It was definitely a room I’d never been in before, and my head snapped over to the windows, as I wondered what I might see through them. But the glass panes were round instead of square, and the white lace curtains had been drawn back, revealing an unexpected sight: the sun setting over the river.
Understanding flashed through me. I wasn’t in any sort of house. Oh, no.
I was on a boat.
23
Instead of bolting out of bed, I wedged a couple of pillows between my back and the frame and propped myself up against the soft cushions. The sight of the strange room didn’t bother me anymore, because I had a sneaking suspicion of exactly where I was.
On board the Delta Queen, Phillip Kincaid’s riverboat casino.
I wondered why Owen and the others would bring me here, though, instead of taking me to Jo-Jo’s salon. Maybe they figured that this would be safer, since Jo-Jo’s would be one place Benson and his men would be sure to look for me.
I sat up a little higher on the bed. The motion made a dull ache roar to life in the back of my skull, one that quickly intensified and spread through the rest of my body. I was still wearing the white hospital gown Benson’s men had put on me. Cuts and scrapes dotted my hands and arms, and the side of my face throbbed from where I’d fallen onto the stone balcony. But worst of all was my busted ankle, which sent out shooting stabs of pain with every beat of my heart.
Jo-Jo must have been waiting for the final dregs of the Burn pill to leave my system so she could heal me. No doubt, Owen had told her about the elemental magic in the drug, and Jo-Jo wouldn’t have wanted to risk using her Air power on me and making things worse. But the aches and pains that flooded my body were a small price to pay for escaping from Benson. So I would be patient and endure the discomfort while I waited for Jo-Jo to come finish the job.
And when that was done and I was well, I would get on with the business of killing Beauregard Benson.
I should have started planning the hit that very first night after he’d murdered Troy and Xavier had told me how obsessed Bria was with bringing Benson down. I should have laid his throat open with my knives the second I saw him at Northern Aggression. I should have found a way to kill him on the bridge when his men were shooting at Bria and Catalina. But I’d been tired and troubled and too damn slow, and Benson had captured and almost killed me as a result, all in the name of his fucking drug empire and his so-called science experiments.
He wasn’t going to get away with that. He wasn’t going to get away with any of it.
Not one damn thing.
The stateroom door creaked open, and Bria appeared, as if she’d been standing right outside, waiting for me to wake up. Maybe she had been.
Some of the tension in her face eased when she realized that I was awake, and she walked over and sat down in a chair next to the bed. She was still wearing the same black clothes she had on when she’d rescued me, although she’d taken off the vest, and the holster attached to her belt was empty. She clasped her hands together, staring at her interlaced fingers instead of at me. Specks of blood marred the pale skin of her hands. More of it had spattered up onto her face and neck, with a few drops staining her primrose rune an ugly crimson.
In a weird way, she looked just like me after a long day of killing. Then again, that’s what this had been for Bria, first at the bridge firing at Benson’s men, then at the mansion shooting everyone who came close to us so she could rescue me. It was an odd bit of role reversal, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that—or how it would affect Bria.
“Catalina?” I asked.
“She’s fine,” Bria said. “She’s here on the boat too. We were able to go through that courtyard and those buildings and meet up with Xavier, just like you said. He drove us over here. Xavier thought that the riverboat would be a good place to hide out. There’s room enough for all of us, and it will be an easy position to defend if Benson decides to attack.”
I nodded. That was smart of Xavier, and he was right. This way, we’d at least be able to see Benson and his men coming. And they would be coming. The vamp still needed Catalina dead, and he’d want revenge on Bria for rescuing me.
As for me, no doubt, the vampire kingpin would want to drag me back down to his lab to conduct some more experiments on me, since I was such a fascinating test subject. I couldn’t hold back the cold shiver of fear that swept through me. I’d been tortured before, more times than I cared to remember, actually, by some seriously nasty folks. But being strapped down to that chair in Benson’s lab, knowing that he could do anything to me that he wanted, knowing how absolutely helpless I was to stop him . . . it would take me a while to get over that.
If I ever truly could.
Bria drew in a breath, squared her shoulders, and finally looked me in the eye. “I’m sorry,” she said in a soft voice. “For all of this. I should have done things differently. I should have let you know what was going on from the very beginning, when Benson killed Max. I shouldn’t have pushed Catalina to testify, and I shouldn’t have said all those terrible things to you and everyone else at Northern Aggression.”
“You did what you thought was right.”
Guilt pinched her lips. “But you’re my sister, and you know just as much about this world as I do. More, really, because you’ve lived in it longer. I should have listened to you. I wanted to listen to you. I hope you know that. It’s just that every time I thought about Max and what Benson did to him . . .” She trailed off. “I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t let him get away with it. Not when I’d promised Max that I would protect him, that I’d keep him safe, and he died because I didn’t keep my word.”
“Max didn’t die because you didn’t keep your word. He died because he got in too deep.”
She shook her head, her blond hair flying around her shoulders. “That’s not how it feels to me.”
I didn’t say anything. Nothing I could say would lessen her guilt. Not about this. Not now, maybe not ever.
She let out a bitter laugh. “And do you know what the worst part is? I almost did the exact same thing to Catalina. I told her that I could protect her too, and look what happened. Benson and his men almost killed us on that bridge. They would have killed us, if not for you.”
Bria stared down at her hands again, which were clasped together so tightly that her fingers were white from the strain. The tension made the drops of blood on her skin stand out that much more. “And then I would have had an innocent girl’s blood on my hands, just like Max’s is already.”
I leaned over and took her hands in mine. “You’re a cop, Bria. You were just doing your job. You were trying to bring a bad guy to justice. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Her lips twisted into a grimace. “There is when you lose focus, when you lose control. And that’s exactly what I did with Benson. Xavier was right. I was so desperate to take Benson down that I lost track of everything else, and it has cost me so much. Roslyn was held hostage, and I pushed Finn away. Xavier and I are on shaky ground, Catalina is still in shock, and you . . .” Bria’s voice dropped to a raspy whisper. “I don’t even want to think about what Benson did to you.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” I quipped. “At least the chair was comfortable.”
A laugh escaped from her lips before she could stop it. But the faint chuckle didn’t keep two tears from streaking down her face.