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At least it wasn’t a bad guy.
My eyes focused more, getting better with every passing minute. I looked around; we were in a library of some sort. No one was inside. Shelves were lined with paperbacks and board games. The windows were small portholes, as if to ward off too much sun. I was on the floor, behind an armchair.
No Brandon in the room.
“Where is he?” I asked. “Did they take him?” I’d kill them, whoever they were.
“He punched the guy, brought you here, and ran off to separate you two,” Marc said. Before I could ask more, he put an arm around me. “Come on. Brandon escaped fine. You got the worst of it.”
I swallowed as my stomach felt funny again, and planted a palm on my belly.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Going to puke again?”
I shrugged. I didn’t think so, but then a wave of nausea would start.
Marc placed a palm against my forehead, cupped my neck by the ear, and tilted my head gently in his hands. “You’re bleeding in one spot, but…didn’t you bump your head yesterday? Someone said you did.”
I inhaled sharply, trying to recall what he was talking about. “On the boat. I hit my head on a banister on the way in. So there might be two bumps.”
He released me with a chuckle. “Bambi…what the hell. I can’t leave you alone for two minutes.”
I wanted to tell him to stop calling me Bambi, but my brain hurt, and I could feel the cut on my head throbbing. The deep, tense feeling on my shoulder was uncomfortable and my body felt so tight.
Marc eased me until he could pick me up, then moved me to a nearby sofa. I sat back, trying to rest my head on a cushion, but my headache wasn’t liking the pressure. I closed my eyes to shut out the light. “So Brandon got away?”
“He’s finding a safe place to hide. We’ll be lucky if Corey doesn’t get mistaken for him.” He pulled away an extra pillow, tossing it to the floor. “Do you need to lie down?”
“My head hurts,” I said.
“I should to take you to the doctor, but I need to make sure we don’t rattle your head around too much more before we can get there. Lie down if you can.”
I tried, but leaning over made my head throb, bringing more nausea. “I think it’s better if I’m upright.”
“Do I need to carry you? I probably should.”
“No,” I said. Not after last time. If the doctor here saw me like this, being carried in again, who knew what he’d think.
He nodded and tapped his ear, where I knew an earpiece was hidden. “Axel and some of the others are trying to clear the path to the doctor. We have to make sure the hospital on the ship is clear, too. Sam’s goon might come looking for you.”
“Maybe the doctor should come here,” I said. I cupped my forehead, partially blocking the light. The longer I was upright, the better I felt, but the major headache was killing me. “At least we know who knocked out Blake. Was Brandon able to identify him? How did he get away?”
“He saw it coming, I guess. I only got the gist of what happened before I was told to come get you.”
He knelt on the floor in front of me, looking up at my face. He examined other parts of me, testing my feet and knees by bending them and putting pressure on different spots. He took my wrist in his hands and bent my joints. “Any of this hurt?”
“Just my head.”
Once he determined nothing else was injured, his touch turned into massaging my legs and feet. He looked up at my face and squinted. “I still can’t believe it’s you. If I didn’t know better…it’s a good thing they told me you were in disguise. You…look so different.”
“The makeup,” I said and breathed in deeply, willing the headache to go away so I could look at him without being in agony. He was in all black, like he’d been with crew. He even had a tag on his chest, the name faded just enough to make it difficult to read.
He seemed different, too. I realized he wasn’t wearing his usual black cord with the silver sand dollar medallion. Had he lost it? I’d never seen him without it.
He studied my face. “It’s your eyes.”
“Huh?”
“You’re looking like me,” he said. “Only one green and one brown.”
I lifted a hand toward my eyes, touching my eyelids like I could feel their color. “A contact must have fallen out.” I reached up, and the wig felt askew. I removed it, getting some air to my head.
“Why were you down in the spa, anyway? I can’t believe Brandon agreed to that.”
“I helped us find out who hit Blake, didn’t I?” I asked. “Who knocked me out?”
“Another crew member,” Marc said. “Brandon said his name. I didn’t talk to him directly and wasn’t told yet.”
“Not anyone else we know?”
