The burning pain slowly began to spread from my neck down to my chest and along my arms and legs. I could feel it like a living thing, burrowing deeper and deeper inside me.
Only a few seconds later, I felt Declan’s hand clamp around my upper arm. He nearly pulled me off my feet as he dragged me around the corner and into an alley.
“Let go of me,” I snarled, attempting to hit him. He effortlessly grabbed my other arm. I blinked against my tears.
“Stay still.”
“Go to hell.” The next moment, the pain cut off any further words as I convulsed. Only his tight grip kept me from crumpling to the ground. He pushed me up against the wall and held my head firmly in place as he looked into my eyes. His scars were even uglier up close. A shudder of revulsion rippled through me at being this close to him.
He wrenched my head to the left and roughly pulled my long blond hair aside to inspect the neck wound. His expression never wavered. There was no pity or anger or disdain in his gaze—nothing but emptiness in his single gray eye as he looked me over.
Holding me with one hand tightly around my throat so I could barely breathe, he held a cell phone to his ear.
“It’s me,” he said. “There’s been a complication.”
A pause.
“Anderson administered the prototype to a civilian before he tried to shoot me and escape. I killed him.” Another pause. “It’s a woman. Should I kill her, too?”
I tried to fight against the choke hold he had me in, but it didn’t help. He sounded so blasé, so emotionless, as if he was discussing bringing home a pizza after work rather than seeking permission for my murder.
His one-eyed gaze narrowed. While talking on the phone he hadn’t looked anywhere but my face. “I know I was followed here. I don’t have long.” Then finally, “Understood.”
He ended the call.
Finally he loosened his hold on me enough that I could try to speak in pained gasps. “What ... are you going ... to do with me?”
“That’s not up to me.” Declan’s iron grip on me went a little more lax as he tucked the phone back into the pocket of his black jeans. It was enough to let me sink my teeth into his arm. He pushed me back so hard I whacked my head against the wall and fell to the ground. I’d managed to draw blood on his forearm, which was already riddled with other scars.
I scrambled up to my feet, adrenaline coursing through my body. I was ready to do whatever I had to in order to fight for my life, but another curtain of agony descended over me.
“What’s happening to me?” I managed to say through clenched teeth. “What the hell was in that syringe?”
Declan grabbed me by the front of my sweater and brought me very close to his scarred face. “Poison.”
My eyes widened. “Oh my God. What kind of poison?”
“The kind that will kill you,” he said simply. “Which is why you have to come with me.”
I shook my head erratically. “I have to get to a hospital.”
“No.” He grabbed me tighter. “Death now or death later. That’s your only choice.”
It was a choice I didn’t want to make. It was one I wouldn’t have to make. More pain erupted inside of me and the world went totally and completely black.
2
I WASN’T SURE HOW LONG I WAS UNCONSCIOUS. THE good news—if I was forced to find some—was, aside from a brain that felt as if it was made from three-day-old oatmeal, the worst of the pain had subsided. I could, however, actually feel my veins now—the length and width of them throbbing just underneath my skin.
The poison was working its way through me.
Poison. But if I’d really been injected with poison, why wasn’t I dead yet?
And where the hell was I?
I heard a noise, a steady hum against my ear. I was laying somewhere slightly soft, but without a lot of give. And I was moving. Well, I wasn’t moving, but I was in something that was moving.
A car.
I opened up my eyes just a fraction, careful not to betray the fact that I’d woken up.
Yes. I was in a car—the backseat of a car, to be precise. As I raised my gaze just a little, I saw that Declan was behind the steering wheel.
No radio. Only the sound of the road beneath the tires. The level of heat I felt told me that this was a car that didn’t have any air-conditioning—or it wasn’t turned on.
So he’d dragged me out of that alley unconscious, thrown me in a car, and started driving. Had no one even tried to stop him?
He’d taken me out of downtown San Diego, not the middle of nowhere.
I hadn’t had much experience with life-and-death situations before, other than dealing with the deaths of my parents five years ago. Beyond that tragedy, everything in my life had mostly gone according to plan, or, more accurately, lack of plan.
Get up in the morning, go to work, try to get along with everyone. Go home or go out for dinner with a friend. Go to bed. Dream about a more interesting life filled with adventure, then wake up, shower, and do it all over again. Mundane and predictable, sure. But at least I never questioned whether I’d live to see another sunrise.
I was questioning it now.
I heard once that your life basically consists of about seven major moments—moments when you made a decision that changed the trajectory of your existence. Perhaps the loss of a loved one. Or a traumatic event that pushed you onto another unexpected path. And usually, these moments were never anything you recognized as life-changing at the time. Sure, when you looked back you could pinpoint it and realize that, yeah, that’s where things changed forever. The choice of a certain college. Saying yes to a job in another city. Going out on a date with the right guy—or the wrong one. Deciding to jaywalk and not looking both ways.
Smash. For better or for worse, your life was different from that point forward.
For me, as I lay motionless on the backseat of Declan’s car, I knew my life had changed. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
“If you’re smart,” Declan said without turning around, “you won’t give me any more trouble.”
