He raised his head, his eyes red. “Everything he says makes sense to me. I really am worthless. I mean, why am I here at all?”
I blinked. Well, that was a pretty strong statement. I didn’t know this person wearing a Sandler guard uniform. He might be useful to know. “My name is Phoebe.” That had been my maternal grandmother’s name and the one I’d been using since I’d arrived. “Can I help?”
“I didn’t get a wife. Okay, these things happen, but then that man started talking to me and the things he said made sense. I am worthless. There really is no point to things. Maybe I should let him out so he can help me.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. That strange feeling I had sometimes, where it felt like I floated a bit, came back. I was going to pay attention to the sensation. Even if it was just my own intuition, I needed to listen to it. This man needed to keep talking.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir.”
He jumped to his feet and grabbed my shoulders, shaking me just a bit. “Quinn Sandler says my life is worthless.”
I gaped at him, which was a completely unguarded response but worked just the same. “Quinn Sandler? One of the Master’s sons?”
“He’s brilliant, and he says I’m worthless. But that he could help me.”
The guard blinked rapidly and dropped his hands from my shoulders. It was as though he returned to himself. “I’m sorry, miss. That was inappropriate. Our staff goes unmolested here. Forgive me.”
I stepped back. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m not sure I understood anything you said. I hope you have a better day.”
I stacked the dishes, my mind whirling. This man had access to what was mine. I was going to follow him until I found my husbands. I took a deep breath. Everything was going to be okay.
I’m coming, guys.
The time was ticking by. Each day was making me feel slightly more desperate than the next. A month of time passed before I could find him again. The guards were practically clones in this place, and it was possible the estate somehow absorbed them.
This wasn’t fear… it was frustration.
How could I be so close and still so far away?
The dungeon on Sandler One
* * *
Tommy Sandler
The days were slipping into one another, and soon, I was going to have to pretty much give up trying to breathe. I was sorry beyond belief I wouldn’t see Paloma’s face again. Although, maybe that wouldn’t have been possible anyway. She was probably dead by now. I coughed, blood staining my hand when I covered the sound.
I’d never get over that I didn’t get to tell Clay and Keith how much I valued our relationships, not just as brothers. They were also my best friends. I’d been so fucking lucky in that regard. Three brothers, three best friends. How many people anywhere in this crazy universe could say the same?
Maybe these were the things you thought about when you were dying? Maybe I deserved this. If there was some sort of universal accounting for all things, then I had really screwed up over the years. I’d done things that didn’t sit well in my gut; I’d done them anyway. Some people said there was a reckoning. I’d find out one way or another, that was for sure.
I’d walked out on Paloma during a fight, told her I was done. She’d forgiven me. I hadn’t managed to forgive myself for that yet.
If she were here, I’d say I was sorry again. I was sorry for being mean when she first showed up. I was sorry for the emotional distance I’d put between us the last months during the war. I was just so fucking sorry.
“That’s all right, gentleman. It isn’t going to get better.”
I stared at my brother, Quinn. I was sorry I hadn’t done better for him either. If I’d paid better attention when he was ten, none of this mess would have happened. What was he doing? There were crowds of guards surrounding him all the time. They were on their knees outside his cage, more and more of them every day.
He turned to look at me and furrowed his brow. “Not doing well there, Tommy?”
“Not so much, no.” I pointed at his crowd. “Ready to tell me what this is about yet, Dad?”
Quinn shook his head and grinned, clearly catching my meaning. This was how my father got people to invest in him emotionally whether they should or not. He inspired loyalty through emotional manipulation, lying, fear, and just being a general asshole. Why were more people drawn to what was bad instead of what was good? I guessed I’d never know.
I coughed until it felt like I would die doing so, and then it subsided.
Quinn rose. He tapped on the plastic. “I think you’re ready to do what I need you to do. Now. If you don’t, there really won’t be any more help for you.”
