I didn’t know what I was leaning against, but I could feel the cold chill of cement beneath my fingers and legs, could hear a steady dripping in the distance that wasn’t familiar.
Struggling against the pain coursing through me, my mind raced, the confusion ebbing back as memory rushed forward.
My eyes were locked on Callan and Jacob down in the pit, the arena filled with the chorus of the audience’s voices, my heart hammering as tears slipped down my cheeks, both fear and relief holding me hostage.
But in the moment I’d allowed myself to believe that everyone I cared for was safe, I’d missed the danger that crept up behind me, didn’t expect the attack until I heard the muffled shots of a gun and felt something hit the back of my head.
Struggling again, I forced my eyes to crack open, every beat of my heart a hammer against my skull. Breath shuddered out of me, the room spinning one way and then another, my stomach threatening to spill out everything churning inside it as I fought to focus on my surroundings.
Nothing was recognizable. Not the stretch of cement floors, the single set of metal stairs leading up to a heavy door. Not the industrial beams above my head, or the dirty windows that lined the tops of four walls of a room that looked like a warehouse.
Hope bloomed in my chest that I was still in the outer shell of the arena, but as the minutes ticked past without a sound, that hoped died a slow death.
Outside the windows, the sky was black, and the only light I could see by was the subtle glow of moonlight spilling inside.
I tried to push away from the wall, but fell back when pain crashed over me, the pounding in my head so violent that bile shot up my throat.
Tears streamed down my cheeks, my teeth gritting as I shoved forward again. Dizzy, my movement was uncoordinated, my body falling back as shaky breath poured from my lungs.
The door above the stairs popped open, and my eyes lifted to see a shadow moving down, fear trapping me in place from my inability to lift so much as hand to defend myself.
Tracking the shadow as it ran down the stairs and approached me, I tensed in place, my eyes refusing to focus, my heart a drum beating in my throat.
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
Confused at the soft lilt of a female voice, I almost laughed at the ridiculous statement. I thought the pain had driven me mad, the fear scrambling my thoughts until I felt the wrong emotions, that I was imagining the person beside me rather than her actually being there.
Forcing my lips apart, I sucked in a breath against the pain, my throat dry and sticky, my voice so gritty it didn’t sound like mine.
“I don’t even know where here is.”
A warm hand touched my face, crept back to examine my skull. When I cried out in pain and jerked from the soft touch, all I heard was her shifting her position beside me, the room too dark to see her face.
“Here is the trap that’s being set for Callan,” she explained, “and I have no way of warning him. Not if I hope to get you out as well.”
I forced myself to keep breathing, to calm my thoughts as if that would make the beat of my heart less painful.
Her hand moved away from my hair.
“You’re bleeding, but I don’t think your skull is fractured. Can you move at all?”
The regret was instant when I tried to shake my head.
“No.” I glanced up at her. “Who are you?”
“A friend.”
Closing my eyes, I had no choice but to believe her. For a moment, I let my thoughts drift, realization slamming into me that we’d all been distracted by one threat, while failing to recognize another.
“Moritze,” I guessed, not sure the woman would follow the direction of my disjointed thoughts.
“Who else?” she bit out, disgust obvious in her voice.
“The fucking lowlife. He’s worse than his father. We should have hunted him down a long time ago.”
“We didn’t think he’d do this.”
Unsure why I was trying to explain myself, I clenched my fists, focused on the way my fingernails dug into my palm in an effort to ignore the pounding in my head.
“It’s my fault,” she answered. “I somehow missed what he was planning. Callan and Franklin were caught off guard because of me.”
As time crept forward, my thoughts grew clearer. Opening