Chapter 4
Camryn stepped in the elevator, inserted her key... and hesitated. She swallowed and then inhaled deeply as the door shut. She was ten minutes early for her shift. Brooks’s words had haunted her all day, despite her best efforts not to think about him. She’d noted a few red flags, but not enough to convince her beyond doubt that something shady was going on.
Maybe now was the time to investigate.
Her finger hovered over the 7 then punched 12. She’d start at the bottom and work her way up until it was time to start her shift. If she got the chance during her work hours or once she finished, she’d hit the rest of the floors. The elevator descended and her stomach rose. All she needed was a quick look around, something to confirm that Brooks was lying.
Maybe then she could sleep.
Ding
The doors opened and a short beige-painted hallway with windows met her. Her running shoes moved soundlessly on the linoleum floor as she stepped out. Shattered glass covered the floor. She stopped in her tracks. A chill hit her skin. She stared at the window next to the hall’s only door. The entire pane was missing. Had someone broken in? No way the staff would just leave glass lying on the floor of the lab. Her senses screamed at her, urging her to run.
She crossed her arms, bringing her tote bag tightly to her side. She walked to the end of the hall and tried the handle of the door. It didn’t budge. A scanning screen sat beside the door. She lifted her ID card and ran the magnetic strip over the laser. It beeped.
Access denied.
Well, shoot. She peeked into the window of the large dark room. A few lights flickered. She pulled out her phone and shone it inside.
Her stomach flipped. A metal bed lay on the floor, and a vitals machine was turned over. What in God’s name...?
She retracted her phone and slipped it into her pocket. Had there been some kind of accident? An explosion or something? She scraped her teeth over her lip. No. They would’ve evacuated the building if that were the case. Was this floor no longer in use? Or had something happened recently? She shoved her hand through the space where the glass used to be and fumbled around until her fingers found the cool metal lock. She turned it and then pulled her hand out, opening the door.
The sound of metal against metal rang through the empty space. Camryn jumped and pressed her hand to her chest. Turning her phone’s light back on, she entered the room. Her soft-soled shoes crunched over the glass scattering the floor. She knelt to inspect the bed with her light. Leather straps hung on each side. One of them had snapped off and was dangling.
Her blood skittered to a halt in her veins. She stood and scanned the rest of the room. The vitals machine and an IV stand were turned over on the ground as if they’d been thrown. She swallowed. Her throat felt like sandpaper. She skirted around the room to a desk, where a laptop sat open. She tapped the keyboard. A blue background lit up the screen, and a password bar appeared. Dammit. She scoured the desk for paperwork. If she could find out what the doctor had been working on down here, it might point her in the direction of what happened.
Her gaze fell to the vitals machine. She approached it and squatted. The screen showed a flat line, as if the machine had been disconnected before the power was shut off—or the patient had died. White letters at the top of the screen caught her eye:
Patient: Brooks Ivanov
Her body turned to stone. Her lungs squeezed in her chest. She lurched to her feet and raced out of the room, her shoes scattering glass everywhere.
My god, what have they done to him?
She stormed down the hall, pressed the button to open the elevator, then jabbed her index finger onto the 7. She raked her hand through the smoothed-back hair that fell into a ponytail. Her body shook. She sucked in one deep breath after another. Nothing calmed the twister of terror inside her. Whatever she’d stumbled into wasn’t right. No treatment should result in a room being destroyed and restraints being torn. She had to get help. Had to report this sick facility.
The elevator dinged.
Shit.
Jen stood outside the doors. Her lips lifted in a tight smile. “Hey, Camryn.” Her smile faltered. “You okay? You look a little green.” She inched backward, as if she suspected Camryn would ralph on her.
Camryn lowered her hand to her throat, toying with the top of her scrub shirt. “Uh, yeah. Sorry. I’m feeling a little off today. I didn’t want to call in sick on my second shift.”
Jen reached out to stop the elevator door from closing. “Are you going to be okay?”
She nodded.
“All right. If you need to go home, just let one of us know.” Jen stepped into the elevator and pressed 12.
Camryn’s heart beat ferociously against her breastplate. If Jen wasn’t aware of what was happening with the patients—specifically Brooks—she’d find out now. And if there wasn’t a huge fuss over what had happened five stories below them, Camryn would know for certain the whole team was in on it.
Jen raised her eyebrows in a “do you need anything else?” manner.
Camryn muttered her thanks and exited the cart. She should have said she was too sick to work. Her conscience gripped her weakening resolve. No. She had to see if Brooks was here... if he was even alive.
