Chapter 5
Fuck.
Look at his girl.
She was an absolute mess, and there was no one to blame but himself. There were leaves in her gorgeous, pale blonde hair, smudges of dirt on her face. There was more dirt on her knees and probably bruises as well.
But it was her hands that were most worrying. Some of the scratches were oozing blood and mixing in with the dirt.
Was it normal that she’d fallen asleep so easily? Shouldn’t she be riding an adrenaline high after her near escape?
He shouldn’t have left that opportunity open to see what she would do. He should have tightened the walls of the cage around her. They were gentle walls, but they were there all the same. Wrapped in soft velvet so she wouldn’t hurt herself. Only she had, hadn’t she?
Yeah, Harvey had really fucked this all up.
He’d had months and months to plan this, so it should have gone off without a hitch. Instead, it was becoming a real mess.
He brushed her hair gently back off her face and kissed her forehead. “I’ll fix this, baby.”
After sending a message off to Michaela, he got to work cleaning the scratches on her hands. The entire time, she didn’t even stir.
That definitely didn’t seem normal.
After her hands were wrapped, he sent a message to one of his guys. Hopefully, the cops had taken away Roberta and his guy could go in and get Lily’s handbag and medication.
Soon after, he got an alert that Michaela was at the gate. After checking the camera, he opened the gate.
He wasn’t even sure if Lily had taken note of the security measures around the cabin. The fact that she’d taken off running was indication that she probably hadn’t. What she couldn’t know was that she wouldn’t have gotten much further before she reached the fence he’d had installed.
Which had cameras and alarms all the way along it.
It was up for debate whether the security measures he’d installed were to keep her safe or to keep her in.
It was a bit of both.
He met Michaela at the door. “Thanks for coming.”
Michaela shrugged. “That’s what you pay me for.”
It was and he paid her well.
“Where’s the patient?” she asked.
“In here, she’s asleep. Which seems odd.”
“Not used to women falling asleep in your presence, huh?” she asked dryly.
No, he wasn’t.
They walked into the living area, and Michaela moved over to where Lily was lying. She stared down at her for a long moment.
“She’s pale. How long has she been sleeping?”
“About forty minutes. She tried to run off and fell over. I carried her back here, and she just sort of slipped off into a deep sleep.”
“She hasn’t stirred? She must be exhausted.”
“Yeah. She’s been under a bit of stress these last few hours.” Probably even longer, given her mother.
Michaela set her bag down.
He pulled a stool over for her to sit on, and she took hold of Lily’s wrist, taking her pulse.
“Pulse is good. I’m just going to run a few tests. What’s with the bandages on her hands?”
“She scratched them, then when she ran off, she fell in the dirt. So I cleaned and bandaged them.”
“She scratched them herself? Does she do that sort of thing often?”
“Not that I’m aware of.” It annoyed him that he didn’t know her well enough to determine if she’d been hurting herself all along and hiding it. “I’ve never seen any visible signs.”
“Right. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t do it in secret and hide it. She could need a therapist.”
He knew that. He needed to do some research.
“I know.”
Michaela nodded and didn’t say anything more. That was what he liked about her, she knew when to stop talking.
She took Lily’s blood pressure. And while she stirred slightly, she didn’t open her eyes.
Michaela’s frown deepened. “Do you know if she’s on any medication?”
“Yeah, she keeps saying that she needs her pills. She’s worried she’ll hurt me if she doesn’t have them. She said that her nervous system gets overloaded and she lashes out. However, she doesn’t seem to know what she’s taking and she often looks blank and out of it.”
“She doesn’t have the pills on her, then?” Michaela asked.
“No, Gareth is trying to get hold of them.”
“Right, I want to be informed as soon as you know what they are. She’s pale and her blood pressure’s very low. I want to take some blood, but not while she’s sleeping and could wake up suddenly.”
“Just do it,” he commanded. “I’ll hold her arm down.”
The older woman frowned up at him, but she knew better than to protest.
