The woman yelled nonsensical sounds of anger and terror. Her arms beat at the ground; her hands rucked up handfuls of dead summer grass. Her feet kicked, but her toes only succeeded in slapping the ground. Her hips bucked up and thrashed, trying to fling the man off her back like an angry bull, but he was too heavy.
Isleen stopped next to them. Immobilized. Paralyzed. Helpless. Forced to watch the man withdraw a knife from a sheath on his waist. The blade was subtly curved, wickedly curved, and smeared with rust. Only it wasn’t rust; it was dried blood. Dear God, who else had he killed?
She pushed against the confines of her body, strained, tensed, tried to react, tried to catch that hand holding the knife, but it was already too late. He punched the blade down into the woman’s back. The unholy shriek of pain from the woman branded itself on Isleen’s brain, burning deep into her memory where she’d never forget it.
He raised the knife, then punched it into the woman’s back—again, again, again—in a series of thrusts so rapid Isleen couldn’t count. The sound of steel to bone snapped loudly against the peaceful backdrop of birdsong. Slurping, wet sounds now accompanied each slam of blade to flesh.
The woman stopped screaming.
*
Xander jerked awake with a full-body shudder. Damn. The incessant noise of the hospital flooded his ears. Beeping and buzzing machines. Hundreds of conversations. The rattle and hum of the air conditioner. Christ. It hadn’t seemed this loud until now. The sounds had been there, but somehow he’d forced them into the background. Now they were in the foreground, demanding his attention, depleting his hold on sanity, driving him closer and closer to a visit from the Bastard.
A streak of light snuck around the edges of the closed blinds, slashing across Isleen’s empty hospital bed.
Empty.
Xander’s heart went bucking bronco inside his chest. Where was she? He kicked to his feet and ran from the room. The hallway was empty except for Isleen in her hospital smock flashing her too-bony spine and creamy white ass to the world.
He darted back in the room, grabbed the blanket off the bed, and then raced after her, his boots clomping as loud as a Clydesdale’s hooves against the tiled floor.
He didn’t mean for it to happen, but his vision locked on the pale mounds of her ass, on the demarcation of each rib, on the expanse of all that ivory skin. He shouldn’t be staring; he shouldn’t be getting a monster rocket in his pants; and he shouldn’t be thinking thoughts of—
What. Was. Wrong. With. Him. Especially when he could see the pale-pink outlines of so many scars that it hurt just looking at them.
She was only four days out of that torture trailer, three days free from death’s grasp, and two days off the IVs and liquid food, and here he was, thinking about the ways he’d like to prime her pump. When had he become a goddamned pervert?
He caught up with her. “You’re probably cold.” The words gushed out of his mouth, sounding as awkward as the front of his jeans felt. He draped the blanket over her shoulders, arranged and rearranged it until her backside was covered to her knees. The whole time, she never stopped moving, never acknowledged him, just kept heading down the hallway.
“Where are you going? I can have them bring up a meal. Or if you need the bathroom, it’s back there.”
She turned into the small waiting area with its vending machines full of fake food. Row had saved him by hauling in as much home cooking as she could carry for Dad and him. She’d even gotten him a replacement cell phone and brought him clean clothes.
Isleen moved across the room and sat in a chair directly in front of a window, staring out at the main entrance three stories below them.
News vans from every channel in Ohio had staked out the parking lot. Reporters and cameramen milled around, waiting, always waiting for a hint, a glimpse, a morsel of information about the two women held hostage in that trailer. The media had gone manic over their story.
“Goddamned vultures. I’m going to close the blinds, don’t want them to see you.” He pulled the cord, and the vertical blinds folded shut. She stared at the closed blinds, her face a blank slate, devoid of emotion and animation.
Shit. She was in shock. Didn’t she have a right to be after everything she’d been through?
Her body seemed to be healing nicely, but her mind had stagnated. She ate when food was placed in front of her. She let the doctor examine her. But she never communicated. When Xander touched her, he felt more than actually witnessed her attention shifting from deep inside herself to him. After what she’d endured, she deserved any comfort he had the strength to give her.