Jami shoved her way through the lobby at a near sprint. In the midst of the chaos upstairs, she’d made the choice to run while she could. Although the further she got away from Drago, the more she wanted to throw up. Leaving him like that had been unfair, but he’d also made it clear that he wasn’t going to let her go.

And the whole fiery dragen thing was totally freaking her out. She’d seen him start to look different with her own eyes and still couldn’t wrap her head around it.

She ran for the first cab she could find outside and hopped in, giving the driver the address before she even got the door closed. The insanity back in Drago’s room had delayed her exit and Connie had been waiting. Addicts weren’t very good at waiting, especially when they were strung out.

She hoped she wasn’t too late. After last night she couldn’t handle losing another person. Jami rubbed the side of her head to ease the beginnings of a major headache. Talk about overload.

The tiny bit of improvement she’d gained from her quick nap was fading fast. Fortunately for her, the address Connie had texted her had been fairly close to Drago’s hotel. Within ten minutes of leaving, the cab pulled up to an apartment building and stopped.

Jami looked out the window and shuddered. Not the best part of town and not unlike her own rundown building. She didn’t remember Connie saying anything about whether she was at home or someone else’s place. She’d been too hysterical to make much sense.

She threw the last of her cash at the driver and sprinted to the building. Unlike her place, this building did not have a locked exterior door so she was able to walk right in and make her way to the second floor apartment with no problems.

As she knocked on the door she had a moment of hesitation about what she might be walking into. Just last night she’d been convinced someone had followed her home. Now she had that same bad feeling again and she couldn’t shake it.

Except this time she had more at stake. Connie clearly needed her help and under the circumstances she would not back down from this. Whatever it took.

When no one opened the door she rapped on it again, this time harder than before. “Connie, it’s me Jami. Open up so I know you're okay."

Complete and total silence followed her request. She blew out a frustrated breath and pulled out her phone to make sure she had the right apartment. Assured this was the correct one, she pounded on the door as hard as she could.

“Connie, are you in there?” she called out, her unease growing with every passing second. What if she was too late?

Fortunately, she didn’t have to torture herself with worst case scenarios for long before the locks were undone and the door creaked open.

“What do you want?”

Jami fought to not step back from the tall, blond and broad man now filling the door frame.”

“I’m looking for Connie. She texted me this address and told me to come get her.”

The man did not look happy, but after a moment of hesitation, he opened the door wider. “C’mon in. She’s in the back, been waiting for you.”

She took a deep breath before stepping across the threshold. “Sorry about that. I was in the midst of something pretty crazy and had to wait for the right time to leave.”

“You can go down there to the end of the hall. Last door on the right. I was trying to get her to sleep off some of whatever it was she took. She’s pretty messed up.”

Jami nodded and started walking down the hallway. Unfortunately, with every step she took her fight or flight response started screaming at her to run. Although she didn’t know why. So she ignored it.

However, that nagging feeling only grew worse.

The walls began to close in on her and the walk to the bedroom door felt endless.

“What’s going on?” She whirled around to face the man to find the room behind her completely empty. What the hell?

She turned back to the doorway and took a step into the darkened room. However, before she could barely register that Connie was lying on the bed, her arms and legs tied to the bed posts, something hit her on the head hard, causing her to fall to the ground as her brain succumbed to the explosion of pain and darkness.

* * *

Jami slowly woke, her brain fuzzy. She blinked against the bright lights of the room, her eyes unable to focus as she tried to remember what happened. Had she fallen asleep?

“You’re finally awake.”

She moaned as the unfamiliar male voice surrounded her. “Who are you?” she asked, her throat tightening.

“The who is hardly what matters at this point, wouldn’t you say?”

She didn’t understand and her head ached from where she’d been struck. Jami reached up and rubbed the back of her head gently across the tender goose egg at the base of her skull.

“What really matters is that you’re here and now I have to deal with you too. Didn’t you have anything better to do than answer a call from a junkie bitch?”

The cold words made Jami’s heart nearly stop. The flood of hatred in that simple statement nearly overwhelmed her. She didn’t fully understand what she’d walked into, but she was certain it was going to be really bad.

