Chapter 2
SLOANE
My head feels stuffed with cotton and broken glass. Every thought scrapes against my skull, demanding that I pay attention, but the fog won't clear. I'm moving—being moved—and the cold air shocks my system enough that awareness comes flooding back in jagged pieces.
Hands—strong hands gripping my arms. The smell of leather and wood smoke. A man's voice, grumbling something I can't understand with my head spinning like this. I've been drugged, and I don’t know who did it.
I twist against whoever's holding me as my body remembers how to fight before my brain fully catches up. "Get off me."
"Stop moving." The way he speaks to me like he can boss me around really pisses me off, but my mind processes it too slowly to defend myself. "You'll hurt yourself."
"You drugged me." The accusation comes out slurred but furious. I thrash harder, trying to break his grip, but my limbs aren't cooperating. Everything feels disconnected, my muscles responding half a second too late. "You fucking drugged me."
"I didn't drug you. I found you in the town square freezing your ass off.
" He's dragging me now, pulling me toward a dark structure that materializes out of the trees.
I blink my eyes hard until the building comes into focus, and I realize he's dragging me toward a dark cabin.
It's just the sort of place maniacs like him drag women they've drugged. He's going to assault me.
Fuck….
Panic surges through the chemical fog and I drive my elbow back, aiming for his ribs but connecting with solid muscle. He grunts but doesn't let go. If anything, his grip tightens.
"Knock it off." His tone hasn't changed—still flat and controlled—but his pace slows slightly. "You want to explain why you're wandering around town half-dressed with hypothermia setting in? Or do you want to keep fighting me so we can both freeze out here?"
"Let me go!" I throw my weight sideways, trying to unbalance him.
We're close to the cabin now, close enough that I can see the door.
If he gets me inside and closes that door, I'm done for.
Statistics flash through my mind—survival rates, response times, how long it takes for someone to die when they're this far from help.
He hauls me up the steps but I grab the railing, fingers wrapping around weathered wood and holding on. He could break my grip easily. I can feel the strength in him, but he stops instead.
"Listen to me." His face comes into view as he moves around to look at me directly. Gray-blue eyes slice through my consciousness, forcing me to look at him. My brain processes his face slowly—stubble along a squared jaw, dark hair, tattoos creeping up his neck from beneath his collar.
He looks exactly how a man who drugs women and drags them to isolated cabins should look—dangerous, controlled, capable of terrible things.
"You're making noise," he growls. "Out here, that attracts the attention of bears or wolves or people you don’t want around you. So you can either walk inside under your own power, or I can carry you. Your choice."
"Fuck you." I spit the words at him and tighten my grip on the railing, but it does no good.
He sighs, a sound of pure exasperation, and then he's lifting me, actually lifting me, my feet leaving the ground as he maneuvers me through the door and into the cabin's interior.
I fight the whole way, kicking and clawing, but it's useless.
Whatever they gave me has stolen my coordination, left me weak and flailing.
The door slams shut behind us before he sets me down, and I immediately stagger, catching myself against the back of a chair. The room spins, then steadies. I can see more clearly now—a main room with a fireplace, sturdy furniture, but no signs of anyone else here but me.
"Who are you?" I demand, forcing my voice to steady, and I catch myself drooling and heaving for breath. "Where the hell am I?" This isn’t right. Nothing feels right. I'm a fucking outdoorsy person and I'm in great shape. I hike ten miles every week. Why is this fucking me up so badly?
"Doesn't matter." He moves to the fireplace, crouching to add wood to the dying embers. The firelight catches on his profile, highlighting the tension in his jaw and the strands of silver at his temple. "What matters is who sent you."
"Sent me?" The absurdity of the statement cuts through my fear and makes me pause for a second. "Nobody sent me. I was at a club in the city, some asshole spiked my drink, and I woke up here. So maybe you should explain why you kidnapped me."
He turns, and the look he gives me could freeze blood.
"I didn't kidnap you. I found you stumbling around town square in forty-degree weather wearing that.
" He gestures at my dress—the black number I'd thrown on for girls' night, now torn at the hem and streaked with dirt.
"No coat. No shoes. Drugged out of your mind.
So either you're the world's worst tourist or someone dumped you here on purpose. "
My knees feel weak and I sink into the kitchen chair I'm leaning on. No one sent me here. What the hell is he talking about? "Why would someone dump me here? I don't even know where here is."
"Sutter's Gap. Adirondacks." He straightens, crossing his arms over his chest. The movement makes his jacket pull tight across his shoulders, emphasizing the size of his barrel chest. I'm five-foot-seven and fit from years of hiking, but he's got six inches and at least eighty pounds on me.
If this turns into a real fight, I'll lose.
It makes my throat clench and my body feel like a piano string ready to snap. I'm really trapped here with no way out.
"I need to call the police." I look around for a cell phone, a landline, anything. "I need to report what happened."
"No police," he grumbles as he crosses back toward me, and the way he says it leaves no room for argument.
"Excuse me?" My temper, never far from the surface even on good days, flares hot.
"Someone drugged me and dumped me in the middle of nowhere.
That's assault. Kidnapping. I'm calling the cops.
" I start to stand but sway again, and he's right fucking there, catching me like he's some hero and not the villain of this story.
"You really want to involve them?" He takes a step forward, and I instinctively fall backward as he plants my ass back on the chair.
