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Burke focused on the intersection he was racing through, even as he spoke to Joel. “Did you let anybody else take point when you saved your wife from her ex-husband?”

“I had backup and a badge.”

Burke risked a glance across the seat to the detective and tapped the badge on his own chest. “What are we?”

Joel cursed again and picked up the radio to update the SWAT team and the plan for going in with a stealthy approach. And if that wasn’t possible, to at least wait until he gave them a signal. “Detective Harris will want to be in on this, too.” He grunted what sounded like a laugh. “Maybe I’ll wait to call him until we’re on the scene and our plan is in place.”

“Appreciate that.” Daniel wasn’t going to let the bullying detective get in the way of saving Polly. He wasn’t going to let anyone do that.

Joel turned to look at Daniel in the back seat. “I want that perp alive. I’ve got two murders and a kidnapping to pin on him.”

Daniel stroked his hand across Pirate’s back, centering himself as he thought through the most important mission of his life. “The only guarantee I’ll make is that Polly is coming out of this alive.”

Chapter Sixteen

“Try anything,” Cayden warned, “and I’ll put you back to sleep.”

“I won’t,” she promised, dropping the soiled bandanna to the floor with a plop while she waited for the rusty water coming out of the bathroom tap to run clear. “I’m a nurse. It’s my job to help people. To help you.”

His cheeks flushed. “You took care of me like this before.”

“I remember.” She glanced down, the nurse in her alarmed by the warmth and swelling surrounding the cut—it was already infected—but the captive in her estimating the distances between her and the backpack on the stool behind her, the open doorway and just how close Cayden was standing to it.

Her fingers were mostly numb from the zip ties, but she worked by memory rather than touch. She breathed deeply, slowing her heart rate so she gave nothing away. He’d let her open the backpack and pull out several medical supplies, including a saline bottle, a syringe and a sterile suture set. The other items she needed were within sight, lined up in a pocket she could easily reach if he gave her the opportunity.

She gently pushed his hand into the weak stream of water. “This’ll sting.” He hissed at the contact with raw skin and immediately pulled away. “I can give you that anesthetic if you want. The stitches are going to hurt even worse than this.”

“You’re not giving me something to knock me out, are you?”

“No. I don’t have anything that strong in my bag,” she answered honestly.

“Okay, then, yeah.” He reached behind him to pull out the knife again. “Just remember. I’ve got this. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you try to leave me. You’re mine.”

“I just want to treat your wound,” she said, amazed that her tone didn’t wobble with the lie.

He nodded.

“Cold wipe,” she warned, tearing the packet with her teeth and swabbing the skin above the wound with the heel of her palm. That vein right there would do nicely. He flinched, but the flinch was pleased—a shiver of being cared for.

“You’re good,” he sighed. “Gentle. I remember you touching me like this. When I got shot.” She remembered that day vividly, but it wasn’t a fond memory. “But I had to go. My cousin said I had to get the bullet that was in my arm, so the cops couldn’t tie us to his business. I left you that day. But then you came to check up on me the next day, and I knew you cared.” Um, she’d driven her sister to pick up her car in that horrible neighborhood where Cayden, his cousin and their gang had hung out and organized dogfights. The fact that he had been there and was threatening her sister and saying lewd things to her had made her want to put as much distance between them as possible. It had been a creepy coincidence—not a house call. “We couldn’t be together because the cops were after me. But I’ve stayed close to you ever since.”

“I knew someone was there.” Gerald’s ghosts, the reflection she’d seen in the cafeteria, footsteps in the parking garage. All had terrorized her until Daniel had come back into her life. She really wished that Cayden Thornhill hadn’t come back into her life, too. “I didn’t know you were trying to take care of me.”

“Of course, I was. I love you, Polly. Do you love me?”

She wasn’t so good an actress that she could say the words convincingly. But she could nod. That seemed to appease him. He smiled and reached out to touch her hair again, leaving a smear of sticky fluid, possibly blood or even some of the infected drainage, that ran down one loose strand. If she got out of this alive, she’d be shampooing her hair three times a day to get the feel of this creepy, unbalanced man off her.

Polly opened the syringe packet. She pulled the vial she needed from her bag. Her thumb found the cap. No measurements, no ritual—just a quick, sure motion a trained hand could make in the dark. She didn’t look at the label again. She didn’t need to.

“Okay, I’m going to numb it. Take a deep breath,” she murmured, the same tone she used with frightened children. “You’ll feel a pinch.”

He leaned into the moment, eyes closing. He wanted it—the tenderness, the care.

The needle kissed skin. The plunger went down. Straight into a vein.

For a heartbeat nothing moved.

Then Cayden inhaled too fast. His lids fluttered open. A blotch fired at the pulse point of his wrist. A row of red dots crept up his arm and disappeared beneath his shirt. The hives reappeared above the neckline. Then they sprouted across his cheekbone, each itchy mark looking redder, angrier as his body absorbed the supersize dose of penicillin she’d given him.