“Connie needed my help.” Jami tried to turn her head to look for the other woman, but pain shot through her head, stopping her.

“You can’t help her,” he said. “No one can.”

The pit in Jami’s stomach grew. The cold, emotionless tone of his voice scared the bejesus out of her. She needed to find Connie and get them both out of here.

“Where is she?” she asked.

“Wrong question again.”

Jami had to bite back the sarcastic retort that popped into her head. Instead, she needed to focus on her training if she was dealing with a hostage situation, and the way he stood between her and the door of this strangely sterile room indicated he might not be willing to let her walk out of here.

What the hell had she gotten into?

That’s kind of obvious, don’t you think?

She nearly groaned again. Was there no sacred time when the voice in her head held back? Talk about ridiculous.

“If you could just point me in the direction of Connie, I could get her out of your hair. Having to deal with an addict while high isn’t an easy thing to do. But I can take her out of here and get her the help she needs. I have resources for that."

He threw his head back and laughed and Jami nearly made a run for it. Not that she’d get far since he stood twice her size.

She knew the better course of action would be to keep him talking, but the fear inside her wasn’t helping her with rational thought. She took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds before slowly releasing the air.

If she could keep calm, she had half a chance of getting out of this mess. At least that’s what all the experts claimed during her training. At the moment, she didn’t have a lot of faith in her education.

“Do you not want Connie to get help?”

He looked down at her, their gazes colliding once again. “No, I don’t. I plan to watch her die as slowly and painfully as possible.”

Jami froze as the impact of his words crashed into her. He might as well have let off a grenade in the room considering the jolt of fear that exploded in her chest.

Think Jami, think. There has to be something you can say to fix this.

She shook her head. Sometimes she could fix crazy and then sometimes crazy was just too crazy.

She felt pretty certain this case qualified as the latter. The calm, eerie tone of his voice, the dead look in his eyes and his ability to not ramble on and on were the potential markings of a cold-blooded killer.

“Why?” she asked, keeping her voice as calm and controlled as she could.

“Why not? She’s an addict. She’ll literally do anything just to get her next fix. She’s so stupid she doesn’t even care that she’s about to die. Just like all the rest.”

Jami hadn’t thought her situation could get any worse until those last few words came out of his mouth. All the rest. Her gut twisted.

Oh my God. Did that mean—

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“I can see you finally got the right question through that pretty little brain of yours. Too bad it can’t save you. I’m going to regret having to add you to the growing list. While your overabundance of compassion sometimes enables those druggies to do their worst, I don’t blame you. Not really. But now you know too much and I have no choice. Wrong place at the wrong time. That’s your problem now.”

“Did you hurt the other women from the clinic?”

He simply smiled with no further elaboration.

Jami wanted to throw up. If her stomach churned much more she wouldn’t have a choice.

“Sondra?” she asked on a whisper, thinking of Drago at the same time. He’d been right.

“Yes, I had too. She had to be in everyone’s business and kept getting in my way. I needed the coast clear to grab Connie and that bitch kept sticking to her like glue. She hadn’t yet realized that Connie couldn't be redeemed. Sometimes drugs are the devil like in Sondra’s case and then sometimes the addict is the devil like in Connie’s case.” He turned toward the bank of dingy windows and stared out at the horizon. "It's my job to kill the devil."

Jami couldn’t begin to unravel the mysteries this guy wanted to spout. She only knew that she needed to get away from him and fast.

Unfortunately, this room looked nothing like the apartment she had entered, which led her to believe they were no longer in that building. The white sterile walls and bright lights with nothing more than a few metal chairs and a lone table against one wall felt more like a warehouse than a home.

Where in the heck had he taken her and was Connie even here?

She refocused on the man, studying him while he was turned away. Tall, lanky and well dressed in khaki pants and a button up shirt. Brown hair curled over his collar and the fact that he was both well dressed and clean stood out. No visible scars or tattoos to identify a rough life or gang involvement. Not at all the typical addict or lowly criminal type.

That knowledge gave her chills instead of comforting her. She’d taken plenty of criminology classes and the well-dressed types were often the most heinous. She hoped to God she wasn’t dealing with some sort of pro.