Any more trouble?
I didn’t answer. I squeezed my eyes shut again and tried not to move.
“I know you’re awake.” His deep voice had a rough-edge quality to it, like he smoked a couple cases of cigarettes every day even though I couldn’t smell any tobacco. “Your breathing pattern changed.”
Even if we were going fast, maybe I could jump out of the car. I’d stand a better chance hitting the pavement at eighty miles an hour than being in here with him. At the moment, I didn’t have much to lose. Except maybe time.
Before I could scramble to unlock the door, Declan reached back to grab the front of my shirt. He pulled me like a rag doll between the seats, twisting my legs into painful, unnatural angles, and slammed me down next to him.
All without taking his eye off the road.
“Behave,” he said. “Or I promise you’ll spend the rest of this trip unconscious.”
“Don’t touch me.” I slapped at his hand, not that it did much good. He finally removed it and placed it back on the steering wheel.
He didn’t say anything else. Didn’t ask me if I was okay, what my name was, or what I was doing in that lobby. Wrong place and wrong time didn’t even begin to cover it.
Stacy had seen what happened. Was she okay? I wished I knew for sure.
“You can’t do this.” My throat felt raw and damaged.
He didn’t reply. It was as if I was suddenly invisible.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Be quiet.”
“You can’t just kidnap me. I’m hurt. I need help.” I touched my neck again and winced. I expected to feel a gash, an open wound, but luckily there didn’t seem to be anything that bad. The blood had mostly dried. It did feel tender and bruised, all up and down the right side of my throat, though. I didn’t need a mirror to tell me that.
My purse was gone so I didn’t have my cell p
hone. No ID. No money. Nothing.
Declan kept his eye on the road as though he was competing in a staring contest with it. I turned to look out the window and saw another car passing us. I pounded on the window and tried to get the other driver’s attention, then attempted to roll down the window when the man didn’t as much as glance in my direction.
I stopped when I felt Declan’s hand clamp down on my arm.
“Do you have a death wish?” he snapped. “Just sit there and be quiet, or else.”
“I need to go to a hospital. You said there was poison in that syringe.”
“Regular doctors can’t help you. As soon as you explain what happened, they’ll call some people interested in getting their hands on that formula, and trust me, you’re not going to want to meet them. Go to a hospital and you will die.”
I grimaced at how certain he sounded about that. “What do you mean? What people?”
“Be quiet.”
“But—but I have to do something. I can feel it inside of me ... the poison.”
That earned me a momentary glance. “You can feel it? How does it feel?”
“It hurts like hell.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“The pain made me pass out.”
“No, you passed out because you were hyperventilating.”
I tried to breathe normally, but it was a struggle. Despite everything, this freak of nature hadn’t been excessively violent toward me yet. Not compared to what he’d done to that Anderson guy, anyway. Did I think he wouldn’t hurt me? Kill me? Not for a moment. But maybe he could be reasoned with.
“My name’s Jillian,” I said. “Jillian Conrad. My friends call me Jill.”
Taking it to a friendly introduction level might make all the difference. Make him see that I wasn’t just a random hostage. I was a normal person with a normal life and I didn’t deserve any of this.
His lips thinned. “Jillian?”
I nodded eagerly. “Yes.”
“Shut the fuck up, Jillian.”
I winced. Okay, that didn’t work so well.
His jaw tightened. Again his attention was anywhere but on me. Which was fine. I didn’t need a full-on look at that ugly, scarred face of his again. I was petrified enough to begin with. All I had to do was hold it together and wait for my first opportunity to get away from him.
Damn it. What did they say? Never get in a car with somebody like this. It wasn’t just a warning to little kids about strangers and candy. It was for anyone. As soon as the bad guy got you in their car, they had you under their control. He could be taking me anywhere.
“Should I kill her?”
He was an admitted killer. A sociopath. I’d never met a murderer before, never wanted to, outside of seeing them in movies or on the nightly news.
Maybe he’d been lying. Maybe it wasn’t poison. To me, poison was cyanide. Something that would kill you in seconds. I wasn’t dead. I was still breathing.
“Your name’s Declan.” I had a feeling he wouldn’t confirm or deny it, so I wasn’t surprised when his mouth remained closed. “Okay, Declan, we can figure this out.”
“We can, can we?”
“Sure. But you really need to tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m driving.”
“I see that.” I swallowed and realized that I had my arms crossed so tightly, my fingernails digging into my skin so deeply that it hurt. “Do you have a Kleenex?”
“For what?”
“My neck. I’m still bleeding a little, I think.”
“No shit. Yeah, you should mop yourself up so it’s not a distraction for me.”
Funny, he didn’t seem the least bit distracted.
He didn’t say or do anything for a moment. Then his right hand darted out so quickly that I jumped and pressed myself up against the door. But he wasn’t reaching for me, he was reaching for the glove compartment. He popped it open and dug inside, pulling out a travel-sized container of tissues. He tossed it in the general direction of my lap. I pulled one out and dabbed at my neck.
