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She screamed again, struggling against him as she tried with every blow to bury her fist or a foot into his balls.
Her knee connected, drawing an agonized grunt a second before she was thrown into the wall hard enough to send her bouncing to the bed.
Voices were raised, outraged, cursing.
Piper was struggling to make sense of it as the sudden explosion of a weapon discharging shocked her senses into an abrupt return to reality.
Every bone and muscle in her body hurt.
Dizziness assailed her, washing through her and weakening her as she struggled to lift herself from the bed.
Was she shot?
Oh, God, Dawg would kill her if she managed to get shot while escaping to New York. She would hear all kinds of “I told you so”s. Her sisters would of course blame her for the additional security that would follow. . . . Who the hell were those men rushing into her room?
Oh, God, they were big. . . .
There were too many of them. . . .
Too big, and too many.
Darkness rushed over her, drawing her into a pit of icy nothingness. The complete lack of sensory information was like being buried alive.
She was aware, yet she wasn’t.
There, yet she wasn’t.
And one question haunted her through it all: Exactly what was it her attacker had been demanding?
Where are they, you little cunt?
Where was what?
Who?
“Lady? Lady you okay? Someone call an ambulance; she’s hurt. She’s hurt—”
She’s hurt.
Who was hurt?
Oh, yeah—it was her.
She was hurt.
Then the darkness deepened; that nowhere place grew, sucked her in, and enfolded her until nothing and no one else could penetrate.
* * *
Jed came awake instantly, before the first, faint vibrating tremor of the phone against the wood nightstand eased away. The second vibration didn’t have the chance to begin before he flipped the cell phone open and brought it to his ear.
“Booker,” he answered.
“Jed Booker?” the male voice asked, faintly quizzical, highly uncomfortable, and not yet fully mature.
“It is.”
“My name is Bret. Bret Jordan. You don’t know me, but I found your name in this lady’s journal—”