Instinct made her want to run to his room and burst through the door, but that would only look suspicious. She placed her bag in the staff room, tucked her cell phone in her pocket, and stopped by the triage station for meaningless chatter before turning her attention to the patients. She tended to one of the female patients first, Lynnie. Her hands shook uncontrollably while she measured out meds and checked vitals. She glanced at the clock on the wall. Brooks needed his sedative in ten minutes.
This time, she had to delay. To be sure he was okay.
She finished up with Lynnie then moved down the hall. Her footsteps padded across the smooth concrete floor, falling into rhythm with the pounding in her head. Heat scorched her back. Paranoia told her every other nurse suspected her plan. She approached the door marked thirty-six.
God, please let him be here.
She could have asked him questions, but instead she’d sedated him. If they’d killed him, whether by accident or on purpose, she was to blame. She could have saved him. She fought back the guilt raging inside her and opened the door. Spotting him, she lowered her shoulders and the tension in her neck ebbed away. She shut the door behind her and approached Brooks’s still, sleeping form. Pressing her hand to his wrist, she relaxed even more as she felt warmth flowing beneath his skin. He was alive. Peeling back the sheet, she stared at his fluorescent-red chest.
A siren screeched inside her head. What the hell had happened to him now? She turned her attention to his face. More bruises covered his jaw, and even more tiny purple marks scattered his torso. What had he been involved in on the twelfth floor? She returned her focus to his wrists. With his hands bound, she couldn’t see if he had any lacerations from tearing at the restraint she’d found broken downstairs. The only way to check was to remove them.
She glanced at the clock again. Shit. She had five minutes, and there was of course a big risk he’d wake early. Moving quickly, she pulled at the belt and freed his hand. She lifted his wrist and stared at the torn and bruised skin.
Her stomach plummeted.
***
Brooks let herlift his wrist, keeping his arm as limp as possible. He’d been awake almost a fucking hour, but his body was spent from the events hours before. Having the two substances in his system made it that much harder to settle. His brain wanted to run, and his muscles needed to rest. The drug would last eight hours in his system, which meant if he could summon his strength, he’d likely kick the sedative lingering in the wings of his consciousness to the curb.
He needed the right opportunity. The one that would get him out of here. He couldn’t waste his last burst of energy. Tomorrow, who knew where the fuck Dr. Leonetti planned to send him, but one thing was for sure—it’d be somewhere he couldn’t escape. Somewhere that prevented any contact with people.
He cracked open his eyelid and stiffened his wrist. Her fingers, so damn soft, held him firmly.
“Hi again,” he said.
She snapped her head toward him so fast she almost stumbled. Her free hand slapped her chest, but she didn’t let go of his wrist. “You scared me.” The accusation came out fast.
He shrugged. “I could say the same, but I’ve been awake for a while.”
Her tongue swept over her bottom lip. She lowered her gaze to his relaxed fingers. “Are you going to hurt me?” Fear flickered in her eyes and then vanished.
Good god. When had he become a person to fear? What’d they do to him? Before Leonetti, and before Conrad had taken him, he’d been a different man. Every day, his memory of who he’d been became blurrier and blurrier. But he knew now for certain he’d never hurt a woman in his life. He lowered his hand to the table. “I never had any intention of hurting you.”
Her gaze darted around. “This morning you said—”
“I thought you were one of them.”
“Who’s them?”
He swept his hand in a circle. “The fuckers running this place. The nurses you chat with. The doctors who take us to the bottom floor and torture us—me.”
Her lips curved down into a frown as if she was trying to stop her chin from trembling. “They hurt you?”
While his hand was free, he took the opportunity to run it over his face. He scratched the thick scruff under his chin, and then touched the zingy spots that still ached from the rubber bullets. “Whenever I resist.”
She came closer. “Resist what? I want to help you, but I need to understand what’s going on here.”
He moved his stare to the ceiling. A yellow water stain covered a section of the off-white tiles. How the fuck should he begin? She wouldn’t believe him. Not when his memory was patchy and his body was still riding high from hormones. Her palm covered his wrist, and the contact spread a wave of warmth to his chest. So gentle. He hadn’t been touched gently or with compassion by another human being in... how long had it been? Christ. He’d been gone almost eight months.
Seven months of hell, then one month of torture.
“Brooks? Please. I don’t have much time. I need to see other patients soon or I’ll look suspicious. Did something happen on the twelfth floor?”
He swung his gaze to her face and coiled his arm away from her. “You know about it?”
She curled her fingers into her palm. “After what you said yesterday, I had to check things out. Before my shift today I went to the twelfth floor. There was glass everywhere, tables overturned and... restraints broken. It was you, wasn’t it? They hurt you?”
He gnashed his teeth. “I told you that’s what they do.” He didn’t try to take the bite out of his tone. “They were punishing me for escaping the other night.”
