Chapter 22
Denver
Lights pulse beyond my closed eyelids, but even if I wanted to, I couldn’t open them.
My body feels simultaneously too light and too heavy, my muscles a dead weight, my mind lighter than air.
I’m not unconscious but I’m close, fighting the urge to slip into the darkness just to hide from the aching in my head.
Hushed voices. Distant laughter. A car stopping.
We’re inside …
It isn’t Colt carrying me. There’s no care with how I’m tossed onto a bed, the mattress plastic and cold.
My head drops back. Something pinches in my arm.
And then I’m asleep.
Fingers in my hair. A soothing, kind caress.
“Colt?” My mouth is so dry I choke on his name. My chest aches as I splutter, the tickle in my throat not relenting until he holds a straw to my mouth and I drink. Cool water washes over my tongue, and I finish most of the glass.
“Not too much,” he says gently.
Not Colt.
That isn’t—
My eyes snap open and I rear back, but my wrists are handcuffed to a bed. The room is sterile, cold—a hospital room. I’m in a pale blue gown, and a cotton bud is taped to my inner arm, like someone has taken my blood.
“It’s okay,” says the man beside me, giving me a wide, toothy smile, but it isn’t kind. Nothing about this situation feels kind or normal or safe. “You’re okay.”
“Where the fuck am I?” I demand, my eyes darting to the door as it opens and a second man enters. They’re both suited. Both men in my world. And then I know who they are. “If Ranger hired you—”
The man by the door chuckles. “What, Denver? You’ll pay us twice what he is?”
“No, I’ll kill you to save my husband from doing it,” I hiss, pulling at my restraints. “Let me fucking go.”
The man by the door tucks his hands into his pockets and smiles. It’s a similar smile to the man next to me. The man who keeps trying to touch my hair.
“We can’t let you go, Deluxe,” he croons softly.
I swallow hard. “Ranger can’t seriously expect—”
“Not Ranger.”
My toes curl, and I try to batten down the urge to vomit. “Whoever is paying you—”
“You’ll never be able to pay more, Deluxe,” the man beside me says. “Besides, you’re pregnant. You know what that means.”
The words slam into me, and I can’t speak. I stare at him, blinking fast, trying to stop the rising panic.
I barely register the man beside me rising and leaning close, his breath rife with tobacco.
It’s then that I notice the tattoo of a spider on his neck.
“It means your price just went way up.”