He heard her retching and cursed, bursting through the door without bothering to knock. He cursed again as he held her hair and stroked her back. His poor Lacie. He hated seeing her suffer.
When nothing remained but dry heaves, Craig took off his shirt, socks, and shoes but left his jeans on. He stripped her, then carried her into the shower. He kept it all very quick and efficient; this was no time for play. He expected an argument, but when none was forthcoming, he counted that as yet another positive sign. He refused to consider that she had simply become too ill to protest.
Craig dried her carefully, dressed her in clean fresh clothes, then scooped her up and carried her back to bed. After changing out of his own wet jeans, he joined her, brushing out her hair.
By the time he was finished, she still hadn’t said a word, nor had she resisted him in any way. He might have been dressing a rag doll. “There,” he said, sitting beside her. “I bet that’s better, huh?”
Lacie didn’t answer. She just continued to stare at her hands resting in her lap.
“Lacie, baby?” He tucked her hair behind her ear. The pallor of her skin was alarming. “How do you feel?”
*
“Lousy,” she mumbled. “Dizzy. Weak.” Confused. Afraid.
“Worse than before?” he asked, frowning.
Worse? Yeah, it was worse. Infinitely. She nodded, avoiding his eyes. She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t look into those brown eyes and see the truth. She couldn’t face it. She couldn’t. Because that would mean everyone had been right, and she had been wrong.
And she had allowed this to happen.
“Do you still want to go outside? I know how you like the rain. I’ll make you some tea, okay?” Without waiting for an answer, Craig kissed the top of her head and left her alone.
Lacie laid her head back on the pillows and closed her eyes. The tea. Is that how he was drugging her? It certainly couldn’t be what she was eating. Her stomach cramped, reminding her of just how true that was.
What was she going to do? She needed to remain lucid, find a way to get help. What would he do if she refused the tea? Would he just put the drugs in something else? What if she asked him to stop the pain meds again? Would he?
The waves of nausea hit her again as she tried to wrap her mind around it all. Shame, disbelief, confusion, hurt, betrayal – they all warred for most powerful emotion at the same time.
It was simply beyond her comprehension. How could the man she’d known her entire life – her self-appointed big brother, her protector – the same man who had been taking care of her with nothing but tenderness during her waking hours – do something like this?
Her mind grasped desperately for another explanation. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe they really weren’t warnings, but nothing more than bad dreams, made to seem real because of the drugs on her battered system. That could happen, couldn’t it? After all, there were other side effects, weren’t there? Nausea, vomiting, blurred vision, slurred speech, dizziness, cramps. She didn’t know what day it was or how long they had been there. How could she trust anything her mind concocted?
The bottom line was that she really couldn’t be sure of anything. Could she vilify him based on nightmarish images recorded in a dream state when every waking moment he had been sweet, kind, and caring? No, she couldn’t, she decided, not without proof. Craig might be misguided, but his intentions were still good. The sick feeling in her stomach eased a little. Where was her faith?
But she wasn’t a complete fool, either. As much as she did not want to accept the possibility, she had to face the fact that she didn’t know. It was now more imperative than ever that she keep her wits about her until she could get out of here on her own, or at least find his cell phone. There had to be some way to communicate with the outside world.
Which brought up another problem. Assuming she could find a way to contact Corinne or Shane, what would she tell them? She had no idea where Craig had taken them. From the little bit she had seen of the surrounding area, it was very remote; their hadn’t been any sign of other people – no cabins, no roads, no steeples in the distance or tendrils of wood smoke curling up into the sky.
What had Craig told her? Something about an uncle’s cabin? It wasn’t much, but maybe it would be enough for them to go on. Craig never talked much about his family, but Lacie knew his home situation hadn’t been very good. It was one of the reasons why he was always hanging around their house when they were kids.
She was kept from musing further when Craig reappeared. “Ready, baby?”
Feeling a bit braver, and a whole lot more determined, Lacie looked up into his face, saw the genuine concern etched there. She did her best to give him a weak smile. It was enough. He beamed back at her, and Lacie knew that she had just bought herself a little more time.
One way or another, she was going to find out the truth.
Chapter Nineteen