Page 145 of No Good Fight

The words aren’t comforting, and he doesn’t try to make them that way.

I nod once and follow him outside because as much as I want him to be telling the truth, I’ve never been more scared in my entire life than I am right now.

30

ALEX

I wake with my chin against my chest and both hands numb.

For a few seconds, I can’t make sense of why lifting my head hurts so much. Then I try to move my arms and the restraints pull tight around my wrists. The chair shifts beneath me, metal legs scraping concrete, and the sound brings everything back at once.

The truck. The dart. The ground coming up beneath me.

I force my eyes open.

The room is small and ugly, more storage space than anything meant for people. Concrete floor, painted block walls, shelves crowded with old maintenance supplies. A bare bulb hangs overhead, bright enough to make the pressure behind my eyes pulse as the concussion and the migraine blend into one. My wrists are strapped to the chair arms, my ankles secured separately to the legs, and every movement reminds me that I left a hospital less than a day ago when I shouldn’t have.

I test my left hand carefully instead of wasting strength pulling. There’s almost no room beneath the restraint.

“Mrs. Vance?”

My voice barely carries.

I clear my throat and call for her again, louder this time.

A door opens somewhere behind me.

Preston walks into the room with a bottle of water in one hand and a folder tucked beneath his arm. He looks rested. Clean. Like he didn’t spend the half the morning hiding in the woods waiting to shoot me with a tranquilizer.

He puts the water on a table and starts sorting through the folder.

I watch his hands. “Where is she?”

Preston doesn’t look at me right away. He takes out several photographs and lays them across the table, making sure the edges line up before he finally glances over.

“You came too late.”

My fingers stop moving beneath the restraint.

He leaves it there long enough for me to understand.

“No.”

“She became a problem the moment she tried to help you.”

The ache in my chest is worse than the one in my head. I see Mrs. Vance swinging that cane at Preston. Her ridiculous bag of weapons. Her hand reaching for mine through smoke when I refused to leave without her.

I came here so she could go home.

Preston reaches for the water, but I turn my face when he brings it near me.

“She was alive in the video.”

“She was.”

He sets the bottle down again, almost casually, and that calmness frightens me more than his rage would.

I pull against the restraint before I can stop myself. Pain bites into my wrist.