They ran. Fifteen grown men who should have been doing other things for my father’s cartel ran to do whatever Quinn had manipulated them into thinking they wanted to do for him. Some of the really dumb ones would probably think it was their own idea.
“What are you getting them to do?”
The plastic enclosures opened.
Wait. What?
Quinn ran to my side. “They need to get us out of here safely, or I’ll never forgive them for being incompetent and pathetic.”
“Why do they want your forgiveness?”
He shrugged. “Because I’m Quinn Sandler. Worship me or die.”
I groaned. I was going to die, and Quinn was in this kind of headspace? The men in my family had to seriously be careful about this. I thought Quinn had gotten most of this out of his system with being responsible for all those people dying when he was very young.
“Quinn, look, I’m very glad you opened the cells. Go. Get away from here. Go live a life. Find our brothers. If I was Clay, I’d have headed straight for P’s friend Diana. Go there.”
He shook his head. “Not leaving without you. The coast is clear. Between here and our exit are people who want to die for me. They might. We’re not.”
“I can’t walk. I’m done. I’m coughing up blood. There is no getting out of here for me.”
I saw when it registered to Quinn just how bad off I was. He nodded once. “Then I’m going to carry you.”
“Quinn? Tommy?”
We both turned at the sound of a voice we shouldn’t be hearing. Paloma? How could she be here? Was I dying? Was I seeing the face I most wanted as my last vision?
She rushed toward us.
“P?” Quinn’s voice shook. “How?”
“Later.” Paloma ducked down, picked up my arm, and put it around her shoulders. “Together. We’ll take advantage of whatever you’ve done, Quinn, to get those folks upstairs uprising. They’re either crying or shouting. You can tell me later. Come on. I’ve had enough of this place to last a year. And I’ve only been here a month. I can only imagine how you’re feeling. Tommy, I can see how you’re feeling. You’re going to get better, too.”
The room turned gray around me, and I blinked. That couldn’t be a good sign. I helped as best I could. I wanted to tell her all the things I’d been thinking about for so long. I wanted to make sure she understood. Instead, I concentrated on trying to help at all as my wife and my genius, albeit likely sociopathic, brother dragged me from the dungeon.
“I’m not a sociopath,” Quinn answered me, and I realized I must have said that part aloud. “There is every chance I will feel sorry about this at some later date. I’m just choosing not to feel sorry about it now.”
Upstairs, a boom sounded. Quinn’s guys were blowing things up. We had to get out before the house came down on our heads.
“I used to love this place when I was a kid,” Quinn said while we stumbled up the stairs. “They used to keep ponies here. Do you suppose they still do?”
“The stables are being used to store weapons now,” Paloma answered.
This was a bizarre conversation, given the circumstances. But then again, I wasn’t sure exactly what would have been considered normal. Bizarre would do.
“Don’t pass out yet, Tommy.” Quinn pinched my arm, and it
brought me back a bit. I could push through this. I could make it.
“Wait till you see our ship. Keith crash landed your shuttle. It’s in bad shape. We have something else.”
He did what?
I was actually getting out of this hellhole, and then Keith and I were going to talk about his flying skills.
9
From Themselves
Four months earlier
Somewhere in Sandler Space, Earth Standard Time
Paloma
I woke up, shivering in my cell, Waverly standing over me. “Good, you’re awake. It’s been days. What do you remember?” She kneeled next to me.
I was so sick of waking up to that question. “I remember him—your father—injecting me with something.” It had hurt. After that, I didn’t know what had happened.
Waverly nodded. “Have my brothers told you anything about the Sandler history of making awful drugs that are universally banned because they’re so awful and can’t be used for anything but torture?”
I’d seen it myself. In the form of their mother who had spent her life in a wheelchair, every year getting worse until fleeing their father and faking her death. She’d made huge mistakes, but no one deserved what happened to her. Her love, the guys’ Uncle Quinn, had also faked his death. Lots of drama in this family.
