As Cold As Ice (3 page)

The kiss in the cell, however, had been all
about gaining whatever control she could in that situation. As much
as she’d thought about kissing him before, there had been no time
to enjoy it as she’d threatened him.

Looking back, she figured she hadn't needed
to take things that far. She couldn't imagine herself kissing
Charles just to gain sympathy. She could cower and make herself
look small and helpless so he could puff himself out and feel good
about protecting her, but she couldn't visualize herself grabbing
his face and pulling him close, letting her mouth linger on his in
an attempt to manipulate her way out of there.

She barely listened to Charles as they
turned the corner and continued on. Then Charles pulled out his
card and waved it in front of the black monitor that scanned it. A
light beeped, letting them know the elevator was on its way.

They were taking her out of the lower
floors. They'd been serious. She was going to spend time with the
other inmates, probably outside, or in the room with the
skylight.

Humans for the Ethical Treatment of
Paranormals and their constant shouting and sign-waving in front of
the building, and in Washington, saw to it that sometimes
paranormals were let out to stretch their legs.

Not often enough, however. If those
protestors knew Jessica had killed three people before Soren and
Charles came for her, then she wondered if they would bring more
than signs. The only people who ever protested were usually the
ones who were related to paranormals who'd been arrested, after
all.

"If I'm wanted in this new program, then why
do I have to spend time with the other inmates?" Jessica asked as
they walked into the elevator and rode it up.

She felt like she was leaving her stomach
back down in the basement. A shiver of unease rippled through her,
growling larger and larger instead of calming down and vanishing
like it should have the closer they got.

Soren answered again. That time, he was
standing beside her, since there wasn't much room to hide in an
elevator. "We've seen that there's no love lost between you and the
inmates you helped to bring in," Soren said. "The guys upstairs
just want us to evaluate you, and whether or not you show sympathy
to others who were brought in. There won't be anyone in there who
should know you. You haven't been seen by anyone else, so it's not
likely you'll be confronted. Just sit down, eat your lunch, and
we'll judge how well you blend in."

"Soren," Charles said, as if warning him for
giving too much away.

Jessica stared ahead, looking at the
reflection of herself in the metal doors, keeping all glassy-eyed
like she hadn't heard or understood what Soren had just said.

She had, of course. Blending in, whether
because she was so common as to be ignored, meant she could also be
used to butter up to suspected paranormals, getting them to confess
in a moment of weakness, needling them to confide their secret to
her.

It was actually how a lot of paranormals who
were law-abiding were found out.

Jessica had faked her way through a lot of
things. She’d spent most of her life getting by on luck. Her
parents tossed her out of the house, terrified of her when they
found out she could make it snow in the middle of July, but they
hadn’t called her in, hadn’t given her name to the authorities. Not
even when Ethan went with her.

It allowed her to live a mostly normal life,
and she’d worked for the enemy for years since, walking by men and
women who hunted people like her for the fun of it instead of just
the money, or because they wanted to keep the streets safe from
people who couldn’t control their abilities.

Jessica had never imagined herself doing
something like that. Paranormals who went out into the world, found
other paranormals and cozied up to them just for the sake of
turning them in, well, that always made her skin crawl in the
grossest kind of way.

She hated how she was suddenly perfectly
okay with it if it meant she wouldn’t have to take another cold
shower while any number of men watched her from another room.

The elevator came to a stop, making Jessica
sway on her feet a little. It always did that to her.

The bell dinged, and the doors slid
open.

On this floor, the ground floor, it was a
little less cold and a little more on the bright side, and not
because of florescent lights that sent off a blue glow over
everything. Natural sunlight spilled in through the many caged
windows, and though there were still guards, they weren’t dressed
quite like stormtroopers up there. They looked like any other
security guards who carried Tasers and Mace, nightsticks, and a
number of other non-deadly weapons that could be deadly if used
with too much force.

These guys were like some of the men who
worked in factory farms, caught grabbing chickens by their legs and
smashing them against brick walls. They wanted to fight, were
itching for it. It was clear in the way they watched the inmates,
shouted at them from time to time just to watch them jump,
searching for any little thing they could use as an excuse to use
force.

That was pretty much why, despite being on
the ground floor where there was light, where the walls were
painted peach, pretty much every inmate in the cafeteria had their
head turned down while they sat at the colorful picnic tables
scattered around. If was the first thing Jessica noticed when
Charles opened the double doors to the cafeteria.

Jessica shivered at the sight of them. She
didn’t doubt that at least half of the people in there had their
heads down because they didn’t know how to look up anymore. Either
the fight had been taken from them after so long of being trapped
in these walls, or they were medicated to the point that they
didn’t even realize they were there.

She kind of wished someone had given her
drugs like that while she’d been stuck in her cell. It would have
made going to the bathroom a little less awkward for her.

Soren’s voice was soft, and without looking,
she knew it was his hand on her back that gently pushed her
forward. Shooing the little sheep to go and mingle with the rest of
the flock. “Go on.”

She did.

Chapter Three

It hadn’t been so bad, once Jessica reached
the food. There wasn’t a lineup, since everyone had already been
there and received their meals and were sitting down, either
staring at their plates or drooling over them. She’d still had to
grab a tray and walk down the little guarded walkway, letting women
behind Plexiglas scoop mashed potatoes, peas, and an assortment of
other goopy items onto it.

She wasn’t about to touch the brown
stuff.

Once she started eating, the rest was a
little easier. She just did as she was told, ignoring everyone
around her, even the one other person sitting at the table with
her. Long, blonde hair that hadn’t been washed in a while hung in
the face of the woman she shared her table with.