“Nope,” Marc said. “No one we were really looking at. Just some big security guy who usually works in the casino part of the ship. Except it seems like in his off time, he does some protection work for Sam. From what I heard, he must have come down in the elevator after Sam and spotted you two hiding. I don’t know if that’s true. That’s the exact same spot where Blake was hiding before. I think they know that spot is a place people could spy on them, so they knock out anyone behind it who might have been snooping around.”
A flash of pain radiated again from the bump. I groaned and rolled my head to one side, holding it in my palm. I didn’t want to get up because of it; staying as still as possible made it slightly less painful. “They can’t just knock out anyone watching Sam near the spa. That’s stupid. Why?”
“I think it’s because you were hiding,” he said. “Why would you hide right there unless you were spying? And why spy on them unless you were on to what they were doing.”
“But…why? Wouldn’t the doctor on board notice if people were getting hit just being around the spa?”
“We won’t know right now, but that doesn’t matter.” He put a hand on my knee. “Stop thinking about it for now.”
“We need to make sure Brandon is okay,” I said.
“Sweetie, I told you, he’s fine. We need to get you to a doctor. Your head needs to be looked at.”
I didn’t really want to sit on an exam table again. I just wanted twenty Tylenol and a nap. And a Blake. And an Axel. And a Brandon. And…
I looked at him, suddenly realizing he’d been sent to me, but…it had been an emergency moment. Was it only because of the dire circumstances that they’d told him to come get me? “Can we just…” I paused, trying to come up with some excuse why I didn’t need to see the doctor.
“Nope,” he said and smiled at me with the coyest expression. He rested his palm on my knee. “You go willingly or I take you myself. I’ll drag you if I have to.”
“I’ll scream,” I said, more annoyed that he was bossing me around than upset about going to the doctor.
“I’ll go get Axel,” he said. “He’ll help me drag you.”
I couldn’t fight both of them, not that I cared to. “Just give me a minute. I don’t want to puke on the way.”
He frowned and gently squeezed my knee. “Puking isn’t good. The concussion might be pretty bad if you keep doing that.”
“You don’t know if it’s a concussion,” I said.
“If you don’t have one, you’ve got the thickest skull ever,” he said and then smirked. “Which I’ve suspected for a while now.”
My head was swimming with pain and anger at whoever had attacked me. I was worried that Sam’s goon had recognized me. I worried about Blake, wondering if he might have walk
ed right past him in the casino, never realizing who he was.
As Marc touched my knee, I started to remember that he should be mad at me, angry about finding out about the others. He should be grumpy to even have to help me.
Instead, he was smiling with concern, but sure everything would be okay.
I swallowed, pushing those thoughts away as I tried to tell if my stomach was going to purge again. It seemed more settled now. “Let me get up and walk there. I don’t want to be carried in.”
He sat back on his heels, waiting, watching me with those mismatched eyes. His dark hair was combed to the side, looking a little nicer than his usual rock star style. His angled jaw was tense, as were his lips, pressed together into thin lines. I could feel frustration from him.
His hand on my knee was holding firm. His other hand was balled up in a fist against his thigh, the knuckles white.
I had been stupid. I knew someone had knocked out Blake when he’d been watching Sam at the spa, and I had done the same stupid thing.
At least it wasn’t a total loss. All we needed now was to know where this goon had been last night and he’d be the prime suspect.
Maybe then Raven would return.
But what if Sam or his goon had done something to Raven? Like knocked him out like they’d done to me and Blake and then stashed him somewhere?
I straightened up slowly, cupping my head, knowing it wasn’t doing any good for me to sit here. The pain wouldn’t go away until I got some medication for it. As I prepared to get up, I felt the layer of thick numbness that seemed to blanket the rest of me, probably from the Taser. It must have been at a higher setting, or maybe it was a different type from the last time I’d gotten a shock. My muscles felt weird, wobbly. I was worried about my knees giving out.
After a couple more minutes, Marc released my knee and moved as if to lift me again. “We need to go,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulders. “There’s people on this floor heading this way. We don’t need anyone seeing you like this.”
I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to slowly, steadily get up, testing my knees to make sure they worked.
Marc combed my hair away from my face and straightened it as best as he could. It wasn’t until then that I realized the wig was gone. With no wig and a contact out, I was at risk for being recognized.
