I move through the space carefully. Each room is stocked like a rental, with enough to function but not enough to leave fingerprints. The closets are empty. The drawers hold spare linens and basic toiletries.
I check the windows and the back door. They unlock easily. There'snothing physically stopping me from walking out and heading toward the road.
Which means the restriction isn't physical. It's social and strategic. It's the knowledge that leaving would be interpreted as defiance, and defiance would not be handled here, in this clean rental with no witnesses.
Defiance would be handled somewhere else.
A shudder runs through me, wondering what Adrian will do once he finds out about Blue and me. There's no question in my mind he eventually will.
I scrub my hand over my face and return to the living room. I stand in front of the wall of windows facing the lake.
The sky has begun to dim, the colors flattening as the light drops. Wind moves the water in rough waves, but the shore sits quiet. There are no boats or nearby houses visible from this angle.
The front door opens. A woman steps inside as if she belongs here, chirping, "So you're the famous Dr. Red Mercer."
She carries herself with confidence, her shoulders loose, spine straight, and gaze direct. Her hair falls in long waves, a deep brown that lightens where the strands catch the window light, threaded with warmer tones that look natural rather than styled. It's the kind of hair that suggests she spends money on it, but not in a way that advertises effort.
Her skin has a smooth, even tone that screams sun and genetics, olive with a subtle glow that makes her look awake even in low light. Her brown-green eyes have an excited familiarity and cut straight to mine.
They look like Blue's adrenaline-filled gaze, but a different color.
She closes the door and locks it with a soft click that lands in my spine, stating, "You decided to come."
"If you call locking me in an SUV a choice, then yes."
Her mouth curves slightly. "And yet you followed every instruction."
"Why am I here?" I snap.
She walks farther into the room, slow and unhurried, taking in the space like she's evaluating her own taste. "Because I needed a setting where you couldn't run to your rules."
"My rules?" I ask.
"The ones you hide behind," she says, and stops a few feet from me. "The ethics. The boundaries. The professional posture. All the ways you pretend you're separate from your impulses."
Heat crawls low in my abdomen, unwelcome and immediate, because she knows exactly how to speak to that part of a man and make him react without touching him. It's not flirtation in the conventional sense. It's pressure applied with precision.
She's eerily like Blue.
I keep my expression steady. "You didn't drag me here to talk about impulses."
"I dragged you here to talk about Blue," she says, and the name lands sharp and clean.
My throat tightens. "Where is she?"
Demi's gaze stays locked on mine. "Safe."
"Define safe."
"She's not bleeding. She's not in a cell. She's not being interrogated by men who enjoy the sound of her voice breaking."
My hands curl into fists at my sides. "That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you get right now."
I step so close to her that her clean and expensive perfume flares. She doesn't flinch or retreat. Instead, she steps closer. Amusement fills her expression.
"You're trying to get a reaction out of me," I say.
