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A soft knock at the door makes me jump. “Come in,” I say, expecting one of the brothers. But it’s not one of them who pops their head inside the room. It’s a woman who looks to be in her late thirties, with dark curly hair.
“Jessie?” she asks.
“Yes,” I reply, closing my laptop over and nervously rubbing my hands on my jeans.
She steps inside the room carrying a medical bag. “I’m Dr. Adams,” she says with a smile. “But you can call me Lisa.”
“Oh? Hey, Lisa.” I blink at her.
“Conor called me and asked me to check you over. Make sure you’re okay while you’re staying here?”
“Okay,” I say with a frown. This is either the highest level of consideration in hostage taking, or there is a hidden agenda here.
Lisa walks toward the bed and places her medical bag down beside me.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
“Is that a trick question?” I reply. Does she know why I’m here, or that the Ryan brothers almost killed me earlier?
She tilts her head slightly and smiles at me. “No. I believe there was some sort of explosion? I know the Ryan brothers well, Miss Heaton.”
I roll my eyes, wondering just how well, and she chuckles softly. “I was also told you asked to come here?” She takes a blood pressure cuff from her bag and indicates that I should hold out my arm.
“I suppose so,” I say as I pull off my hooded sweatshirt until I’m sitting in only my tank top. I don’t add that I didn’t feel I had much choice at the time.
“Shane and his brothers will look after you. I know what they are, but they're good men,” she says as she places her stethoscope in her ears. “They just want to make sure you are fit and well and don’t need any medical treatment, especially after what happened today.”
“Huh!” I snort.
“Well, if you have some sort of internal bleeding and die in bed tonight, it would be a bit of an inconvenience for them to find somewhere to bury your body, wouldn’t it?” She flashes an eyebrow at me and I burst out laughing. Dr. Lisa has a dark sense of humor and I decide immediately that I like her.
“So, you know the brothers well, then?” I grin at her.
“I’m their physician,” she replies with a knowing smile. “Nothing more.”
Dr. Lisa gives me a thorough medical and confirms I don’t have any internal bleeding and am unlikely to die in my sleep tonight. I figure she’s about done when she pulls a huge needle from her bag.
“What the hell is that for?” I ask. “I hate needles.”
“I need to take some blood and run some tests.”
“What kind of tests?”
“To make sure you don’t have illnesses that the brothers need to be aware of.”
“Such as?”
“Blood-borne diseases you could infect them with should you ever cut yourself, for instance. STIs. And also, I’ll do a pregnancy test too.”
“Jesus!” I hiss as I hold out my arm. “What are they planning on doing with me?” I attempt a joke, but my insides are churning.
“It’s just a precaution, I assure you,” she replies.
I smile at her and nod. Never let anyone see how afraid you are, Jessie. A lesson from my father. A sudden surge of grief almost overwhelms me as thoughts of him and my mom and my little brothers force themselves into my consciousness. I haven’t thought about them for a long time, but seeing Liam and Mikey today flicked some kind of switch and now I can’t stop thinking about them. I do whatever I can to keep my memories of them at bay because it hurts too much not to. But, as painful as it is to think about the night they were taken from me—slaughtered in front of my eyes—it destroys me when I remember the happy times. When I recall how much I loved them. How much they loved me. When I remember what a team the five of us were.
I blink away a tear and focus on the sharp scratch of the needle piercing my skin. Pain grounds me. No matter what might happen here at the hands of the Ryan brothers, I know without a doubt that I have endured worse. I was sixteen years old when I learned that monsters were real, and unlike the princesses, maidens or the damsels in distress in the fairytales my mother read to me, there was no-one left to rescue me.
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