“She’s gone. Someone took her.”
Chapter 24
Clare
I woke up choking.
Not on water. Not on blood. On nothing. Just the phantom pressure of hands around my throat that weren’t there, crushing a windpipe that was working fine.
My eyes snapped open to darkness.
Wrong darkness. Wrong smell. Wrong everything.
Panic slammed into me before conscious thought. Where was I? What happened? How did I get here?
Xavier.
His name cut through the terror like a flare.
I tried to sit up. Couldn’t. My body jerked against resistance, wrists yanking backward with a sharp bite of pain.
Restrained.
The word dropped into my brain like ice water.
Medical-grade cuffs, the kind I’d used a hundred times in the ER on combative patients. Padded but unyielding, designed to immobilize without causing tissue damage.
My ankles too. Locked down. And across my chest, a strap, wide and tight, pinning me to whatever surface I was lying on.
I yanked harder. The cuffs bit deeper. My breathing accelerated, shallow and fast.
“No. No, no, no.”
The words came out strangled, barely audible over the roaring in my ears.
I forced myself to stop thrashing. To think. To assess like I’d been trained.
Where was I?
The surface under me was hard. Cold. Metal, maybe? A table. The air smelled sharp with antiseptic, chemical clean. That smell that turned my stomach because it signaled hospitals, procedure rooms...
My head pounded. Temples throbbing with each heartbeat, nausea rising hot and sick.
Drugged. I’d been dosed with something.
The realization came with a wave of vertigo that spun the room. Whatever they’d used was wearing off, leaving me disoriented and slow, thoughts slipping away like water through my fingers before I could grasp them.
I blinked hard, trying to clear my vision.
A single door. Heavy. Secure. No window.
And on the far wall, a mirror. Large. One-way.
Someone was watching.
Terror spiked fresh and sharp. I jerked against the cuffs again, harder this time, panic overriding logic. The metal table rattled but didn’t budge.
“Help!” My voice cracked. “Somebody...”
