I woke screaming. Not in pain or thirst.
In disbelief. Horrific disbelief.
Dalton.
My brain was fuzzy again. No doubt he’d drugged me after giving me my ultimatum. But even drugs couldn’t dull what I now knew.
The bastard who kidnapped me, who took me from the airport parking deck and brought me here, the man who was nearly starving me, also had my son. My sweet, precious, funny, bright, helpless little boy.
Images of what he might have been doing to Dalton rattled through me. Thoughts of how scared and vulnerable my child was rolled through my brain. Over and over again. Relentlessly. Wave after wave after wave.
Worst-case scenarios and gut-churning clips from movies battered my mind. In all of them was Dalton’s face. My baby boy’s face. Even though I couldn’t see him well, I could imagine all too well what that face looked like. Red. Streaked with tears. Terrified. It seemed so real.
Too real.
I tried to put the images out of my mind, to make it stop, but I couldn’t. It was like being haunted. And the ghost was uncontrollable.
Several times, I threw up. Small bits dog food and tiny puddles water I couldn’t afford to lose. It wasn’t long before nothing came up. It was just a heaving of my muscles as I lay on my side, in the fetal position, praying for mercy.
Maybe he’d used a different agent this time. It felt different. Everything—my surroundings, my memories, my thoughts—had a nightmarish quality. Like a bad trip. A really bad trip. It was all as confusing as it was agonizingly clear. Especially the part about Dalton. The sound of my son’s voice as he screamed for me... It was so sharp and distinct, even now. Later. After.
In my thoughts, I heard him so clearly I’d called out to him. More than once.
But I didn’t hear him. Not again, because he wasn’t there.
Someone had taken him to God knew where, to do God knew what, and I was stuck in a padded prison, helpless to do anything about it.
My stomach heaved again. I rolled further onto my side and pressed my cheek to the concrete.
That’s when I heard the moan.
That’s when I knew I wasn’t alone.
The sound, it seemed…wounded somehow. Tentatively, I reached out. Fingers shaking, stomach in a knot. I stretched until I felt...something. Something solid.
I jerked my hand back. Recoiled like a startled cat.
Questions, questionsquestionsquestions raced through my mind. Who? How? Why?
All questions and no answers.
Was this even real? Or was it the drugs talking? The drugs and my subconscious mind?
I took a deep breath. Tried to ground myself. In the room, in reality. I felt the body-temperature air. The hard concrete. The pain on my hipbone. I pressed into that sore spot, into that pain. If I was alseep, I wanted to wake up. And if I wasn’t...
I reached out again. Boldly this time. Like I knew what I’d feel. When my fingertips met resistance, I applied pressure. Just enough to test, to confirm.
It was a person. For sure. Warm, solid. Dense, but not overly muscular.
I backed off. Rubbed with the pads of my fingers. Lightly, back and forth.
Material, high quality. Maybe silk. It covered a shoulder.
I tapped and danced my way along. Down, down, down.
It covered an arm. A forearm. A wrist.
A delicate wrist.
A bound wrist.
Duct tape. Wound tight enough to bite into what little flesh covered bone.
The skin was soft. I smelled a hint of vanilla. All signs pointed to this being a woman.
Kill her, he’d said.
Her.
I wiggled my thumb under the tape, tried to loosen it. No luck. I was too weak or it was too tight. Maybe both.
Her fingers were cold when I touched them. She didn’t move. Didn’t jump or jerk or flinch like she felt the contact. I wondered if they were numb. And if she was alive.
Kill her.
My guess was that she was very much alive.
I worked my way back up her forearm, over the ball of her shoulder and the ridge of her clavicle, to her neck. Strands of hair tickled my fingers. I turned my hand, pinched a lock between my thumb and first finger. It was long and coarse. Thick.
I felt along her jawline, met with another restraint. This one was leather. It crossed her face. Slashed over her cheekbones, ran under her chin. It held something in her mouth.
It was a ball gag.
Her breath brushed my knuckles. Puffed steadily from her nose. Deep and even. She was asleep. Or unconscious. She must’ve moaned because of something in her head. She definitely wasn’t making a sound now. She was silent, motionless. Vulnerable.
I knew how that felt.
I tried to remove the gag from her mouth, but the leather wouldn’t stretch. I worked my way around the straps to where they joined. Found the closure. Two rings held together with a tiny luggage lock. There was no opening it without a key.
This guy...he was smart. He didn’t want us talking. Talking could lead to planning. Planning could lead to mutiny. Mutiny could lead to escape. And he couldn’t have that. No, he wanted us here, together, for a reason. A reason I knew.
He wanted this woman dead.
And he wanted me to kill her.