Chapter 4

It made Felice change her opinion of him more than a little. He portrayed himself as a royal ass—and yeah, he said ridiculous things, but he really wasn’t a bad person. Quite the opposite. He was the sort to champion a woman if she needed it. His cavalier attitude about their uses was a bit offensive, but she believed that was a cover. He was careful to choose women who understood his outlook, never promised more than he was willing to give. She knew of plenty of times when guys had lied to her about looking for that special someone just to get into her pants. She would much prefer Halo’s approach. Truth. Knowing what was wanted and expected up front. Then she could decide if she was into it. Into him. She admired that about him now that she thought about it.

“Well, the office personnel were more civilized than you would have been,” she said. “They pulled him off, held him back till the cops came. And the ambulance. I was so ashamed and so embarrassed that I never went back to work in that office again.”

“You had nothing to be embarrassed about. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But it was,” she argued. “I let him into my life. I put up with his jealousies and erratic behaviors. I let myself believe I could change him by loving him enough. The incident in the office was a clarifying moment. I had never moved in with him so thankfully I didn’t have to separate myself from him with that amount of difficulty, but he knew where I lived and restraining orders meant nothing to him. For the most part they were nothing. He would invade my space and my home constantly, but always disappeared before the cops could come and witness him breaking the law. It was impossible for them to prove what he did. It was a lot of he said/she said. I finally escaped him by moving and not telling any of our mutual friends where I was going. They would have given in to him eventually and told him. His persistence knows no bounds. Someone might tell him just to be rid of him.

“So I moved, bought the antiques shop from an old lady who was retiring, changed the name of the shop—which was risky, I know, but who would think to look for Felice’s Antiques from a girl trained in the corporate world? I figured it was safe enough. So far I’ve been right. He hasn’t found me…unless maybe he has.” She flipped a hand to indicate the room around them.

Felice had come so far since her ex had been in her life. She had moved a thousand miles away from anyone who knew her. She had basically started fresh again on her own in the middle of an obscure town in Upstate New York. She had been delivering several pieces she’d acquired and refinished with her own hands to a shop in Greenwich Village. They loved her work and were one of her best customers. That was what she had been doing when she had suddenly…

“I don’t remember anything about how I got here,” she mentioned. “I was making a delivery one moment, then the next I woke up naked here. I was shocked that you could hear me through the TV. I am doubly shocked that they put us together.”

“I was just as shocked as you were. This whole situation has me off kilter.”

As if they propelled him, his words had him surging back out of his seat and pacing the wall. He walked over to where the door was and pressed a hand against it. He then moved to the wall near it, feeling all along it. He suddenly pulled back his fist and punched it into the wall. He used a terrific amount of force; she could see it in the way his body moved. But the strike had no effect. He cursed softly and struck again. The second strike was even harder than the first. This time when he pulled back he shook his hand out as if he had hurt it. She immediately leapt to her feet and grabbed his arm before he could strike the wall a third time.

“Stop! It’s solid. You can see that it is. You’re just going to hurt yourself.”

She felt the biceps beneath her hand flex powerfully and knew he could easily pull free of her and shake her off, but he didn’t do that. He could clearly be reasoned with, even as his temper rose.

“I can’t just sit here and do nothing. I can’t just resolve myself to being a monkey in a cage under observation from god knows who,” he snapped.

“I know it’s frustrating,” she soothed, her fingers stroking over that flexed muscle, “but this isn’t the way. There will be another opportunity. A better one.”

“They’re not going to give me a chance to fight my way out,” he said with frustration. “They’re going to poison me slowly every time they want to come in here, knocking me out with that gas.”

“Gas? When did they use gas? Poison you?” she asked him. She didn’t think knockout gas would be toxic, although it wasn’t exactly healthy either. He would never have woken up if it were toxic. “If anyone’s being poisoned, it’s me.”

“You don’t understand,” he said with a sigh as he turned away from the wall and stepped away from her clinging hands.

“Then help me to understand. Tell me what you mean.”

He shook his head. “Just trust me. Knocking me out is making me sick. I can’t process the gas fast enough. It’s going to catch up to me.”

“Maybe they won’t do it again. Maybe they’ll come in here. Maybe you’ll have your chance to fight them.”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” he said bitterly.

She knew he was right. The odds were they wouldn’t do anything different then they had been. If it was her, she’d be afraid of facing the wrath of Halo without knocking him out first. It was the wisest course of action. All she could do was hope their captors did something very unwise and came in there while Halo was conscious and kicking. However, she knew she shouldn’t hold her breath.

“What will I do if they dose me with heroin again?” she asked in a small voice. “They’ll make an addict out of me. Soon I’ll act just like any other junkie on the street. I’ll want it. I’ll be begging for it.”

“No. You won’t. I won’t let you,” he said firmly, turning back to her and taking her elbows into his hands. “I don’t think they are going to dose you constantly. Just enough to…”

“To what?”

He shook his head. He was keeping his thoughts to himself. “Try not to worry about it. We’ll worry about it when it happens. Not before.”

