“So you called the clinic, pretending to be his father.” I cast a dismissive glance at his coat. “You know the ins and out, even if you only dress like a doctor now.”
“I’m still a physician,” he says with a snarl in his voice. “I haven’t forgotten how to heal. Or how to hurt.”
He’s reaching into another drawer now, and my heart flutters, nausea climbing the back of my throat. “I don’t know where he is.”
He pulls something out - a roll of gauze, I think - before he clutches it in his hand. “I don’t believe you. I saw him give you those flowers. He picked them out himself and had them wrapped in a special ribbon.” He leans down, his fetid breath fanning over my cheek. “He told you where he was going.”
I think of the business card Damien gave me in the hotel parking lot. I’d shoved it in my pocket and forgotten about it, but even if I had it on me, I wouldn’t give it to his abuser. “He didn’t. He just wanted to say goodbye.” I pause, wondering if I’m making a terrible mistake. “Damien Courtland is just a patient, nothing more.”
He seems to chew over my words, his heavy jaw flexing as a rumbling sound vibrates in the back of his throat. “You’re lying,” he says finally. “The Courtlands are old money. Damien could have any physician in the city to help him with his heats, and yet he went back to you. Over and over.”
Because he didn’t trust alpha assholes after you abused his body and soul.“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
“Then perhaps you need an incentive.”
I gulp, because he opens his hand like a magician revealing a trick. The gauze is gone, replaced by a shiny new scalpel thatgleams against the grimy skin of his palm. “I could pump you full of drugs, but your heart might stop before you break. And this way, you can watch your skin split, your body bleed. Pain is so much more meaningful when we can see the damage with our own eyes.”
Just like you’ll see your eyeballs boil in their sockets when I get free and burn you to ash.
But my fighting words die on my tongue as he presses the scalpel to the skin of my inner arm. “No one can hear you out here,” he says as we both watch the blade draw the first drop of blood to the surface. “We’re parked in a quiet, secluded spot. I can cut and cut and cut...”
The pain is just starting to burn through my nerve endings when there’s a faint clatter outside. A branch, maybe, dragging against the side of the bus. Or a trickle of rocks, kicked up by the wheels. Except we’re not moving… “How secluded?” I ask as he holds the blade against my arm, a nick more than a cut. “Don’t you think you should go check? Someone might be calling the police right now. They could be telling them they found an ambulance parked all the way out here.”
“It’s just the wind.” His hand jerks, his mouth tightening as he digs the blade deeper. “Tell me where he is, or I'll keep cutting until I reach your wrist.”
I shudder, thinking of all the delicate veins and essential arteries in his path. “You think I’m afraid of a couple of scars?”
His glasses flash, his eyes full of malice. “I think you will be if I cut those ugly claiming bites out of your neck.”
“Jedi!” The voice is so loud, I jump, accidentally digging the blade deeper. But Hargreaves’ head is turning, following the sound of a sharp whistle as it bounces against the side of the bus. “Here, boy! Stop chasing squirrels, you dumb mutt, and get back here.”
I blink, my mouth caught between a gasp and a cry for help. “Someone's out there. They’re going to report the ambulance…”
Hargreaves snarls as he stuffs the wad of gauze in my mouth. He pushes it in so deep, I choke, but he’s already turning away, the scalpel clenched in his fist like a weapon. I drag a breath through my nose, trying to will my dinner to stay in my stomach. Throw up now, and I’ll be dead before Bluff can save me.
Because ithasto be him knocking on the back door. I know that voice, even if the panic in my chest is burning too hot to feel his bond. “Hey, is anyone in there? Open up, will you?”
Hargreaves jerks like he’s been electrified. “Go away! I’m busy.”
“I’m just looking for my dog, man.” A fist thuds on the side, hard enough to shake the wall. “Can you open up and I’ll show you a picture?”
“I don’t have your stupid dog!” Hargreaves holds the scalpel up, the blade red with my blood, as he opens the door an inch. “I said you’re looking in the wrong place…”
I catch a glimpse of Bluff’s face, the scar bright as a lightning bolt, and then he wrenches the door out of Hargreaves’ hand. “Looks right to me, motherfucker.”
Hargreaves lunges at him, but a leather slapjack slams down on his wrist, cracking the bones. Hargreaves screams in agony, but Bluff is already dragging him out of the bus by his neck. He hurls him onto the muddy ground, savagely stomping on his broken wrist. Hargreaves howls again, but Bluff grabs his hair, dragging his head back until his neck is straining at a painful angle. “Only a really stupid motherfucker would touch what's ours.”
I’m making small, helpless cries behind the gauze when Ark leaps into the bus, Pitt on his heels. “Fuck! Abbie!”
They both start tearing at my restraints, Ark ripping the gauze from my mouth and hurling it against the wall. His anger isincandescent, his shoulders heaving as Pitt pulls me into his lap. “Fuck, she’s bleeding.”
Pitt is as stiff as a board under me, but Ark drops to a knee, taking another roll of gauze from the open drawer. He unwinds it slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. “Do you think it needs stitches?”
“Maybe one or two,” I croak, nodding towards a dressing on the shelf. “Put that on first to soak up the blood.”
He nods, placing the dressing on the wound and wrapping the gauze around it. He’s careful, methodical, but I can see the tremor in his fingers. “What else did he do to you?”
“A sedative to knock me out, and a different drug to get me talking.” I decide not to give him any specifics on Hargreaves’ demon drug while he’s radiating so much dominance, it’s burning the back of my throat. “I banged up my knee but I’ll be fine. I just want to get the hell out of here.”