“Yes.”
She sighed. “That’s good. So he dosed you with some bad stuff. If it’s not gotten out of your system in a med machine soon, you will lose all sense of reality and never come back to it. I’ve given you a dose through some injections to hold off the mania. That’s why he called me down. He’s trying to negotiate with your husbands to save you. I think Quinn might be getting ready to break. The bad news: it’s almost too late to save you from side effects or death. I got a message to Clay. If they have any ability to get out of there, they need to do it now.”
That made sense. “Thank you for helping me.”
“I’m not done. I’m tired of being a coward. I’m better than this. We have to get you out of here.”
What did she mean? That was when I realized my cage was open. “How?”
“I dosed the guards. They’re all out cold. Come on. Lean on me. We’re getting you out of here. If I have to go back for your husbands, I will, but I’m hoping they come through.”
It wasn’t until we were in the lift that I heard the noise. It sounded like a roar above us. Waverly stared up at the ceiling. “That’s not normal. That has to be something Clay has done. I like my brothers. I wasn’t sure I would, but I do. I like you, too. You all deserve a happy ending.”
I squeezed her shoulder as best I could, considering how weak I was. “You do, too. Come with us. Whatever is happening. Let’s do it together.”
She actually grinned. “I think I’ll take you up on that, Paloma.”
The ship violently shook, and she hissed. “Well, that can’t be good.”
No, because either we were being fired upon, or something was happening on the ship to make it shimmy like that. I didn’t care for either idea. I really didn’t want to be blown up without getting away from my father-in-law.
We exited the lift in a ship bay. The side was open, and since we weren’t being blown out into space or dying instantly from exposure, then the force field must be in place. I reached forward to touch it, the zap striking my hand to let me know not to go any further. We’d have to exit the bay in a ship or not at all. The shuttles could get through it, not us. That was the same on Mars Station.
Waverly held onto me tightly. “I was hoping one of your husbands would be here by now. I…”
A crash sounded as another lift opened up, and men wielding all different types of weaponry stormed into the area. I gasped, and Waverly squeezed me tightly. “These are not my dad’s men. These are the ones who were locked up with your husbands. They didn’t like seeing him abuse a woman. There are so few of us, and most of them will never have a wife. You don’t hurt the ones who are around, or something.”
“Hey,” a voice called out, and suddenly, Quinn was in front of us. He threw his arms around me, and I squeezed him tightly as Waverly turned my weight over to him.
“We kept getting the message from Waverly that you didn’t want to be saved, that you could handle whatever happened. I was going to break, P. I admit it. I was losing it. You’re my girl. Fucking no one touches you. My dad is a dead man.” He scooped me up. “Come on, Waverly. You’re with us now. Welcome to the bad branch of the family.”
Her grin was so Sandler I couldn’t believe she didn’t see the resemblance. I clung to Quinn. “I don’t feel well.”
“I know. Considering what he did to you, I can’t say I’m at all surprised.”
Clay appeared next to us. “Thank the universe that worked. I’ve never handled an uprising before. We used to be the people making sure that didn’t happen. Things are exploding. It’s going to get out of hand. We need to get Paloma on the shuttle and in the med machine. So good to see your face, honey.”
I tried to smile. A headache was forming behind my eyes. The ship tilted abruptly. Quinn stumble backward, me in his arms. We both hit the ground, and Quinn oomphed.
Tommy’s face appeared before us. He knelt in front of us. “They’ve gotten into the control room. They must be trying to take over the ship. I wish them well, but I want nothing to do with this. I want to be gone. Fuck all of this. Keith’s gotten onto our shuttle. Let’s go.”
The ship tilted in the other direction, and a muscle ticked in Tommy’s jaw. “I designed this ship. They’ve screwed up the dampeners. Come on.”
Quinn rose, and I found myself in Tommy’s arms. Okay, I might object in the future to being passed around like a bag of groceries, but I didn’t have the energy to argue.