She nodded. She supposed he was right. It would do her no good to stress about it. But she could still feel the effects of the poison they had pumped into her. Eating had made it a little better, but not much. It was fading with time, but still she could feel it. It could be so easy to swim in the sensations; to let them wash over her and just give in to the high.

She began to turn away from him, but he held her tight by her arms. Then he did the unexpected. He pulled her in close and hugged her. Actually hugged her. Gave her comfort. She was so surprised that she almost didn’t hug him back. But as she felt all that strength fold around her, Felice knew she was being given special care and she wanted to return the comfort twofold. She hugged his big body close until she became very aware of their nakedness being squashed together in all kinds of intimate ways. Then she eased back and wriggled out of his hold. He let her go slowly, but he did let her go. There was a strange contemplative look in his eyes as he did this.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “You didn’t strike me as the hugging type.”

“Special circumstances,” he said with a shrug and a half smile.

“Maybe you needed a hug just as much as I did and that’s why you did it.”

“Geez, lady, do we have to analyze my every action? Don’t make me regret this.”

“Sorry. I won’t do it again if I can help it.”

“That isn’t exactly reassuring.”

“I can’t help but call things as I see them. I’ve learned to be blunt and straightforward. I don’t get lost in drama and bullshit anymore.”

“And that’s a good thing,” he said. “But maybe you should keep some of that bluntness to yourself or wait until someone asks for your opinion.”

He crossed back over to the recliners and shook his hand out as he sat down. With a gasp she hurriedly followed him.

“You’ve hurt yourself!” she cried, grabbing up his hand and examining his fist. He went to pull away but she held him tight. She was aware that he was a hundred times stronger than she was, so in the end he was letting her hold on to him. He let her examine his red fist. Let her run her fingers over his knuckles. “Did you break it?”

“I don’t think so. No X-ray machines around here so there’s no way of knowing for sure. And even if it is broken, there’s nothing to be done about it. Don’t worry about it. I’ll heal quick enough.”

“It takes weeks to heal from a broken bone.”

He shrugged as if it made no difference to him.

“Flex your fingers,” she instructed him.

“Why?”

“Because I want to see if you’ve…I don’t know. If you can do it maybe it’s not so bad.”

He flexed his fingers for her, opening and closing his fist. She watched his features for any reflection of pain, but he wasn’t showing her any.

Stubborn ox, she thought heatedly.

“Fine. You’re right. There’s nothing we can do.”

She dropped his wrist and sat down in the other chair with a huff of frustration.

“I have this overwhelming sense of doom,” she said quietly.

“Don’t let it beat you down. We have to stay strong. We can’t let them get into our heads.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You’re a real tough guy.”

“You’re a tough gal. You’ve proven that by getting away from that creep of an ex. It takes strength to uproot your whole life in order to escape the mistakes you’ve made.”

“I was weak enough to get in that mess in the first place.”

“We all make mistakes. The trick is learning from them.”

“What was my mistake this time?” she asked sadly. “What did I do to cause this, and how do I fix it?”

“You didn’t make a mistake. No more than I did. We were targeted. There was nothing we could have done to make this different.” He was quiet a moment. “I’m working on how to fix it.”

“Yeah, I saw that,” she said dryly.

“Would you rather I just sit here and bemoan my fate? I had to take a chance that there was drywall and a void between the walls. I could have easily busted us out of here if there was. They are running lights in here somehow, and the electric for the TV and surveillance. That means gaps in the walls somewhere.”

“Oh,” she said softly. “I hadn’t thought of that. But what are you going to do? Punch every inch of the walls?”

“No. My next target is getting up near those cameras. The walls are likely to be hollow up there.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, and she realized he was trying not to give his plans away.

“How will you do that?” she asked, leaning in and speaking even softer than he was.

“I haven’t figured that part out yet. But whatever I do I’ll need to do it fast. They’ll react when they see me.”

“Maybe they’ll react by coming in here and then you can beat the shit out of them,” she said.

He chuckled at that. “Nice to know you have faith in me and my fighting ability.”

“Provided you haven’t broken your wrist, I have a feeling you’re a hell of a fighter.”

They had leaned in together to whisper to each other and Felice could feel his warm breath against her face when he chuckled. She liked it when he laughed like that; it lightened him up. Lightened the whole damn situation up.

“I am a hell of a fighter…right now. But I will grow weaker over time. Faster if they keep pumping me full of that poisonous gas.”

“I don’t understand. Are you sensitive to it? And how do you know that? I mean, it’s just a knockout gas, isn’t it? And why will you grow weaker over time? They are feeding us, finally. It took two days, but they fed us.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” he said evasively. “I am allergic in a way. And food isn’t enough. I need doses of…medication.”

She gasped softly. “It never occurred to me that you might be ill. You seem so healthy!”

“I am healthy. For now. But the longer I go without my medication, the worse it will be for me.”

“Maybe if you let them know…”

“They know. Believe me, they know,” he said bitterly.

“What makes you say that?”

