THE AIR around me was clammy and chilly. Without opening my eyes, I reached for the covers at my side—covers that I must have kicked off while I slept.
As I moved my arm, a painful ache in my side worked its way into my consciousness. Then a jab of pain shot through my wrist. Why was I hurt?
A flash of Anna’s bloody, pain-marred face passed through my mind, and my eyes snapped open. They stung for a moment until I blinked the tinge of discomfort away and focused my vision on the ceiling.
The paneled ceiling. The ceiling above my head in the household had been smooth and white—not paneled.
The previous night floated up through my memory—the attack on the household, my hurried departure, that oh so wonderful drive through the rain… and the crash. The men who’d supposedly come to my aid.
And then I’d blacked out.
But where had I ended up after that? This wasn’t a hospital. No tang of antiseptic cleaner and sterilized surfaces hung in the air. It smelled of dust and stale coffee with a hint of masculinity.
I turned my head slowly, taking in the small, cement-floored room that contained nothing but a bed, a wooden chair, and a large rug. At least I could see properly now, the chemicals finally wiped from my eyes. Still, fear trickled through my chest. I squared my shoulders against it.
Fear was weakness. Fear would be the reason I got killed. There were plenty of other emotions—powerful emotions—to choose from, so I needed to pick wisely. Rage and vengeance were my top two options, but I chose the third, the one that had served me well many times in the past.
A cool, focused calm.
I pressed my left arm into the mattress and pushed myself upright, trying to avoid clenching the muscles that I knew would bring a deeper ache into my ribs. Even so, a groan slipped from my lips. I examined my right arm, which had been placed in a firm plastic brace as I slept.
Otherwise I was dressed exactly the same as when I’d left the household. I didn’t look or feel as if anyone had violated my body. A quiver ran down my spine at the thought, but I dismissed it. No point in worrying about what might happen, only what was actually happening right now.
I released a long breath, my bruised ribs throbbing with the deep exhale. My gaze lifted to the door. My instincts urged me to run for it, but the trained part of my mind knew I had to play this smarter. Whoever had brought me here would be waiting outside that door, and escaping that way might be impossible, especially with a sprained wrist and bruised ribs.
Instead, I allowed my eyes to flick toward the window. It was set high in the wall, which confirmed what I’d already suspected from the smell and the floor: I was in a basement. A stream of sunlight seeped through the glass, offering a thin yet cheery light, but my heart sank.
There was no way I was squeezing my shoulders or hips through that tiny rectangle. I’d had enough practice at wriggling through small openings to judge it at a glance.
Shit.
I needed another strategy, and I needed it quickly. Did I have anything like a weapon on me?
I patted my pockets, thinking of the dinner knife and the shard of glass. My stomach clenched for a different reason. My pockets were totally empty. Not just of weapons, but of the rolls of cash and the jewelry I’d grabbed to fund my self-assigned mission.
How the hell was I going to track down the murderers who’d killed Anna, Noelle, and the others if I didn’t have anything to pay my way?
I glanced around the room, but the tote bag I’d stuffed the rest of my belongings and more jewelry into was nowhere in sight. My pulse hiccupped.
No, no, no. I had no money, no weapons, and injuries that’d slow me down in a fight. I had no one to turn to for help. I had nothing. Nobody.
Gritting my teeth, I took a deep breath to steel myself. I was Decima, protector of the household, and I’d get through this. I’d see my mission through.
But the first step in doing that was figuring out where I was and who’d brought me here. I wasn’t tracking down any murderers while I was stuck in this room anyway.
Whoever had taken me, they’d stolen the loot I’d rightfully stolen. And it hadn’t even really been stealing when I’d done it, since I was the sole remaining survivor of the household—everything left in the house might as well have been mine. Of course, what did I expect from the kind of person who’d haul an unconscious woman into a strange room somewhere?
I considered the window again, scooting to the edge of the bed. I should be able to reach it if I pulled the chair over—my ribs were going to just love that move. But even if I couldn’t escape through that opening, I might be able to catch the attention of some passerby…
A click caught my attention. My head jerked toward the door. The previously locked door, judging by the rasp of a deadbolt shifting with the turn of a key. All my senses went on even higher alert. I tensed where I sat, preparing to fight for my life if I had to.
The door swung open to reveal a man.
A massive man. He stood several inches over six feet and ducked through the low doorway, a habit he’d likely developed after hitting his head a handful of times in the past. His dark brown hair, short and methodically cut, matched the scruff that covered his jaw and neck. Beneath the neckline of his tight-fit shirt, there were various places where tattoos peeked out from his brawny chest, though I couldn’t tell what they were.