“What can I do to help you?” she asked, thinking the more she could build a rapport or trust with her captor, the better chance she had of getting away.

He turned his gaze back to her, leveling his cold dead eyes on her once again. “Staying out of my way is all you could have done for me, Ms. Raye. Now it’s too late.”

She shook her head, trying to ignore the panic swelling. “It’s never too late."

“You are so wrong.” He turned then and headed towards the door. She didn’t know whether to be relieved he hadn’t killed her right then or scared to death it meant something worse would happen.

He opened a door, a big metal behemoth she hadn’t noticed before, and slipped outside closing it firmly behind him followed by a resounding click of a dead bolt lock that needed a key from the inside to open.

Still feeling a bit groggy, she stood and followed. She had a feeling that whatever time she had left it wouldn’t be long. And that there would be no amount of reasoning with this man, whoever he was.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

If ever there was a time for curse words in her life, it was now. She’d run from one dangerous situation to another and she didn’t even know where she was or if Connie still lived.

She examined the lock to see what it would take to get open. Thanks to her wild child sister, Savannah, she did learn certain skills growing up. As she pulled off the belt she always wore and began dismantling the buckle for a pin small enough to work the lock, she thanked God for her sneaky sister who had a thing for going places she wasn’t invited.

With her belt lying on the floor in pieces, except for the two pins she hoped would work magic, Jami pressed her ear to the door to listen for signs her captor would return.

Hearing nothing, she got to work. First one, then with the second, she searched for just the right angle that would give her the leverage she needed. As the minutes passed, sweat pooled at the base of her spine and her headache grew worse.

She should have taken Savannah more seriously. She was having no luck, where her sister could have done this in thirty seconds or less. She thought of Drago and the scary changes she’d seen in those last few minutes in his hotel room.

Right before her eyes she’d watched his skin begin to change. First it heated and a faint glow emanated just underneath. There was no denying it had freaked her out. In the span of just twenty-four hours she’d gone from identifying a body in the morgue to finding out dragen’s existed to being kidnapped by a psycho who apparently had been killing her clients.

Not to mention the voices and the blank spaces.

Maybe it was time to rethink her decision to move to Serenity. Before coming here her life had been blissfully dull. And maybe that wasn’t a bad thing after all.

Several more minutes passed and still the lock didn’t budge. Her arms were getting tired. Except she was pretty certain her life depended on this and she couldn’t give up. She pulled the pins from the lock and took a deep breath. It didn’t help that her mind raced a mile a minute with fear and adrenalin, likely holding her back.

Remember what Savannah taught you.

Take it slow and easy and don’t try to force it. Some things took finesse and this was one of them.

She leaned forward and eased the makeshift pins back into the key slot. First the left and then the right. Turn, push, slide. It didn’t work.

Jami took another breath and tried again. Twelve more times she went through the process until she wanted to scream with frustration. She took another deep breath. This one had to be it. Her lucky thirteen. It was her favorite number and her sister Violet had a lot of faith in personal luck.

Following the order she’d practiced all those years ago, she again slid, twisted, pushed and then a slow slide to the left. As if she’d finally willed it to happen that darned lock slid free with a soft click. Tears sprang to her eyes.

She twisted the knob half expecting it to still be locked. But it opened easily and she was able to ease it open without making any noise. She waited and listened before crossing the threshold. It wouldn’t do her much good to have gotten the lock open only to get caught walking out the door.

Luckily, there was only silence. No television or radio sounds. No voices and most important, no footsteps. She crept forward, looking both left and right to find the coast clear.

No time like the present.

She popped out of the room and tried to make heads or tails of the blank, nondescript hallway that gave no more clues than the room about her location.

Go right.

Great. The voice in her head wanted to get involved. While tempted to ignore that advice, she agreed it made the most sense. She crept quietly, afraid any noise could get her caught if she wasn’t careful. At the end of the hallway she had only one direction to go so she followed the corridor to the left. She passed no other doors and saw no signs that would clue her into where he had Connie hidden or how the hell to get out. Just another long hallway that led somewhere.

