Chapter 20
Her head hurt. So did her chest. And her leg.
Where the hell am I? What happened?
Kaitlin lay unmoving while her sluggish brain tried to come up with answers.
The bad guys from the future had taken her. She’d been careless and had paid the price.
She just hoped Steve and Josie hadn’t paid a higher price for her carelessness. Forcing her eyes open, she winced, then glanced around.
She was lying on a bed. Straight across from her was a second bed, and on it lay Josie. Thank Christ. Her eyes were closed, and she wasn’t moving. But they would hardly have bothered putting her on a bed if she was dead. Would they?
She stared harder and made out the steady rise and fall of Josie’s chest. She was unconscious, and a little of the tension eased from Kaitlin’s mind.
There was no sign of Steve, and she prayed that they hadn’t killed him. Josie would be devastated.
She pushed herself up, so she was sitting, her back against the wall, and rubbed at her thigh. They’d injected her with something. She could still sense it in her bloodstream, making her sluggish. She reached into her pocket, but the tracker was gone. So was the panic button.
Damn.
Holding herself very still, she concentrated on breathing, trying to calm the anxiety rising inside her. She tried closing her eyes and reaching out but whatever drug they had given her was affecting her mind as well as her body. She had to wait, give herself some time.
Don’t panic!
Every minute that passed, she felt stronger.
Kane would be looking for her. He would find her.
He might be really angry with her, not to mention disappointed.
Hell, she was disappointed—she’d totally underestimated her enemy.
She’d been so sure they would send more hired thugs after her.
She should have guessed they would learn from their mistakes.
But even if she had known they would come after her personally, likely it wouldn’t have stopped her. They needed the information, and this had been their only hope of getting it.
What did they want from her?
At a guess, the same thing she wanted. Information. Or maybe they wanted the time machine. Could they know of its existence? If they came from the future, then they probably knew everything.
No doubt she would find out in good time.
She tried reaching out again but still wasn’t fully functional. Closing her eyes, she brought up an image of Kane, and something twisted inside her. She might never see him again. And suddenly, she wanted him with a need she hadn’t even known existed.
She wanted the chance to...what?
Call him an asshole one more time? Tell him his mission was stupid?
No, she knew what she wanted. She wanted to kiss him again.
And do a whole lot more. She couldn’t stand the idea that she might die, and she had never made love.
Because that’s what it would be. She’d had sex in the past, but she had never made love.
But Kane loved her, and while she wasn’t quite ready to admit she loved him in return—hell, she was no longer even sure she would recognize the emotion if she did feel it—she knew his love was real.
And he’d come back for her. He’d put her before his mission, and she knew how huge that was. So yes, if she got out of here, she was dragging him to the nearest bed—whether he liked it or not. But somehow, she didn’t think he would put up that much of a fight.
So, all she had to do was stay alive long enough for Kane to find her.
A groan came from the other bed, and Kaitlin opened her eyes and glanced across. Josie was coming around. She groaned again, and her eyes blinked open, slightly unfocused.
“Josie, are you okay?”
She blinked a couple more times and then licked her lips. “I think so.” She sat up and rubbed her head. “I think I was drugged.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Josie peered around the small room and panic flared in her eyes. “Where’s Steve?”
“Not here.”
“Oh God, did they kill him?”
“I don’t know, but there was no reason to kill him.”
“They killed Travis.”
“We don’t even know if it’s the same people. Right now, though, we don’t know Steve’s dead, so for the moment, we’ll presume he’s alive. Okay?”
Josie opened her mouth then closed it again and gave an abrupt nod. “Do you have any clue where we are?”
“No. But we were only unconscious for around half an hour, so I’m guessing we’re still in London.”
“What do they want?”
“I expect we’ll find out soon enough. But don’t worry. They won’t hurt us. There’s no need. I suspect they can just go right into my head and pick out anything they want.”
“They can’t get into my head.”
“No, but they’ll get it from mine that you don’t know anything else. Really, there’s no reason to torture us or anything.”
Josie glared. “I wish you hadn’t said that word.”
“Everything will be fine. The others will be looking for us already. They will find us.”
The strength was returning to her body, and she swung her legs around and put her feet on the ground.
Her knees almost buckled as she tried to stand up.
On the second attempt, she managed it and staggered the short distance across the room to the windows.
Tugging the curtain aside, she peered out.
It was nighttime, and they were in some sort of high-rise, maybe on the tenth floor.
Below she could see the streetlights. They were definitely still in the city, but she didn’t know more than that.
She tried the window, but it wouldn’t open. Not that it mattered. There was no way they could get down from this height.