He was the boss, after all.
So she got the needle ready, and he held Lily’s arm as she took blood. Lily let out a soft whimper, but she didn’t wake up.
“Okay, let’s look under the bandages at her scratches,” Michaela said once she was finished. “She got dirt on the wounds?”
He nodded as she checked Lily’s hands.
“Keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t get infected.
Make sure you clean and re-bandage them.
I think she’s also underweight. Her lips are dry, and her skin doesn’t really bounce back when pinched, which means she could be dehydrated too.
Infection could get hold of her easily. So you need to keep an eye on that.
There isn’t much more I can offer without the results of the blood tests and knowing what medication she’s on.
Hopefully she’s just exhausted and needs the sleep, but if the sleep goes on for too long, then she may need to go to the hospital. ”
His first reaction was to say ‘no hospital,’ but if that was what she needed, then he had to provide it, because nothing could happen to Lily.
So he nodded. “I’ll keep a close eye on her.”
“I’m sure you will. Just be careful with her. She seems fragile. And if she’s hurting herself, she will need some trained help.”
He walked with her to the door just as his phone beeped.
He opened the message from Gareth, glancing down at the photo of the white pill bottle he held.
“This is the medication she’s on. Gareth got it from her handbag.” He turned his phone around to show her the image.
Michaela frowned. “According to this bottle, it’s just a light sedative. Something you’d take to get yourself off to sleep.”
“So it wouldn’t make her more docile or blank? Out of it? It wouldn’t cause any sort of memory loss?”
“Not unless she was taking high doses of it. Could she have been abusing them?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I wouldn’t have thought so. Lily usually likes to follow the rules.”
“I think we should get the pills tested, just to make sure that what’s in the bottle is the same as what is written on the outside.”
He nodded. “Do you have somewhere we can do that safely?”
“Yeah, I do. But it might take a few days.”
“Make it happen.”
After she left, he called Gareth and told him to drop off a sample of the pills to Michaela’s office.
And then bring the rest, along with Lily’s handbag, to him.
Then he returned to the living room.
Time to make this girl more comfortable.
Lily woke up confused.
Her heart was racing, and she sat up suddenly, glancing around. Where was she? What was going on? What happened?
This wasn’t her bedroom.
Oh no. Oh no. This had happened to her before, where she’d gone to sleep in one place and woke up in another, with no idea of how she’d gotten there.
And she hated that.
She’d detested that feeling of having lost a period of time. Of having no idea what had been done to her or how she’d gotten here.
Find somewhere to hide, Lily.
No, no. What she should do is find her pills. They’d calm her down. She needed to be calm right now. Otherwise, they might come for her with a needle.
Wait . . . who would come at her with a needle?
Lily looked around. This bed was comfortable and huge. The walls of this bedroom were painted a soft gray and the high ceiling was made of wood. Where was she?
Think, Lily. Think.
Bits and pieces of memory came back to her.
And she realized exactly where she was. In the cabin in the woods.
With Harvey.
Because the wedding to Rick had been called off.
A sigh of relief escaped her before she could stop it. The wedding to Rick was off. She didn’t have to marry that mean, selfish asshole.
Lily drew her legs up against her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Why was she here?
Why did Harvey want her?
You’re useless. You have no skills. You’ve never had a proper job. And you’re sick.
Lily needed her pills.
Deep breaths.
Before she did anything else, she had to find a bathroom. Urgently.
As she pulled the blankets off the bed, she noticed the bandages on her hands.
What had happened?
Her breathing started to quicken in shock. It brought up memories of when she’d woken up after losing moments in time to find that she had strange bandages and bruises that hadn’t been there before. She turned her arms over so she could see her inner elbows.
There it was.
A bandage on the inside of her right arm.
Just a small one, but as she peeled it back, it was clear she’d had blood taken.
Her breathing grew faster and faster as she broke out in a cold sweat.
Someone had taken blood from her. What else had they taken? What else had they done?
