Only now, at the sound of the name, he watched as she squirmed slightly. Was her reaction one of surprise because she hadn't realized he knew it, or because it wasn't really her name?Given that they had been unable to identify the woman from a sketch of her, it was no stretch to believe that she was using a fake name now.
“Hmm, or not Mary,” he said as he pulled out his favorite knife and began to spin the handle between his fingers like one might a pen. This knife had been given to him by his dad on his thirteenth birthday. It was the only thing he’d allowed himself to keep from his life before, and that was only because he needed something to tie himself to the people he’d loved but given up for their own safety.
Now the knife was a good luck charm of sorts. It went with him on every single op, and he always preferred to kill with it rather than a gun whenever given the opportunity.
Not that he had any intention of killing the woman yet. Not unless she forced his hand.
When he’d called her on the name thing, her eyes had widened, and she sucked in a breath, all but confirming that Mary was not her real name.
No worries.
Blade knew the perfect way to finally identify this woman once and for all.
“You know it’s rude to lie about your name,” he murmured as he stepped closer, pressing his much larger body against hers and letting her feel the power rippling through it.
Intimidating women wasn't something he’d usually be comfortable with, but this wasn't just any woman. She had participated in creating the drug that forever changed him in ways he never could have guessed when he first signed up for the program. Her last-minute attempt to save him and his team went exactly zero ways toward making up for all the suffering she’d helped cause.
Especially when she’d then tried to blow them up.
“You’ve been a tricky little one to identify, you know that, darlin’? You think your buddy did a good enough job of scrubbing you from databases to pass this test?”
Crowding close enough against her that he could feel every shiver that rocked her slim frame, Blade slowly lifted his knife, allowing the thin moonlight to glint against the blade. If she didn't know which member of the team he was before, although he suspected that she did, then she certainly knew now.
There was no guessing at how he’d gotten his nickname.
Growing up on a cattle ranch, he spent most of his childhood outdoors. Cowboy blood ran through his veins, and he loved camping, hunting, fishing, and anything outdoorsy. It was why his dad had given him this knife for that long-ago birthday, and now it was all he had left of that carefree time of his life.
Now he moved his knife toward her, touching the tip against her temple at the corner of her eye. Filled with an irrational need to destroy the perfect beauty of the woman watching him from terrified blue eyes, he managed to control himself. Maybe he’d taunt her with that later, but for now, he wanted to get a fingerprint to his team so they could finally figure out who she was.
Although her ID said she was thirty, which still would have made her very young a decade ago when they were injected with the drugs, the still nameless woman looked so much younger. She must have been blessed with some magic genes, because if he had to guess, he’d put her at early twenties at most, likely younger than both Cassandra and Rose, who were twenty-four and twenty-three respectively.
But there was no way in hell that timeline worked, because then she would have been a mere pre-teen. Maybe the theory that she was the daughter of Ridge Gardner was correct. Rose had grown up mostly off-grid, although she did have a birthcertificate, so it would make sense that the crazed scientist would keep his child off any database.
Regardless, they knew she was involved, and until he knew otherwise, based on the likelihood she set off the explosions to kill them, he was going to treat her like a threat, an accomplice in the horrors he and his team had suffered, and still battled on a daily basis.
Meeting those baby blues of hers, Blade pressed the tip of his knife into her skin just hard enough that a single drop of blood welled out. “No one is coming to save you, you're my plaything now.”
January 10th
11:32 P.M.
Whitney hadn't even known that terror at this level existed.
Most of her life, she’d been manipulated through fear. She’d thought she could handle mostly anything, but she’d never been in any situation that even remotely resembled this one.
There hadn't been a need for pain, and ropes, and knives to control her, she’d been so young, grooming was easy. Why close a door with a hammer when you could nudge it with a finger and get the same result?
Obviously, she couldn’t handle fear.
At all.
Not only had she been paralyzed, trapped inside her own body as her system rejected both fight and flight and instead picked freeze, but at the sudden sharp sting of pain as the knife pierced her skin, she felt a sudden rush of warmth against her leg as she peed herself.
For one second, mortification overrode the terror, and she hoped that her assailant, who she had to believe was in fact one of the men she’d thought she killed, Blade, if the fact he was using a knife he’d held up rather proudly, didn't notice the fact she’d just wet herself.
No such luck.
Taking a step back, the man laughed as he looked down at her feet, where she was sure a puddle was forming even if she couldn’t see it from this angle.
