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“Aargh!” I scream through clenched teeth, as he wraps something around my waist, over the burn on the low of my back and the bullet wound in my stomach. I grip his shoulders instinctively, panting through my nose.
“That's it. Just take easy breaths.” He lifts my left arm from his shoulder and turns it from side to side like he's assessing me, the bite mark, then he yells in a panic, “Andres!”
He lays something heavy over my naked legs—his leather jacket. The material is cold but welcomed.
Charlie crouches down in front of me and I can feel that he's staring at my face. I sit forward, elbows on my legs, trying to control my breathing. Years and years of meditation and I can't control my breathing? I know something isn't right.
“Is that her?” a man says in a Latin seasoned voice.
I glance up with blazing eyes, ready to attack.
“Relax.” Charlie grabs both my arms on my legs and holds me there. “That's Andres.”
“Your brother?” I say in a shallow tone, peering back at Charlie.
He nods at me, his face tight with anxiety, then he looks up at his brother. “We need to go, Andres.”
“Dios mío!” his brother says. “She's the Irish girl from the missing person's report I got this morning. Her and her brother were kidnapped from their home in Ireland ten years ago. She-she looks exactly the same as the girl on the newspaper article.”
“Yeah,” Charlie says, “the boy we’ve got at the house... he’s her brother.”
Charlie knows James is my brother?
A blazing pain shoots through my lower back. I screw up my face, reaching around to touch the burn.
Gaining height on his feet, Charlie leans over me and a hand lifts the shirt at my back. The anger that comes off his body in waves is stark.
“I'm gonna murder that motherfucker,” he says. “We haven't got time to wait for the Scour Detail. I think she's got blood poisoning.”
“No, no! Stop, Charlie!” Andres says in a fluster. “If we run into trouble, she might not make it. Just wait. Keep her calm.”
I feel Charlie's presence move away from me, and then I hear the low murmur of his voice, “He's branded his name in her back, bit her arm, shot her, and I’m pretty sure she's got blood poisoning. If we don't leave now she won't make it anyway. She's dying.”
Another hand touches my back where the burn is under the bandage, causing me to whine in pain. “Please, don't touch my back.”
“Jesucristo,” Andres gasps. “James must've been telling the truth when he said Maksim shot her.”
Charlie's anger rises, and he says sarcastically in Spanish, “You think?”
A tall guy whose features I can't really make out squats before me. “Blaire, I'm Andres,” he says in a deep voice. “I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just going to look at your arms.”
“We don’t have time!” Charlie yells.
“Brother, let me check her over,” Andres says, and I imagine he’s giving Charlie a serious look because nothing else is said.
I blink up at Charlie standing at my side, and he nods, so I let his brother examine me.
He gently grips my hands and turns them over. I let my head hang then, coming down from my rush of adrenaline-panic, but as I do, the tension in my back and the wound in my stomach become unbearably painful, and the fuzziness is back, the throbbing in my head making my skull pound.
“You're right,” Andres says. “She does need medical attention but she’s got time.” He touches my inner elbow, which stings a little. “That pig has been giving her fluids, I think, so she’s hydrated. If you stay calm, Blaire, you’ll be okay,” he says in my face, warm puffs of air blowing over my cheeks.
“Did you know he was doing this to her?” Charlie asks someone. “Because if you did-”
“No,” Carl chokes out. “I swear. None of us knew.” He tells Charlie between coughing Maksim was warned a few years ago by Tatiana that he's not allowed to whip me anymore. “She's the reason Blaire has money, a car, and an apartment.”
What?
“How'd you know this?” Charlie sounds dark with intrigue.
