Taking deep, quiet breaths through his nose, Gabe tried to calm his racing heart at the memory of the gruesome images. A man who looked exactly like Gabe in a cage in the center of a room, terrified and hopeless. His face showed the telltale signs of a life lost to addiction. Sunken cheeks, dark circles that never went away, and a haze that had made Gabe wonder if the man even knew where he was. Gabe had been lost in the fog of drugs more times than he cared to admit, even to himself.
But the doctor saved me.
Why would the doctor save Gabe, then turn around and harm a man who was Gabe’s double? It didn’t make sense, and even as he listened to one half of a conversation through the closed door, Gabe couldn’t make himself believe that the doctor who’d taken him in when he had nowhere else to turn was anything but the angel of mercy he’d always known he was.
Right?
The photos taken during the doctor’s vacation had to be staged. Why, he didn’t know. But the doctor was entitled to enjoying his vacation any way he saw fit. He’d earned it.
Another thought occurred to Gabe that instantly had his stomach in knots. Was the photographed man turned on by his own mortality? Gabe had recently stumbled across personal ads of that very nature while perusing his favorite pickup site.
One click on an advertisement had taken him to a website he’d never seen, and he’d been horrified by what he’d found there. People who were desperate to leave this earth but fantasized about torture. There were fancy code words and abbreviations meant to hide the true meaning of their ads, but Gabe had seen right through them. These people wanted to die in the most humiliating, painful way possible, and it only took one click to find someone willing to make their darkest fantasies into reality.
Sick to his stomach, he’d scrolled through listing after listing, each one more graphic than the last. If Gabe’s doppelgänger wanted this, how did the doctor even find him?
He shuddered. The instant messages on the doctor’s personal computer had to be it. When they’d popped up that day, Gabe hadn’t thought anything of it. The message had been strange, but so vague Gabe had no idea what it meant. “I’m glad I caught you in time. I’m not sure this one is going to last the weekend. If I don’t hear back from you in an hour, I’ll have to put him up for bid.”
At the time, he hadn’t intended to violate the doctor’s privacy, had only been trying to shut down the computer that had been left on by mistake. But once he saw the message, his interest was piqued. He couldn’t just pretend he hadn’t seen it, so he’d done some snooping.
Even with his limited knowledge about such things, Gabe decided the messenger had to be a broker; a go-between for people who wanted to experience things no dating site would condone. That was the only explanation Gabe could come up with. Even then, it seemed too outrageous to be possible.
The doctor had been nothing but kind to Gabe. Even giving him an all-expense paid vacation a month ago. And while Gabe was in Florida, showing off the flashy luxury car the doctor had rented for him and enjoying a hotel on a private beach, his boss was on his own adventure, doing things Gabe had never even imagined.
Until now.
“Let’s get down to it. What are you proposing?” The doctor’s voice was calm, all business, as if he was blackmailed every day.
Gabe grappled with his doubts as they clashed with his loyalty for the man who had rescued him from the street, unsure now if he’d even seen what he thought he had, all overlaid by a healthy dose of fear. Maybe there was an innocent explanation, and it was Gabe’s own mind turning an innocent situation into something sinister. He’d heard of people having paranoid thoughts even years after recovering from heavy drug use.
“What about you? You don’t think he’ll turn you in?” Gabe narrowed his eyes, straining to hear more. This time, the doctor’s tone was quiet and ominous. “And what about what I know?”
Gabe’s skin broke out in gooseflesh, and he almost abandoned his curiosity right then. What the doctor had said was terrifying enough, but the implicit threat in his tone made Gabe’s stomach lurch. If Katarina wasn’t scared, she should be.
The outer door to the waiting room clicked open, and Gabe’s heart slammed against his ribs. Someone had entered the lobby.
Not now. He’d never get this chance again.
His breathing was fast, his mind racing. He could either walk away and never find out what happened, or risk someone catching him snooping.
On the other side of the door, the doctor chuckled, his tone suddenly light and friendly. “If anyone can find the girl and convince Fink to keep his mouth shut in order to get her back, it’s you.”
The girl? Gabe stared at the door, his feet rooted to the floor. What girl?
Movement forced his attention away from the doctor’s door. Backing up, he tried to compose himself as he set off at a brisk walk toward the lobby, as if he was just coming from down the hall and hadn’t been standing in front of an office door eavesdropping. By his second step, a man came into view at the end of the hall.
The placement of the hall in regards to the doctor’s office and the lobby was intentional so that guests wouldn’t be able to see other patients leaving their session. It gave them several feet to compose themselves or duck into the bathroom if needed. But now that Gabe was the one in the hallway, he couldn’t see out into the lobby and
