by Julia Sykes
I struggled to keep from hyperventilating, worried even the tiniest movement would jar the gun against my ribs, sending a bullet searing through my lungs and up into my heart. My mind had been frozen in those first few minutes of shock, but it suddenly came whirring to life again as all of the gruesome possibilities of what might happen to me ran across it. Gathering up my courage, I forced the words out of my mouth.
“Where are we going? What do you want from me?” I struggled to keep my voice steady, desperate not to betray my terror to the man who held my life in his hands. It was obvious to me that he was unbalanced, and his evident desperation only made him that much more volatile.
It was a mistake to speak. The unyielding metal was only pressed harder into my ribs, making me wince as pain flared.
“I didn’t say you could talk,” the voice said sharply. “Just keep driving. Turn right here.”
My mouth snapped closed, and I pursed my lips together to hold in my questions. I followed his directions, his voice the only sound breaking through the tense silence. Between the pain and my stark terror, my mind was threatening to succumb to hysteria. I ruthlessly held it at bay, focusing solely on following the man’s clipped instructions. I reached for the cold void within me, that place where my heart had existed so many years ago. With long-practiced ease, I allowed cool logic to govern me rather than giving in to emotion. Emotions were volatile and sure to bring nothing but pain. They were useless and destructive, and I had never been more grateful of their absence within me than I was now. A clear head would be my only chance of getting out of this alive.
“Pull into the garage here,” the man ordered after what seemed to be both the longest and shortest drive of my life. My stomach was in knots as I drove up the ramp into the dimly-lit parking garage. It was deserted; there was no hope for help here.
“Park here, and then get out of the car. Don’t you dare make a sound,” his voice was a threatening growl.
As soon as my hands left the steering wheel, they started shaking hard, making up for the forced stillness from their grip on the wheel. The pressure of the gun left my side, and I breathed a sigh of relief. But my reprieve from my fear didn’t last long. I knew I was still in easy range, and I didn’t dare try anything stupid. Like running away as fast as I could, as my mind was screaming at me to do.
I shoved back my instinct to flee. Giving in to primal urges was a sure way to get myself killed.
I heard the car door slam, and then the muzzle of the gun was at my lower back.
“Walk.” The man prodded me along with it, and I didn’t hesitate to comply. I moved carefully, trying to walk at a slow, even pace, avoiding sudden movements that might make it look as though I was trying to run.
We arrived at a heavy door with a keypad set into the wall beside it. “Press nine-three-two-eight,” he said in a clipped voice. His tone was strained again, and I couldn’t help but wonder at it. Was he uneasy about what he was doing to me? His steady grip on the gun told me that probably wasn’t the case. He needed me for something. His desperation and determination told me that much. Once he had whatever it was he wanted from me, I might be able to appeal to the humanitarian side of him that had been clouded by his intense need.
My mind flitted to what it might be that he needed from me. I fiercely hoped it wasn’t as horrific as what I was imagining.
I punched in the code, nearly pressing the wrong keys with my trembling fingers. Even though my logical side was in control, I wasn’t impervious to the adrenaline that came along with extreme fear.
“You’re going to have to have steadier hands than that, doc,” my captor said cryptically. The door buzzed and there was a clicking sound as it unlocked. “Inside.” He pressed the gun into my back for emphasis.
We walked down a short corridor to an elevator. With his free hand, the man reached around me and punched the call button. The doors pinged open, and I meekly walked into the small compartment that would take me god knew where. The walls of the elevator were mirrored, and I could see my captor for the first time.
He was young, maybe in his mid-twenties, with closely-cropped dark hair and a hard-edged jaw. His mouth was set in a grim line, but his brown eyes betrayed the same strain that I had detected in his voice. The man was tense, upset. And that scared me more than anything. A man on the edge could be more dangerous than a cold-blooded criminal.
I caught my own reflection as he punched the button for the ninth floor. My grey eyes were wide, the fear that was making my heart hammer in my chest evident in every strained line of my pale face. But other than that, I looked completely normal: light brown hair pulled back into a tight bun and my collared shirt and slacks perfectly straight and wrinkle-free. The contrast with my wild expression was jarring.
All too soon, the doors opened, and I was being ushered down another hallway. We stopped outside an apartment. The paint on the door was cracked from the pervasive damp that left the hallway smelling faintly of mildew. We clearly weren’t in one of the nicer parts of town.
He fumbled with his keys, reaching around me to unlock the door. Once he had kicked it open, he gave me a particularly hard shove, and I stumbled across the threshold.
The door closed behind me with a sound of finality, and I couldn’t help the fine tremor that rippled across my cool skin.
