Authors: Adrienne Bell
It was a good lie. Halfway believable even. Probably because it was so steeped in truth. Boyd was undoubtedly coming for her, and Tessa couldn’t imagine anything worse than someone getting hurt—or worse—over her. Wasn’t that, at its core, why she was doing all of this anyway?
The stranger didn’t look away. “I’m already involved.”
“Boyd won’t waste his time on you,” Tessa said, shaking her head. “All he wants is me. There’s lots of time for you to run.”
A muscle ticked in the man’s jaw, and Tessa had the feeling her words had offended him somehow. She wasn’t sure why. Couldn’t he see that she was offering him a way out? If he was the kind of man she thought he was—and after seeing his handiwork back at the house, what other kind could he be?—then he had to know just how dangerous Boyd was.
“And where will you
run
to?” he asked. His voice was calm and even. “To the police? To the hospital? Boyd will find you, and with his money you won’t be safe in those places for long.”
Tessa’s gaze slid to the side. She didn’t need the reminder. She knew all of these things.
The legal system was a joke to a man like Boyd. Even if she could afford to go after him through legal channels, her word would count for nothing. Less than nothing. In the end she would be the one ripped apart—first figuratively by Boyd’s lawyers, then quite literally by his henchmen.
But the man across from her wasn’t done.
“You’re in worse shape than you realize. You have a dislocated shoulder. You’re bleeding. You can barely hold yourself upright, and I’m not entirely certain that you’re not about to slip into shock. If I let you out of this car, you won’t make it down the sidewalk,” he said.
Tessa felt tears slip down her cheeks. Damn it. She couldn’t even wipe them away because she needed to cradle her arm.
“Let me take you somewhere you can rest and heal,” he said. There was no aggression in his voice. No anger. He sounded so reasonable. And Tessa hated it.
“I-I can’t.” Her throat was tight. She could barely squeeze out the words.
He looked at her for a long moment. Tessa looked for a flicker of any emotion in his eyes but saw nothing. After another second, he nodded.
“All right,” he said, and Tessa felt a wave of relief wash over her. “But let me take care of your dislocated shoulder first.”
Tessa glanced down at her useless limb, and back up at his face. “You know how to set it back in the socket?”
“I do,” he said without hesitation. “It’s going to hurt though.”
Tessa bit into her lip. Of course, it would. It hadn’t felt all that great coming out, but now her shoulder was so swollen and tender that the slightest touch made her want to howl in pain.
But he was right. It wasn’t going to get any better on its own. And she couldn’t go to the hospital. They would demand answers. And that wasn’t something she could give anyone.
Better to suffer through the pain now and be done with it.
“Okay,” she agreed, giving him a terse nod.
“I can give you something for the pain,” he offered.
Tessa narrowed her eyes. “You just happen to have pain meds in your car?”
“You would be surprised how often things like this happen.”
Maybe a couple of days ago she would have been, but today Tessa doubted that anything could surprise her.
Not that it mattered. She wasn’t about to take candy, or sketchy drugs, from strangers.
“I’ll pass,” she said.
“Your choice.” He reached out and touched her upper arm.
Tessa screamed in agony. Actually screamed. The sound filled the car, but the guy didn’t flinch. He just pulled his hand back.
Sickening heat rushed through Tessa even as her body shook with chills. Her stomach churned, and she feared she was going to retch all over the floorboards.
And that was just from a touch.
“I’ll take the drugs,” Tessa said in a rush.
“Good idea.”
He reached over and opened the glove compartment. Tessa’s eyes widened as he pulled out a syringe and a small glass vial.
“What is that?” she asked, as he stripped the sterile plastic wrapper away from the needle.
He watched carefully as he drew the clear liquid inside. “Just something to take the edge off.”
Tessa’s mind raced with a thousand reasons not to trust him, but all of them had the hollow ring of desperation. The sad truth was, he didn’t need drugs to overpower her. If he wanted to hurt her, he could do it easily.
But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d put himself in danger trying to help her.