Jami fought the urge to run, but moved as fast as she could without making noise. By the time she got near the end she knew she’d been caught. Behind her a door slammed and foot steps echoed on the plain concrete floor.

“There is nowhere to go, Ms. Raye. You cannot escape. But if you make me chase you, then this will get much worse for you. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”

His voice crept over her much like she imagined a snake would weave through a grassy field. Slow and cunning.

With the element of surprise gone, she turned and ran for the end of the hall. There she found the door locked, leaving her trapped again. She turned back and headed for the only alternate door available. The one emblazoned with a black and white sign that stated roof access.

How the hell she would get away from him by going up eluded her, but it beat waiting here for him to pluck her off like easy prey.

As the sound of his footsteps grew louder she ran through the door and up the two flights of stairs. For a moment she worried that the door to the roof would be locked, but when she grabbed the handle and twisted, it opened immediately.

Cool air and the pitch-black night greeted her as she climbed onto the roof. Spinning from side to side she searched for a miracle, like another exit. No such luck. Other than a bunch of metal boxes that likely contained mechanical crap for the building, there was nothing. Just a flat open roof with a black railing that surrounded it. Apparently, there was only one way down and that—that killer stood between her and freedom.

Again, she thought of Drago and the fact he claimed she was his mate. As much as that frightened her clear to her bones, she’d give anything right about now to hear his thick Russian accent whispering in her ear.

Your wish is my command, my little OTM.

Jami jerked at the sound of his voice in her mind. Oh great, just what she needed. More invisible people in her head.

I will not be invisible for long. But you should probably brace yourself. I do not look like I did when you saw me last. The dragen is in control.

Jami turned and looked behind her, hoping beyond hope that Drago’s voice was real and all the rest of this had been nothing but a bad dream. Except behind her she found her captor coming through the rooftop door, a long bladed knife in his right hand.

It’s too late. He’s found me and he’s going to kill me.

Why she was answering the voice in her head was beyond her. Maybe this is what fear and/or the knowledge of certain death did to a person in their final moments.

Jami! Drago’s voice boomed through her head. You need to focus. This is real. It is how dragen’s communicate in this form. I don’t know why you couldn’t hear me before, but I’ve been hunting for you for hours.

She scooted around one of the AC units knowing she had little time left, but determined not to make this easy for the killer. If she got to the edge of the roof maybe she could push him over or, worst case scenario, jump herself.

Yes. That will work.

Her steps faltered. What will work?

You will do the jump and I will catch you.

Now she knew she was crazy. She wasn’t exactly sure how high in the air this building stood, but based on the buildings nearby it was more than a few floors.

You want me to just jump off the roof? So you can catch me? Yeah, that’s not crazy at all.

While she talked to him she continued to weave around the metal boxes until she stood only a few feet away from the roof’s edge.

“Ms. Raye, this is not a game. I can either make this quick or slow and excruciatingly painful. I’m not going to say it again. There is no escape.”

Jami, what is happening? I am almost there.

“If that’s true, you’d better hurry. I’m out of time.”

You will have to jump.

She shook her head. I can’t.

You can and you will. Trust me. I will not let anything happen to you.

How was she supposed to trust a man she’d just met? Yes, he was very attractive and yes, she had a burning desire to spend more time with him, but this was too much. He asked for too much.

She rushed to the edge of the roof and climbed over the edge of the railing while holding on for dear life. As she looked down her head spun. She had to be at least ten or more floors in the air.

I'm too young to die, especially like this. What will my family think? Will they even know I was forced to do this to escape being stabbed to death or worse? Probably worse. Much worse.

She looked down again and then behind her. The asshole behind her was almost upon her. She had to decide. Die by his hand or her own.

Dammit, Jami. You are not going to die. But you’ve got to jump now!

She held her breath. If she jumped, then Drago or the thought of Drago held her life in his hands. She would have to trust him one way or the other.

Jami! Jump now!

She sucked in air.

Maxim Drago if this is fake and you don’t somehow catch me, I am going to haunt your ass until the end of time.

As the man behind her grabbed at her arm, Jami jerked away from him and did the craziest thing she could ever do in her life, praying that her family would forgive her.

She jumped.