Her face was cold. Too cold. Every thought hurt. Pain radiated through her skull, threatening to crack it like fine china. A high frequency of sound would leave her in pieces.

A loud rumble churned deep and consistently. She wanted to scream at it to shut up, but nothing responded.

Each wave of the rhythmic noise punched her in the head, pressing her face flatter against the floor. It had to be a floor. The thing was hard as a rock and freezing. She tried her best not to move. Any shift would bring unrelenting agony. Breathing aggravated the demons banging against her brain.

Stress. Stress caused catastrophic damage to the body. Did she have an aneurysm?

“You fucking thing. Work, goddammit,” Lucas screamed. Panic laced his words.

Dread filled her belly. If he was freaking out, something bad had happened to her. She needed to assure him that she was okay. Everything would be fine if she could just open her eyes and tell him so.

A sliver of light struck the back of her retina like lightning. Nausea rolled through her stomach like back-to-back storm surges. Sound the alarms. Run for your lives. This was bad.

Light formed swirls of gray. The loops and curves refused to form a coherent picture.

“No. No. No,” Lucas bellowed.

Larkin hated the despair in his tone. If a battle-seasoned man like him panicked, the situation was dire. She focused on the stabbing light and looping lines. Why wouldn’t her right eye cooperate and open? The left was smashed against the cold … tile? No. Concrete. That didn’t make sense. Short, scratchy carpet covered the floor in the waiting room.

The need to see and assess her condition overrode everything. Bit by hazy bit, the whips and mixes of color formed an image, an image she wished she could erase.

Gray concrete walls, floor, and ceiling framed the sole of black wingtips. The shoes were attached to feet that lay unmoving on the chilling, unforgiving floor. Ruffled pant cuffs revealed a hint of socks. Black with fine white pinstripes. The same pattern Douglas wore every single day.

They both lay on the floor.

She closed her eye and willed away reality.

Neither she nor Douglas would have lain on a floor unless they were injured or under attack. Fear turned her saliva to sludge. They were both injured and attacked, if Douglas wasn’t …

Her mind refused to allow the possibility. Reagan was too much. Losing Douglas wasn’t an option.

“Dammit,” Lucas hissed. The sound of metal on metal squeaked.

Larkin exhaled long and slow and waited for a bullet’s impact. A loud boom filled the room. Pain shimmied through her skull but not more than before. She mentally checked her limbs and torso. Nothing new.

Lucas’s irritation turned to a mumble that faded quickly in the rumble of whatever it was.

She blinked in the room with one eye. The other made a fair effort, giving her a half-lidded view. It didn’t improve the fear clouding her already muddled judgment. Thick pipes and skinny ones ran across the ceiling in a tight line through the room. The image of her being hung by them corrupted what little faculties she possessed.

“Douglas?” His name was a quaking mess on her lips. “Douglas?”

His feet remained perfectly still. Too damn still.

Larkin shoved off the floor. Her wrists twisted. The skin around them pinched as though tension would sheer them off. Her thin purse strap was wound around her wrists and tied in a fat knot between her arms and her body. She pressed her elbow to the ground and pushed to sit. A small pool of blood marked where her head and face had been. Her stomach clenched.

The room spun like a fair ride. Lights whirred and blurred past her eyes.

She spread her legs wide and braced her knuckles on the ground. The ride came to a gradual stop until she tried to stand. Her knees hit the ground. Nothing bound her ankles, but it didn’t help her crooked steps.

“Douglas?” Larkin stumbled to the wall and leaned against it for stability. Her head pounded as though it might pop right off. She shimmied down, trying to get a better look at his face.

Her gaze lifted to the bleak horizon. The throbbing minimized. Her fear, though … There were no shrines of her taped to the walls. There were no ugly expletives. There was nothing. The room scared her more than Tarin’s apartment.

It was as though the room had been cleared of all furniture or equipment. This room had a purpose. And it frightened her. She imagined Reagan huddled in the corner, tears streaking her cheeks.

“Douglas?” She peered down. His face was pale. Lips chalky. Blood seeped from a gash above his eye. “No!” The shriek fled her lips without permission. Her knees hit the floor. She grabbed his collar, yanked it back, and felt for a pulse. Cold, clammy skin met her fingertips, and nothing. She repositioned. It was so light as to be imagined.

“No!” She jerked his shoulder. “Douglas, wake up.”

Larkin jerked upright and reached for her pocket. He needed an ambulance. Her head boomed from the movement. She needed an ambulance. They needed the fucking police.

The leather tightened and pinched. She strained. Her fingers smoothed over the stitched fabric. “No.” The sob leaked from her lips. Her pocket was empty.

Lucas had seen Douglas before coming to the waiting room. Lucas had thrown him in this room. Lucas had taken her phone. Lucas had knocked her so hard over the head that she might never see without the shimmy of the image again.

“Why would Lucas do this? Why?” She didn’t ask in self-pity. If she knew his reasoning, she could calculate a way to get her and Douglas out alive. Her unconscious friend didn’t offer an explanation.

She shoved off the wall and stumbled toward the door on rubbery legs. Her hands clasped the knob, twisted, and heaved. The door didn’t budge.

It didn’t compute. The knob wasn’t even equipped with a lock.

Larkin repositioned her hands, twisted, and pushed. Again, it didn’t move.

