am up the ladder in four steps, scanning the horizon for her. I close the hatch and head through the field, searching for any sign of Mallory. If she overslept too, she could still be passed out on her blanket. But if she slept in the woods—

No, there she is. My gaze snags on a patch of bright blue in the reddish brown of the overgrown field. Mallory’s blanket. I veer toward it, my heart pounding as I mentally grasp for some new way to apologize, but—

She’s not there.

My heart seizes, refusing to beat. Mallory’s blanket lies crumpled on the ground. A few feet away, her white leather satchel has been abandoned in the dirt, the contents scattered, as if the bag fell while she was running.

She didn’t stop for her bag. Which means she couldn’t stop for her bag. Someone took her. Or someone was chasing her.

She could be anywhere. Varian could have her.

She could already be dead.

No. I swear I just heard her call my name. She’s alive, and I can still find her.

I shove her things back into her bag, and for a moment, my attention is captured by a small metal disk lying among them. A holo-disk. Like the makeup, it must belong to the original owner of the satchel. I drop it into the bag with everything else, then I grab Mallory’s blanket and race back to the shelter, where I rearrange the vines and brush to better cover the top. Then I stand on it and study the surrounding field.

The reddish stalks of grass are waist-high on me, and they’re densely packed in places. With the extra height the top of the shelter gives me, I can see the paths Mallory and I usually take to the stream and to the woods, because the grass along those trails has been trampled underfoot.

There’s no trail leading to where I found her blanket, because that isn’t a frequently used path, and Mallory’s only one small person. But when I study the field carefully, I can see a sparse trail of infrequently broken stalks leading from approximately that spot toward the woods, at an angle from the one we usually take.

Someone walked from Mallory’s overnight campsite to the woods. Someone big enough to leave a trail. Maybe more than one someone.

I hoist her bag over my head so that the strap lies flat and secure across my chest, then I take off for the woods. Just inside the tree line, I stumble to a stop. I have no idea where to go. Whoever has Mallory, they’re not too far ahead of me. So I close my eyes and listen, on alert for any sound other than the rustle of leaves in the wind and the scurry of small animals through the brush. But I hear no footsteps. No voices. Nothing but the normal sounds of the forest.

Think, Barrett!

Whoever took Mallory was out and about fairly early, which means they probably didn’t come from very far away. I close my eyes again, trying to visualize the layout of the land around my shelter. When I first found it, I did a lot of reconnaissance, to make sure I knew how much of a threat my nearest “neighbors” were.

There are only two clusters of buildings within easy walking distance of the shelter. One is a grouping of three structures, occupied by twenty or so men, from what I could tell. The other is just a pair of rundown buildings that were unoccupied when I scoped them out, probably because they boasted neither running water nor furniture.

Whoever took Mallory is more likely to live in the cluster of three buildings, but he—or they—would have to be crazy to take her back there. Surely any kidnapper with half a brain would take her to one of the abandoned buildings, in order to hide her. To keep her for himself.

I set off into the woods, glad that it’s cooler here, without direct sunlight beating down on my head. Before long, I get the distinct feeling I’m being watched. Followed. But every time I turn to look, I see nothing but reddish foliage and rust-colored dirt.

There’s no outward sign that I’m not alone in the woods. No snapping of twigs or rustling of the underbrush. Not even the scurrying of rabbits or squirrels. Yet that feeling persists. It raises the hair on the back of my neck and frays my nerve endings, shortening my temper when I’m already intensely on-edge. I don’t have time for this shit. Mallory needs me

Finally I turn and face the forest, my arms thrown out at my sides in wordless challenge, while a growl rumbles up from my throat.

Come out and face me, fucker!

Yet no one steps into sight. And without any evidence that anyone is even there, I feel like a fool. So I turn back around and carry on, trying to ignore the niggling sensation of someone’s gaze trained on my back.

After nearly an hour of hiking, I realize I’ve veered off-course somewhere. It’s been months since I’ve been to either set of buildings, and I can’t entirely remember the way.

I stop to relieve myself and eat something while I try to figure out where I went wrong, and as I’m digging in Mallory’s satchel for a snack, my fingers brush that holo-disk again. Curious, I pull it out, and this time I notice that there’s a label stamped into the bottom of the disk. It reads, “UA Resort Rental Catalogue.”

A sick feeling churns in my stomach.

I set the disk on the ground, label-side down, and press my thumb to the top. The center of the disk becomes a ring of bright light, which projects above itself—right in front of me—a life-sized holographic video of a young, naked woman standing with her hands clasped at her back, her gaze trained on the ground. She’s half a head shorter than I am, with light brown hair cascading over her shoulders in soft waves.