From the lines just starting to form at the corners of his eyes and mouth, I estimated he was in his late thirties. And he hadn’t had the easiest of lives. The bottom of his left ear was ragged with missing flesh. I couldn’t tell from this far away what’d done it, but it’d obviously been an unpleasant situation.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, his voice just as deep and gruff as I’d expected from his appearance. It was a familiar voice.
“You were at the crash,” I said. The big guy who’d reached me first, who’d offered his medical training. I hadn’t been able to make him out well enough between my blurred vision and the rain to recognize him on sight, but that commanding voice was unmistakable.
He nodded, taking a slow step forward. “That’s why I’m asking how you’re feeling. You collapsed on us, and we weren’t sure what to do, since you were pretty insistent on not going to the hospital. I hope you can forgive me for not being willing to leave you lying in the road. We brought you back here, and I’ve patched you up.” He nodded to my wrist. “It’s just sprained, not broken.”
“Fantastic,” I said tersely. The sarcasm wasn’t polite, but I didn’t see any need to put on a friendly front with this guy. He was making it sound as if I’d fainted, but I hadn’t felt dizzy beforehand. Had the crash caught up with me suddenly… or had he and his friends messed with me somehow?
But as long as he was playing the good guy, I could play along a little too. “To answer your question, I’m a bit sore but otherwise fine.”
“That’s good to hear. There wasn’t much I could do for your ribs.” His gaze traveled over my chest, but without any trace of a leer, and then back to my face. “I’m sorry—you must be pretty confused. If you didn’t catch my name last night, I’m Julius.”
The nickname I most often went by when dealing with anyone outside the household fell from my mouth automatically. “Dess.” Sometimes I had other aliases for a specific mission, but Dess was my all-purpose public name, just a shorter version of Decima. Noelle said it was always best to have one you could respond to easily, naturally.
Julius moved another step closer, and it took every ounce of my willpower not to shoot forward and knock him to his knees so I could dash past him. If I even could knock him over. He was bigger and probably stronger than me, all my training aside, and I was in pain. I still didn’t know what exactly he was up to.
“Dess,” he said, testing the name—weighing it for who knows what. As he said it, he cocked his head to the side, and a flicker of deeper recognition sparked inside me.
Maybe it was the tone of his voice or the way the light hit the chiseled planes of his handsome face at that angle, but I had the abrupt sense that I’d seen him before. And not in a bad way. The tug of emotion inside me felt almost reassured by his presence and his authoritative stance.
What the fuck? I must have been more shaken up by the crash than I realized. I mentally shook myself and studied him surreptitiously. The sense of familiarity remained, but I couldn’t place him.
It didn’t matter. What mattered was figuring out his motivations: had he and his friends really been playing hero, or had they knocked me out and dragged me here for some nefarious reason? And if the latter, did that reason have anything to do with the massacre in my home?
“What were you doing there last night?” I asked abruptly.
Julius blinked and gave me a quizzical look. “We were heading back here after a party at a friend’s house, and we saw you hit that telephone pole. We’re not the types to just keep driving when someone’s obviously in trouble.” He paused and reached behind him to pick up something he’d left by the door. My tote bag.
My gaze tracked it as he held it up, my fingers itching to grab it. It looked as full as it’d been when I’d left, but that didn’t mean it had anything except my clothes and that stupid stuffed tiger in it.
“We were actually wondering if you were in more trouble than just the crash,” Julius said, his voice dipping lower. Something about the assured baritone sent a whisper of heat over my skin that I almost… liked?
Focus, Decima.
Julius was still talking. “When we checked you over for ID to try to find out who to call to let them know where you were, we didn’t find any, but we did notice this stuff.” He pulled out one of the necklaces and then waggled a roll of cash. “And you’ve got blood on your shirt even though you don’t have any cuts on you. What happened to you before you got into that car?”
“I don’t really see how that’s your business,” I said, like a regular person who had nothing to hide but wanted their privacy would. Right? I didn’t have enough practice at being a normal person to be sure, but the response felt reasonable. “Thank you for stopping and helping me, but I don’t know you, and I’d really like to get out of here now.”
Julius contemplated me, his gaze curious but penetrating. I met it, narrowing my eyes and daring him to question me further.
The way he effortlessly held my gaze drew up another unexpected feeling in my stomach that fluttered and multiplied. The strength that he exuded, both literally and with his mere presence, called to a part of me that had long remained dormant. This was a man who got things done.
But what was he going to do with me?
The question didn’t unnerve me as much as it should. Julius folded his arms over his chest, and the movement brought up his sleeve to reveal a pointed shape that was part of one of his tattoos creeping over his bicep.
