For a second she thought he leaned into her touch, that his fingers tightened. But when he pulled away from her, his eyes were cool. “I can’t.”
Tears stung Reese’s eyes even in sleep, blurring the memories, which spun past faster now, mercifully showing as single images: Hood’s eyes, open and staring; a ruby pendant; a ring box sitting in a pool of blood.
“That’s enough,” Strike said, his voice breaking through the memories and bringing her back to drowsy reality.
“You want me to block it out?” That came from the silver-eyed man who held her hand, his words resonating in her head as well as her ears. Through their strange mental link she learned his name—Rabbit—and caught a trace of wood smoke, sharp and acrid, along with a sense of worry.
“Not yet,” Strike rumbled. “Let’s wait and see what she . . .” The words faded.
No! Reese grabbed for consciousness as it started to slip away again. Come back! She fought against the grayness that crept in from the edges of her dream state, but couldn’t stay awake. As she faded, another memory broke through unbidden, one that came from years earlier than the others.
“Hurry!” Fingers biting into her wrist, the stranger dragged her along the outside wall of Seventeen while rain lashed down around them. As they ran, he muttered to himself, “Mendez, what the fuck are you doing?”
Behind them, shouts sounded as the Cobras pounded in pursuit. They were cursing vilely that she had gotten away and threatening the guy who had helped her escape.
He dragged her over two buildings, to a pile of junk lumped haphazardly behind Fifteen. Then he let go of her so he could shove aside a metal sheet. Behind it, a corrugated pipe led into pitch blackness. “Get in,” he ordered roughly. “They don’t know about all of the tunnels.”
In the light of one of the few unbroken outside floods, she saw that the guy who had risked his own ass to get her away from Hood was a couple of years older than she—maybe eighteen, nineteen? He was tall but whip-thin, his fierce eyes rendered colorless by the sodium lights, his dark hair plastered to his skull as the rain poured down. He wore the ragged, mismatched clothes of a castoff, but he wasn’t anything like the other street kids she had met in the month or so that she’d been on her own. He had a presence the others lacked, an aura of capability and strength. There was a layer of menace, too, one that warned that he wasn’t someone she wanted to fuck with.
She hesitated, shaking. He had gotten her away from Hood, but that didn’t necessarily make him any better than the cobra de rey. He might just have wanted the fresh meat for himself.
When he moved, she flinched back, expecting him to make a grab. But he put his hand over his heart instead. “I’m one of the good guys, okay? And I swear on my sister’s soul that I won’t hurt you.” Then he held out his hand to her, in an invitation that showed where a wide, slashing scar crossed his palm.
The sight should have scared her. Instead, it made her feel a strange kinship. Nodding, she darted past him and ducked into the tunnel as the gang members′ footsteps got closer and she heard Hood shouting: “You’re mine, bitch. You hear me? Mine.”
“Not on my watch,” Mendez grated as he pulled the metal sheet back into place, cutting out the light. Then he guided her fingers to the tail of his ragged denim coat. “Be as quiet as you can, and hang on to me. I’ll take care of you, I promise.”
Then, with him leading the way, they crept into the darkness together, leaving their enemies behind.
The next time Reese aimed for consciousness, she made it all the way back, waking up to find herself lying on a couch. A thick blanket was tucked around her, its suffocating, too-warm weight threatening to trigger claustrophobia.
She didn’t let the fear take over, though. Instead, she forced herself to lie still and feign sleep as she tried to get a sense of her surroundings. Given the weirdness that had already gone down, she needed all the intel she could get.
All she came up with, though, was that the air was clean and processed, the couch and blanket smelled fresh, and her surroundings were silent except for the background hum of appliances. She didn’t hear anyone nearby, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there, waiting for her to come around and . . . and what? The fragments that came back to her didn’t make any sense, didn’t tell her where she was, or what Strike and the others wanted from her. Panic sparked. She hated not knowing things. Knowledge was power. Control. Safety.
Shit. Breathe. In and out.
Logic said they had drugged her—the impossible memory of Strike appearing out of thin air had to be some sort of retrograde hallucination. Then, after they had knocked her out, they had kidnapped her and interrogated her under some sort of hallucinogenic. But why? And how long had she been out? Had anyone realized she was missing yet?
The answer to that last one was “no,” she knew. Not after she had made such a big deal about being independent and not needing to clock in or out.
Breathe, she told herself. Pretend you’re asleep. She was pretty sure she was alone, though.
A minute passed, then two, and the panic leveled off. She took a deep breath, then another. Then she opened her eyes.
And froze, heart hammering anew.
It wasn’t the sight of a generically furnished three-room apartment that caught her by the throat and ramped the panic back up . . . it was the view outside the window nearest her: a few buildings, a few trees . . . and a red-rock canyonscape that didn’t look anything like the Cancún hotel district.
Where the hell was she?
Letting out a low moan of terror, she wrenched off the blanket and bolted for the door. It was locked from the outside, the intercom keypad beside it nonresponsive. Damn, damn, damn. Survival instincts clawed at her as she tried the windows, found them locked too.
Breath sobbing between her teeth, she grabbed a desk chair and swung it as hard as she could at the glass.
The chair bounced off with a reverb that sang up her arms and made her hands go numb. But she was only peripherally aware of the pain as she let the chair drop and stared, horrified, through the window, to where a pair of Jeeps and a dune buggy were parked near the steel building.
Holy shit. Oh, holy, holy shit. They were all wearing New Mexico plates.
And she was in serious trouble.
She hadn’t told anyone where she was going or who she was meeting, had left only a breezy “Got a new case; call you when I get a chance” voice mail and turned off her phone. Now, her latest move in the “don’t stifle me” argument had come back to bite her in the ass, because nobody would know where to start looking for her. They would have to track the GPS in her phone, and—Her phone!
She gave herself a hasty pat-down. She was still wearing all her clothes—wrinkled now and damp with fear. The .38 was gone, and her carryall was . . . no, her bag was sitting on a low coffee table beside a blue binder with some papers on top.
Ignoring the paperwork—though the pile sent a clear “read me” message—she grabbed the carryall and pawed through it. She wasn’t really expecting to find her phone, but adrenaline jolted when her fingers glanced off its familiar shape. She yanked it out, flipped it open, started to dial, and then stopped.
There wasn’t any signal. Not even a fraction of a bar.
“Shit.” She started to flip the phone shut, but then froze, eyes locked on the upper corner of the display, where the little digital clock was trying to tell her that less than an hour had passed since she had walked into that tacky-assed Cancún hotel. Which didn’t make any sense. There was no way they could have gotten her from the Yucatan to New Mexico in less than an hour. It just wasn’t possible.