“State your name and your prisoner number, please,” a voice says from off-camera, and the woman in the holo-vid looks up.

“Lilliana Marie Malone. Prisoner number 4084786.”

“And how old are you, prisoner 4084786?” that same voice asks.

“Twenty-two standard Earth years.”

Battling blinding outrage, I squat on the ground and tap the disk, intending to turn it off. Instead, my quick tap skips the video to another catalogue entry, and suddenly Mallory is standing right here with me in the forest. Only this isn’t the Mallory I’ve gotten to know over the past few weeks.

This Mallory is completely nude, and there’s an oddly empty look in her eyes. Not like there’s no one home, but like there’s no one willing to answer the door. As if she’s closed herself off from the world. I know that look. Varian’s girls all had that look, by the time they’d been with him for a few months.

“State your name and your prisoner number, please,” that same off-camera voice says, and the holo-vid of Mallory clears her throat.

“Mallory Landrum. Prisoner number 4084792.”

“How old are you, prisoner 4084792?” the voice asks.

“Twenty standard Earth years.”

“And now turn around for me slowly. Show the customers what they’ll be getting.”

Mallory turns in a circle, reluctantly modeling her beautiful body for a customer base cruel and wealthy enough to rent a human being for an evening, and the rage building inside me erupts through my throat in a vicious growl as the hologram flickers and the video clip begins playing over again.

I watch it four times. I look into her eyes as she stares right through me. I reach for her, and my hand scatters the image, fracturing it into a million points of light.

I wondered how many times Gerald and Phoebe watched this before they paid for the right to rape her.

If I don’t find her soon, that’s exactly what’s going to happen again.

I bend and press my thumb to the disk, and Mallory disappears. The circle of light fades, but before I can pick up the holo-disk, a soft sound draws my attention and I look up.

Cody stands a body’s length away, staring not at me, but at the disk. “Play it again,” he says.

I stare at him, trying to understand. I killed you. Was I mistaken about that? Could he survive the head-bashing I gave him? My gut says no, but my own head is evidence to the contrary.

With it hidden by his hair, I can’t see the wound I thought had killed him, but he’s clearly still suffering its effects. His voice sounds strange. No, not his actual voice, but his delivery of the words. His verbal cadence.

I’ve never known Cody to use three words when eight words will do the job. His speech is full of colloquialisms and tangents. Dirty jokes and pointless asides. And now his eyes look…pale. Weren’t they a dark brown, before? Can brain damage change one’s eye color?

It must be the light, here under the reddish canopy.

Either way, I’m not playing the footage again for him. I wouldn’t have played it at all, if I’d known he was watching. Clearly I should have hit the bastard harder with that damn bottle.

I reach for the disk, but before I can touch it, Cody lunges in and squats to press his thumb to it. Mallory appears again, standing between us in the nude. He stands and frowns at her.

I lunge for him, scattering her image again, but he dodges me and kneels to tap the disk. He looks up at the woman standing over him, and I watch, puzzled, as he frowns again. This isn’t what he wants either.

Cody taps the disk again, and a new woman appears. Then again, and we’re looking at yet another woman. He frowns at the disk and taps the other side of it, and the clip reverts to the previous image. He taps that side again, and again, and Mallory reappears. Then he taps it one more time, and the first woman I saw, Lilliana Marie Malone, stands in front of us one more time.

Cody stands slowly, staring at her as if he’s never seen a woman before. He wasn’t ogling Mallory. He didn’t even seem to recognize her. He’s struck by Lilliana Marie Malone—surely the friend Mallory calls Lilli.

Well, he’s not going to get anywhere near this Lilli, even if she is in zone three, as Mallory believes. Not after what he tried to do to my Mallory within seconds of meeting her.

I really should have swung that bottle harder.

I squat and reach for the disk, and this time I’m able to grab it and turn it off because he’s still staring, dumbstruck, at Lilli.

“Mine.” Cody reaches for the disk, and I shove it into my pocket, to keep it away from him. I point off into the woods, telling him to go, and when he only stares at me, his hand still waiting for the disk, I shove him. Hard. He goes down in the dirt and stares up at me. Shocked. Fucker must be seriously damaged, if he forgot I can whip his ass every damn day of the week. Maybe I hit him hard enough after all.

I should feel bad about that, considering my own experience with a traumatic brain injury. Yet I feel nothing for Cody, except rage at the memory of what he tried to do to Mallory. So I point into the woods again, giving him one last chance to disappear, before I stomp him into forest fertilizer.

When he only stares up at me, I grab Mallory’s white leather satchel and I leave him in the dirt.

