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“Shush now. Everything will be okay when you wake up.” The voice came from miles away, from the end of a long, dark tunnel. “You’ll be fine.”
Cold air washed over her, so cold her breath instantly turned to mist. Her last clear recollection before the drugs sucked her into the murk was being laid on the backseat of a car, her head in a stranger’s lap, while doors banged, and an engine started.
“She’s out?” Hadley asked.
“Yeah, she’s good. Should be out for a good few hours—we didn’t skimp on sedative. She’s a flighty little thing.” Andrew’s hand rested on her head. “She was pretty broken up when you wouldn’t let her see the doctor.”
“I heard,” Hadley replied grimly.
Barely awake, thoughts muddled, Jenna had trouble distinguishing voices. Maybe Connor hadn’t told them how quickly her body processed sedatives because they hadn’t given her enough to send her into that dreamy place, not even for a few minutes.
“Dirty bastard doesn’t deserve to say goodbye.” Another voice, disgust tainting the tone, came from the front. “Forcing a woman to call him Daddy. What kind of sick fuck enjoys that shit?”
“Keep your opinions to yourself, Mark. I don’t give a fuck what anyone does with another adult as long as it’s consensual.” Hadley’s voice came across calm, but even doped to the eyeballs, Jenna read the nuances beneath. The agent did not like the man he was working with.
She drifted for a while, losing track of the conversation as the drugs pushed and pulled her along between stupor and consciousness. She didn’t know how long they’d been travelling before her fingers twitched, and she moaned.
“Was that her?”
“She can’t be coming out of it so quickly; she’s hardly been down a half hour!”
“For Christ’s sake, get her back under.”
“I can’t. Not without overdosing her and putting her in a goddamn coma. Ah hell, her fingers are moving. Just shut up and see if she goes back under.”
Silence dropped like a weighted blanket, with only the growl of the engine and the crunch of tires on snow remaining. Peaceful, she thought, and was tempted to slide away again, but without Connor there as her safety blanket, her mind was already ticking into action.
Her legs moved restlessly, and her hands sought purchase to push against so she could sit up. Her protest was a strained grunt as she was held down.
“Hold still. We’ve a ways to go yet.”
Her hand lashed out limply, smacking the seat in front of her. Her mouth was tacky, her system desperate for a drink. Unease pricked at her when the man holding her wouldn’t let her up. “Lemme go.”
“Just put pressure on the carotid artery,” Mark snapped from the front seat. “Knock the bitch—”
The world imploded.
Jenna heard Hadley swear, saw him wrench the wheel to one side through blurred eyes, then there was just a horrific screech of metal ripping into metal.
She thought she screamed as the SUV skidded sideways, went airborne. Unrestrained, her body lifted off the backseat, twisted and tumbled as the vehicle rolled. When it landed, bounced from roof to wheels to roof, Jenna bounced with it.
The familiar pain of broken bones radiated in her head before it smacked into the passenger seat’s headrest. Blood filled her mouth, her nose, sprayed all over as she coughed to clear her airways. Agony split her ribs, and she knew some were broken.
The SUV stopped on its roof, shuddered with the last of its momentum, and she laid facedown on the ceiling. Blood pooled beneath her head, dripped into her eyes. Pain consumed her down to the soul.
Broken ribs, broken arm. Nasty head wound, and several lacerations to her legs from broken glass. She tried to continue the tally as her vision swam with black.
She heard the crunch of footsteps in the crisp snow, shivered from the cold and chunks of ice inside the wrecked truck. Someone coughed, asked if everyone was okay.
Pop.
Her eyes rolled at the sound. An almost soft exhalation of noise that had dread pooling in her belly as thick as the blood beneath her. A few more footsteps and anotherpop. A short, shocked cry. Silence.
She blinked in confusion as a face peered through the shattered window nearest to her. Distorted, she couldn’t see the features not covered by a black ski mask. She blinked again, her heart stopping as a gun poked through, angled upward.
Following the direction it was pointed, she saw the man, Andrew, hanging limp above her. Secured in place by his seatbelt, he looked like a forgotten puppet dangling by his strings.
Pop.