Tessa looked into his eyes as he held up the syringe. She didn’t see even a hint of malice there. She wouldn’t go so far as to say that he was a good guy, but she was willing to bet that he wasn’t one of the bad ones.
And betting was just what she was doing.
“Deep breath,” he said, as he pulled his jacket away from her shoulder.
Tessa hissed air in through her gritted teeth as he slid the needle into her arm and pushed down the plunger. A moment later, the sting faded as he pulled the syringe out.
“How long does it…” Tessa’s words faded as a warm, pleasant feeling pulsed through her like waves on a beach. The pain receded to a background hum. Everything inside her slowed down. Her breath. Her heartbeat. Her mind.
Tessa looked up at him and smiled. “That’s better.”
“I thought it might be,” he said.
This time there was only a dull ache when he lifted her arm. Tessa watched with little more than curiosity as he straightened her limb out. Without warning, he pulled hard.
There was a brilliant stab of pain. Then a pop. And another scream.
Tessa was pretty sure the scream came from her lips, but she couldn’t be certain. Because as soon as it was done, another wave came in and dragged the pain out to sea—far, far away from her.
He bent her arm, testing it, a few times, before laying it back down in her lap.
Tessa closed her eyes, pulling in a few deep breaths as everything inside her started to calm down. She only opened them again when she felt the car beginning to pull away from the curb.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’m taking you someplace where you’ll be safe.”
Tessa’s brows pulled together. That didn’t sound right.
“You were going to let me out,” she said. She knew that she should have been upset at the change of plans, but she just couldn’t seem to muster up any real anger.
“After you’ve had a chance to rest,” he said.
Rest
. The word sounded like heaven. Even now, it felt like her spine was melting into the back of her seat.
Of course, that could have just been the drugs.
The drugs.
“What did you give me?” she asked. Her voice sounded sleepy.
“Morphine.”
Morphine? He wasn’t fooling when he said he had something to take the edge off.
“What kind of freak show drives around with morphine in his glove box?” Oops. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
He looked over at her, and she thought for a second she saw a flicker of amusement shining in his eyes. Now, Tessa knew she was as high as a kite.
“How much did you give me?” she asked.
“Enough,” he said.
Tessa closed her eyes as she nodded her head. That sounded about right.
“What’s your name?” Her eyes popped open as he asked the question.
“Teresa Rosenthal,” she said, and put out her hand. “But everybody calls me Tessa. What’s yours?”
He glanced down at her hand, but kept his hands on the wheel.
“Don’t be rude,” she said, glaring up at him.
After another second, he pulled one hand away just long enough to briefly wrap his fingers around hers. “Rhys Vaughn.”
“Oh, a
sexy
name,” Tessa cooed.
A smile played around the corner of his lips. “Is it?”
“
Rhys
,” she said it slow, letting the sounds cascade over her lips. “It suits you. Goes well with your sexy face.”
Tessa clapped a hand over her mouth. Dear lord, what was she doing? She knew better than to say things like that. She swore she did, but it seemed the morphine hadn’t just taken away her pain. It had also stolen her filter.
“Sorry,” she said through her fingers.
Rhys didn’t say anything. Tessa figured he was being merciful and pretending that he hadn’t heard a word. That would be the kind thing to do, and Tessa desperately wanted to believe that the man she found herself traveling with was kind.
They drove on for a little while longer in silence. Tessa bit into her lower lip to make sure she stayed that way. She lost track of time, watching the blurred lights dance past her window.
After what might have been five minutes or maybe an hour, Rhys pulled into a driveway next to an older ranch-style home. He pulled the car all the way around the back, where a freestanding garage sat in a corner of the property. Tessa turned her head up to him as he got out and opened her door.
“Where are we?” she asked. “No, wait. Let me guess.
Someplace safe
,” she parroted his deep voice.
He fixed her with his blue stare. “The less you know, the better off you are.”
Her brows pulled together as she shook her head. “You are aware that makes
absolutely
no sense, right?”
He didn’t answer, but bent down to wrap a steadying arm around her shoulder.
“How could ignorance possibly serve anyone better than knowledge?” she went on. “To say otherwise is to discount thousands of years of scientific progress.”