“Sean!” The man called out. There was no answer. “Sean!” Fear colored his tone this time. He pushed me forward, guiding me towards a bedroom. When I saw what was inside, I stopped in my tracks. But my captor wasn’t having it, and he shoved me into the room.
There was a man lying on the bed. His face was pale, contrasting shockingly with his dark auburn hair. His eyes were closed, and, most alarming of all, there was a dark stain on the front of his shirt and a crimson pool soaked the white sheets beneath his left shoulder.
My instincts as a doctor kicked in, and I momentarily forgot my dire situation. I rushed toward the man who was lying prone on the bed, quickly taking inventory of the source of the bleeding. Strips of cloth had been tied around his upper arm. Only they had already soaked through, and they were wrapped far too tightly. That was a good way to lose a limb.
I rounded on the dark-haired man.
“What happened?” I demanded.
“He was shot,” my captor answered simply.
I glared at him. “Then why isn’t he at a hospital?”
The man glared back. “I can’t take him to a hospital. You’ll have to fix him.”
“What?” I half-shrieked. “He needs medical attention. Urgent medical attention. What do you expect me to do? I’m a pediatrician, for god’s sake!”
“Fuck!” He cursed, his brow furrowing as he ran a hand over his buzzed hair in agitation. Then his eyes narrowed, and he leveled the gun at me. “You went to med school, so you’ll have to do. Besides, I don’t have time to snatch another doc. Fix him.”
I blanched as I was once again in the line of fire, but I plowed on. “I can’t,” I insisted. “You have to take him to a hospital, or he’s going to die. He’s lost too much blood.”
The man’s face twisted into a snarl, and he cocked the gun with an ominous click. “We’re not going to a hospital. If you tell me you can’t save him, I’ll kill you now.”
I swallowed hard. I knew there wasn’t anything I could do. I was going to die. I looked at the bleeding man’s pale face and felt a twinge of sadness. He was going to die.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I can’t do anything for him. Not here. Not without any equipment.”
My captor’s expression was anguished. “What if you have this?” He asked desperately, reaching into his large jacket pocket. He pulled out my first aid kit that I kept stashed in my car.
My heart leapt. I had medical gloves in there, tools for sewing stitches, and gauze to wrap a wound. If I could save this man, even if there was a slim chance, I had to. This was about more than the gun that threatened me; this was about my deep-seated desire to preserve human life.
I held out my hand insistently. “Give it to me,” I demanded. “How long ago was he shot?”
The man bristled at my domineering tone, but he was going to have to deal with it. His friend would likely bleed out without my help, and he knew it.
“About two hours ago. It didn’t look that bad, but it won’t stop fucking bleeding. He was conscious an hour ago.”
I would have spared him a glare for being such a fucking idiot, but I was too focused on my task. My fear had taken a back seat to my concern for saving this man’s life. Despite the circumstances, I wasn’t about to watch him die. I couldn’t live with myself if I allowed that. And my captor probably wouldn’t allow me to live if I failed.
The man was lucky I had more equipment stocked in that small box than would usually be found in a standard first aid kit. I sanitized my hands and pulled on my medical gloves. Even though I wanted to save the man, I wasn’t keen to put myself at risk of communicable diseases. I pulled out my utility scissors so I could cut away the makeshift bandaging.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed my captor stiffen. “If you hurt him, I’ll shoot you where you stand,” he threatened.
“Well, thank god he’s unconscious, or this would hurt like a bitch,” I snapped, irritated at the pointless interruption. “As it is, it’ll hurt like hell when he wakes up.”
I didn’t spare my captor another glance, but instead focused on my patient. I hadn’t been lying; I was a pediatrician. But that didn’t mean I didn’t have a good idea of what I needed to do. As soon as the bandages were removed, a fresh wave of blood seeped out of the open wound. My captor had been right: as bullet wounds went, it could have been much worse. There was a long furrow cut deep into his bicep. It wasn’t a through-and-through, and, even better, the bullet wasn’t lodged in his body.
But what seemed fairly superficial could quickly turn lethal. If his brachial artery had been hit, he would have bled out long before I had gotten here. As it was, if blood loss didn’t kill him, an infection most likely would.
My fingers were steady as I cleaned the area with iodine. My residual terror had been completely overridden by reason and clear logic. Everything else fell away as I focused on my primary objectives: prevent infection, stop the bleeding. With practiced ease, I closed the torn skin with neat sutures. True, the cuts I usually patched up weren’t anything near this serious, but the principal was the same. When I was satisfied with my work, I re-wrapped the wound with proper bandages and gauze from my med kit. Finally, I grabbed the two extra pillows on the bed and placed them under his arm in order to elevate it.
Sighing, I sat back. He had lost a hell of a lot of blood before I had gotten to him, but he should make it through. His skin was still shockingly pale and cool to the touch, but his chest rose and fell in an even rhythm.
