“But…”
Hudson moved closer, but heeded Connor’s order to keep her distance. Leaving three feet of space between them, she squatted on the dusty ground and rested her pistol on her thigh. “They’ll kill us both if they hear us.”
“Why…? How are you here?” His voice lowered to a whisper. “You’re Dominik’s sister, aren’t you? You look just like him.” Panic flickered in his eyes. “They’re all looking for you!”
The nausea returned in full-force. She should’ve known better than to hope her escape was no longer a priority for Dom. “They’re still sending out search parties?”
The kid nodded fervently. “One a day. Knox —” His mouth slammed shut.
“Knox what?” she demanded.
“He’s on the warpath. He demanded round-the-clock searches, but Dominik turned down the request, and the two of them had it out in the courtyard a couple weeks ago.”
Her mouth puckered in a frown. She wasn’t surprised to hear that Dom and Knox had argued – the two of them had been at odds for as long as she could remember. That’s why she’d been so shocked when Dominik had informed her she had to marry Knox.
What surprised her now was hearing that Dominik was limiting the search for her. She had assumed he’d be desperate to find her and bring her home.
“It was bad,” the kid admitted, still talking about the fight. “Really bad. Knox got Dominik on the ground and snapped his wrist, but Dom somehow fought through it and broke Knox’s nose. They would have killed each other if Cruz and Dalton hadn’t stepped in to break up the fight.”
Shit. An argument was one thing, but a full-on fistfight? With broken bones? It was rare for Dominik to get violent with his own men, even ones he didn’t like.
“I don’t know… Maybe it’s the drugs, or maybe they’re all fucking crazy. Either way, I had to get out. I —”
“Wait. Back up,” she ordered. “What drugs? What are you talking about?”
“You know, the pills.” He shrugged. “Well, now it’s injections. The commander says they get results faster.”
Hudson had no clue what he was talking about. The only pills she’d ever seen her brother take were the vitamin boosters that every man in the compound swallowed on a daily basis.
Her throat grew impossibly dry. “What do the pills do?”
“I’m not really sure. The commander says they keep you alert, you know, help you focus, and something about blood clots and healing faster… I honestly don’t know half the stuff he was saying. But it’s all bullshit. The only thing the drugs did was give me headaches. And the other guys in my training class… they…” His hard expression collapsed. “The pills messed them up too, made them violent and angry and turned them into strangers.”
She felt sick. What the hell were the Enforcers taking? Some kind of aggression drugs? Steroids, maybe?
Hudson’s mind raced as she tracked Dominik’s behavior as far back as she could. He’d been taking the boosters since his Enforcer training, so… since he was seventeen. Hudson’s father had worked closely with a chemist at the city lab and a nutritionist to create the cocktail, and Dom had still been normal at that age, so the drugs couldn’t have had a negative effect on him, not back then. She knew Dom was still taking the cocktail, though. And their father had died two years ago, which was when her brother had started to change.
“Did Dominik ever say anything to you about the drugs?” she asked.
The kid shook his head. “I barely spoke to the guy. Cruz was my training instructor, so he was the only authority figure I ever had contact with.”
Her mind spun faster as she tried to put the pieces together. Dom’s behavior had changed once Commander Ferris had taken over for their father. Hudson had always hated Ferris. The man was a cold bastard. Rude, short-tempered, and self-entitled, and he lacked the diplomacy that Hudson’s father had possessed, that enigmatic combination of ruthlessness and compassion that had made Arthur Lane such a strong leader.
She wouldn’t put it past Ferris to give his men drugs. But she knew her brother. He would never willingly take anything that screwed with his head.
Had Ferris altered the vitamins without Dom’s knowledge?
Her pulse sped up at the thought. God, if that was true, then…
Dominik was as much of a victim of the GC as the outlaws he’d been hunting.
“Cruz is fucked in the head too. They’re all fucked in the head. They’re killing them! They make you kill them.”
She tensed. “Kill who?”
“Outlaw prisoners,” he mumbled. “It’s the final test you need to pass if you’re accepted into the program. They bring out an outlaw and make you kill them. Cruz says it’s supposed to prepare us for taking a life in the field, but it’s sick! It’s fucking sick, and I had to get out – don’t you get it?”
Hudson inhaled slowly. “What’s your name?”