Turning back, she studied the room. Two doors.
She tried the first. It was locked. The second led to a small bathroom.
No window. There was a glass on the sink, and she gulped down some water then filled the glass and took it to Josie.
“Here, drink this. We need to get our strength back. Looks like we’re staying here for the moment, but we need to be prepared. ”
Josie nodded. She was doing much better than Kaitlin would have expected. In fact, she seemed almost calm. A couple of months ago, she would have been climbing the walls. She’d come such a long way. Kaitlin just hoped Steve was okay.
Footsteps sounded outside the door, just before a key turned in the lock. She leaped for her own bed and collapsed onto the mattress—she wanted to look as pathetic as possible. Then the handle turned, and the door opened.
She glanced across at Josie, but she seemed okay.
Two people stepped into the room—a man and a woman.
They looked so eerily like the Kindred that she found herself relaxing.
Which was just plain stupid. She knew how ruthless the Kindred could be.
Look at Kane. He hadn’t let the idea that they were in some way connected stop him from trying to annihilate them all.
All the same, it made her feel better, and she forced a smile. “Hi, nice to meet you.”
Amusement flashed in the man’s face but then he blanked it out.
“Our friend. The man in the car with us. Is he alive?” Kaitlin asked.
“As far as we know. We stunned him but no more.”
Thank God. “That’s good to know.”
She gave Josie a quick smile, saw the relief reflected in her eyes, the tension draining from her body.
“So why don’t you tell us why you’ve gone to all this bother just to meet us and then perhaps we can all go home.”
“We need to know who and what you are,” the woman said.
“I’m just an ordinary, everyday girl trying to get on with her life.”
“There’s no point in lying.”
“I was worried that might be the case.” She tried to decide what was the best way to deal with them but hadn’t come up with an answer when the woman walked closer.
Kaitlin tried to read her mind but hit a brick wall.
She was guessing they had reflector devices, but nothing obvious.
Maybe they’d had something surgically implanted.
That’s what Melody, the agent from the future, had had to prevent them reading her.
Melody hadn’t been telepathic, though, whereas these people obviously were.
Could the reflector devices be one-way? So they could still read other people? That would be cool.
“Just relax and this won’t hurt at all,” the woman said.
Trouble was, she’d never been good at taking orders. Kaitlin felt the first tendrils of another consciousness entering her mind, and she locked up tight. Or she tried to.
Then she gasped as the pain hit her. It was like a drill probing into her mind, prying open her thoughts, digging into her brain. She half-expected her head to explode and almost wished it would.
She’d been tortured before and never broken. This time, she was pretty sure she would have said anything to stop it. Except she didn’t have the choice. It seemed to go on forever, then the pain vanished, and she collapsed onto the bed, eyes squeezed shut.
“You just needed to stop fighting,” the woman said.
“You might have mentioned that,” Kaitlin muttered through clenched teeth.
“I did.”
“Reminded me, then.”
She stayed very still, a little worried that something might be broken inside her head.
“There’s no permanent damage,” the woman said.
“Good to know.” She forced herself up, her stomach churning, half anticipating that the pain would come back. She had a feeling they weren’t finished with her.
“We’re done.”
“Also good to know. So what happens now? Are you going to kill us?”
A look passed between the two of them. “No, we’ll keep you as leverage.” She glanced across at Josie. “She’s broken. What happened?”
“Brainwashed by some assholes who were experimenting with telepathy.”
“I hope you killed them.”
“Oh, he’s dead.” She forced her brain to work. “Leverage for what? Just who are you people and what do you want?”
Another look. She presumed they were communicating. “My name is Stella. And this is Clyde. As you guessed, we’re from the future. An organization called the Tel Group. And we’re here to complete a job.”
“What job?” Could it be tied in with Kane’s mission?
“That, you don’t need to know.”
She really wanted to deny that vociferously.
She did need to know. Right now, she had no way to get the information out, but on the off chance that Kane managed to contact her, it would be great to have something useful to tell him.
At least that way, this whole clusterfuck wouldn’t have been a complete waste of time.
Unfortunately, at that point, her questioners turned around and headed for the door.
“Hey, wait,” she called out.
The woman turned. “We must go and make arrangements for our departure.”
“And what about us?”
They did that obvious communicating between themselves thing again and the woman nodded. “You’ll be coming with us.”
Then they disappeared out the door and it locked behind them.
“At least we’re still alive.” Kaitlin tried to sound cheerful. “And staying that way for the moment.”
Josie sighed. “But who knows for how long. Where the hell is that fucker, Kane?”