I sip from my water pouch every few minutes as I go, but I don’t take time to refill it, even though it’s nearly empty, because I’ve wasted enough time already. Every second that passes without Mallory in my arms is another second something terrible could be happening to her. And I suspect I’m still headed off-course.

Finally, I emerge from the woods, and immediately I understand my mistake. Directly ahead, where I expected to find two buildings standing on a hill, is the tall, smooth metal wall separating zone three from one of the other zones. I’ve gotten turned around—it’s hard to judge direction when the sun is directly overhead—but with the wall as a landmark, I know exactly where to go. So I spin around and take off into the woods again, at a run this time.

Twenty minutes later, I emerge from the forest, and straight ahead I see the two hilltop buildings I remember from my exploration a few months ago. Only now they look decidedly less abandoned.

Behind the building on the left, where it isn’t visible from the front, three fire pits have been dug into the ground. I can’t tell for sure from this distance, but they appear to be permanently lined with stones. Also out back, an odd assortment of bedding and clothing hangs over a cord strung between two trees, like an old-fashioned clothesline. And several of the first-floor windows are covered from the inside by cloth the nondescript color of prison-issued sheets.

I’ve never seen a prisoner hang out laundry.

Someone definitely lives here now. Lots of someones. Which changes everything. It could take me an hour to search this place for Mallory, considering the resistance I’ll encounter from the residents and my inability to tell them what I’m looking for. And if Mallory isn’t here, I don’t want the occupants to know that she exists at all. The fewer men who know there’s a beautiful, vulnerable young woman lost in zone three, the better.

And my search could be nothing but a dangerous delay, if she’s actually in that other settlement. Which will take me at least another hour to get to.

Fuck.

I step back into the woods and hunker down to watch. To assess the size and makeup of the population of this new settlement, before I take action. Reconnaissance is a critical part of any successful mission. I learned that during my four years as a soldier for the planet Kallisto and I used the skill long after my discharge, when Varian “promoted” me from bodyguard to enforcer—a title the Royses used as a euphemism for hitman.

But this time, my training is at odds with my instinct. If Mallory’s up there, I can’t just sit down here and wait until it’s safe to rescue her. Someone could be hurting her now. Yet if I rush in and get myself killed…

I’m paralyzed by indecision, afraid that no matter what I do, I’ll be making a mistake and Mallory will pay the price. Because that’s what happened with Norah.

Fuck it. Norah died because Varian and his men—my former coworkers—got the jump on me. This time I’ll get the jump on them. Or on whoever has Mallory.

I’m about to step out of the woods when two men and a woman round the corner of the right-hand building, headed for the one that’s obviously occupied. Both of the men are large—gladiator size—but one is also very tall. And he’s carrying something in both arms.

No, he’s carrying someone. Someone small, with long, dark hair…

Mallory. Her head and arms hang limp in the tall man’s grip, her hair swaying with each step. She’s hurt. Or unconscious. Or both.

Pain lances my chest like a spear, and I step out of the woods, my thoughts racing as fast as my feet. But they disappear into the left-hand building without noticing me. They’re focused entirely on Mallory. And the fact that there’s a woman with them confuses me. Women are rare in zone three, at least in my experience, and I’ve never seen two of them together.

Have these people hurt Mallory, or are they trying to help her? If they took her from the field near my shelter, why are they coming from a different direction?

I race toward the building, and one of the makeshift curtains moves. A face appears in the window. It’s another woman. Her eyes widen when she sees me, then she disappears and the curtain falls back into place.

When I’m a few feet from the front door, it swings open. People pour out of the building, and in the lead are five large men, including the two I just saw with Mallory. Their fists are clenched and their jaws bulge with tension. They’re ready for a fight, and they look entirely capable of doing serious damage. But behind them…

Women. Four of them. Three carry long, sharpened sticks—homemade spears.

What is this place? When I scouted this building out a few months ago, it was empty. The floors were thick with dust. Now it’s home to a settlement that includes several women carrying spears?

I should have patrolled more often.

“Leave,” the man in the front growls at me. It’s the tall man who carried Mallory into the building. One side of his face is bisected by scar tissue from a wound that clearly got very little medical care, if any. “Turn around right now, and we won’t kill you.”

There are more than enough of them to do just that, if these men are even half as dangerous as they look. But they have Mallory. I have no way of telling them that she’s mine. That she depends upon me to protect her. That I’m not leaving here without her.

“You have until the count of three,” the tall man says.

“Ty, wait.” A blond woman steps past him, and he pulls her back with a look that is half annoyance, half protective instinct. He clearly cares about this woman. Which means he should understand why I’m here.

“Who are you?” the blond asks.

