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Chapter 19
Dust.
The scent of dust tickles my nose. My stomach churns, although I don’t know why. Dust has never made me sick before.
Or maybe it’s not the dust that’s making me feel sick. My eyes are closed, but the world seems to tilt around me, making me feel like I’m on a wildly rocking boat.
I swallow down the bile that creeps up my throat.
What… happened?
My arms hurt. They’re wrenched uncomfortably behind my body, bound together behind my back. Something like tape wraps tightly around the biceps of each arm, and they hang down behind me over the back of the chair I’m sitting in.
I swallow again. My throat hurts. My mind is mush.
“…think it’ll work?”
A deep voice seeps in through my muffled ears. My head is lolling, my chin practically on my chest, but I force my eyelids open.
“Are you fucking kidding? You’ve seen how obsessed they are with her. They’ll do anything.”
My eyelids refuse to stay open at first, but I blink harder, forcing away the burn that stings my eyes. The room I’m in isn’t brightly lit, but it feels like too much light anyway, like my blown-out pupils are letting too much of it in.
“So, what? We trade one of them for her? You think they’ll give themselves up like that?”
“Marcus would. In a fucking second. I think the others would too. But it doesn’t matter, really. We can use her to get to all of them.”
I peer up through my lashes, and my sluggish heart kicks hard against my chest as I realize why the second voice sounds so familiar.
It’s Carson Purcell.
The man who rented Natalie her apartments and dressed her in designer clothing is standing in front of me, his hand wrapped casually around the grip of a gun as he confers with another man—a stranger. His friend is a little taller than him, with a surly, angular face and dark hair. He’s got a gun shoved into the waistband of his pants, and as I look up at him, his gaze suddenly cuts to me.
“Hey.” He jerks his head at Carson, getting his attention.
Carson turns toward me, showing his gap-toothed smile as he does. “Ah. You’re awake.”
His voice has taken on the same falsely casual tone it held that day in my apartment building when he faced off with the guys in the hall. It sounds nothing like his tone just a few seconds ago, and I hate the put-on friendliness of it all. What the fuck did Natalie ever see in this guy?
Natalie…
A momentary flash of fear fills me as I wonder if they’ve taken her too. But then I remember the way she grabbed my arm in a tight grip, the way she pulled me determinedly across the street. She told me the firefighters had instructed her to wait over there.
But as soon as we were away from the crowd…
The sting of pain in my neck.
The blackness.
No. Natalie wasn’t fucking taken. She was part of this. She helped these men. Fuck, did they start that fire too?
My mind is churning with questions, and each one feels like a hammer beating against the inside of my skull. Everything is too fuzzy for me to think as fast or as clearly as I know I need to right now.
“What do you want?” I croak.
Carson grins. He squats down in front of me, balancing on the balls of his feet and resting his forearms on his knees. The gun hangs casually from one hand. “Your boyfriends.”
My stomach twists. Everything Marcus ever told me about Carson rushes through my mind, along with the things Theo and Ryland said. They told me he’s from new money and his family moves in the same circles as theirs. That he’s seen them as rivals for years. That he’s never liked them.
