“Too bad you don’t know where he is, then you could just send them an address,” she muttered as she rolled over for what had to be the thousandth time since she climbed into bed.
With a sigh, she tugged the blankets up and over her head. It was nice at least to sleep with as many blankets as she wanted. Nice ones, good quality ones, not the rough, scratchy blankets she had always been given.
Tears burned her eyes, and she hated everything she’d set in motion. Her good intentions had been used and twisted so many times that they no longer even resembled anything close to what she’d once tried to create.
If she could go back and do her life over, she would …
What?
There was nothing she could change. She’d always been a pawn, and there was nothing she could have done to?—
Whitney froze.
Was that a sound?
An inside-the-house sound?
Paranoia. Had to be. If Dr. Gardner had found her, he would have come rushing in with an army of his loyal guards. As much as he would have loved to kill her outright for her betrayal, he knew he couldn’t do that. Not if he wanted to keep working on the drugs. While he liked to pretend he was the mastermind behind it all, unfortunately, it was all her. In fact, she was sure that if he stopped messing around with her formulas, they would work the way she’d intended, even if that wasn't the way Dr. Gardner wanted.
Forcing herself not to give in to the fear, Whitney rolled over again, so she was facing away from the door. No one was coming, and she wasn't going to let old fears tarnish her newfound freedom.
Hard fought for freedom.
Scrunching her eyes closed, she evened her breathing out, relaxing her muscles one by one in an attempt to push herself into sleep.
It should be easy, she hadn't had more than a couple of hours of sleep here and there since she made the decision to go to Cassandra with a warning. Despite the run through the forest the night before, she’d been too wired to sleep, so she was going on forty-eight hours without any sleep at all.
Yet it wouldn't come.
Too many emotions raged inside her, the most dominant was knowing that she had killed the six men she’d tried to save. Why hadn't she given the building one last check over before setting off those explosives? It was the smart thing to do, and yet she’dbeen ready to just get out of there, her nerves on edge, the prospect of freedom too heady.
Lost in her thoughts and her attempts to force her body to relax and go to sleep, when her covers were suddenly ripped away, she was caught completely off-guard.
A scream ripped from her throat as a hand tangled in her hair and yanked her upright.
Fear paralyzed her, and she stared up at a large figure standing beside her bed.
Guess she hadn't been imagining the sounds inside her house after all. Instead of writing it off as paranoia, she should have investigated. She didn't have a weapon, and she knew zero self-defense skills, but at least she wouldn't have been caught off-guard.
When the hand in her hair dragged her from the bed, it was automatic for her own hands to fly up and grab onto it, attempting to ease the stinging pain in her scalp.
It didn't help.
Scrambling to get her feet beneath her as the man began to walk with her, he didn't speak a word, just pulled her along with him out of her bedroom, down the stairs, and then out into the cold night.
Walking with purpose, it soon became apparent that the man had prepared for this before coming for her. Which meant it absolutely wasn't random. He was there for her.
Run. Fight. You have to get away from him.
The order echoed inside her mind, but she couldn’t make her body cooperate. It was like she’d been turned to stone, all she could do was try to keep up with the man’s much longer strides as he marched her toward a tree with a rope hanging from it.
At first, she thought it was a noose, and she was going to be dead in just a couple of minutes, but as he roughly released herhair to grab her hands, pinning them together with ease, she realized he wasn't going to kill her.
Worse.
Because the only other option was torture.
Pathetic.
