Hunted by Jaycee Clark Read Free Book Online Page B

Next.
    Hurrying, she scrubbed herself again, rinsed her hair out and quickly dried off, dressing in jeans and a white turtleneck. The undergarments were plain white cotton. It had been so long since she’d worn a bra, she just stared at it for a moment. She barely glanced at the woman in the mirror with old bruises mottling her exposed rib cage. Her hipbones, one sporting the vivid crescent scar, poked from her lower abdomen.
    She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Don’t think. Just do. Dress . She wondered how they’d known her size, though the jeans were a little big, but the brown boots fit perfectly.
    In the bedroom, Becca stood with a hair dryer. “Hurry. Time’s a wasting and we still need to get to the Metro.”
    “What?” she asked, sitting back down.
    “They’ll be looking for you,” Becca explained as she brushed out and dried Dusk’s hair. “We’re splitting up here. The rest of us will meet you and John at a later location, then we’ll all head to London and lay low. Go through detox if you have to.”
    Detox. Drugs. Was there a program to rid the rest of the poison the bastards had inflicted on her? Some way to purge it all out of her?
    “John and I?” She watched in the mirror as the girl with the tired eyes and fawn-colored hair began to cry.
    “Yeah, you and John.”
    Alone with the man. The image of him slashed in her brain as she’d first seen him, standing in the room with Mikhail. She’d seen something flash in his dark eyes before his finger had reached out and caressed her cheek, before he’d said something about appreciating beauty. For one instant, she thought it had been rage, but his voice, calm and smooth, had made her think he was just like the others. All the uncaring others.
    But he hadn’t been. The flicker of rage had been real and quickly hidden.
    Rage for her?
    One long tear trickled down her cheek and she didn’t even move to wipe it away.
    Another followed. And then another.
    No. No. If she cried, she gave them something else.
    Sniffing hard, she didn’t think about the future or the past. Just the now.
    She noticed Becca had even died her eyebrows. How had she missed that?
    Concentrating on things around her, she noticed the scarred dresser, the simple single bed, bare floors, motel art on the walls.
    Enough to look livable, but only for appearance sake. There were locks on the doors, beds, food, and warm water.
    This was, after all, a safe house.
    When the dryer stopped, Dusk gave herself one quick glance. Same hollow eyes, sharp cheekbones, thin neck. But the hair, a light reddish brown color, danced in soft waves around her head. Turning, she stood and followed Becca downstairs where the men were waiting.
    Voices filtered from further back in the house. She hadn’t really paid attention to her surroundings when they’d arrived, but she noticed the downstairs was about the same as the upstairs, simple, no frills. Functional. The wooden floors were bare and her boots echoed softly down the tiny hallway to the voices.
    Kitchen.
    The men were around the counter and a simple squared wooden table. They stopped talking when she and Becca entered. Shadow laid his palms on the counter and glared at John. She wondered why.
    John Reyer. He’d changed. His blond hair and the goatee were gone. Something else . . . Now his hair was dark, either black or almost so, short with a widow’s peak.
    Dusk looked to the table where vials and syringes lay and felt the monster stir.
    “What are you on?” George asked without preamble, motioning her to the chair.
    She shrugged. “I don’t know.” Then rubbing her arm where Mikhail had jabbed the needle only as punishment, she said, “He . . . he wouldn’t let them give my anything. Not regularly anyway.” She shuddered. “Dame slipped me some X a few times, but he knew and she wasn’t allowed to give me anything else.”
    John frowned, his eyes piercing her. “Why?”
    “He wanted me to know . . . ” She sniffed and