“Are you a scientist?” he asked, helping her to her feet.
“I am,” Tessa said proudly. “I have a doctorate in bio-engineering. And I don’t need your help to walk.”
She might have been in bad shape before, but now she felt fine. Better than fine. Hell, she was pretty sure she could dance her way into the house if he let her.
But it didn’t look like that was going to happen.
“Humor me,” Rhys said.
He swooped her up again, and for a second Tessa felt like she was floating. Then she was pressed up against his body, his strong arms supporting her. Suddenly, she forgot what they were arguing about. Tessa let out a long sigh as her head fell against his hard chest.
“You feel good,” she said.
His mouth tightened at her words, but Tessa didn’t mind. For the first time in days, she felt safe, rising and falling in his arms. Safe and warm and protected.
All was right in the world as he carried her out into the crisp night air. So right, that her eyelids started to flutter with every step.
She was so tired. It wasn’t surprising. Dylan hadn’t allowed her to sleep. Surely, there wasn’t any harm in taking just a little nap.
No harm at all.
Chapter Three
“Don’t fall asleep on me yet,” Rhys said as Tessa’s head lolled against his chest.
He rushed across the back lawn of the safe house and up the steps. The lights were off and the neighborhood was quiet. He was confident that no one was watching as he unlocked the door.
Which was good. Barely conscious, bleeding women were notoriously difficult to explain away to neighbors and police.
At least the morphine had done its job. Having her nod off before he was able to get more information out of her would be a pain in the ass, but at least she was no longer in agony.
For now at least.
Tomorrow morning would be a different story. He might have taken away the worst of her pain, but she still had a long road to travel until she was truly healed. And based on her near feral behavior in the car when she’d tried to get away, he had the feeling that Tessa Rosenthal wasn’t going to consent to bed rest without a fight.
So, he would just have to convince her.
Rhys walked her down the hall to the back bedroom. He laid her down as gently as he could, but she still flinched as her back pressed against the soft mattress. She looked up at him with heavy hooded eyes.
She looked particularly small down on top of the king-sized bed. Vulnerable. Hardly worthy of the half dozen guards that Boyd had posted at his house. And yet, she’d escaped them all.
But what had they done to her? And why?
A fresh wave of anger surged inside him.
“I need to take your shirt off,” Rhys said through gritted teeth. Her eyes widened, showing a glimmer of fear. He forced himself to relax and softened his voice. “To check your injuries.”
She didn’t look all that reassured, but she didn’t fight him as he peeled back the mottled brown T-shirt from her chest and pulled it over her arms and head. It wasn’t until he held it in his hands that Rhys realized the fabric used to be white. He tossed it on the ground at his feet.
Rhys’ hands curled into fists at his side as every muscle in his body went tight.
Her left side was covered in red and black bruises. He lowered himself down to his knees to get a better look. Finger-width welts still showed on her flesh. But that wasn’t all.
There were clean cuts all over her torso. Some short. Some long. All superficial, but each one showing bright red and angry against her pale skin.
Rage replaced anger as Rhys recognized the careful knife work, meant to elicit maximum pain with minimal damage. It was a rudimentary but effective tactic used when high-value targets refused to talk.
Which meant two things: Tessa
was
the person he’d been called out to question, and even after all of that she’d endured, she still hadn’t talked.
His suspicions were confirmed as he traveled up to check the damage on her head. What he saw there was far from the cold, calculated cuts below. Through the dried blood and matted hair, he saw a tightly grouped series of ragged wounds, the kind caused by fingernails digging into her scalp as they grasped her hair in frustration.
Tessa Rosenthal hadn’t just been roughed up or interrogated. Someone had tortured her.
Not
someone
. Rhys knew without a shadow of doubt who had done this.
“Dylan,” Rhys said.
Tessa’s eyes went wide with fear at the name. “What?”
“Did Dylan do this to you?” Rhys asked, certain he already knew the answer but wanting to hear it from her lips.
