Damned

She moved her head in another nod, her mouth sliding over his palm. In the silence, his breath audibly caught, and his eyes glowed bright, like a blue beacon in the darkness. She was glad that he couldn’t read her mind, because once he got her out, she intended to run again. From him.

“You have to do what I say. Everything that I say,” he insisted.

While she’d forgotten chunks of her life, even before the past few months, she remembered that she’d never done well at following orders. Maybe that was another reason her adoptive parents hadn’t been able to love her.

“I’m going to take my hand away. If you scream, I won’t be able to get you out of here.” I won’t be able to save you.

Because he’d be in a jail and she’d be here. Alone. At the mercy of a madman.

Come on, Irina, trust me. That last thought, and his hand lifted from her mouth, hovering just an inch away from her lips as he waited for her to scream. While he requested her trust, he didn’t give his.

“I’m not crazy,” she assured him in a soft whisper.

He moved his hand from her face to her wrist and the restraint binding her to the bed. “I know.” I know everything.

And there was so much she didn’t know—about herself, about her sisters, about the witch hunt. But what she wanted most to learn couldn’t wait until he’d set her free. “Who are you?”

“Ty McIntyre.”

She hadn’t forgotten the psychiatrist’s introduction. But his name told her nothing. “Who are you to me?”

Why had his thoughts pushed into her mind before she’d ever met him? What was their connection?

“I’m a friend.”

Pieces of her past were missing, so much she’d forgotten or lost to drugs and alcohol. But if he’d been a friend, she would have remembered him. Ty McIntyre wasn’t the type of man any woman could forget. Instead of screaming Liar! at him, as she had at the killer, she just whispered, “No, you’re not.”

“I’m here for your sisters.” For you.

“You’re working for them?” Donovan Roarke had claimed the same thing.

“They’re friends of mine,” he said. “I’m going to bring you to them, but we have to hurry.”

“Yes.” She expelled a nervous breath. Her sisters were part of that missing past. Only faint memories of them remained, like faded photographs in an old album.

“We have to hurry,” she agreed. “He knows where I am.”

He didn’t doubt her certainty, either aloud or in his head. He just uttered the man’s name with the intensity of a curse. “Roarke.”

“If he’s the one…”

Who killed your mother. Your aunts. Who tried to kill your sisters and niece. “He’s the one.”

Scream after scream echoed through her mind. All the pain. All the horror. She trembled under the force.

“Don’t be afraid,” he told her.

For so long she’d known nothing but fear…except for when she’d lost all touch with reality. And she’d done that too long, giving up when she should have been fighting.

The thought flickered through her mind that maybe she should be fighting him…despite his intentions. He might want to protect her, but she had no way of knowing if he would be able to keep his promise. She didn’t know him. Yet somehow he seemed so familiar to her….

The restraints undone, he helped her from the bed. As she reached for the IV, pulling it from her arm, his fingers fumbled with the ties holding her gown together in the back.

Her breath hissed out as his knuckles brushed her bare skin. “Hey—”

“Shh…it’s okay,” he assured her. “You can’t go out there in this.”

“But…”

“I brought other clothes.” Before the cool air did more than brush her naked skin, he pulled a scratchy cotton shirt over her head, dressing her as if she were a child. Or helpless. She wouldn’t be helpless anymore.

“Let me,” she protested, fumbling in the darkness for the pants. But as she lifted her leg to pull them on, dizziness overwhelmed her, and she swayed…only a few inches before her back settled against his solid chest. His arms came around her, helping her tug up the pants of the scrubs he must have stolen for her, his fingers fast and sure as he stretched the elastic waistband over her hips.

Heat streaked through Irina’s stomach at the brush of his knuckles against her navel, the brush of his hard body against her softness. Her limbs still weak, she melted deeper into his warmth, into his strength.

“Irina…” His breath stirred her hair again, then his fingers as he tunneled them into her thick curls.

“What…?”

“A braid,” he said as if concentrating on his task. And perhaps he was, because she could pull no other thought from his mind despite their closeness.

“Ty?” She used just his name to question his action, not wanting anyone to overhear their conversation and learn she was awake and not alone.

Intent on her hair, he murmured, “The psychiatrist.”

“She’s helping?”

“Yes, but she doesn’t know it,” he admitted. “You’re going to be her.”

It wouldn’t be the first time she’d been someone she wasn’t. But she wanted it to be the last. She wanted to be Irina Cooper now. For as long as she lived.

He knelt in the darkness, and Irina felt his big hands on her feet, his skin warm against hers as he peeled off the slipper socks to pull on canvas shoes. She reached out, dizzy again, and used his broad shoulders to steady herself. Muscles rippled beneath her hands. Then he stood, his body bumping against hers.

Dizziness lightened her head again as awareness rushed through her, quickening her pulse. She dragged in a deep breath, his scent of mint and soap so fresh and clean, unlike where she’d been, what she’d been.

“And here’s her jacket,” he said, sliding the sleeves over the scrubs she wore.

A plastic tag dug into Irina’s breast while something heavy dragged down the coat pocket and knocked hard against her thigh.

“You have the keys.”

She’d like to know how he’d gotten them, but she couldn’t waste time asking, nor did it really matter. Getting out before Roarke got in was all that mattered.

“You have to let me in and out of this room and the ward and act like you’re her,” he instructed.

“But…”

“The hospital’s old. Dimly lit. The nurses’ station a distance away. We can do this, Irina.” He expelled a ragged breath. “I keep calling you Irina. You remember you have sisters, so you must remember—”