Against the imminent sensory overload, one thought dominated his mind—get to Isleen. He went with it, lurching away from his conversation with Kent without a good-bye, a kiss-my-ass, or a fuck-you.
In the hallway, his vision narrowed to a laser beam of focus on Isleen’s door. Each step toward her room systematically eased the itch in his brain and faded the pain of the frequency connection until he stood outside her room—no brain itch, no pain. He had returned to a level of functioning that was better than his baseline. It had to do with her. Something about her affected the frequency connection and did something to him. But how? Why?
He pushed through the doorway—and froze solid as a glacier. Went as cold as one too.
Her mussed covers dangled off the bed, pooling on the floor. Her smock was tangled up on her bare thighs, her legs sprawled akimbo. Not even that image horrified him as much as what lay on her forehead. A cross, only it wasn’t shaped the same as a Christian cross. It was squared off and sitting at an angle like a golden X-marks-the-spot. There was something wrathful and wrong about that piece of metal touching her. He ran for her and flung the offensive cross off her, sending it hurling across the room to bang into the wall and clatter to the floor. The silence that followed was deadly. His mind whirled through too many thoughts.
Someone had been in her room.
Someone was sending a message—but Xander wasn’t fluent in the language of wonky crosses.
Someone had hurt her, and now she sounded dead. There was no thumping of heart pumping, no soft rasping of breath being inhaled and exhaled, no whooshing of lungs expanding and contracting. He couldn’t trust his ears. They’d been fucking up from the moment he parked outside the torture trailer and heard nothing. But his eyes didn’t lie. Her normally pale complexion had turned cadaverous, like she’d sidled up to death and was making cozy.
“No.” Denial’s favorite word flowed out of his mouth. “No. No. No.” A scalding hot knife sliced open his heart—at least that’s what it felt like—and cold fingers of dread reached in and squeezed the organ. “No, no, no, no, no, no.” She couldn’t be… No, he couldn’t even think the word. Not after everything she’d been through. Not when her health had bounced back. Not when she had a chance at a new life. Not when he’d been just down the hallway, dealing with that fucktard instead of protecting her.
“Isleen, wake up. Right now.” He shook her shoulder. Nothing. Shook her harder. The fist around his heart tightened, but he didn’t care. Nothing mattered except her. He pressed his fingers against her neck, closed his eyes, and concentrated on finding the pitter-patter of her pulse, but…he wasn’t in the right spot. He repositioned his hand. Waited. Nothing. He grabbed her cold face in his hand and yelled, “You have to open your eyes for me.”
As if his words were a Simon-says of magical proportion, her eyes popped open. The cold grip on his heart vanished, and relief warmed him from the top of his head to the tips of his big toes. She was alive. As long as she was living and breathing, everything else was whipped cream and cherries.
She gasped and sucked in a breath so violent her torso thrust off the mattress. “Don’t. No. Stop.” Her arms and legs went wild, flailing in all directions. Her hand caught him alongside his scarred cheek. A sensuous zing raced throughout the network of his scars and down his neck, his shoulder, his torso, passing only inches from his happy place, before finally ending where the line of scars ended—on his calf. Damn. The sensation was a combination between a jolt of electricity and an orgasm. Never felt something like that before. Wanted to feel it again. And again. That response was the definition of bad timing.
“Isleen. It’s me.” He grabbed her arms and pushed her back against the bed, pinning her upper body, but her legs still kicked. He pushed his face in close and touched her nose with his. “Baby. It’s me. Xander. Look at me.”
Nightmare shadows swam in her eyes, then submerged, and she came back to him, her gaze lucid but tainted with terror. Her chin trembled. “Queen? I think she tried to hurt me again. I couldn’t breathe.”
He didn’t move, just stared straight at her and hoped his message hit a bull’s-eye through the heart of her fear. “That bitch is dead.” Just speaking about Queen forced his facial muscles into a near-animalistic snarl that peeled his lips back over his teeth like a rabid raccoon. “Has been from the day I found you.”