Lifeless (Lawless Saga Book 2) Read online

  Contents

  Other Works

  Title

  Copyright

  Get Exclusive Perks

  Dedication

  One - Bernie

  Two - Lark

  Three - Soren

  Four - Soren

  Five - Lark

  Six - Bernie

  Seven - Lark

  Eight - Lark

  Nine - Soren

  Ten - Lark

  Eleven - Bernie

  Twelve - Lark

  Thirteen - Bernie

  Fourteen - Soren

  Fifteen - Lark

  Sixteen - Lark

  Seventeen - Bernie

  Eighteen - Lark

  Nineteen - Soren

  Twenty - Bernie

  Twenty-One - Bernie

  Twenty-Two - Soren

  Twenty-Three - Lark

  Twenty-Four - Lark

  Twenty-Five - Lark

  Author's Note

  Before You Go

  Also by Tarah Benner

  Bound in Blood

  The Defectors

  Enemy Inside

  The Last Uprising

  Recon

  Exposure

  Outbreak

  Lockdown

  Annihilation

  Lawless

  Lifeless

  By Tarah Benner

  Digital Edition

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, please visit your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. No alteration of content is permitted.

  This book is a work of fiction, and any similarities to any person, living or dead, are coincidental and not intentional.

  Published by Blue Sky Studio, LLC

  Copyright 2017 Tarah Benner

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  To Noel, one of my most trusted beta readers. Your help on this series has been invaluable. I credit those extra glimmers of realism to you.

  one

  Bernie

  The first and only thing Bernie felt was pain. The agonizing burn in her left thigh was the first sensation that broke through her haze of sleep. It crawled sluglike from the muscle and spread like poison down the back of her knee and up her hip, where it joined the aches and pains emanating from her arms, back, and shoulders.

  The pain grew and grew until she couldn’t fall back to sleep, but she didn’t want to open her eyes and see what had become of her. The horrible pain in her limbs and back gave the impression that she’d been knocked to the ground, hog-tied, and dragged behind a truck over a winding gravel road.

  She wanted to run. She wanted to scream. She wanted to scratch off her skin, yank out her hair, and then find some inane reality TV star to kick in the shins and push into a vat of hot baby diarrhea.

  But she couldn’t do any of those things floating in the dark, and soon the effort of ignoring the pain became too much. Slowly, apprehensively, she opened her eyes.

  She was lying on a thin foam mattress in a dreary cinder-block room. It looked like the inside of a middle school janitorial closet, except that it was full of medical equipment rather than cleaning supplies.

  Fancy-looking monitors behind her beeped and flashed intermittently, and the top of her bed had been raised to a ninety-degree angle. It had hard plastic sides like a crib and a clear bladder of IV fluids hanging beside it.

  There were no windows or wall hangings to tell her where she was, but based on the fact that her left wrist was secured to the bed with handcuffs, she guessed she hadn’t made it out of San Judas. Her frayed T-shirt and cargo pants had been replaced by a flimsy blue smock, her long blond waves were tangled and matted, and she had the icky feeling that she wasn’t wearing any underwear.

  Bernie lifted the thin white sheet and stared down at her legs. Her right leg looked completely normal, but there was a fat gauze sausage resting where her left leg should have been.

  Upon closer inspection, she saw that her thigh was heavily bandaged. Something was horribly, horribly wrong.

  Suddenly the door burst open, and a smug-looking man stepped inside. Bernie tried to catch a glimpse of the hallway beyond, but the man snapped the door closed at once and pulled up a plastic swivel chair.

  “Morning, sunshine,” he said in a brisk, fake-cheerful voice.

  Bernie didn’t speak.

  The man was bald except for a ring of very short hair. He had thick black eyebrows, a large bump in the center of his nose, and the sort of face that made Bernie want to punch him. He was wearing a pair of ill-fitting brown slacks and a matching bomber jacket with the word “Security” embroidered on the left shoulder.

  “Calvin Bishop,” he said, extending a hand. “Head of security at San Judas.”

  Bernie’s mind was racing with questions, but she just glared at him.

  “Glad to see you’re back with us,” he said, dropping his hand and resting his right ankle over his knee.

  Bernie bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. She desperately wanted to freeze this man out, but she was in dire need of information.

  “How long was I out?” she asked. Her voice came out low and croaky.

  “A while.”

  Bernie’s gaze flickered from the four bare walls of her room to Calvin Bishop’s hairy hand, which was resting on his thigh. He was wearing a cheap silver wristwatch with shiny Roman numerals, but she couldn’t read the time.

  “Where am I?” she asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  Bernie could tell that the man was making a real effort to keep his tone pleasant, but he couldn’t quite shake his inner smugness. She scowled. If he wasn’t going to tell her anything, she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking what had become of Lark and the others.

  “Why am I here?” asked Bernie.