She cocked her head. “Punishing you how?”
He rolled his wrist in a circle, reveling in being momentarily free and at the same time releasing a tiny bit of the energy that the memory conjured.
“Water torture and withdrawals,” he whispered gruffly.
Her eyes rounded to huge green dishes. “Water torture?” She inched closer and ran her fingers over the sensitive flesh on his abdomen. He flinched and she drew her hand away. “That’s why you’re red?”
He nodded.
She studied his body as if assessing it for more signs of the truth—or hoping to find something to make him a liar. “Withdrawals from what?”
“The drug.”
She shook her head. “What do you mean? The sedative?”
“No. The one that they’re experimenting with.”
She raised both her hands, stopping him from saying more. “Hold on. Holy shit.” She blew a breath through her lips and turned her back to take two paces toward the door. She turned and came back. “What drug?”
He rolled a shoulder. “I don’t know what it’s called.”
She went to the door and whipped the clipboard from the plastic case. Flipping through the pages, she shook her head. “I don’t see anything out of the ordinary—”
He snorted. “Do you really think they’d document an experimental drug I never consented to using? Just like they documented the water torture and the incident in the basement?”
She lowered the clipboard. “What happened?”
“They deprived me of the drug for hours. If I go too long without it, I suffer intense withdrawal. They thought that would be a perfect time to throw me in the water chamber for several hours.”
Her face paled. “Then what happened?”
“They had me strapped standing up to a metal bed and told me I’d have to kill another person—”
“Wait, what?” Her voice hit a shrill note.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
Regret pulled at the sides of her mouth. “It’s a little hard to wrap my head around.” Her dry tone made him almost smile.
“Well, it’s true. This drug... it gives me superhuman strength. I can run for miles, hours, without getting exerted. I can fight multiple armed guys at once. My body can still feel pain, but it’s blunted. Almost like I can override it.”
Her eyes took on a faraway look. He’d lost her. His only fucking chance at escaping and he’d lost her.
“Why would they make you kill someone?”
“To see if the drug can supersede my emotions and conscious mind. They put me in...” Memories rushed into his mind. Innocent men begging him to show mercy. “Situations that would test someone’s morals. Then they delayed giving me the drug and discovered that I had less control over and connection with my conscious mind and that the drug filled me with rage so intense that I couldn’t stop myself from harming people.”
She toyed with the strands of her ponytail. Her eyes reflected her indecision. His gaze went to the name tag above her breast. Camryn. His lips moved silently on the syllables, needing to speak the soft waves of her name, to taste something delicate on his tongue.
She exhaled loudly. “Okay. Look. I believe you. Something is very wrong with this facility. But I need something more concrete to know I’m making the right decision by filing a report.”
He laughed, the sound abrasive. “Filing a report? What the fuck do you think this is, a grocery store? You think they care about a disgruntled lab rat?”
“No, but I need to go through the proper channels.”
He dropped his hand back to the belt. “Might as well lock me up, Cam. They’re shipping me off first thing in the morning. I won’t be around for any investigation, and I suspect my file will be wiped from the system too.”
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “How do you know that?”
“Because I heard Leonetti on the phone. He said they’d ship me off first thing in the morning. I killed another man, Eddie, Leonetti’s assistant. That’s four men in total, if you count the three from two nights ago. Leonetti wants to continue his work with me. I’m too valuable to kill. But...” He stretched his neck from one side to the other. Damn, he hated being forced to lie down. “I guess I cause too much trouble around here.”
She stepped closer. This time her scent invaded him. Ah, god, she smelled sweet. Like a lavender cupcake or some shit. It was a scent that struck him. Took him back to simpler times. Times when he could buy a pretty woman a drink and take her home for some good old-fashioned fun. Something he hadn’t even had the luxury to miss lately, let alone partake in. Not when he’d been so driven to survive.
“Brooks, I’m going to help you. I promise.” Her palm touched his cheek.
Instinctively, he brought his hand to hers. A smile tugged at his lips, but he couldn’t place a finger on the emotion that charged his body. Appreciation? No. Amusement? No. Something else made him want to smile, and it’d been so fucking long since he’d smiled a genuine one that he couldn’t even give her a full grin. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Camryn.”
The door whooshed open. “What the hell is going on?”
He snapped his head up. The witch head nurse, Jen, loomed at the door. “Camryn, get the hell out of here. Now.” She bustled to the cupboard above the sink. Her back to them, she pulled out the tray with the syringes filled with the liquid that would put him out for another fucking eight hours. Then he’d be gone, away from this place and from Cam.
The familiar red mist filled his vision. He locked his gaze on his target—no one would stand in the way of his freedom this time.