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"Why am I here then?" I asked, trying to wriggle my wrists around, get them loose, but he had the cuffs on me too tight.
"To heal her," he said, wincing a bit as the woman on the bed shrieked against her gag when he tried to brush her bloody hair out of her face.
"Why wouldn't you bring her to the hospital?" I asked.
"For reasons that are none of your fucking business. Just get over here and look her over. Tell me what you need to fix her, and I will have someone get it."
Not sure I had a choice, I rose from the couch, feeling my vision swim for a moment before it settled and I could continue across the room, going to the opposite side of the bed than him.
The woman was completely covered in blood.
And it was no wonder.
Because her back looked like it had been whipped, the lacerations deep and long, criss-crossing her entire back from shoulders down to lower hips. There was even one deep lash mark across her butt.
"How long ago did she get these?" I asked, somehow able to think past my kidnapping and focus on the task at hand. But as I raised my hands to try to push her hair out of the way, the cuffs were a painful reminder of my situation.
I raised them at him, giving him a hard look.
To that, he searched my face for a long moment before moving around the bed, coming around to tower over me, reaching out with one hand to encircle my wrist to see the lock, then pulling out the key.
There was not—was absolutely not—a strange little electrical current that coursed over my skin when his fingertips brushed me. Because that would make no sense whatsoever.
"Don't even think about running," he told me, voice low, lethal, drawing my head up to look at his face. "I have men everywhere," he added, holding my gaze for a long second, making me realize that those specks I'd seen in his light blue eyes were actually, well, red. Except that made no sense. Because people didn't have red accents in their eyes.
"I'm not going to promise to be a good little captive," I told him, watching as his lips twitched ever so slightly before they fell back into their stern line.
"Fix Red," he demanded, pulling the cuffs off fully, then moving toward the other side of the room, leaning back against the wall near the door.
I tried not to notice, but there was no way to avoid feeling his gaze on me as I reached out toward the woman—Red—moving her hair, so I could see the outer edges of the wounds better.
They weren't puffy and red like they were older, like they had time to get infected. They seemed fresh.
"These all need to be stitched," I told him, checking out each individual slice for any tiny sign of infection that would need to be left open to drain.
"Give me a list of items," he demanded, curt, no-nonsense.
"A suture kit. Gauze. Saline solution. Antibiotic cream. Some actual antibiotics. Oral. She needs to be in a hospital," I insisted, looking over at him, shaking my head. "This is bad. She needs medical attention."
"She has it. That's why you're here."
"This isn't a sterile environment. I don't have—"
"I told you to give me a fucking list," he interrupted me. "Whatever it is, I can get it," he told me, not a hint of uncertainty in his words. And I guess if you were willing to kidnap a nurse to treat someone, stealing medical supplies wasn't a big deal.
"Everything I just mentioned," I said, feeling it was useless to argue. If she wasn't going to go to the hospital, then I had to treat her to the best of my ability. "Pain medicine. She's screaming. You don't hear her screaming?" I asked, voice tense.
"I have someone getting her pain medicine," he told me, shrugging. "What else?"
Ignoring him, I moved around the bed, inspecting some minor cuts and bruises under the blood on the woman's thighs, legs. They were worse on the bottom of her feet.
"Oh, God," I hissed, feeling my stomach flip over, making me need to take a steadying breath.
"What?" the man asked, not sounding any more concerned than he'd been a moment before.
"Someone removed... did you do this?" I asked, whipping around, ignoring the swirling of my vision, shooting daggers at him.
"Did I do what?" he asked, voice just as cutting as mine.
"Remove all her toenails," I clarified, even thinking of it making me feel sick again. I had a tough stomach when it came to all the various injuries a body could have inflicted upon it.
Two things freaked me out.
Toenails broken off.
And piercings being ripped out.
It was probably because they reminded me of horror movies I'd seen at way too young an age, ones that had stuck with me no matter how hard I tried to shake them.