  Calvin Bishop scrunched his eyebrows together. “Come on, Miss Mitchell. You’re a smart girl. What did you think was going to happen? You pull a sloppy-ass stunt like that —”

  “I meant why am I here?” snapped Bernie, glancing around at the drab institutional walls. “What happened to my leg?”

  “You were shot.”

  Bernie sucked in a burst of air, fighting a sudden tidal wave of shock and panic.

  “You’re welcome,” said Bishop.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Our medical team was able to extract most of the bullet fragments. You lost a lot of blood, but two transfusions later . . . Our doc said there likely won’t be any permanent damage. You’ll be as good as new.”

  “Good as new?” Bernie growled.

  “Nearly.”

  Bernie’s blood was boiling. She longed to hurl one of the fancy monitors at Calvin Bishop and then pin him down and pluck out all the stupid little hairs on the back of his hands.

  “Get — me — out of here,” she whispered.

  Bishop looked taken aback. “Out?” He let out a harsh bark of laughter. “Oh no. You’re not going anywhere. At least not until you tell us what happened to your little friends.” He reached into his breast pocket and extracted a small notebook and a pen. “Well, I guess if you can really call them ‘friends’ after what they did to you.”

  “What they did to me?”

  Bishop looked up, infuriatingly casual with his slack jaw and smug dark eyes. “You know . . . leaving you for dead while they ran for the hills?”

  Bernie didn’t s
ay anything, but inside she was screaming. She wanted to knock over all the machinery and throw the bag of IV fluids against the wall, but she knew on some very basic level that she had to remain calm.

  If she lost control, there was a good chance she might let something slip, and she had no intention of helping the San Judas jackasses track down Lark and the others. They had put a bullet in her leg, had blown a boy to smithereens, and were at that moment scrambling to put Lark and Soren back behind bars. She would not and could not cooperate.

  “Listen,” said Bishop. “We already have their names. We know which way they went, and we’re closing in on them as we speak. But it’s been about twelve hours, and my superiors are growing impatient. One boy is already dead thanks to your friends’ recklessness and stupidity. Let’s not add to the body count.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Bishop tilted his head to the side. “You don’t want to see your friends get killed do you?”

  “You can’t do that.”

  Bishop blinked in polite confusion. “Can’t do what?”

  “You can’t just . . . kill them,” Bernie stammered. “You have to give them a chance to turn themselves in.”

  Bishop let slip a pseudo-uncomfortable smile and shook his head at her apparent naiveté. “Four dangerous fugitives are on the loose, Miss Mitchell. They assaulted a security guard with a copper pipe and opened fire on a dozen men and women. One of my men caught a bullet to the chest and is now in critical condition.”

  He leaned forward in his seat so that Bernie could smell the coffee on his breath. “Let me be clear . . . I have the authority to bring them in by any means necessary.”

  Bernie swallowed.

  Calvin Bishop seemed satisfied with her reaction and sat back in his chair. “Now . . . we know you escaped due to a malfunction with the electric fence. We know the make, model, and license number of the vehicle your friends stole. We know they were headed south. I have my men setting up roadblocks and coordinating with the U.S. Marshals Service. They won’t get far.”

  Bernie gritted her back teeth, curiosity overcoming her crippling rage. “So what do you need me for?”

  “I need you to tell me where they’re headed so we can end this quickly and cleanly.”

  “What’s in it for me?” asked Bernie. She had no intention of telling Calvin Bishop anything, but she was curious as to why he thought she would be willing to help him.

  He cocked his head to the side. “What do you want?”

  Bernie thought about it for a moment. “I want out.”

  Bishop cracked a smirk and pulled the clipboard off the little metal hook attached to the foot of her bed. He flipped through the first few sheets until he found what he was looking for.

  “Bernadette Mitchell,” he read aloud, skimming her rap sheet as if it were a mildly amusing article. “Serving five years for arson, blah, blah, blah.”

  He continued reading in a breathy half whisper and then raised his voice for the part that included, “intended to kill a prominent Fortune 500 CEO and his family . . .” He returned to the annoying mutter-whisper. Bernie caught the words “ecoterrorist” and “delusions of grandeur” before he paused and looked up at her.

  “You’re a cuckoo bird earth muffin who went postal and tried to burn a prominent businessman alive with his wife and two children.” He let out a short harsh laugh. “These sorts of charges don’t just go away, sweetheart.”

  “No one was in the house,” Bernie muttered. “And his kids were away at college, so . . .”

  “Not to mention that you attempted to escape while being held for a felony . . . That’s another one to five years automatically. Now, if they decide to stick you with aggravated assault . . .”

  “That wasn’t me!” Bernie cried. “I never even saw that security guard, and I never touched a gun!”

  Bishop shrugged. “You’ll find that hard to prove, and somebody’s gonna hang for that no matter what. Are you sure you wanna take the fall for one of your low-life friends?”

  “Check that pipe for prints,” said Bernie, crossing her arms over her chest and jerking her chin up in defiance. “They won’t match mine. You don’t have a case.”

