The two men continued to watch the screen, the mass of red dots becoming larger and larger as Napoleon’s army came together, but Napoleon began slamming his fists on the desk when the third yellow smudge stopped. “What kind of fucking moron is going to stop in the middle of fucking nowhere to pick up a couple of fucking women carrying fucking swords?”

***

Revenge had never been Bennett’s bedfellow before tonight. When Napoleon and Simeon had tortured her, she had merely wanted justice, an acknowledgment by the council of the wrongdoing, and a punishment fitting the crime. Revenge, however, brought with it the need to see someone suffer, and when Bennett left Lisa’s apartment, she didn’t just want Napoleon to suffer. Bennett wanted him drawn and quartered. The rage that followed was Bennett’s fuel. It had enabled her to push aside her hostility toward Ruby and accept her help. It had empowered her with ferocity to fight like she’d never fought before, and it had permitted Bennett to keep other emotions in check.

When Bennett saw Lisa gazing back at her, Bennett’s emotions didn’t just escape. They became a train wreck. Piling into one another in an endless barrage, grief collided with joy, joy collided with fear, fear collided with hope, and hope ran headlong back into grief, and Bennett felt as if she just stepped off a whirling carnival ride. Lisa was alive, but was she the woman Bennett loved or the woman Bennett would learn to loathe? Was she still honest, or didn’t that matter any longer? Was she still kind, or wasn’t there a point now? Was her wit still as sharp, or had she become cool and calculating, her remarks still edgy but no longer holding one ounce of whimsy? Choked by the fear of what Lisa may have become, Bennett was speechless…totally and utterly speechless.

“Hi there. You miss me?” Lisa said, ambushing Bennett with an irresistibly devastating grin.

Bennett’s stomach fluttered as hope made its arrival known, and stuck on dumbstruck, Bennett could do nothing but stare at Lisa like a love-struck fool.

A few seconds passed before Lisa flashed a perfect row of teeth. “So, am I going to leave you standing by the side of the road, or are you going to get in?”

Bennett breathed off a little laugh and straightened long enough to pull the weapons from her scabbard. “Put these in the back,” she said, shoving them at Ruby. “I’m sitting up front.”