There were other available seats, which gave
Jessica the impression that this particular paranormal was being
avoided. Either she was a powerful paranormal, a scary one, or just
liked to steal other people's food. Didn't matter. Jessica didn’t
want to look at anyone, or sit with anyone else anyway, since
pretty much everyone in the room had the same dirty hair and
complexion. This woman appeared a little worse than most, but at
least she was the only one at the table, and her face was down.
Also, Jessica was fairly sure she could take the girl in a fight if
she lost it and started attacking for no reason.

She wasn’t looking at Jessica, and Jessica
wasn’t looking at her. That was the ideal

The risk that Charles and Soren were wrong,
that someone would know who she was, recognize her face, then
attack her when she was shackled and surrounded, made her too antsy
when it came to everyone else. Had her ‘Employee of the Month’
plaque been in sight when any of these people had been brought in?
Better yet, was it still there? She’d have to ask Soren about that.
Jessica wasn’t exactly sure if he was going to help her or not, but
she trusted him more than she did Charles.

Though she couldn’t see anyone watching her,
she knew there were eyes all over the place, and not just from the
other inmates. There were more two-way mirrors in there than in
most other places in the building, not to mention the cameras
hidden behind the black glass balls on the ceiling. Then there were
guards who walked between tables, fingers held on their
nightsticks, waiting for something to start up so they didn’t have
to be bored out of their minds anymore.

None of them paid much attention to her, and
she pretended they didn’t exist as she scooped her mashed potatoes
onto the last of her bread.

When she was done with her food, she pushed
it away, still determined that she wasn’t desperate enough to eat
whatever the hell kind of meat that mashed-up brown stuff was.

The woman on the other side of her noticed
the abandoned tray and her large hands shot out to grab it, yanking
it forward with a clatter against the plastic table.

It happened so fast, and the woman moved so
quickly, that Jessica jumped up. Food thief confirmed.

A guard shouted, but she barely heard
him.

The person she’d just shared a table with
wasn’t a woman at all. It was a man. A young, thin man who happened
to have long hair. Some of it was getting into the last of
Jessica’s meal as he scooped up the mashed meat with his hands and
stuffed it into his mouth. His cheeks were hollow, like he’d been
starving, and only then did Jessica realize he didn’t have a tray
of his own at the table.

A hard force with the strength of a truck
slammed into her. The ground flew up to meet her face and body
hard, and the heavy weight of one of the guards stayed on top of
her, keeping her down.

The pained yells of her eating companion
followed. Jessica struggled, but she couldn’t quite get up to see
with the guard on top of her.

She didn’t need to see. The sound of
something hard smacking against flesh was enough to know that a
nightstick had come out, and it was being used on the man she’d
been sitting with.

“
Stop it. I gave it to him!
I said stop it!” Jessica screamed, flailing beneath the
guard.

He grabbed her wrists and yanked them behind
her back. He latched a chain on her shackles that would keep her
virtually helpless; she heard the clink of the metal links when he
pulled them out.

Panic rose up inside her like a wild animal.
Jessica managed to wiggle her wrist free before he could latch the
chain onto her shackle. Their bodies were a mess as they tangled
together, but she managed to spin around on the smooth tiled floor,
putting herself on her back with the guard on top of her.

He wasn’t wearing a helmet; none of the
guards in the cafeteria were. The shouting from the other prisoners
as they were rounded up was so loud that no one seemed to notice
the fight happening between Jessica and this man.

She slammed the heel of her palm into his
nose. Even with the lack of space for her to draw back her wrist
and really get a good, strong hit in, it was still painful enough
for the guard to yank his face back and cry out. There was even a
little blood flow.

That was all she needed. Jessica hooked her
leg around the back of his thighs and pushed hard. She spun them
around, using the momentum to put herself on top of him, even with
his superior weight.

Rage took over. She didn’t think, just let
her fists fly, and fuck the consequences of that. She’d been buried
beneath this building for so long, forced to put on shows for the
people who watched her, forced to kill to save her own life, and
forced to try and forget that there wasn’t anyone watching her
whenever she needed to use the toilet, or the tiny shower with no
curtain to hide herself.

She was filthy and tired, and her body was
working without her brain to make someone pay for what she was put
through. Someone was going to suffer, and this guy was the only one
she had in front of her at the moment, so it was going to be
him.

The man couldn’t defend himself well, which
was good. It allowed her to really get her aggression out. His nose
was bleeding, and his blood got onto her palm every time she
slammed it into his face. When he tried to lift his hands to defend
himself, it splattered onto his fingers and uniform, as well.

A hand clamped down on her shoulder, and
another one on her wrist.

Guards surrounded her, and Jessica flew at
them, too.

She was smaller than they all were, but not
by much. All the same, the guard immediately behind her didn’t see
it coming when she arched her spine and threw herself between his
legs.

She kicked him in the balls on the way
through just for good measure. Guys were normally a lot more
protective of their male parts than books or television led people
to believe, so she figured it was a good time to get a shot in
while the guard was stunned with her move.

He bent over, clutching himself between his
legs, and Jessica scrambled to her feet.

It was too late. She was grabbed up by every
other guard surrounding her, and there was no fighting them off.
Her arms were latched onto, as were her legs and stomach. Five men
were on her. Jessica struggled and screamed, one last, hard burst
from her lungs, but it was done. She was caught.

“
Holy God, Bill. That
little bitch!”

Of all the angry faces in her line of
vision, this one was the angriest as he came forward and slammed
his fist down onto her cheek. The pain flared up and white splashed
in front of her eyes. He might’ve hit her again; she couldn’t tell
because she was a little numb at that point.