He did not respond except to pull away from her and sit back in his recliner. His unwillingness to share irked her, but what could she do? She had to take what he was telling her at face value, and she had to take it very seriously.

“Will it kill you eventually?” Felice asked, her voice still small. She didn’t want to give away any of his weaknesses if he didn’t want her to.

“No. It’ll be worse than death, believe me. I’ll be sick. Spoiled. Befouled. Unfit for human company.”

“That doesn’t make sense. How can gas make you unfit for human company?”

“It’s hard to explain and I’m not about to, so just sit back and relax and let me worry about it.”

“I can’t do that!” she protested.

“You can and you will. Don’t make me regret sharing with you. Hell, I already do. Look at it like this, you know how heroin is going to make a junkie out of you? Make you addicted and unfit for human company? The gas and stuff will do the same thing to me.”

“I’ve never heard of someone being addicted to knockout gas before.”

“First time for everything,” he drawled.

Felice turned away from him in frustration. He wasn’t making sense, but she could tell he wasn’t about to make things any clearer at the moment.

Fine. If he wanted to be wrapped up in this all by himself she’d let him. Why should she worry about it?

That thought lasted only a second. She was immensely worried about him now. “I’m sorry, but I can’t just turn off my worry button. I care about what happens to you.”

That remark seemed to surprise him. It was written all over his face.

“Why should you give a damn what happens to me?” he asked.

“Why do you give a damn what happens to me?” she countered.

“Who says I give a damn? I never said that,” he said hesitantly.

“You don’t have to. I can tell. You’re a good human with a good heart under all this gruff, uncouth exterior.”

He snorted out a laugh. “I am not a good human. Far from it, in fact. You got me all wrong, lady.”

“Keep saying that. I know you like to believe it. But I know better.”

“You don’t know jack about me,” he said caustically. “Stop trying to analyze me.”

“Why? You think you are this big mystery that my little mind can’t hope to figure out? You’re not as mysterious as you think. Granted, there’s a lot I haven’t figured out yet in our brief time together, but I’ve touched on enough to know you’re a good person.”

He wanted to say something, she could see that he did, probably more denials. Maybe he realized he couldn’t shake her conviction so he just gave in. She got up out of her chair, abandoning all of her shyness, and began to pace in a circle around the chairs. She kept steady eyes on him as she paced, trying to figure him out. She also knew that he was doing the same, staring at her every time she looked away from him. She caught him in the mirror, his eyes running down over her in a way that reminded her she was naked. But she didn’t cover up. She wasn’t about to let him know she was aware of his attention. She could better observe him this way.

“You’re going to wear yourself out,” he said after long minutes of watching her.

“You did it,” she countered.

He couldn’t argue with her about that, but he still frowned. “How are you feeling?” he asked her.

His question just proved her point; there was more to him than just an asshole. “I feel fine. Just restless. I want to be doing something. Anything.”

“I know the feeling,” he said grimly. “We could always fuck.”

She gave him a hard look but softened when she saw the amusement in his eyes. “You’re just trying to get a rise out of me.”

“You could try to get a rise out of me,” he countered, completely unrepentant.

“Stop it,” she said with a laugh she couldn’t help.

“There now. You should laugh. It looks great on you.”

She blushed in a way she hadn’t when faced with his more crass observations. She tucked her hair nervously behind her ear and wondered why his compliment affected her like this. She was usually very gracious and accepting of compliments. Although, she had to admit they were hard to come by. Not from a stranger, in any event. A strange male. She wasn’t exactly the type to turn heads with her overly round figure. Felice knew she had a pretty face. Of course she knew. She’d heard “You have such a pretty face…if only you’d lose some weight” so many times in her life she’d lost count.

“This isn’t really a time for laughter,” she said quietly.

“This is the perfect time for laughter. We should laugh in the faces of these asshats who have us trapped here. We should let them know we don’t care what they do to us. We’ll make it out of this, but first we’ll make it through this.”

“That’s positively Zen of you to say,” she said with a smile.

“Eh. I have my moments.” He grinned. “So that’s a no to fucking?”

She laughed. Hard. He got up and moved over to her, catching her hand in his and bringing it to the thick wall of his chest. He reached a finger out to tip up her chin and met her eyes intently. “We are going to make it through this. One way or another. Don’t lose hope.”

She smiled and leaned in closer to him, their bodies almost touching. “You didn’t strike me as an optimist.”

“I’m being optimistic for your sake…and because I know no one has ever gotten the better of me for very long. I have faith in myself if nothing else.”

“Should I have faith in you too?”

“I’m not going to tell you what to do. But if I were a betting person, I’d bet on me.”

“All right then. I’ll bet on you.”

She was looking deeply into his blue eyes as she said this and felt just how compelling he could be when he was trying to be civilized—if she could call asking her to fuck civilized. He was doing it to make her laugh though. To help ease her way in a difficult situation. Just as his coming over to her and holding her hand and meeting her gaze was meant to do.

Yes.

Halo was a lot more civilized and decent than he was letting on.