He looked into her eyes as they flooded with tears. He could tell by the way she struggled to focus on his face that Tessa was quickly succumbing to the potent combo of drugs and exhaustion, but for the moment she was lucid enough.
“It was…terrible.”
There was a world of emotion in that single world. Rhys’ back teeth ground together. He put his hand to her head and smoothed back her hair, hoping to soothe away at least a little of the anguish Dylan had caused.
“Did he do anything else? Besides dislocating your shoulder?” Rhys asked. He needed to know if there were other injuries, ones he couldn’t see.
Tessa slowly shook her head. “He didn’t do that.”
“Who then?”
“I did.”
Rhys narrowed his eyes. “You?”
“It’s how I managed to escape. I don’t know why everyone left the room all at once. They’d never left me alone before.”
Rhys knew. It had to be when he’d arrived at Boyd’s.
“I had to get out of there, and I knew it was my only chance.” Her voice grew frantic. “My arms were tied. I tried to reach the knot, but I couldn’t quite get it. So I tried harder. Then it popped. It hurt…but my fingers could reach the knot.”
She’d done what she had to do.
Rhys stared at her face as he stroked her hair back.
Her eyes began to close. She was almost out. He had time for one more question.
“Tessa,” he said. Her eyes flickered open. “What did Boyd want from you?”
She lolled her head back and forth against the bed.
“I can’t tell you, Rhys,” she said, her voice soft and sleepy. “I’m so sorry. I can never tell anyone that.”
Her eyelids drifted down. Her breathing evened out. All the tense lines on her face washed away as sleep overtook her.
Rhys stayed down on his knees watching her. She was strong—a fighter. She had endured pain that had broken men twice her size, but she’d still found a way to escape.
But it wasn’t over yet. Dylan hadn’t managed to crack her, which meant Boyd would still be desperate for whatever information Tessa was hiding. He wasn’t going to give up easily.
A minute later, Rhys’ phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out as he stepped into the hallway. His eyes narrowed as he stared down at the name on the screen.
He lifted the phone to his ear.
“Dylan,” Rhys said, his voice low.
“You left.” Dylan didn’t bother hiding the strain in his voice this time.
“I did.”
“And the guards at the door, that was you too?” Dylan asked.
This time Rhys let his silence answer for him.
Dylan gave a hard sigh. “You know, I took a big risk asking you to meet with Boyd. I put my reputation on the line for you tonight.”
“I guess I’m not the person you thought I was,” Rhys said through clenched teeth.
There was a long pause.
“You took her, didn’t you?” Dylan finally asked.
“I
rescued
her.” Rhys’ fingers curled into a fist at his side as rage threatened to boil over inside of him.
“You have to bring her back,” Dylan said.
“And you know I’m not going to do that,” Rhys said. He walked down the hallway, toward the living room.
The house was empty and dark. The moonlight filtering in through the windows gave just enough light to navigate the house. Besides, the shadows suited his mood perfectly.
“Listen, man, I know it looks bad—” Dylan started.
“It looks a hell of a lot worse than bad,” Rhys broke in.
“—but you have to let me explain.”
“Do I?”
“Dr. Rosenthal is not the woman you think she is,” Dylan said. “She’s dangerous.”
Rhys froze as another wave of rage swept through him. The image of her injuries flashed in his mind—the blood, the bruises. Someone in this situation was dangerous, but Rhys didn’t believe for a second that it was Tessa.
“Funny,” Rhys said. “I don’t seem to remember seeing any of her wounds on you.”
“Not like that,” Dylan said. “She’s been using SciGen labs and resources to secretly create a weapon. It’s bad news, Rhys. Worse than anything you’ve ever seen. When Boyd found out about it, Tessa freaked and hid the evidence. I was just trying to get her to tell us where.”
“By throwing her in a basement and filleting her with a razor?”
“Did I do a shit job? Sure. That’s why I called you,” Dylan said. “But am I ashamed of what I did? Absolutely not. Thousands of lives hang in the balance. Maybe more.”
There was a note of truth in Dylan’s voice, hidden deep beneath the many layers of desperate lies. But without having the man in front of him, it was impossible to tell which part was true.