I can only shake my head at her.

“What do you want?” a very small brunette asks, gripping a spear taller than she is. Her gaze finds Mallory’s bag, still hanging across my chest. “Maybe he wants to trade.”

Again, I can’t answer.

“Doesn’t matter. Go,” Ty growls, hard gaze trained on me. “And if you tell anyone about this place, we will hunt you down and tear you limb from limb.”

And suddenly I understand. The men aren’t hurting these women. They aren’t collecting or selling them. Or using them. The women look healthy. They look eager to defend their home.

This is a sanctuary.

They didn’t hurt Mallory; they’re trying to help her. But so am I. I have to figure out some way to tell them—

The holo-disk.

I slide my hand into my pocket, and all five of the men tense, clearly expecting me to pull out a weapon. The three women holding spears raise them. If they’re any good, I’m about to be riddled with holes.

I slowly remove my hand from my pocket and raise both of them, showing everyone my empty palms, in the universal signal for “I mean you no harm.” Then I pull the strap of Mallory’s bag over my head and set it on the ground in front of me.

“I think he wants to show us something,” the blond woman says, as behind her, yet another woman steps out of the building. She has long, dark hair, and unlike the others, who all wear variations of the standard-issue uniform, she’s wearing a white button-down blouse with her prison pants. She looks familiar, but I can’t—

“Barrett Oliver,” she says, making her way to the front of the crowd, and suddenly I realize who I’m looking at. Kaya Johnston, one of the sponsorship liaisons from the arena in zone one. A Universal Authority employee.

What the hell is she doing down here, living with prisoners?

“You know him?” the guy to her left says, stepping closer to her, as if he’s resisting the urge to shield her with his own body.

“Not personally. He was the champion the season before Sylvie,” Kaya says, and several gazes flick toward the slim, fit woman who isn’t carrying a spear. She must be Sylvie. “Barrett wasn’t mine, but he was a huge fan favorite, because—” Kaya’s eyes widen. “He’s non-verbal. You guys, he’s not being obtuse. He just can’t speak.”

“Seriously, I think he’s trying to show us something,” the blond woman repeats.

“There’s something in your pocket?” the man standing protectively close to Kaya says. He’s massively muscled, and his face looks familiar too, though I don’t think we were in the bullpen at the same time.

I nod to answer him.

“Is it a weapon?”

I shake my head.

“I’m going to come get it. Okay? That way, the ladies get to keep fondling their big sticks, instead of poking you with them.”

“Sebastian!” Kaya smacks him on the arm, and he flashes her a playful smile.

“Come on, you know you were thinking it.”

Sebastian. Sebastian Wolfe. Havoc. That’s why he looks familiar; he was a civilian gladiator. And at some point since I left the arena, he was evidently a convict gladiator. Though there shouldn’t have been enough time since my release for both Sylvie and Sebastian to be named champions.

Sebastian approaches me carefully. “Okay, put your hands up.” I slowly raise my hands again as he stops in front of me. “I promise this is not an excuse to feel you up.”

I growl at him, but he only laughs.

“Okay, then let’s just get this over with.” He slides his hand into my right pocket and pulls out the disk. “This it?” he asks, holding it up for me to see. “Is this a holo-disk?” I nod, and he frowns. “Where the hell did you get a holo-disk?”

I can’t answer, so Sebastian backs away and sets the disk on the ground, halfway between me and the small mob ready to stab me to death with sharpened sticks. Then he presses his thumb to the disk.

Mallory appears over it, naked, and several of the ladies gasp. My teeth grind together. I hate that they’re all seeing her like this. But I had no other choice.

“That’s the girl you just brought in!” the blond woman says to Ty.

“Mallory,” one of the other women tells her, and when I look closer at this woman, I realize she is Lilliana Marie Malone, the prisoner whose clip played before Mallory’s on the holo-disk. “Mal got caught when we escaped the Resort. Graham went back for her, and he got caught too.”

All gazes turn to one of the men, obviously another gladiator. His eyes widen as he stares at Mallory’s face. “Holy shit, that is her. I hardly even looked at her that day, I was so focused on getting us to the gate.”

The Resort. Finally the holo-disk and the things Mallory has told me about her time on Rhodon click into place. These are the women she mentioned, who escaped from the Resort into zone three. And Graham is the man who got caught because he tried to help her. I’d bet everything I own that they sent him to the arena. He has the build of a gladiator. Though, again, there haven’t been enough seasons since my victory for this many new gladiators to be in zone three.

“What is that?” the very small woman asks, studying Mallory’s image as the off-camera voice asks her to state her name.