"You really want to explain to a small town sheriff why you're walking around wasted in the middle of my town with nothing but a flimsy gown that could in fact make you look like a prostitute? "
"Oh, my God," I grumble as my head starts to spin again and I slump to the table over my folded arms. As my head hits the cold, hard surface, so does something else. I hear the clink and pause for a moment to regain my composure before sighing and then forcing myself back upward.
I look down around my neck where I feel the chill of metal and see something tucked between my tits. It's my chain. I put it on earlier tonight before I went out, but the charm dangling from it isn't mine.
I've never seen it before, and I barely get a chance to inspect it before the ogre's hand is grabbing it, snapping it off my neck.
"Give that back." I reach for it but he pulls it away, holding it above my reach.
"Tell me who sent you," he repeats, and I feel ready to pounce on him. He doesn't seem like he wants to hurt me. He's too busy playing cop, interrogating me, and I just want to go home.
"I don't know!" The frustration breaks through in a loud whine that morphs into a shout. "I don't know anything! I went out with friends, someone slipped something in my drink at the bar, and the next thing I remember is waking up here. Just give me my fucking necklace and let me leave."
His eyes narrow. "This isn't your necklace. You didn't put this on."
"How would you know?"
"Because you didn't even know you were wearing it." He's studying me now, looking for tells, for lies. I've been the one giving that look before, in the ER when patients try to hide their symptoms. "Someone put this on you. Someone who wanted to send a message."
"What message?" I'm shouting now, the fear and anger and confusion all boiling over at once. "I don't understand any of this! Why would someone use me to send you a message? I don't even know you!"
I cover my face with my hands and growl out my frustration because I'm clearly not getting through to this man.
I wonder if I'm even making sense because as woozy as I feel, maybe I'm not.
Maybe this is all some damn hallucination, or worse, a delusion.
Maybe I'm just dreaming and this will all be over when I wake up.
The man grabs my wrists and pulls my hands away from my face, then shoves the thing in my face and demands, "Read it." He holds the bullet up with the engraving facing me, and I squint, trying to focus.
The letters swim for a moment, like they’re spinning in a circle, then they resolve and I can read them.
Queens, 2011.
The year I spent as a perioperative nurse in a trauma center, fresh out of school and drowning in cases I wasn't ready for.
I don't understand what's happening. I remember a man was rushed into the ER with gunshot wounds who bled out faster than we could work.
I was blamed for making mistakes but it wasn't me, but who would've known that? And why is that around my neck?
I think I’m going to be sick.
I never told anyone about that night and I moved on, even switched hospitals. I had to go through therapy after that because I blamed myself for things I should’ve done better.
But there was nothing I could have done. He'd been unconscious when they brought him in, and he never woke up. But I've never forgotten his face or the way I felt when my bosses accused me of failing.
I spent years trying to prove them wrong, even digging into that case on my own time, searching for answers the police never found. And now someone's dragging it back up. Dragging me back to that night.
"Queens, 2011," I whisper, and my throat feels tight. "There was a patient. Uh… a gunshot wound." My mouth feels so dry. "But he died in surgery."
The man's expression doesn't change, but I see the minute shift in his posture.
He knows what I'm talking about somehow.
I search his face but he gives nothing away as he says, "What do you remember about him?
" His voice is quieter now as he calms down, lowering himself into the chair next to me.
I notice how intently his eyes stare at me, like he's as haunted by this as I am.
"Everything." The unwanted memories flood back so vividly, it's like I’m reliving it now.
"Uh, he had three gunshot wounds—two to the chest, one to the head.
The head wound was the fatal one, but he was still alive when they brought him in.
We tried everything—transfusions, chest tubes, emergency thoracotomy—and nothing worked. He was gone within twenty minutes."
"And after?"
"After?" I meet his eyes, searching for whatever answer he's looking for. "After, the police told me it was a Mob hit. That he was connected to organized crime. They questioned everyone on staff, looked for witnesses, for any information that might lead to the shooter."
He leans back, running a hand through his hair. The gesture is the first crack in his composure I've seen. "You need to understand something. Whoever brought you here, whoever put that bullet around your neck—they know about Queens. They know about that patient. And they know about me."
"Who are you?" My voice shakes as I ask the question because I'm not liking the feel I'm getting from him. He is starting to creep me out, and that's not an easy thing for someone like me.
"Nobody." He turns away, shoving the bullet into his pocket. "Nobody you should know."
When he stands, I can only sit and watch him.
This whole fucking night is a blur and I'm terrified.
If this has to do with that dead man on the surgical table five years ago, then I'm fucked.
I've been digging around trying to figure out what happened, playing amateur sleuth, and clearly, I've barked up the wrong tree.
I have no clue who this man is or what he has to do with that dead man and I don’t want to stick around here to find out. Whoever he is, he knows something, and maybe he's not the one who drugged me, but I don't trust him.
"I gotta piss. Stay where you are. I'll be back." His grunt as he walks off gives me just enough time to get my bearings, and as soon as the bathroom door clicks shut, I'm on my feet and moving.
The drugs are still heavy in my system, but I can't stay put. I'd rather take my chances on the cold side of a mountain with the lions and wolves and bears in sub-freezing temps wearing only this dress than to sit here waiting for him to come back.
I didn't see where he put his keys, but I can hope maybe he left them hanging. In under a few seconds I’m out the door, racing for his truck.
The ground is rocky and I stumble around a bit because of the drugs still in my system, but I think my mind is clear enough to drive away. At least I have to try.
Staying here feels like a death sentence and I'm not ready to die tonight.