Okay, so despite his looks and previous actions he wasn’t a complete heathen. He provided tissues when I asked for them. That was ... mildly encouraging.
Yes, I was reaching. I knew it.
“You knew that guy? That ... Anderson guy?”
He sighed. “You’re not going to shut up, are you?”
“Maybe talking is what I do instead of freaking out.”
The line of his jaw tightened. “What do I have to do to get you to close your mouth, apart from my making you?”
A shiver went down my spine. “Let me the hell out of this car.”
“Any other options?”
I bit my bottom lip. “Answer my questions.”
“And you’ll be quiet for the rest of the drive?”
That all depended on where this monster was thinking about taking me. However, I didn’t say that out loud.
“Yes.” I used a fresh tissue to wipe at my face, under my damp eyes. Half the mascara I’d applied that morning came off in a black smear.
“Anderson was a chemist who specialized in the development of serums and toxins.”
“You killed him.” Bile rose in my throat at the memory of glassy eyes, a bloody wound, and a growing pool of blood.
“You’re observant.” Sarcasm. “He pulled a gun on me. I reacted.”
“You could have just wounded him.”
“I don’t shoot to wound. I shoot to kill. Makes it harder for anything to go wrong.”
That meant this wasn’t the first time. Declan did this sort of thing frequently. Racking up a body count wherever he went. By the looks of him—scars, eye patch, and all—I never would have pegged him for a nice family man. I suppose the title of assassin suited him just fine.
“Should have wounded him,” Declan continued under his breath. “I fucked up. He kept that formula in his head and I had to go and shoot it off.”
Seemed as if he was talking more to himself than to me.
I touched my neck again and pressed lightly on the injection point. It made me feel weak all over when I thought about what had happened. “He said he destroyed the rest.”
“Only one sample left—the prototype. And you got it. Which is the only reason you’re here right now.”
“That’s why you kidnapped me? Because of what’s inside me?”
“Yes.”
“It’s important, isn’t it?”
“Vital,” he said simply.
I was important because of what was currently coursing through my veins. Ironically, the deadly poison was my ticket to getting out of this nightmare alive.
“So you’re not going to kill me?”
“Not at the moment.”
“But you were ready to kill me in the alley. You would have done it if you were told to, right?”
He eyed me sideways. “You ask too many questions. Are you some sort of reporter?”
“No. I’m ... I’m a temp. I do office work. Whatever’s needed, for however long they need me.”
“And you get in trouble for talking too much, I’m guessing.”
“Among many other things. My last job review stated I was hard to manage.” I was pressed firmly against the door, as far away from Declan as I could possibly sit without riding on the outside of the car. My ankle felt sprained from when this monster had lurched me into the front seat. I noticed a small tear in the knee of my black pants. “What were you told to do with me?”
“Exactly what I’m doing. I collected the formula and I’m returning it to where I was supposed to take it in the first place.”
“And where’s that?”
“To see someone.”
“Who?” I pressed. I wasn’t feeling much braver, but talking kept my mind from wandering off in silence and imagining of all sorts of horrific outcomes.
“My father. He helped to order the development of the formula in the first place. Back when it was in a glass vial, not a living, breathing human be
ing.”
Why would his father be developing a formula like this? Who the hell was he? Dr. Evil?
“How long will I be a living, breathing human being with this poison in me if I’m not supposed to go to any hospitals?” I asked quietly.
“I don’t know.” Flat. Matter of fact. No sugar-coating the details.
“No estimate? Weeks? Days?” I swallowed. “Hours?”
“I said, I don’t know.”
“Okay. But what do—”
There was a sound then. A beeping—three clear tones that made me jump. Declan reached to his left wrist and pushed a button on his watch.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A timer.”
“For what?”
That pale gray eye moved to me to show his bland disinterest in my endless string of questions. “I need to do something. It’ll only take a minute. If you budge an inch from that seat, you won’t like the results. Consider that a firm warning.”
He pulled off to the side of the road, shifted into park, and got something out of his pocket—a small, black rectangular case, which he unzipped. I tensed when I saw it held another syringe. It was more of a pen needle than the one Anderson had.
“Relax,” he said. “This isn’t for you.”
As he fiddled with a small glass vial, one of a half dozen that sat in the padded case about the size of his palm, I considered making an escape attempt.
Another glance at Declan showed that he was injecting himself in his stomach. He’d pulled up the edge of his black shirt to expose a flat, muscled abdomen, which bore a thick diagonal scar bisecting his navel.
My God. What had this horrible man been through to scar his entire body so badly? The thought turned my stomach.
“What is that?” I asked, referring to the needle. I didn’t normally ask this many questions and could see how it could be annoying to the askee, but at the moment I didn’t exactly give a shit.
“My serum.”
He continued to answer my questions, albeit vaguely and abruptly. At least it was better than the silence from earlier. I felt somewhat assured that he wouldn’t be putting a bullet into me. At least, not yet. He needed me. Or rather, he needed the poison inside of me. Maybe his father would be able to draw it out and help me. Give me a transfusion. Otherwise, why bother at all with this field trip to who knows where?