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Panic filled her chest, and she glanced up. A man in dark scrubs with a mask covering his face pushed her bed. The cool air brushed her face as he sped up.
“Where are you taking me?” she grumbled, trying to shake the fog from her brain.
Was it morning already? She didn’t think she’d slept that hard or long.
“Shut up,” he snapped.
Well, that certainly wasn’t the way to speak to a patient.
She looked at him and frowned. Fear crept into her chest with the thought of where he was actually taking her.
She may have been a little loopy from the medication but she was no dummy.
He is not hospital personnel.
She frantically took in her surroundings and found herself being pushed down an unfamiliar hallway. From what she could tell, it looked as if they were in the basement of the hospital. Strangely enough, there wasn’t anyone around for her to call out for help.
“They are going to be looking for me,” she warned. She didn’t have much to threaten with. Hell, she didn’t even know if they’d realized she was gone yet. “The feds and the police—”
“I said shut up, bitch,” he snarled. “Or I’ll shut your mouth permanently.”
Her lips snapped shut. The pain in her leg was throbbing, and she needed to push her pain button. She glanced up and saw her IV pole still attached to her bed, but there was no way in hell she was going to take the happy drugs and drift off to her wonderfully drugged sleep at a time like this. She’d just have to grin and bear it.
They turned a corner, and the perfectly esthetic hallway turned into what looked to be a large storage facility. Her gaze landed on large loading dock doorways, and she finally understood where they were.
The underbelly of the hospital.
Late at night, the maintenance employees weren’t around, and deliveries would not be happening at this time.
Her heart skipped a beat as a few men stepped from behind large pillars. One familiar figure stood apart from the goons and captivated her attention.
The one person she’d hoped to never see on this side of a set of prison bars stood not twenty feet from her with a scowl embedded on his face.
“I knew you weren’t dead,” Ray sneered.
“And I just knew you’d be in prison forever,” she remarked. She took in a deep breath and refused to show fear. There was no way she’d let him know how frightened she was.
His dry chuckle met her ears. She glanced around and took in five men with him. Each of them were armed with weapons visible on their bodies. She stared at Ray and saw the man she’d grown up with and thought of as an uncle, but the man whose murderous gaze met hers wasn’t that same person.
“You’re still a smart-ass.” He shook his head. “Come here, Aspen.”
Her eyes widened, thinking of the pain she was in lying down. She didn’t even want to think of the agony she’d be in taking her first step.
“I don’t know if you know, but I just had surgery to remove a bullet your man put in my leg,” she snapped. How the hell was she supposed to walk?
“Well, you’re lucky he only hit your leg. Too bad. He should have been aiming at the middle of your forehead.” Ray nodded to the man who had pushed her down.
The masked man came alongside her bed and snatched the IV line from her arm. She cried out from the sting of the tape and tubing being removed.
“You’re not going to get away with this,” she gasped as the man dragged her to the edge of the bed.
He wasn’t gentle at all. Her vision blurred with tears. The pain in her leg exploded, and she cried out. Her back was sore and ached as if she’d been hit with a bat. She didn’t even want to imagine what it would have felt like if she hadn’t worn the vest.
“But I will. Do you know how much I had to spend to find you? How many agents I had to bribe?”
“How could you do this to us?” she screamed. She batted the masked man’s hands from her. She wasn’t going anywhere with Ray. If they took her, she knew she’d never see Declan again. She’d watched with her own eyes, Ray take a man’s life. What was stopping him from doing the same to her? “You were like an uncle to me. I looked up to you.” Her voice ended on a hitch.
Ray stalked toward her and stopped directly in front of her. “You left me no choice, Aspen,” he snapped. He settled his hands on his hips and waved his thug away. Ray returned his attention to her with a look of disgust on his face.