  Calvin Bishop stared at her for a second, as though sizing up his opponent. “I’m not sure you understand how these things work, so let me put it to you this way: When one of you pieces of human garbage goes after one of our own, nobody stops to skim the rule book. Now, your so-called friends may not give a shit about you, but we take care of our boys in blue.”

  “Whatever,” muttered Bernie, averting her gaze so he wouldn’t see how rattled she was. “You’re not even a real cop.”

  “Why are you protecting them?” asked Bishop. “They sure didn’t go out of their way to protect you.”

  “You don’t know anything about them.”

  “No?” Bishop’s voice was casual, but Bernie could detect an undercurrent of excitement in his tone.

  He flipped back a few pages in his notebook and began to read aloud. “Lark Roland, serving twenty-five years without parole for first-degree murder. The man she killed was a volunteer firefighter, working as an organic farmer to make ends meet. While she was with us, she assaulted several fellow inmates, including a pregnant woman!”

  Bernie blinked. She had no idea that the San Judas security officers kept tabs on what went on inside the prison. As far as she knew, no one had ever been punished for instigating a fight or even killing a fellow inmate, so she’d assumed that they hadn’t been watching that closely.

  Bishop continued. “Her boyfriend, Soren Hensley . . . serving ten years for kidnap and aggravated assault. He and his little gang of thugs apparently had a beef with the Aryan Brotherhood while they were with us. His friend Axel was a repeat offender who nearly killed a man in a barroom brawl.” Bishop flipped the page and squinted at his notes. “He severely injured three fellow inmates . . . and that was only last week.”

  Bishop closed his notebook and tucked it back into his jacket pocket. “As for Simjay Kapoor and Finn McGregor — another psychopath — we’re not really sure why they were involved. They’re not exactly criminal masterminds, but they bunked with Hensley and Park, so who knows. We’re still putting the pieces together. That’s where you come in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We could use your input,” he said. “It would certainly help us understand their motives . . . create a list of friends and family — anyone on the outside who might be willing to help them.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Bishop shrugged. “It might motivate the DA to go easy on you.”

  Bernie glared at him. “No.”

  “Come on,” he said in a cajoling voice. “What have you got to lose?”

  “They’re my friends.”

  “Friends?” Bishop let out an incredulous laugh. “Come on, Miss Mitchell . . . You aren’t in the same league as them. Lark Roland, Axel Park . . . They might be the sort of people who helped you survive in prison, but they’re just a bunch of low-life criminals who’ll use anyone they can.”

  “I’m a criminal.”

  Bishop laughed and shook his head. “No. You’re a college girl . . . a philanthropist. Your mother was a school teacher, for Christ’s sake. You had a full ride at NMSU for engineering. You don’t belong here. They do.”

  “Is that supposed to convince me?”

  “It should,” he said. “If you value your future.”

  Bernie scowled. “You don’t give a shit about me.”

  “Do you give a shit about yourself?” he asked. “Because cavorting with murderers and kidnappers . . . ruining your track record of good behavior and getting time tacked onto your sentence just so you can cover for a few selfish thugs?” He shook his head. “It just doesn’t seem like you’ve thought this through.”

  Bernie swallowed and looked away. She didn’t want to show it, but she felt suddenly sick to her stomach. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know abo
ut Lark’s crimes. Frankly, Soren’s and Axel’s rap sheets didn’t surprise her either. But having them read to her like the police blotter made her insides curdle with dread.

  From the outside looking in, they certainly sounded like bad people. And if she’d heard about them on the news three or four years ago, before her arrest, she would have agreed that they weren’t worth protecting.

  Back then, she’d seen herself as separate from people like them, as though they existed on two different planes of reality: one universe where the law mattered, and the other a Wild West where people would lie, cheat, and steal as easily as they breathed.

  She didn’t feel that way anymore. Lark was her friend. She wasn’t some hardened criminal. Bernie felt confident that they could have been friends even if they’d never been sent to San Judas. Lark was a good person.

  Bernie didn’t know Soren and the rest of them that well, but she still didn’t want to rat them out. Maybe it meant that she’d been on the inside for too long, but she felt a stronger affinity to Soren than the likes of Calvin Bishop.

  Bernie’s memories of that night were foggy at best, but she remembered the chaos outside the administrative building. It was dark. Bullets had been flying, and her eyes had been on fire from the tear gas.

  She remembered a sharp, penetrating burn in her leg, but not much else. That must have been when she was shot. She vaguely remembered writhing on the ground in pain, but she had no recollection of where Lark had been at the time.

  Lark hadn’t abandoned her. She wouldn’t. If Lark hadn’t been at her side, there had to be a reason.

  “Well?” prompted Bishop, looking satisfied. He probably thought that he had made her see her friends in a whole new light.

  “Go fuck yourself,” growled Bernie.

  For several seconds, she wasn’t sure if Bishop had heard her. The lower half of his face had turned to stone, but his eyes were still full of polite interest. Then he sighed and shook his head.