She stood on shaky legs and glanced around. Ouch. She had to get out. She dismissed her last disastrous escape attempt as she rushed over toward the double doors to her left.
Immediately, the sound of an alarm went off.
She froze, crouching with her arms over her ears. It was all too much. She couldn’t cope.
Make it stop. Please, make it stop.
As soon as the alarm went off, he knew what had happened.
He was in the kitchen preparing a light dinner. He’d planned to wake her up as soon as it was ready. He hadn’t liked Michaela’s comment that she looked thin. So he didn’t want her missing another meal.
Turning off the stove, he rushed up the stairs to the bedroom. Maybe he shouldn’t have left her, but she’d seemed like she was in a really deep sleep.
When he ran into the bedroom, he came to a sudden stop as he saw she wasn’t in the bed. She couldn’t have gotten outside as all of the doors and windows were centrally locked. He’d done that when he’d carried her back from her earlier attempt to escape.
They could only be unlocked by him.
But it still caused him a moment of surprise and worry.
Then he heard a whimpering noise above the screaming alarm. Shit, he needed to turn that off.
Pulling out his phone, he brought up the app and turned off the alarm. Then he moved around the other side of the bed to find her by the window.
She was sitting on the floor with her legs curled up against her and her hands over her ears, rocking back and forth.
Fuck.
He was doing a fucking terrible job of taking care of her.
“Lily? Lily, it’s me. Lily, can you hear me?”
She didn’t react to his presence at all. Instead, she just kept rocking back and forth, back and forth. Walking over, he sat down in front of her.
Should he touch her? Would that make things worse? Could things get worse than they actually were? All he knew was that he couldn’t leave her like this.
Reaching over, he grabbed hold of her and lifted her into his lap. She sat there stiffly.
And then she started to fight.
It caught him completely by surprise.
And she escaped his hold before he could recover. He hadn’t expected that from Lily. But as she took off out of the bedroom, he finally got up and raced after her.
Fuck, he was probably scaring her more.
But he couldn’t let her run down the stairs in this condition. He managed to wrap his arm around her waist just as she reached the top of the stairs.
Who knew what would have happened to her if she’d tried to run down the stairs. She could have slipped and fallen, could have broken her neck.
Fuck. Fuck.
Unable to remain standing, he sat on the top step with her on his lap. To his surprise, she no longer fought him. She just sat there sobbing quietly.
“Baby, baby, it’s all right. You’re okay. I have you. You’re all right.”
“What’s wrong with me?” she cried. “What’s wrong with me?” She smacked the palms of her hands into her forehead.
He grasped hold of her wrists, pulling them away from her head.
“Stop that, Lily. Stop it right now.” Fuck, he hated this.
Was this why she needed those sedatives? To calm her down? But Michaela had said they were only light. Surely, they weren’t the reason for her zombielike state most of the time.
Unless it wasn’t due to the drugs, unless she just zoned out because she was trying to get away from her mother and Rick. He couldn’t blame her for that, but it wasn’t a healthy way to survive. Neither was her reliance on sedatives to keep calm.
“What is going on with you, Lily-girl?” he muttered. “What the hell happened to you?”
She tensed in his arms, glancing up at him. “Let go of me, Harvey.”
“No.”
“Harvey, you need to let go of me now.”
“You need to realize that I’m never going to let you go.”
“It’s going to make going to the bathroom awfully awkward,” she said.
Oh, hell.
He stood with her in his arms and carried her back into the main bedroom, then into the attached bathroom. He set her down on her feet in the bathroom.
“I’m going to wait just out here with the door slightly open.”
“Why? So you can hear me pee?”
“Because I don’t like that every time I leave you, you try to run. And then you hurt yourself.”
“It’s nothing more than I deserve.” She turned away and walked over to the toilet.
“It’s nothing like what you deserve,” he told her before he left. He partially shut the door before speaking through the crack. “You deserve the fucking world and I’m going to give it to you.”