Page 46 of The Ashes of Summer

A ragged sound catches somewhere deep in his throat. His chest tightens beneath my fist. His head shifts weakly across the pillow, trying to escape the pressure, and a slow, cold satisfaction settles low in my stomach as I bear down harder.

Good.

Pain still reaches him.

"Wake up," I murmur, leaning close enough that the words never travel beyond the space between us. "Come on."

Another strained breath. Another twitch.

I watch every tiny movement, waiting for the one that matters, refusing to blink in case I miss it.

The door opens behind me. Tamara crosses the room without a word, slipping into the gap beside the bed before positioning herself with her back to the door. When her hand comes out of her pocket, there's a syringe between her fingers.

I reach for it automatically and lift it toward his mouth.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, not like that!" she hisses, snatching it back before I can do anything stupid. "Here."

She catches his hand instead, steadying it as she slides the syringe into the cannula port taped over the back of it. The plunger sinks beneath her thumb in slow, deliberate increments, and I find myself watching the clear liquid disappear into the line, knowing there's no taking it back now.

"If anyone finds out..."

"They won't."

The words barely register.

My eyes never leave his face.

I'm watching for the moment he comes back to reality—regardless of how fucked up reality is these days.

His chest rises and falls. The monitors continue their steady rhythm, indifferent to the fact that the room feels like it's holding its breath. Somewhere beyond the door, a cart rattles along the corridor, its wheels squeaking over the linoleum, the noise so ordinary it feels out of place amid the chaos.

A long breath escapes me as I lean to place my elbow on the chair arm, then rest my chin in my palm.y gaze fixed on the faint rise and fall of his chest.

Every breath is another second closer. Most people think waiting is passive. They mistake stillness for inaction. They're wrong. Waiting is a weapon if you've got the patience for it.

And patience has never been something I lacked.

The rhythmic beep of the monitor is becoming its own kind of fucking torture.

Every pulse is another second she's still inside Rivers Ridge. Another second Jackson Moore has his hands on her. Another second I'm trapped in this hospital room while that psychopath gets to decide what happens next.

I lean forward in the chair, my forearms braced against my knees, my phone clenched so tightly in my hand my knuckles have long since turned white. The satellite map fills the screen, rain dragging down the windows behind it until it reflects nothing but the fluorescent lights humming overhead. The room reeks of antiseptic, burned coffee and that metallic smell hospitals never manage to get rid of—the smell of blood scrubbed away but never quite gone.

The bastard in the bed doesn't move.

My eyes move from him to find the map again, tracing the same roads for what has to be the hundredth time. They're burned into my head now. Every bend. Every tree line. Every stretch of mountain road that disappears beneath thick woodland before the satellite can show me a fucking thing.

Three routes. That's all I've got.

One cuts north through old logging land. One disappears into private property before it's swallowed by the trees. The last loops west and vanishes beneath forest so dense it may as well have been designed to hide people.

An entrance.

An exit.

Somewhere they bring women in.

Somewhere they take bodies out.