“No.” She yanked and jerked.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Her head drummed. Defeat left her weak. Nausea scaled her esophagus.

She stumbled to the far side of the room, braced her elbows on her thighs, and retched. Nothing came out. There was nothing in there to lose. Food wasn’t high on her list of priorities last night. Reclaiming herself and shielding her heart from Beckett had been.

“Beckett.” Why had she sent him away? Pride? Self-preservation?

If she died today, he’d never know how she felt about him. If she died today, she’d die without ever loving someone and having been loved by them in return. What was heartbreak compared to death? Worth the risk.

She had to live past this day.

Larkin sank to the floor and grabbed the back of her head. A sharp and acute pain stabbed at the crown. She winced but forced herself to explore the broken lump. Sticky wetness coated her fingers. By God, if she died today, she’d leave a clue or ten as to her killer. She scrawled Lucas B. killed me on the floor. That was more of a declaration and less of a clue. A declaration she hoped was wrong, but just in case …

Why did the detectives think it was Tarin? Had he set her up?

Metal squeaked on metal. Her gaze whipped to the door. The knob twisted, and the door opened.

Lucas stepped into the room. When his gaze found her, his face scrunched into an unfamiliar mask of rage.

He stepped inside and slammed the door.

She hated that he didn’t care about making noise. It didn’t bode well for her chances of survival.

Larkin expected him to charge, head down, and crush her with a single blow. Instead, he hung his head, breathed hard, and paced a line from one side of the room to the other in front of the door. She breathed through her mouth to keep from retching, and she watched him pace back and forth. He tugged his hair. Sweat trickled down his chin. He’d lost his tie somewhere, and the top two buttons of his shirt hung wide.

He didn’t lock the door.

“Lucas, it’s okay.” Her voice quaked, maligning her. She swallowed. “Just talk to me. I know there’s a reasonable explanation for all this.”

“Yeah.” His head snapped up. “There is. You’re a spoiled, rich bitch.” The crest of his lip curled on the angry words.

“You know that’s not true.” She was anything but a bitch to him. “I gave you a job when how many people had turned you down?” What had they seen that she’d missed?

“Sure, you gave me a job, but what about your heart? You never gave me a chance at that.” He paced, a predator preparing to strike.

“I’ve never given anyone a chance at it. I’m damaged goods, Lu—”

“Shut up!” His chest heaved. The blood vessels in his face bulged. “You don’t know anything about damaged goods. This is all your fault. You and that crazy fucking bitch.”

“Tarin?” She couldn’t make herself shut up. If she was going to die, she’d go down with as many answers as she could. Answers and a fight.

He turned away from her and paced.

“I never told you about the flowers or the threatening notes.” The more she spoke, the more solid her voice became. “Douglas didn’t either, did he?”

“You were supposed to be scared, damn you.” He scraped a hand down his face. Pellets of sweat littered the ground.

“Scared?”

“Tarin was just supposed to scare you, but you wouldn’t react.” He looked at her sideways but continued pacing the uneven, agitated line. “You wouldn’t let me …”

A gasp caught in Larkin’s throat. “You knew she was sending the threats.”

“I caught her trying to break into your apartment two months ago. The woman has a sick fucking fetish with you.” His head shook. “I thought she was harmless. I thought the whole thing was harmless.” He pulled his hair so hard she expected to see chunks come out. “No one was supposed to get hurt. You were supposed to let me protect you and …”

And she was supposed to fall in love with Lucas. Her hands shook. He wasn’t as insane as Tarin was, but a number of delusions were at play in this once upon a hero’s mind. Tears slipped down Larkin’s cheek. He would kill her to protect himself.

His sigh filled the room.

Larkin looked at her white hands and the leather binding them. She looked at the ceiling again and remembered the same piping in the bowels of her building. They’d been overhead when she’d taken the back entrance Beckett had shown her the day he’d left. Hope bloomed in her chest. The roar of the machinery had been there too. She closed her eyes trying to remember the steps she’d taken under his guidance. In the side door, turn right, past two doors, then left to the underground level of service elevators.

This was her building. This room was one of those two doors.

“They weren’t supposed to stick their noses where they didn’t belong.” He looked at Douglas on the floor.

They?

Lucas had killed Reagan.

Ice raced through her veins. Had Reagan been in here when she’d jogged through that fateful day?

Douglas wasn’t dead. She’d found his pulse, and she wouldn’t let him die, dammit. When Lucas turned away on his unsettling back and forth, Larkin lifted her hands to her mouth. Her teeth sank into the leather and tugged. The tempo of her heartbeat soared. It thundered in her ears.

She dropped her hands to her lap and hung her head before he turned and paced in her direction.

“They think Tarin did everything. She’s a lunatic. You just got caught up in her crazy scheme.”

His gaze lifted to her, then drifted back to Douglas. He snarled, turned, and walked away.

Larkin yanked the loose strip of leather, pulled it through the loop, and then yanked another and another. She dropped her hand just in time. Her heart pounded in her throat.

“It won’t work.”

“It will,” she countered. She’d wait until he turned his back to stand. If she ran as hard and as fast as she ever had, she could get out the door in time to jet right down a short hallway, and then left through the door to the outside world.

His head shook. He turned.

Larkin shrugged the leather and stood. Her legs felt like cement pillars. A taxi rolled over her chest. Her gaze slid to Douglas. This was it.

She ran.