Page 57 of The Verdict

His nostrils flared, my plea only angering him more. “You didn’t give me a choice.”

I swayed again. Maybe from his words. Maybe… from weakness. I took a half step back, my legs hitting the edge of the chair. I wasn’t okay, but I couldn’t ask for mercy now. I’d made my bed, and now I had to sleep in it.

“I can give you the flash drive.” It took all my strength tospeak loud enough for Dare to hear. I didn’t want to lose the drive—to trade it—but I was running out of options.

“No,” Rhys snarled.

“The flash drive for my freedom,” I begged, the crack in my voice betraying my growing weakness. I shivered, the thump of my heart growing heavier.Shit.

“Rhys, listen to her—” Dare tried to interrupt him. He wanted Rhys to take my deal. He didn’t like me, didn’t trust me, and didn’t give a shit about what happened to me. All he wanted was the flash drive to find the man they were looking for.

“We’re taking youandthe flash drive back to the garage where I’ll get the truth.” His grip snared around my wrist.

“Jesus, Rhys.”

I heard Dare, but I couldn’t focus on him—I couldn’t focus on anything except how warm Rhys’s fingers were on my arm. I could feel the pulse in his fingertips, warm and steady on my skin, as he urged me forward.

“Please, let me go.” I sounded lethargic. Drunk.Damaged.“Take the drive?—”

“Rhys, she looks like a fucking sheet?—”

“I’m not letting her go. I’m not letting her out of my fucking sight until I have the truth.”

“No.” I fought to stay steady. I fought to stop my head from spinning—to stop the world from tipping.

But it was like fighting the force of an avalanche barreling down on me.

“Jesus Christ” was the last thing I heard before blackness enveloped me.

They didn’t take me back to the garage.

Pain lanced the protective bubble of unconsciousness, letting glimmers of reality peek through. Glimmers of the roof inside the SUV. Glimmers of Rhys’s taut expression as he glowered above me. Dare had driven. There was another man in the front seat who I hadn’t seen before, and Rhys had held me in his lap in the back seat the whole ride, barking out orders at everyone else with a voice I hadn’t heard before.

Beneath the anger, there was desperation. And when his voice dropped to a low rumble, I heard him murmur,“Hang on.We’re almost there.”And then,“It’s going to be okay.”

I wanted to reassure him of the same, but I couldn’t speak. The only sound my tongue could make were syllables of pain. I drifted in and out—into his warm embrace and back out into darkness.I didn’t even know we’d stopped until my limbs moved as Rhys manhandled me out of the SUV.

He refused to let anyone else get close, his growl reminding me of a bear protecting its cub. The thought—purely born of the pain medication that had been pushed through my lips—made me smile.

It was heavy-duty stuff—only the heavy-duty stuff infused a sense of ignorant bliss into your veins. And I was certainly blissfully ignorant to the trouble I was in, caring only to focus on the hot male chest against my cheek.

“What happened?”

“Knife wound to her side.”

“When?”

“Three hours ago?”

“Three—lay her here.”

I whimpered when Rhys’s hard warmth was replaced with something soft and cool. A bed. I dragged my eyes open, my surroundings appearing in a wash of blurs. One of those blurs was Rhys. The other… I had no idea. My head lolled to one side. My fingers were covered in blood. My own. Next to them was a rail on the side of the bed—a hospital bed.

But I wasn’t in a hospital, or was I?There was medical equipment. Monitors.A man in scrubs.

But it wasn’t a hospital.

“Move her shirt,”the other voice ordered. “Shit. Did she?—”

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