Sin of Silence (Sinner's Empire #1) - Nikita Slater Page 0,9

right now, in this dirty little basement, then she was going to do it with whatever dignity she had. She would do it with professional pride, knowing that she was doing the right thing.

“No,” she said simply.

He pulled the gun back, and her eyes drifted automatically closed as she felt death rush toward her. An explosion burst through her head, followed by bright flashes behind her eyelids, and for a split second she thought she was dead. As pain razed through her skull, she realized he hadn’t actually shot her, but hit her instead.

Anger rushed through her and she balled up her fists. She opened her eyes and glared up at him. “Next time you hit me, you may as well kill me, because I will kick your fucking ass.”

She saw a flash of surprise in the clear depths of his eyes, and there was a slight lift of his lips into a smirk. He was amused by her words. Probably wasn’t used to someone like her fighting back. He probably preferred his victims docile until he killed them. Well, he wasn’t going to get that with Shaun.

She was a fighter.

He sat on his haunches and contemplated his captive. Then he leaned over, brushing her arm with his, making her jerk back, and pressed the gun to the head of his other victim. The man he’d most likely beaten until his heart had given out. Though the gun was pressed to the skull of the man lying on the floor, her captor still stared at her, speaking with his face and eyes.

Despair rushed through her. What should she do? She couldn’t actually let the man be murdered right in front of her, could she? Not if there was something she could do. She’d made an oath to do no harm. Yet, would she be doing more harm by helping? Patching him up just enough that he could be awake for his own death?

She glanced over the man and reassessed his injuries. The main issue was a suspected coronary. She couldn’t know for certain what was going on inside him, but her best estimate was that this man had no more than a few hours left without intervention. A lot could happen in two hours. Maybe by some miracle, the hospital had managed to alert the military to her abduction, and maybe they were casting a net in hopes of finding her. It sucked that she wasn’t within the city limits anymore but had been driven out to the countryside. Maybe someone saw the van and reported it. Maybe, just maybe the military was on its way.

She couldn’t let the patient die if there was even the glimmer of a chance that she could save him. She sighed deeply and nodded. “Okay, I’ll do what I can. But I don’t know if it’ll be enough for you to talk to him. He’s pretty far gone.”

She hoped if the man on the floor was listening at all, that he was capable of understanding the conversation taking place over his prone body. Shaun thought it would be best for him to stay unconscious, even if that meant he had to pretend. The longer he was unresponsive, the longer he and Shaun would stay alive.

Her kidnapper tucked his gun back into the holster and stood. He took a few steps away and leaned against a stone wall, his arms crossed in front of him in a negligent pose. Shaun suspected he could be across the room and on top of her within seconds if she made any wrong moves. He made his position very clear, in both his posture and the hard stare that never wavered from Shaun; he wasn’t budging until he got what he wanted.

She worked silently for several minutes, crushing up a handful of aspirins and mixing the white powder with some water before slowly trickling the liquid into her patient’s mouth. She used her finger to rub the extra mixture from the spoon onto his gums, where the skin was thin and the blood vessels were close to the surface, allowing the medication to reach his bloodstream faster. He didn’t swallow, which meant he was unconscious again. She checked his pulse. It was worryingly faint.

There wasn’t much more she could do about his heart.

She turned to the rest of him, tugging on clothes, and inventorying and treating injuries, until the basement faded away and it was just her and her patient. His body, his injuries spoke to her, even while