“Kieran,” I whimpered as if the only word my brain remembered was his name.
“Yeah, baby doll. I got you. Just relax.” Gently, he pushed me back, his wide frame looming over me like armor.
Even though I couldn’t see past him, I knew I was in his bed. The sheets were soft and smelled like him. The pillow at my back was practically a cloud.
“How’d I get here?” I asked. My eyes widened. “Did you find me on the boat?”
His brows pinched. “What boat?”
“I ran for miles until I couldn’t anymore. So I hid on a boat at the marina.” Gasping, I grabbed his forearm and squeezed. “They tried to kill me.”
“Who?” The quiet, ominous tone paralyzed everything. The clock, my panic, even the thundering of my heart. For one suspended moment, all that existed was an unspoken promise to destroy.
In a sense, it was more frightening than the bullets I’d dodged. Because this kind of menace vowed to never miss its mark.
Perversely, I was not afraid but comforted.
The world only restarted when his fingers grasped my chin, a gesture he repeated so much it was almost expected. “I want names.”
Swallowing, I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know their names or why they came after you?”
“Both.”
“Kinda sus,” someone sang from across the room.
Kieran’s body tensed, the muscle in his jaw knotting. Over his shoulder, he said, “I told you to get out.”
“And miss seeing you all up in a tizzy?Pfffffft.”
Leaning around Kieran’s body, which was perched on the side of the bed, I peered through the shadowy room in the direction of the heckling.
“Who are you?” I asked, trying to make out the man standing there.
“No one,” Kieran replied instantly, moving to block my view.
Rude.
The shadow scoffed. “Yeah, theno onewho brought you a doctor for a late-night house call.”
“A doctor,” I repeated, suddenly reminded of the way my body hurt. Glancing down at myself, I took in the white button-up covering my body and the large cutout in the left sleeve to make room for the IV line that was stabbed into the inner flesh of my elbow.
That explains the pinching.
Groaning, I lifted the tubing distastefully. “Not again.” Pinning Kieran with a look, I said, “I don’t need this.”
He glowered. “You nearly ripped it out again.”
“Good.”
“It stays in until the doctor comes back later tonight,” he commanded.
“What time is it?” I asked, my brain full of a thousand questions and all of them fighting to come out first.
“Almost noon.”
That meant nothing to me. “I don’t remember getting here.”
