When awareness returned, it came with pain—burning, sharp, electric pain that made her gasp.Her head lolled against the headrest, and it took effort just to lift her eyelids.
She was still in her car.
The blue sedan was mangled into her driver’s side door, its front end a twisted, snarling wreck of metal and glass.Her brain was slow to make sense of everything.
“What… happened?”Her voice was barely a whisper, thin and cracked.
Then she looked down and froze.
Her arm—God, her arm.The skin raw and scraped, blood oozing in a slow, sticky line toward her elbow.A deep burn radiated from wrist to shoulder, making her stomach pitch.
Movement outside her window made her flinch.Slowly—too slowly—she turned her head.
A figure was walking away.Not running.Not even glancing back.Just… walking, like they’d crossed a street on their lunch break.
Tall.Long blond hair that swung perfectly with each step, too perfect, too shiny—like it had been bought and worn for effect.A tailored black blazer.Heels clicking against the pavement in an unhurried rhythm.Before the woman was too far, she turned and Natalie saw dark sunglasses, one red nail reaching up to push right over the bridge of the woman’s nose, sliding the sunglasses higher.
Something about the red nails, sunglasses and the woman’s stride seemed familiar, but…also sent a ripple of unease through her.The gait was wrong—too heavy, too wide-shouldered.
Her brain struggled to make sense of what her brain was trying to tell her.Was it a man in a wig?Or was she hallucinating because she’d been knocked on her head during the accident?
“Hey…” She tried to call out, but her voice came out weak and broken.She swallowed and tried again, “Hey, stop!”
The figure didn’t even pause.She melted into a loose cluster of bystanders now hovering at the edge of the scene.The people there were staring at her, not at the woman walking away.And even more disturbing, no one came toward her.
Why weren’t they helping?
The sound of sirens started faintly, as if very far away, then swelled into something sharp enough to slice through her haze.Red and blue lights flashed at the edge of her vision.Someone banged on her passenger-side window—rapid, urgent.
She turned her head an inch, fighting the heaviness in her skull.A woman’s face peered in, mouth moving fast, brows drawn tight with alarm.Natalie couldn’t hear a single word.
Her arm throbbed in time with her heartbeat, her head pulsed like it was being crushed in a vice, and every breath tasted faintly of metal.
She forced her gaze back toward the street.The blond figure was gone.
Her tongue felt thick as she tried to speak.“Someone… walking…” The words tangled and died before they reached her lips.
The pain roared higher, hot and merciless, and black closed in from the edges of her vision.
Then there was nothing.
Chapter 28
Normally, Rylan didn’t answer calls from unknown numbers.Anyone who needed to reach him went through his personal assistant, who screened everything.But Natalie was supposed to have arrived thirty minutes ago, and she was never late.
He’d already called her ten times.Each unanswered ring had only tightened the knot in his chest.Something was wrong.
When his phone buzzed again with an unfamiliar number, he hesitated, his thumb hovering overdecline.But a gut instinct—sharp, cold, and insistent—told him to answer.
“Yes?”His voice came out clipped, sharper than intended.
“Is this Rylan?”A woman’s voice.Tentative.Unfamiliar.
“I don’t have time for this,” he muttered, already tensing, his mind fixed entirely on Natalie—where she was, why she hadn’t called, why she wasn’t answering.
“Sir?Is this Rylan?”the voice repeated, more urgent now.In the background, faint but unmistakable, came the sound of machines beeping and a high, wavering cry.
His stomach dropped.“Yes.Who is this?”
