CHAPTER TEN - FINN
She falls to the floor. Like collapses into a heap. Her head misses the coffee table by mere inches. “Issy!” “I yell. “Issy?”
I struggle in the zip ties, but my hands are secured behind my back and I’m not in the right position to break out of them. So I don’t bother. I’m a little more worried about her right now than myself. I wriggle across the floor until I am close enough to get a good look at her face. “Issy?” I whisper, trying to see if she’s breathing. “Issy?”
She moans.
Thank fuck. “Issy,” I say again. “Can you hear me?”
“Whaaaaaa…”
“I think you fainted, Issy. Open your eyes. You’re OK, do you hear me? You’re OK, you just fainted. You’re fine. Just open your eyes.”
She shifts her body, turning over on her side. I can’t see her face because it’s covered by her long, dark hair.
“You’re OK,” I repeat. “You’re fine, all right? You just fainted. It’s gonna pass. Just… try to breathe and open your eyes.”
She does more than that because suddenly she’s up on her hands and knees, her whole body swaying.
“Don’t get up!” I say. “Just be still, breathe, and open your eyes and look at me, Issy. Do you hear me? Look. At. Me.”
She collapses again. Her breathing is heavy, almost a pant. Like she’s having a panic attack or something.
“What… what happened?” she mumbles.
“You fainted, that’s all. No big deal. Happens to everyone. It’s gonna pass really quick, OK? You’re fine.”
“My heart,” she moans.
“No,” I say. “It’s a trick. I promise. Your heart is fine, just breathe through your nose for a few minutes. It’s a trick. You got overwhelmed and—”
“Shut up!”
Her yell catches me off guard. So much so that I do. I shut up.
“I don’t need your help. I don’t need your words. I don’t need you to tell me when things are and are not OK. So shut the hell up!”
“There she is.” I chuckle, relaxing my head on the floor again.
She starts making mad grabs at her hair, pushing it away from her eyes. We’re only inches apart—face to face—when her gaze finds mine. Her beautiful blue eyes look like shining sapphires right now. “I don’t need your help.”
“Obviously,” I say. But I feel better. Relieved. I mean, yeah, if she was really hurt and didn’t wake up, I’d be stuck here trying to get myself free. And then, with my luck, Declan would show up before I managed that and… yeah.
The last thing I need is a rescue.
But that’s not why I’m relieved.
She’s OK. She just fainted. She got overwhelmed and scared and who can blame her? It’s been a pretty messed-up night for her.
“You can untie me now,” I say.
“No.” She gets back on her hands and knees, her head hanging, her long hair brushing against the floor as she sways a little. And then she’s on her feet. One hand covering her eyes, the other holding onto the back of the couch so she doesn’t fall over again.
“I’m not gonna hurt you.”
Her hand flies away from her face and she spits, “You can’t hurt me.”
“I know,” I say, pulling every FBI trick out of my hat to keep her calm and see reason. “I mean, I know that now. You’re pretty tough, chick. Anyone ever tell you that before?”
She huffs air, stumbles across the room, hand outstretched, reaching for the small dinette table, and feels her way around it until she’s leaning on the formica kitchen counter in front of the sink. She turns on the tap, sticks her mouth into the flowing water, and drinks.
“Hey,” I call. “I could use a drink too.”
She pulls back, wipes her hand across her mouth—little droplets of water spilling down her chin—and laughs. “Do you keep whiskey here?”
My neck is tired, the muscles in my shoulders strained from lifting my head off the floor. “Untie me and I’ll look.”
She ignores that. Just starts going through cupboards, slapping them closed after looking through each one.
“Nothing,” she says.
Well, duh, I want to say. “It’s a safe house. Not a bar. But we can go get a drink if you want. Talk this over, relax a little, and come up with a plan.”
“I already have a plan,” she says.
“Ya do?” I laugh. “What is it?”
She grabs at her hair, trying to straighten it out. Doesn’t help, it’s tragically disheveled. Beautifully unkempt. “You’re going to let me out of here, I’m going to take your car, and then we’re never going to see each other again.”
“Nope,” I say. “Not gonna happen that way.”
“I’ll hurt you,” she says.
“No, you won’t.”
This makes her laugh. But then she cuts it short and seethes, “Underestimate me, Agent Murphy. I dare you.”
“Look,” I say. “I can see that you’re not happy with the arrangements we’ve made for you—”
“Understatement.”
“—so let’s just renegotiate, OK? You want to make it to that seminar tomorrow, right?”
She says nothing. Just stares at me.
“We can do that. You untie me, we leave here, go back to your place, you grab a little sleep, and then I go with you to the seminar. I’ll just pretend to be a student and that way I can keep you safe and—”
She cuts me off. “How many times do I need to tell you? I do not need your protection.”
“I get that,” I say, trying to remain calm and reasonable. But the truth is, my fucking neck is killing me, I’m pretty sure there’s no circulation in my hands because the zip ties are too tight, my nose might be broken, there’s blood all over my face, and she might’ve fucked up my jaw when she clocked me. So I’m really fucking sick of this shit.
But I deal. Because that’s what I’ve been trained to do.
“I get that now,” I amend. “But it never hurts to have someone on your side, right?”
“You’re not on my side,” she sneers. “You lied to me! You lied to get me up here! And you fucked me!”
“You fucked me back. And you kinda beat the shit out of me, so suck it up, buttercup. We’re in this together whether you like it or not. Because this night, Issy, this night isn’t a game, OK? It’s fuckin’ real. I’m not after you but people are after you. So put your big-girl panties on and un-fucking-tie me.”
I kinda lose it at the end. Because ‘un-fucking-tie me’ comes out as a threat.
But it works. At least it might be working. Because she takes a deep breath, looks down at her shaking hands, and exhales out a sigh of resignation.