With Waverly at our side, we ran for the shuttle. Keith stood on the outside, the hatch open for us to enter. I felt the heat before I heard anything. Something must have exploded. We all went flying forward, me out of Tommy’s arms and straight into Keith. I hit the ground hard. The world spun. This was too much. This was the blast that finally undid me.
Waverly was saying something to Tommy, who gripped his head. Quinn was on his back, flat. I didn’t see Clay. I tried to get to my feet and couldn’t. Keith’s hand was on my back. Then we were surrounded by men in red. Sandler guards. This couldn’t be good. Tommy was on his feet fast. He hauled Quinn up and then Clay. Quinn staggered backward. He must be hurt. They needed help. Where was Waverly? Was she dead? What was going to happen?
Clay turned and fired a weapon. One of the red-wearing men hit the ground. Fire was returned. Blasts. I covered my ears. Was this all happening slowly or too fast?
“Get her on the ship,” Tommy yelled. Another explosion. This time, the heat burned my skin. I could see the red marks where it struck me, but I couldn’t feel any pain. What did that mean?
A laser weapon of some kind? Keith yanked me up, and Clay ran past him, hollering something over his shoulder. Quinn was pinned down, and I could see it—and I knew what Tommy was going to do. He turned around, took one look at me, and then at his brothers.
“You remember what we promised each other. Twenty seconds, and then you get her out of here.”
“Tommy!” It was hard for me to hear, but I’d understood him well enough. I wanted to argue, but pain stole my voice.
Keith ran me to the med machine. I wanted to struggle. I just… couldn’t. Was Quinn okay? Where was Tommy? What was happening?
Then nothing.
I must have dreamed all those months under medical care. People always did in the machines. The constant sleep kept the brain in a dream state almost the entire time. I didn’t remember dreaming anything at all. Just blackness. But somewhere in that time, I transformed. What I understood when I woke up—even if I wasn’t clear about it for weeks, maybe months, later—was that my time in the Sisterhood changed me, but it was the day we left Quinn and Tommy on that ship that shaped me. I was capable of anything when it came to my family
. I would not lose. To steal a line from Quinn, the need to save what was mine, in whatever form it came, was almost pathological.
Earth Standard Time, Now
Sandler One
* * *
I rushed Tommy and Quinn—who wasn’t as well off as he was pretending—onto the ship as fast as I could. Keith or Clay must have seen us coming. The doors opened, and we were pulled on board as much as anything else.
Clay hugged me tightly while Keith helped Quinn get Tommy into the med room. “You did it.”
“Quinn did it.” I followed closely behind them, Clay right next to me. “Missed you two. Long months.”
“You’re telling me.” He rubbed my back. “Quinn got himself out?”
I could hardly believe it myself. “I was finally getting down to them when they were coming up to us. He took a play from your book. Somehow he, like you, managed to incite a revolution from his jail cell. Only he managed to convince the guards to turn on your dad by just talking to them.”
Clay gaped at me. “Wow.”
“I know. Tommy’s in bad shape.” I moved to the side of the med machine while Keith typed in instructions. Every time he breathed, I could hear a wheeze, like a second breath after his first one. He coughed, and blood came up. I tried not to wince. Fear made my hand shake as I wiped the blood off his face. “You’re going to be fine. We reached you in time. You’ll get some sleep, and when you wake up, you’ll be better. We can talk about all of this. Until we’re sick of talking about it. Nothing but smooth space from now on.”
He winced. “Don’t know, Paloma.” His voice was low, strained. “If this is the last thing I’m saying, let’s not do platitudes. I love you. I fucked up so many times. Please forgive me. I’m so glad I got to see your face again.”
I bent over and kissed him on the lips. “You’re making yourself out to be so much worse than you are. You’re one of the four best men I know. I love you completely. You’ll see my face again. Get some sleep.”