Page 48

“Because you need the money to run,” I told myself, finding some comfort in talking to myself. But what I couldn’t talk myself out of was the memory of his hand and the direction it had been headed. He had gone as far as my stomach, palm flat, his fingers already sliding beneath the waistband of my scrubs, and then somebody had banged on that door and he let me go.

Meaning, I had spent the whole drive home telling myself thank God. Thank God for that knock. Thank God for the interruption. Thank God, thank God, thank God.

Thank God he didn’t find out.

Because I knew what he would have found. I had known while it was happening that my body was betraying me and I had been praying with everything in me that he wouldn’t find out.

Not because I was frightened of it going further.

But because he would have known how much his touch affected me.

That was the type of proof you couldn’t talk yourself out of being true. Something you couldn’t explain to the man who held you captive and already believed that his touch had that effect on you.

And unfortunately for me…

He was right.

Which was why it was only an hour later that I found myself in bed and this time I had no restraint left for what came next. There was no stopping my wandering hand as it dipped lower under the covers until it found that aching place between my legs. And I would have loved to say that I thought about somebody else. Anybody else. A movie star. An old boyfriend. Hell, even one of the guards at the prison.

But I couldn’t, because I only thought of him.

I thought about the wall, and a hand big and strong enough to fit around both my wrists and hold me there. I thought about a voice at my ear telling me to open my mouth. I thought about the exact moment my body had stopped fighting and gone still, and how he had felt it happen. How he had said good girl like I had handed him something precious. A gift.

Shamefully, it didn’t take long. It didn’t take long at all. And when I came after only minutes of touching myself, I came harder than ever before as a silent scream tore through me. And then it was over, and I was left still lying alone in a strange bed and in a strange town with my heart pounding. Because for those few, blissful minutes, he had been right there with me.

Three years of one thought… survival… running… getting far, far away.

And I had just lain there in the dark and thought about a man who had told me I was his, and not one part of me, not one single part, had been thinking about escaping.

I turned over and put my face into the pillow.

“What the hell is wrong with you!” I groaned into the material, which ended up being the theme of the night. That and the tossing and turning until eventually, I fell asleep.

Dreaming of a monster I secretly wanted in my bed.

I went back in the next morning, and I knew how that sounded. Because here was the deeply unglamorous truth of my situation. I had six hundred and forty dollars in an account belonging to a woman who didn’t exist, and a roll of cash in the glovebox that wouldn’t have covered a month’s rent anywhere.

Anna Vale had cost me two thousand dollars, and I needed that name to last until I had enough to change it again. So, I did the only thing I could do. I put concealer on the bite at my neck, and I pulled a long-sleeved tee up high under the spare scrubs I had signed for the day before, and I drove to a maximum-security prison. Because the alternative was being a woman who lived in a car with no plan and a new name she couldn’t afford yet.

Eight days I told myself. Just eight days until payday and then I would be gone before anybody had finished saying my fake name. Because I knew now that staying the full six weeks wasn’t going to happen.

Not now I was on his radar.

I got to Halloran just as he was taking his coat off, which meant catching him in the corridor before he’d had his morning coffee, so let’s just say, he wasn’t exactly in a chipper mood. It also meant that this wasn’t a great start for me as I had a request to make.

“The recent transfer patient, the one with no name.”

“Yes, what about him?” He practically snapped but before that I noticed something else. A small jerk of his body, like part of him was recoiling from a memory.

“I’d like you to take him from now on,” I said, and he looked at me the way a man looks at a vending machine that has eaten his money.

“He’s a medical patient and last time I checked, you’re part of the medical staff.”

I gritted my teeth at this snide remark.

“He needs two-person handling. He’s high risk, he’s non-compliant, and I’m not comfortable being the only clinician in the room with him,” I stated firmly, impressed by how steady it all came out, no matter how many times I had rehearsed it on the way here. Which I thought was rather elegantly put for a woman who had spent the night doing what I had spent the night doing. Which was obsessing over a dangerous man who had noticed me in a way that was anything but healthy.

Halloran sighed the sigh of a man being asked to carry something for someone.