“It’s the Resort’s rental catalogue,” Kaya tells her. “They’re given out to guests, so they can look through the selection to pick…you know.” She shrugs, and my blood boils.

“We all had to film one of those,” one of the other women says through clenched teeth. “Butt naked, just like that. Maci, if you’d been with us for more than a day, you’d have made one too,” she says to the tiny woman.

That’s Maci Bishop? That tiny thing with a mop of wild dark hair? I was expecting someone…bigger.

“He’s here for Mallory,” she says, still studying me.

“No,” Ty growls. “This is a sanctuary, not a dispensary. We don’t just hand out women.”

“Where did you get that holo-vid?” Maci asks.

I nudge the leather satchel with one foot.

The blond woman frowns at it. “That’s not standard issue.”

“I recognize that satchel,” Kaya says to Sebastian. “Phoebe Gregory was carrying it when she boarded. She and her husband must have rented Mallory. Oh my god!” She covers her mouth with both hands, then speaks through them. “Mallory was on the yacht with us when it crashed.”

Kaya and Sebastian were on the blimp. Which means he escaped just like Mallory did, and for some reason, Kaya came with him. I give her an exaggerated nod, my jaw clenched.

“I think we should let him in,” the blond woman says. “Maybe he just wants to see her. To know she’s okay.”

Ty’s scowl deepens. “No, Audra.”

“Well, if that bag belonged to a guest, at the very least, we need to see what’s in it, to make sure there isn’t any traceable tech that could lead a patrol shuttle to us,” Maci says.

Sylvie frowns. “You really think they’d come out here after one escaped prisoner? The crash was more than six weeks ago, and we haven’t seen anyone other than David.” She glances at Kaya, who looks suddenly uncomfortable. “And that was a month ago, now.”

“We can’t be too careful,” Maci insists. Then the tiny woman looks right at me. “Mr. Oliver, we need to look in that bag. So Sebastian’s going to bring it to us. Okay?”

I shake my head and pick up the satchel. Then I lean forward and tap the holo-disk again, to restart Mallory’s clip. To emphasize my demand.

Let me see Mallory, and I’ll let you see the bag.

“We’re not negotiating,” Ty insists.

“I really don’t think he wants to hurt her,” Audra argues.

Sebastian inches closer, hands held out for the bag, and I settle it over my shoulder and take a firm step back. Then I point at the holo-disk again.

“You can’t take all five of us.” Ty gestures at himself, Graham, Sebastian, and two other men who haven’t yet spoken. “Give us the bag, and we’ll consider letting you see Mallory.”

Rage builds inside me like a force pressing against my skin from the inside. As if someone’s dialed up a pressure gauge, and any minute I’ll explode from the increase. My fists clench at my sides. My teeth grind together. The edges of my vision begin to go fuzzy.

I’m about to lose my shit. In a second, I’ll wake up in the middle of some gruesome carnage I won’t remember having unleashed.

Or maybe I won’t wake up at all, this time.

Either way, I am not leaving here without Mallory.

“Okay, I guess we’re going to do this the hard way,” Ty says. Audra grabs for his arm, but he pulls free. “This place will only work if everyone abides by the rules. Everyone,” he growls, his focus trained on me.

The door opens at his back, and Mallory steps out. She looks pale and unsteady. There’s blood smeared on her neck.

I push past Sebastian, knocking him to the ground. Graham and one of the other men step into my path, braced for impact. I throw a punch, and the nameless man goes down, clutching a broken nose. Two other men grab my arms and haul me backward.

Dimly, I’m aware that I’m spitting and growling like a wild man, trying to pull free, while Mallory watches in horror. Then Ty steps in front of me and drives one huge fist into my gut.

“No!” Mallory screams.

Ty’s fist blurs in front of me, and my nose crunches in an explosion of pain. Blood erupts from my face, and my hearing feels suddenly clogged.

“Let him go!” Mallory shouts. She grabs Ty’s arm. When he tries to pull free, he jerks her off her feet, and suddenly my fragile, injured Mallory is in the middle of a brawl.

I try to reach for her, but I can’t get free of the assholes holding my arms.

“Everybody stop!” The blond woman—Audra—throws herself between Ty and Mallory, staring up at her man with a wide-eyed, panicked expression. “Stand down!” She’s shouting at all of us now, and I blink, trying to figure out how this went so wrong, so fast.

Mallory lies on the ground, propped on one elbow. She brings one hand to the back of her head, and it comes away covered in blood.

At Audra’s order, the men holding me let go, and I collapse to my knees. Then I pull Mallory into my lap, clutching her to my chest while I glare at the rest of them, fucking daring them to come near us.

I’ll kill every fucking one of them.