Love What’s Left (Trust & Tequila #4)

Chapter 1

Sydney

The straps on the hospital bed chafe my skin, and the reek of mildew burns my sinuses. The pressure of a heart beating too hard and too fast builds in my neck and chest.

I keep my eyes closed and focus on my mantra. “Your name is Sydney Walsh McRae. He’ll never give up on you. You don’t know anything else.”

“Why isn’t she cooperating?” The man’s syllables punch consonants the way his fists like to pummel my body.

“You gave her too much. She’s having a bad reaction,” the woman says.

The drug they gave me isn’t legal in this country for good reason.

Trahypnofen is Rohypnol’s jacked-up cousin with a side helping of pathological people-pleaser.

If I don’t die from cardiac arrest, coma, or seizures, my captors think they’ll have a perfect little puppet on their hands.

I have one chance to take control before it’s too late.

I’ll give up anything . . . everything . . . before I give them him.

Don’t let these people inside your head. There’s no room for anything but what I put there myself.

It’d be easier to force myself into the dissociation I need if the drug made me fuzzy-headed or sleepy. Instead, my mind is open, but sharp. I’m a crab with a cracked shell, waiting for my captors to pour a new reality into it.

I could recite the mechanism for how it works in my sleep. Trahypnofen binds to the GABA-A receptor, enhancing the frequency of chloride—Stop.

The mantra. Only the mantra. I repeat it in my mind and will myself to believe it. To absorb my thoughts as truth, not their words. To know nothing but my name and that he won’t give up on me. He’ll find me if I can hold on long enough.

“Look at me, Sydney,” the man says.

My lids lift of their own volition, and I stare back at the positively normal-looking person leaning over me.

“You already betrayed him. Without us, he’ll kill you. Don’t you remember?” he asks.

“I don’t know anything else.” The words slip past my mental leash. Shut your mouth. Stop talking.

“We’re all you have left. Be good for us, Sydney, and we’ll be good to you,” the woman says. Brooklyn accent. Sounds like—Stop thinking. Stop.

Your name is Sydney Walsh McRae. He’ll never give up on you. You don’t know anything else.

Days or Weeks Later

The assholes want something from me. Too bad for them I have zero clue who or what they’re talking about. Too bad for me too.

I huddle in the corner and wrap my arms around my knees for warmth.

My hair follicles sting, my toenails ache, and every last cell in between hurts, but I figured out how to go floaty a long time ago.

Eight steps from here to the dirty green door smeared with the rust of my blood.

One, two, three, four, five, six steps to the grungy tiled bathroom attached to my concrete-block basement prison.

If they tie me to the hospital bed for too long, they hose me down in there.

I named the empty toilet paper roll Howard for shits and giggles. Loneliness has stolen into my soul and swallowed it whole. Now I’m hollow on the inside and the kind of person who uses her thumbnail to scratch a face into a cardboard tube because it might be my last fingertip grip on sanity.

Or maybe that ship has already sailed. The drugs they gave me carved pieces from my mind that I’ll never get back.

When that glaring overhead lightbulb finally burns out, I’m throwing a party. No guest list or invitations, of course. Just me and my little buddy, Howard, celebrating by sleeping like the dead.

Well . . . until unending darkness replaces the unrelenting light and steals the last pittance of coherence I have left.

Hey, you can’t win’em all. Rub some dirt on it. One day at a time, sweet Jesus, when the going gets tough, girls just want to have fun.

Whatever. I’ve decided to be grateful for the light. That awful thing glaring through my eyelids 24/7 is a blessing, right? It prevents this place from becoming a sensory deprivation chamber.

I read about an experiment like that once. Some guy in a cave not only lost track of time but also of his ever-loving mind. And he did it on purpose.

I stopped eating their food days ago. Now I drink only from the bathroom faucet and flush all their drug-laced crap down the toilet. They’ll figure it out sooner or later, but, hopefully, not today.

I’m 99 percent sure there are no drugs in me right now, but does it matter when my brain is fried either way?

“Answer me,” the man demands.

How can I answer when I don’t remember the question?

The crack of the man’s slap jerks my head to the side and leaves fire in its wake. I’ve had worse.

I keep my eyes closed and move my mouth to speak, but my brain fights back. Words can hurt him. Who? No idea, but I’m rolling with my gut on this because one thing is for sure, the assholes in this room aren’t the good guys.

I lift the knotted sash from my filthy red dress to my chest and rock in place. The woman crouches close and pries my eyelids open, shining another glaring light into my retinas because one is clearly not enough.

No sensory deprivation here. No, sirree. Attitude of gratitude.

She turns on the man, an anxious note in her voice. “You said you would break her, not destroy her mind. You have to do it right.”

“I should have stuck to the first plan. I can still kill her, leave the corpse on one of his properties, and pick them off one at a time,” he says.

“Killing her is wasting her potential. My way will—”

“Your way only works if she does—”

“She will. You gave her a concussion. She needs a few weeks to rest and recover, then you can start over.”

The asshole makes a sound of frustration. “Deal with her, then.”

He opens the door that I can never get past and slams it shut behind him.

The woman leans closer and speaks, her breath warm against my cold ear. “Gabriel murdered a woman when he was ten years old. I don’t suppose he told you that.”

My name is Sydney Walsh McRae—

“Nick can’t let it go. He’s going to make Gabriel and his brother pay, but you can go back to your life as soon as you prove that Nick can trust you.”

For a moment, smiling green eyes flash in my mind, then they’re gone, burned away like mist under the strength of my own will, a drug that never should have existed, and my captor’s pounding fists.

He’ll never give up—

My fingers twist and worry my red sash. I concentrate on the fabric, the jersey knit familiar beneath my fingers as I tie another knot by feel alone.

She sighs. “I can’t come back here for you, again, Sydney. It’s too dangerous for me. This is it. It’s your last chance.”

I don’t know anything else—

She tugs the sash from my fingers. “Look at me.”

I obey automatically and warm brown eyes the picture of empathy gaze down into mine. “That’s good, Sydney. Remember me? You can trust me. I’m here to help you.”

I snatch the sash back and cradle it to my chest.

“Would you like a blanket instead? I’d love to get you one. We could make it cozy down here. I’ll get you real bedding and clean clothes. I could put the lights on a timer so you can get some rest, and I’ll find you some painkillers. Just talk to me, and everything will be fine.”

For a blanket and safety, I’d tell her all my secrets, but I locked them away and threw away the key. They can torture me to death, and I’ll go to my grave with the words: “My name is Sydney Walsh McRae. He’ll never give up. I don’t know anything else.”