Turncoat: Turncoat Trilogy Book 1

Chapter 23.3

Training continued the next day, my shoulder screaming in protest after only a fifteen minutes and my hands numb by a half an hour. As my other wounds healed, I accumulated a rash of new bruises and bumps. Some from walking out into the woods, others from either hand to hand combat with Vicki or shooting with Nick. I slowly got better. At the end of the first week, we had finally moved onto a pistol, which for whatever reason was actually harder to shoot than the rifle.

I had been sorta good at hand to hand combat during training, better than shooting that was for sure, so my sparring matches with Vicki were a little more evenly matched. Until she started throwing dirt and leaves in my face before launching into an attack that always left me laying on my back with her arm around my neck.

Every night I would come back and nurse my wounds before flopping down and sleeping for several hours until they would drag me back out again. Nick seemed to think that dragging me out to shoot at midnight was a good idea. After proving I was semi proficient with a pistol when it was nearly pitch black and there was no way I would ever see a shooter at that distance at night, I stole his covers and pillow. Not much of a punishment for a sniper, but it was the best my tired mind could come up with.

It felt weird, staying in one place so long and listening to the broadcasts about two terrorists still at large in the capital. Especially since the capital was a day’s train ride away. Still there were no pictures and the talking news head continued to speculate as to who we were. The captured terrorist still wasn’t cooperating with authorities.

“That’s not going to work,” Vicki snarled at the reporter. “We know that he’s a mole and is probably telling you everything he knows. You aren’t going to catch anyone like that.”

“The only reason we know is because that loyalist had a loose tongue,” I said. “Imagine if we had launched a rescue mission. We would have been caught instantly.”

Vick nodded and I looked down. “Can we not train today? I think we all need a break.”

“Yeah, sure,” Vicki said.

Nick nodded and stood. “I have some contacts I want to talk to, arrange our next stop,” he said. “I’ll go use the hotel’s business center. You girls keep it civil in here.” He left and Vicki walked over and plopped on the bed next to me.

“You know what I’ve always wanted to do?” she asked.

“What?” I asked.

“Your hair, it’s always so soft. I just want to run my fingers through it and play with it,” she whispered.

I smiled and looked over at her. “Really? I would have imagined there were other things you would have wanted to do.”

“Yeah, well, those are illegal and these walls are thin,” she said. “So, may I braid your hair?” she asked.

“Sure,” I laughed and sat up. The word barely left my mouth when she started to untie the wraps and began to peel apart the smaller braids already there. Her fingers danced in my hair, sending tingles across my scalp as she worked, deftly twisting my hair this way and that, muttering under her breath about how nice it was.

“So, I have to ask, if I hadn’t come back and pulled you into this, where do you think you would be?” she asked.

“Probably sitting in the maintenance bay working on a bot of some sort,” I said. “Definitely not fleeing for my life as...well...a traitor.”

“Most likely true,” she admitted. “I just remember sitting at a cafe waiting for a contact one day when I saw you walk past. I couldn’t believe it at first. You were walking and well, alive. Otto told me you were dead.”

“I thought you’d forgotten me,” I admitted. “You said you would come back and you never did. I was waiting for you to come back, every day I waited. I kept asking if I could contact you and the nurses wouldn’t let me.”

“You were fifteen and alone,” Vicki said. “No one would blame you for being stubborn.”

“General Jameson came to visit a few times, he brought me a few things,” I said. “But I wanted to see you. I asked him to see what he could do and he couldn’t even get in contact with you.”

“I thought people were trying to torment me,” Vicki said. “I trusted Otto, I never thought he’d lie to me or try to kill you.”

I smiled weakly. “He said you had information over him, what was it?”

“Nothing you need to concern yourself with,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. I flipped through the holovids on the screen until I found a good one, or at least an entertaining one and we both lounged back. Nick came back later that day with a confirmation that we would have new place when we left. The month progressed and I slowly became better with the rifle and pistol, as well as with hand to hand combat. Vicki was starting to accumulate her own bruises. When the time came to leave, I was sad to go, we could have hidden there for another month or so, but Nick was right when he said we had to leave. So, one night, we packed up and left, taking a ground car and heading north.