Free Abandon The Night by Joss Ware

a little faint.
    “You’ve got to get to someone who can help you,” Zoë said, her dark eyes serious and—
Whoa! Was that compassion there?
“We can leave just before dawn. Three hours at the most, if I can catch a horse. Will you trust me?”
    An interesting question. Hadn’t she already done so? But, yes, she would. She had to.
    Because if something happened to her, all would be lost.
    She nodded.
    Zoë looked up and down the corridor.
    Empty. Silent.
    She slipped her keycard into the slot of Quent’s door, listened for the soft click, and then withdrew it just as silently. Breaking into the room where they programmed the keycards and making her own had been one of the smartest things she’d ever done. He’d never asked how she’d gotten into his room—she wondered if he even wanted to know.
    The slender knob went down without a sound, and she pushed the door open. Her heart was pounding and her mouth had gone dry…just as it always did.
    But this time, it was for a different reason.
    It was daylight.
Exposure
.
    She didn’t think he was inside…but what if he was? Her belly flipped.
    But the room was empty and she slipped in. The space smelled like him and she closed her eyes for a moment, leaning against the door. And just breathed.
    Then she shook it off and walked briskly over to the window. She meant to yank the curtains closed, but she paused for a moment to look down onto the ravages of 2010 Las Vegas, awash in a blaze of sunlight. Those same rooftops and high window ledges, balconies, and even wall-less rooms that she frequented under cover of night and shadow appeared fragile and forlorn in the day.
    Overgrown with whatever tenacious greenery could find root and spread up, down, or across, the buildings looked as if they needed to be trimmed. Irregular holes dotted the walls where windows or doors had been. The city’s silhouette was one of jagged walls and rooflines, where the force of earthquakes, torrential storms, and battering tornados had torn away all but the skeleton of the buildings. And even then…steel beams curled and rusted and were eaten away by Mother Nature.
    Zoë pulled the curtains closed, leaving only a three-finger-wide strip of sunlight to play over the bed.
    The bed. A wave of anticipation and warmth shot through her. The covers were straight and unwrinkled, the pillows neat against the headboard. She reached across the sunbeam and brought a pillow to her nose, breathed in, and smelled him.
    And then, as if realizing what she was doing—how ridiculous she must look—she shoved it back into place.
    The rest of the space was just as neat as it had been the other times. Shadowy and darker now that the curtains were closed, but clear of clutter. Very impersonal. Much more impersonal than her own home—the one she always returned to after a hunting trip.
    Or a visit to Envy.
    Zoë tightened her lips. She was wasting too damn much time here.
I should get the hell out of this place.
    If it weren’t for Remy, by now Zoë would have tracked down Raul Marck and shoved an arrow into his cold stone heart. Then she would have been back at her own little home, a cozy space where she made her arrows and still cooked some of Naanaa’s recipes. And where she kept the few things she’d salvaged from her family’s belongings.
    But, despite her annoyance with the whole damn situation, she couldn’t leave Remy, especially if she was somehow really connected to the infamous Remington Truth.
    So Zoë had caught a mustang—rather easily today, perhaps because it was just after dawn, and the horses were still sleepy. She’d ridden as hard as possible with a feverish and injured woman clinging to her. By midday, they’d approached Envy. The city was enclosed by massive walls of old vehicles, debris, and even things called billboards that protected it from
gangas
and other predators—wolves, lions, tigers, and so on.
    Entering the city through its gates was never a problem for her—the gates