Panic geysered through her. She jacked up, catching the man in the face with her foot, and some machine began to beep. The man’s head snapped back, and he stumbled. In her periphery, Marley caught a blur of motion. She rolled off the table, striking at the hand still holding the blade. It sliced her palm, leaving behind a bright crimson ribbon as she staggered away. Desperate to find some balance, she grabbed at a cart. It spun away from her, but not before she snatched a tool off the tray.
Scalpel. Shifting her grip so the blade angled away from her arm, she lifted the small weapon in a defensive position and staggered back a few more paces, eyes wheeling. No windows. No doors. No escape. Heart hammering, she yanked off the leads from some kind of monitor, pulled out the IV from the back of her hand. Stepping free of the restraints, she brandished the scalpel as the nearest of the two men—the one she had kicked—took a step toward her.
“Stay the hell away from me.” Her throat was raw from screaming. What the hell had they done to her? Was this real? Or some new illusion?
“Just calm down.” The one who’d had the knife—another scalpel she realized now—held up both hands. Empty hands. “I’m a doctor.”
That fit with the antiseptic scent burning the back of her nose and the stainless steel throughout the room. It did not, however, fit with the rough stone ceiling sloping overhead. There was a door on the far side of the space, but both men, a surgical gurney, and several lab tables blocked her route to freedom.
“You’ve been wounded.”
Marley glanced at her hand, where blood trailed down her fingers to drip on the floor. As she watched, the line of red began to narrow and close. “What the hell?” she whispered. Definitely another illusion.
“Ah, not that,” said the doctor. He pointed lower, to her stomach. “That.”
Blood oozed down the slope of her belly from another, deeper gash a few inches to the left of her navel. The wound was partially stitched, a needle and surgical thread dangling.
“What—”
The memory slammed into her, a sucker punch to the mind. The dungeon. The knife. The unimaginable pain and the cold as she lay dying.
Not real. Not real.
Where was Ian?
Her attention and her defensive hand snapped back up at movement to her left. The second man—the one the doctor had called Harm—had edged a few paces closer.
“It’s all right.” His voice was a rumble that seemed too big for his chest, like the purr of a giant cat. “You were wounded, a
nd we brought you here for treatment. We’re not gonna hurt you. I’d never let anyone hurt you.”
Long and lean, with deep-set gray green eyes in a sharp, weather-beaten face, he stood very still, but she could sense the coiled readiness in his body as he watched her. He was older. Surely if it was an illusion he’d look the same as he had then.
Marley began to tremble. “Daddy?”
Shock and a painful hope flickered over his face. “You…know me?”
Part of her wanted to crawl into his arms and burrow in, as she had when he’d found her in the air duct. To let him protect her from all the fear and the pain. But she couldn’t forget waking up alone in that office, couldn’t forget that he’d walked away.
Because it was the simplest of the storm of emotions battering through her, Marley grabbed on to temper, used the energy to straighten her spine and steady her shaky legs. “I know who you are. I know you left me behind. And I don’t really give a damn about the rest. Where is Ian?”
Harm’s momentary vulnerability vanished, and his expression chilled, but Marley could still see the rage that leapt into his eyes. “The wraith is in holding. He won’t get near you again.”
“Take me to him. Now.”
“Confronting him isn’t wise. He’s unstable.”
“Confronting him? Are you crazy? I don’t want to confront him. I want to see that he’s all right.”
Her father stared. “You want to verify the well-being of the man who tried to kill you.”
It was Marley’s turn to stare. “Ian has saved my life more times than I can count in the last few weeks. He’s the reason this didn’t kill me.” She gestured at the half-stitched wound and realized she was clad in only her bra and jeans. A fresh wave of gooseflesh swept over her exposed skin.
“We can talk about what he did to you later. Thane needs to finish stitching you up.”
“I don’t want to talk. I want to see Ian.”
“I don’t want you to bleed out or end up with sepsis, so put down the scalpel and let him finish.” There was a thrum of something in Harm’s voice, something Marley knew would have most people leaping to obey him.