“I knew you’d fight, but I didn’t expect this,” he snarled.
I lashed out at him next, but he was so much bigger than me, so much stronger and so much more than I could handle. I was good at the con, not at wrestling.
“I’m not going to let you hurt yourself,” he insisted firmly.
He reached in his pocket and I never stopping trying to escape. I kicked. I pounded his arms with my fist. I twisted and turned as much as I could.
“I didn’t want it to go like this,” he said sadly and before I could do anything to stop him, a wet handkerchief pressed over my mouth and nose.
A sickly-sweet scent surrounded me.
Chloroform.
I tried not to breathe. I tried to escape, but a body can only hold out so long and this wasn’t something I’d trained for. Ten seconds turned into twenty and then into thirty before I was forced to draw in a breath.
I breathed in that scent and my vision went hazy. Black dots danced at the edges of my sight and I wriggled hard in one last-ditch effort to escape.
It was useless.
Flowers.
Nothing.
Blackness.
The last thought in my mind before I passed out was that I hoped that I never woke up to find out what came next.
Chapter 4
Fuck.
My head hurt. With a groan, I turned my head to the side and laid my cheek on the cool silky sheets beneath me. I couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes yet and my mind slowly lurched to piece back together what had happened to me.
Had I drunk too much whiskey with Tim? Was I hungover?
God. I felt like I was about to heave up whatever was in my stomach. I groaned as a ball of nausea roiled inside my belly. What was in my stomach? When did I last eat?
Where the fuck was I?
I went to draw my arms in to hug my chest, but they didn’t move. Instead, something metal clanked against metal and I came to the very slow realization that there were leather cuffs surrounding my wrists. I was bound.
My arms were spread out wide. My chest was pressed against a bed. I was lying face down.
In a rush, I opened my eyes.
What the fuck?
At first, all I saw was darkness, but as my vision very slowly started to adjust, shapes began to form. I blinked several times in an attempt to speed up the process, but everything still felt fuzzy from the sedative that had knocked me out cold. All of my senses seemed dulled. The only thing that would make them return to normal was time. I knew that, but that didn’t make it any easier to process.
I sighed.
Fucking fuckity fuck.
This really wasn’t good.
I tried to move my legs, but I soon realized my ankles were lashed to the bed too. I blinked, trying to force away the dull haze. When my sight finally fully returned, I could see that there was a chain attached to the leather cuffs around my wrists that led somewhere beneath the mattress. From what I could tell, there wasn’t any sort of release.
I’d been kidnapped and now I was bound face down to a bed.
At least the mattress was soft.
It’s crazy the places your mind goes in an attempt to escape the terrifying fear that’s brewing just beneath when you’re trying to come to terms with the impossible.
I flexed my fingers and my toes. Those felt fine. The bonds were tight, but not tight enough to cause any sort of lasting damage in either the long or short term.
Another thing to be thankful for, I guess.
I was still dressed. The familiar feeling of jeans and a t-shirt was comforting against my skin. My cotton panties and matching bra were still beneath, so I could guess that nothing untoward had occurred while I was passed out. Nothing really hurt, so I hadn’t been beaten either. At least I’d still be able to do my job if I could find a way to get out.
God dammit.
How the fuck was I going to tell the Father about this? I’d been careful. I never hit a city twice. I didn’t have any sort of social media accounts to track. With every new identity came new credit cards, banking information, a new social security number, a birth certificate, the fucking works.
Dean had changed everything.
I pulled on the chains again, trying to test them for weakness and finding none.
Fuck me.
The screech of unoiled metal hinges echoed somewhere in the distance and I stilled as a frisson of fear raced through me. My blood rushed icy cold through my veins and I found it terribly hard to breathe.
Why had I been bound face down? Why wasn’t I on my back?
I wouldn’t be able to see who was coming.
I pulled even harder on the chains and cried out as the leather pinched the skin of my wrists just a tiny bit. There wasn’t much give. I could only move about an inch.
That was especially concerning.
I needed to get out. Now.
I tried harder. Still nothing.
Was he going to take out his revenge on me? Would he kill me?
I heard the sound of footsteps coming closer, reverberating against the tile or stone or whatever he was walking on. It was so loud that it was competing with the pounding roar of blood in my ears,