“So why not bring her to the cops? The FBI?” Rhys asked.
“Same reason you didn’t,” Dylan replied. “Too many questions. The last thing SciGen needs is more bad press.”
So, Boyd had already checked in with the authorities to see if Tessa had popped up. Rhys was doubly glad he’d kept Tessa from getting out of the car. She wouldn’t have lasted an hour on the street.
“You’re right,” Rhys said. “Kidnapping and torture play much better in the papers.”
There was a pause on the other end, and Rhys got the feeling their conversation was no longer a private one. Someone else was listening in, and Rhys was pretty sure he could guess whom.
“Last chance,” Dylan said. “Are you going to bring Dr. Rosenthal back to Boyd or not?”
Rhys didn’t hesitate. “I already gave you my answer.”
“You’re going to regret that decision, Rhys.”
“Is that a threat?”
“All I’m saying is that Carter Macmillan might run a nice little business, but it’s nothing in comparison to Boyd’s resources,” Dylan said, his voice as cold and sharp as steel. “I will find where you’re hiding her.”
Rhys’ jaw hardened as he stared into the darkness in front of him. “And I’ll be waiting for you.”
Rhys ended the call, but he didn’t tuck the phone away. It stayed tightly clenched in his hand as he stared out the front window of the safe house.
He had other calls to make. And none of them were going to be easy.
Macmillan Security had just weathered a major scandal of its own that had ended with a congressman in prison and the company being run out of Sacramento. Now that they had finally cleared their name in the eyes of the law and re-opened their doors in San Francisco, no one on the team was going to be anxious to take on another powerful and well-connected adversary.
But that was too damn bad.
He didn’t care what it took. He was never going to let Dylan get his hands on that poor woman in the room behind him. He knew only too well what would happen to her if Boyd succeeded in capturing her again.
He knew because he’d done it to others.
It had been years ago, halfway around the world. He’d been a soldier then, doing his job.
But none of those old, familiar excuses had mattered the moment Rhys had looked into Tessa Rosenthal’s eyes tonight. All of the painfully vivid memories rushed into his head…along with the guilt.
He might not know the full story yet of why she’d ended up in Boyd’s basement, but he did know that she didn’t deserve what had happened to her there. And for that reason alone, Rhys swore that Dylan would never touch Tessa again.
***
Schlick. Schlick. Schlick.
The rhythmic metallic sound wormed its way into Tessa’s dreams, threatening to wake her up. She nestled her head deeper into the pillow, but it didn’t stop.
Schlick. Schlick.
The relentless sound held on to her and pulled her toward reality.
She was already becoming more aware of the throbbing soreness that seemed to have invaded every cell of her body. She knew it would only grow worse the moment she joined the land of the living, so she fought to stay in the twilight between dreams and consciousness. But it was no use.
Her eyes flickered open.
A strange man was sitting on the window seat across from her, one bent leg propped on top of the opposite knee. Heavily tattooed arms showed from underneath the sleeves of his black T-shirt. In one hand, he held a thin, gray, rectangular stone, and in his other a large serrated knife that he was sharpening against it.
Schlick.
Panic swelled in Tessa. She shot up and kicked backwards at the same time.
“Rhys!” She screamed the name without thinking. After all that had happened last night Tessa wasn’t entirely sure that the man was real and not a product of her fevered mind.
But all her doubts were erased a second later, when the bedroom door was thrown open, and her blond Adonis came crashing in.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. His whole body was tense, but he didn’t even look in the other man’s direction.
Couldn’t he see the madman with the knife? Maybe not. Maybe she
had
lost her damned mind. Just to be sure, Tessa pointed a shaky finger at the stranger.
The tattooed man lifted his head and locked eyes with Rhys. He didn’t bother putting the knife down.
“Ah,” Rhys said, instantly relaxing. “Dr. Tessa Rosenthal, let me introduce you to a good friend of mine, Jake Thorne.”
“A
friend
?” Tessa’s brows shot up. “The guy sharpening a knife in the corner is
your friend
?”