Sandy Oaks Medical Research Facility
Eighteen months ago
The ants occupying Rachel Kline’s hospital bed won the battle against her sanity. Whipping off the heavy faux-knitted blanket, she dropped to her hands and knees and searched for the offending little creatures.
“You’ve got to be in here somewhere, you little bastards.” Seeing only the white starched linen, she tugged at the corners, thinking they’d sought refuge between the plastic covered mattress and metal bed frame.
“Well, well, well. Isn’t that a pretty sight. Gotta say that this view is even better than the one outside.” The low, slow drawl she’d grown accustomed to during the last month brought a sigh to her lips.
“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been outside in a week.” Rachel abandoned her quest for the insects and flipped around, making sure her pajama bottoms covered her backside.
Logan, by comparison, made her feel frumpy. Tall, broad shouldered, and with a penchant for wearing inappropriate or lame-joke T-shirts, the man was always put together and never without a grin on his face—or his cowboy hat on his head. A few months ago, he would’ve been the exact kind of guy who’d catch her attention.
Now she forced herself to admire from an emotional distance. “Why is it that every time I turn around, you’re there?”
Logan’s mischievous smirk blossomed as he set a brown paper bag on the nearby table. “If I didn’t know how much you love my visits, sweetheart, my feelings would’ve been hurt just now. It’s a good thing you’re one of my favorite redheads.”
“Can you go visit the other one today instead of me? Maybe if you’re keeping Penny company, she’ll be less likely to make surprise drop-ins too.” Rachel slid out of the bed.
She hated being bitchy. She loved Penny like a sister and owed her, Logan, and his team everything, including her life. But she could sense the looming darkness that came at least once a week, and she’d rather not have an audience.
Unable to hold off anymore, Rachel scratched her tingling arms until red marks popped up over her skin. Logan’s gray eyes immediately latched on to the move, forcing her to stop.
He was right. With nothing much to do in Sandy Oaks, the government-run medical research facility she’d called home for the last month, she looked forward to his visits. But over the last two weeks, he’d formed a habit of popping up on her worst days. She’d first thought it a coincidence, but second-guessed it now.
She second-guessed a lot of things—especially herself.
And that was usually when Logan magically appeared.
“Seriously, Logan, can we not do this today?” Rachel fought against a sudden rush of woe-is-me. “I don’t have the energy.”
He leaned his jean-covered rear end against the table and never once took his eyes off her. “Rough morning?”
“Rough everything.” Her skin itched again, the ant-like sensation slithering its way down the back of her neck. Rachel shifted on her feet uncomfortably, trying to keep her involuntary jerks to a minimum.
Two days before her next dose of meds, her body waged war on itself, almost like clockwork. The doctors kept telling her that the frequency would lessen, but she was still waiting for that time to come, anxious to get back to feeling like herself.
“Why aren’t you going?”
“Because you want me to.” Logan moved to the reclining chair across from where she stood and leaned back, getting comfortable. “It’s been a month, Rachel.”
Rachel clenched her teeth until her jaw ached. “I’m fully aware how long it’s been.”
“Then why aren’t you cutting yourself some slack?”
“Would you be taking it easy on yourself if the shoe were on the other foot?”
He wouldn’t answer, but it didn’t stop him from glowering from a distance.
Four months ago, starry-eyed and eager to change the world, Rachel had traveled with a local NGO determined to bring education to rural Honduran children. Instead of her feeding the minds of youths, Diego Fuentes had fed her his latest drug cocktail. Kidnapped from her assigned village and experimented on as if she were a guinea pig, she’d prayed for death more times than she could count.
Even now, a month after her release, drug withdrawal hijacked her body. Her schedule revolved around medications and tests, not to mention therapy—all because of a drug that had been forced upon her. And that all revolved around the physical fallout of her imprisonment in Honduras. It didn’t touch the untold horrors that flashed through her mind in dark, enclosed places.
When Logan helped free Rachel from the Fuentes compound, he might have saved her life, but he’d also helped her exchange one prison for another.