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I pulled my sluggish body up to rest on my knees and reached a shaky hand out, my trembling fingers hovering less than an inch away when I couldn’t force myself to continue.
“Momma?” I whispered, begging her to respond. “Momma. Momma, wake up.”
A scream tore through the room when the tips of my fingers brushed across her cold skin.
Her name ripped from my throat as I grabbed her frail shoulders and begged her to wake up. Begged her to open her eyes. Begged her to do anything. Say anything. But her body was already stiff.
I was grabbed from behind and pulled away from her and off the bed. I didn’t fight. I couldn’t.
I just kept screaming her name as I was dragged out of the room and down the hall. My vision blurry as I stared in the direction of the woman I’d spent my life trying to keep safe.
I wasn’t sure when I’d been placed on the couch in the living room.
Or when he’d crouched in front of me.
But he was there. His hand roughly gripping my chin so I would look at him. With an evil look on his devilishly handsome face.
“You shouldn’t have run from me,” was all he said before he pushed my head back and stood with his repulsive errand boy looming behind him. When he reached the door of the house, he turned and looked at me. “Who do you belong to, Jessica?”
My jaw clenched as I stared at a spot on the floor.
I didn’t respond.
It was all I could do to fight back another wave of sobs.
“Good enough.”
The bouncing of the car had my eyes flashing open.
The slamming of a door had my grip on my knives tightening.
Panic turned my blood to ice when I noticed the rising sun outside the tinted windows.
I?
?d never fallen asleep on a job. It was how you got yourself killed.
Then again . . . I’d also never left the most crucial part of the job in someone else’s hands the way I had last night.
But I had no other choice.
I’d reached around the side of the SUV’s seat I’d tucked myself behind and held Jessica’s limp hand during the drive to Holloway from downtown Wake Forest last night. Keeping my ear trained to her shallow breaths and one finger on the pulse point in her wrist to keep myself from unleashing devastation on the world.
As soon as we’d pulled onto the estate and the ghost had carried her from the car, I’d forced myself to remain there and called Conor.
“Yeah?”
“Where are you?” I demanded.
“That girl in the guesthouse? Jessica?” he asked uncertainly, still not knowing what she meant to me. “She wanted food. I’m a few minutes out.”
I clenched my jaw and suppressed the urge to tell him to drive faster. “I think she was drugged by someone tonight.”
Conor didn’t respond or question how I knew. He wouldn’t. He knew when to listen and take orders.
“I can’t be there to watch her,” I ground out, my hand clenching the phone so hard I thought it would shatter. “Don’t let anything happen to her.”
“Got it,” he said firmly.