Were we playing some kind of game of cat-and-mouse where neither of us was showing all our cards? I still couldn’t tell what his intentions were, and that made me hesitate to make any aggressive moves.
If this was a game, he probably figured he was the cat in it. Ha. I doubted he could possibly imagine how many men like him I’d taken down in the past several years.
Julius offered a casual shrug. “I just want to be sure we’re not sending you out there into some kind of danger. It’s hard not to worry, considering the state we found you in. Or maybe we should be worried about whoever you got this hoard from.”
Oh, it wasn’t me who was in danger. It was the people who’d massacred the household and made the grave mistake of leaving me alive, and when I figured out who they were, they wouldn’t know what hit them. Every feeling I’d experienced as I held Julius’s gaze faded, replaced with the same steady rage that would continue driving me until I completed this mission successfully.
If he wanted a story, I’d give him a story.
I blew out a breath as if I was frustrated with the situation. “Fine. If you insist on knowing—my boyfriend won that crap in some stupid poker game. He was so drunk he passed out, and I saw my chance to get away, and I just—I grabbed it and ran for it. Things haven’t been so great between us for a while.”
I swiped my hand across my face and looked down at my shirt. At the bloodstain the rain hadn’t quite washed out where a spurt of Anna’s blood had hit the fabric. My mind leapt to the next explanation. “I get nose bleeds when I’m stressed sometimes. It must have happened while I was leaving without me even noticing it, and some got on my shirt. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
Julius nodded, but his wary expression didn’t change. Something I’d said wasn’t lining up with his assumptions, and I didn’t know how to fix it. Had I shown the wrong emotions for the story I’d given? I’d never had a boyfriend before, let alone an awful one. I didn’t know what it was like to be someone desperate enough to take off on that boyfriend in the middle of the night. Maybe I should have tried crying? But tears didn’t come easily to me.
I hadn’t even cried for Anna, not really.
Julius didn’t argue with me, though. He set my tote bag down on the chair. “We didn’t find a phone on you. I’m guessing you don’t want to check in with this boyfriend, but is there a friend or relative you were heading to that you’d want us to get in touch with? If someone was expecting you, they must be panicking by now.”
I shook my head quickly. “I don’t have a phone—he broke my last one a few days ago. No one knew I was coming. I didn’t even know where I was going yet.”
That last part was true enough that a twinge of loss ran through my chest and into my voice. Something shifted in Julius’s expression.
He motioned to the bag. “Well, you can take that with you when you leave. I don’t want to get in the middle of some domestic dispute. And by the sounds of things, you’ll need that stuff.”
Seriously? I resisted the impulse to snatch the bag up right this moment and kept my voice carefully neutral. “So I can go, then? The question period is over?”
“This isn’t a prison,” Julius said. “I do have first aid training from my time in the military, and in my opinion, especially if you don’t have anywhere specific to go, it’d be better if you stayed here another day or two to make sure there aren’t any lingering effects from the crash. Unless you’re more comfortable with the idea of going to the hospital now?”
Would he actually take me to one—out of this room, into a place where I could much more easily escape him and his friends? I wet my lips and decided to call his bluff.
“You know, I was panicking last night and obviously not thinking clearly. I probably should get a doctor to check me out.”
Julius stepped back toward the doorway without any sign of apprehension. “I’ll take you right over there, then.” He motioned for me to join him.
That easy, huh? Still wary, I stood up and reached for the chair to take my bag.
The moment I took a few steps, a wave of dizziness crashed over me. My head spun. I stumbled and banged my knees on the edge of the chair, grasping it with my good hand just before I fell all the way to the ground.
“Whoa, there,” Julius said. He gripped my other arm just above my elbow and guided me back to the bed. My vision swam, my thoughts still jumbling with dizziness. “I think you’d better get a little more rest before you try to go anywhere. I’ll get you something to eat—maybe that’ll help you get your strength back.”
He sat me down on the bed and walked right out of the room, closing the door behind him.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead, but now I just felt exhausted. Whatever had happened to me during or after the crash, it was definitely worse than it’d seemed before I started trying to move around.
Didn’t that mean Julius really should get me to a hospital fast? Should I insist he call an ambulance?
I couldn’t focus well enough to decide what the smartest course of action was. One clear thought pierced through the jumble alongside a sinking sensation in my gut.
No matter what Julius had said, this room was essentially a prison, and if he decided he didn’t want me leaving, I was stuck in it with no clear way out.
I’d rest all right. I’d rest and heal, as quickly as I could, and then I’d show these assholes that no one kept me caged for long.
