Page 83 of Dragonfly

Because they better both be…

TWENTY-EIGHT

JIMMY WINTER

Damien

Fucking damn it.

I haven’t had someone ring my bell so hard since I was a twenty-five-year-old idiot who teased Lincoln Crewes about being whipped by Ava Monroe. I’d forgotten for a moment that he was a brawler who idolized his girlfriend, and after he knocked me out, I made it a point to never talk down on St. Ava again.

The headache I had when I woke up from Lincoln’s punch has only a slight edge on the one I had now. My head is splitting, my tongue too thick for my mouth, and my arms feel like they’ve been yanked from their sockets.

That’s not all, either.

My whole left side radiates heat. My shoulder is in agony, bleeding through to my back, and there are parts of my lower body that have never hurt this bad before in my life.

With my eyes still closed—if only because it’s too fucking painful to open them—I take stock of my injuries. I’ve obviously been beaten. I’m sitting now, and the way my arms are pulled, I’d wager that I’m tied to something. The pain in my shoulder? Gunshot wound, definitely.

And all of that makes sense since the last thing I remember was talking to Elizabeth outside of the clinic. She bumped into me after I parked my car. I had my phone out, already calling Savannah to let her know I arrived, when the doctor frowned.

She told me that she didn’t know what I was talking about, that she hadn’t heard from Savannah or Genevieve at all, and that since the clinic was so slow, she was shutting down early because she had an appointment she needed to go to.

My wife didn’t answer, but before I could try to call her back, Elizabeth’s face changed as she looked behind me.

She screamed one word—shoulder—before my body bucked as the gunshot hit me right in the back. The unexpected impact forced me to my knees. The doctor dropped right next to me, and just when I thought she was going to check my wound, he did the last thing I ever would’ve expected.

She jabbed me in the neck with a needle she’d had hidden in her hand.

After that, everything went black—until now. Until I’m slowly coming to, my surroundings still dark, though my ears prick, trying to listening to the sounds around me while I continue to fake being out.

Until someone slaps me upside the head, and I’m so stunned by the cruel gesture, my eyes spring open.

“Finally,” comes a pleasant voice. “I was told that sedative was only supposed to last half an hour. It’s almost been forty minutes. I was getting impatient.”

I blink, trying to get a read on the man speaking.

The voice isn’t familiar. Neither are my surroundings. At first glimpse, it looks like I’m in some sort of retail space. It’s empty, though, with glass windows and a door in front of me.

Ballsy move. Now that I can kind of see, it’s easy to notice the heavy rope keeping my hands tied to the wooden chair my battered body was tossed into. Anyone passing by could see what’s going on in here.

Well, maybe. There aren’t any lights on. The only illumination comes from the sun peeking around the skyscraper opposite where we are. The room is full of shadows and gloom, though maybe that’s my hazy vision making it seem so much darker.

It’s not so dark, though, that I can’t make out the face of the man in front of me.

When Tanner prepared the folder all about Jimmy Winter, it had everything in it except for a photo.

Now I now exactly what he looks like. He’s in his mid-thirties about, though his head of shocking white hair throws me off. His face is young so the hair ages him. No wrinkles, though, and his vivid green eyes are so cat-like, he reminds me of Orion.

Like me, he’s wearing a suit, but his is—like his hair—a pristine white. The only spot of dark on him is the weapon in his hand.

He’s not alone, either. He has three soldiers. A bald man in his fifties, a blond about a decade younger, and a Black man who’s around the same age as Winter.

Because, yeah, there’s no doubt in my mind that the white-haired freak is the one and only Jimmy Winter.

“He’s awake?”

Now that voice? That I recognize.

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