Scorched by Mari Mancusi Page A

contaminated—or carried some nasty disease. Maybe she should have turned it over from the start, instead of aiding and abetting a crazy person to steal it away.
    Connor stepped forward, his expression anguished, beseeching. “Please, Trin,” he begged. “I know it sounds crazy. But I can explain.”
    “Explain?” she sputtered. “Explain what? That you’ve come back from the future to steal a freaking dragon egg?”
    “That’s oversimplifying things a bit. But yes, that’s the idea.”
    “And you’d do that, why?”
    He gave her a sheepish look. “To stop the dragon apocalypse?”
    She narrowed her eyes, fury winding up inside her. She was right to have punched him—she only wished now that she’d hit him harder. Instead, she’d somehow gone and convinced herself that he was some kind of self-sacrificing hero with her best interests at heart. When all along, he’d been playing her like a fool.
    At the end of the day, she was as a gullible as Grandpa.
    What could she do? She could try to scream, to alert the last guard in the house to her presence. But Connor had a gun. He could shoot her before help could arrive and he’d still have the egg. She bit her lower lip, mind racing. There was no way she could overpower him on her own. And the barn wasn’t exactly a stocked arsenal.
    Then she remembered her cell phone, stuffed in her pocket. Could she reach in and dial 911 without him seeing her? Maybe if she kept him talking…
    “Prove it to me,” she blurted, forcing her voice to stay strong as she slowly inched her hand down to her side.
    Connor nodded tersely, though he looked slightly relieved. He dropped to his knees, ripping open his black bag and rummaging through. She took her opportunity, slipping her hand into her pocket and gripping her phone, seeking the three buttons she needed for help to arrive. Once she’d pressed them, she let out a small sigh of relief. Now she just had to keep him occupied until the cavalry came.
    “You already saw my laser pistol,” he reminded her, looking up from his bag. “Not exactly your everyday handgun.”
    She frowned, thinking back to her captor’s head, exploding in a mass of green goo. Growing up in Texas, she’d seen a lot of guns—but never anything like that. Still, she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of admitting it.
    “Sorry. I let my Weird Weapons Monthly subscription expire last year,” she retorted, willing herself not to glance down at her jeans. She could hear the tinny “911, what’s your emergency?” coming from the receiver and took a step back, to make sure Connor was out of hearing range. Hopefully when they didn’t receive a reply, they’d track her by GPS and send help.
    “What about the Bouncer, then?” Connor asked, pulling out the strange disc they’d used earlier to escape over the fence. As he held it in his hand, the sphere twisted and turned, hovering an inch above his palm. She turned away, ignoring the niggling at the back of her brain. He really did have a lot of strange stuff. But still!
    “I’m sure they sell those by the dozen at sci-fi cons across the country,” she managed to say, though her voice had definitely lost some of its confidence.
    “Right.” Connor pressed his lips together, then went back into his bag of tricks, this time pulling out a shiny, egg-shaped object, encased in silver. He set the bag aside and rose to his feet, pushing it into her hands. “What about my transcriber then?” he asked, his voice starting to take on a desperate tone. “Tell me this technology exists here.”
    Against her better judgment, she closed her hands around the object, studying it with careful eyes. Her fingers brushed against a small button on one side and, to her surprise, a three-dimensional hologram popped up in her palm. A woman, who looked to be in her late forties, seemed to stare up at her.
    “Connor, on your way home could you pick up—”
    She shrieked, the device tumbling from her hand.