“He needs more blankets to prevent him from going into shock, and he’ll need antibiotics to fight off an infection,” I told my captor. I had almost forgotten he was there, but now that I was no longer absorbed by my work, the reality of my situation came crashing back down on me. I suddenly felt utterly drained as the adrenaline that had been driving me seeped from my system. My voice was hollow when I addressed him again.
“I did what you wanted.” I looked up at him. The slackened lines of his face betrayed relief, but there was still a hint of distress in the dark brown depths of his eyes. It gave me a spark of hope that he might not kill me after all. “Will you let me go now? I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
He frowned down at me, uncertain. His hand that was holding the gun twitched, as though he was tempted to go ahead and eliminate me. My sense of relief when he didn’t was short-lived when he reached into his pocket and pulled out a syringe. I tried to jerk away as my panic spiked again, but he caught me easily, jamming the needle into my arm.
“I still need you in case something goes wrong,” he explained dispassionately.
Warmth seeped into my veins as the sedative entered my system. The sensation might have been pleasant if I wasn’t so terrified of losing consciousness. But the soporific fog rolled over me with insidious intent. Fear finally triumphed over logic, but the scream that resounded through my skull never left my lips. The world swirled around me, and the sweet drug pulled me mercilessly into the dark waters.
My mind was strangely fuzzy as I stirred to wakefulness. I never had any difficulty awakening in the morning, but my eyelids were heavy with sleep. I was tempted to fall back under. My alarm clock wasn’t beeping; I should have another few minutes to stay in bed.
But there was an insistent sense of wrongness that pricked at the corners of my mind, and the unease roused me. Sunlight seared my eyes when I forced them open, and I tried to shade them with my hand to give them a chance to adjust. Only, I was stopped short as my wrist jerked against something hard and unyielding. Dread churned to life in my gut, and I twisted my neck so I could look back at my hand. My left wrist was handcuffed to a metal bedpost.
Everything came flooding back: the kidnapping, the dying man, the world spinning around me as blackness took me. I gasped as the terror that had claimed me in my last seconds of consciousness came roaring back to life. I jerked at my hand reflexively, desperate to free myself. My efforts were rewarded by nothing but bruising pain.
There was a low moan beside me, and I looked over to see that I was lying next to the man whose life I had saved the night before. Through my terror, I noticed that the white bandages were colored by crimson splotches.
Again, I harnessed the cold, clinical side of myself, embracing rationality rather than succumbing to panic. Attending to the injured man would grant me the focus I needed to avoid my volatile emotions.
I rolled onto my side and propped myself on my elbow awkwardly, reaching out for him with my free hand. I needed to check on the wound, so I began to slowly unwrap the gauze from around his arm. He was completely still as I worked, likely still unconscious from the blood loss, but some color had returned to his cheeks.
I took a moment to more thoroughly examine the man whose life I had saved. Now that he no longer had the pallor of death upon him, his skin was lightly tanned. His jaw was strong and masculine, covered in rough stubble that gave him a rugged aura. His dark auburn hair glinted hints of gold in the morning light, which cast shadows beneath his angular cheekbones.
My fingertips inadvertently brushed against his bare skin as I unwound the bandages. Although the touch was light, his deep green eyes snapped open in response. He moved faster than I could comprehend, and I suddenly found myself on my back, his weight pressing me down into the mattress. He held my free hand above my head, pinning it there. His forearm was against my neck, applying pressure to my windpipe.
“Who are you?” He growled fiercely. “Where am I?”
My mind was two steps behind, still shocked by the sudden turn of events. My mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water as I struggled for an answer. But he wasn’t pleased by my hesitation, and he pressed his arm down harder, nearly cutting off my breath entirely.
I jerked fruitlessly against his grip on my wrist. My cool calm had abandoned me entirely. As much as I might have told myself that logic would be the key to my survival in this situation, the primal part of my brain was much stronger than the rational one. My fear was a toxic thing, burning away my ability to form coherent thoughts.
“Who are you?” He asked again, half-shouting this time. His green eyes were ablaze with some inner fire, a furious inferno that threatened to swallow me up.
“Cl-Claudia,” I gasped for breath. “Claudia Ellers.”
Impossible: The Original Trilogy (Monster, Traitor, and Avenger) is now available!
Also by Julia Sykes
The Impossible Trilogy
Monster
Traitor
Avenger
Impossible: The Original Trilogy
Angel (A Companion Book to Monster)
The Impossible Novels
Savior (An Impossible N
ovel)
Knight (An Impossible Novel)
Mentor (An Impossible Novella)
Rogue (An Impossible Novel) (Coming Soon!)
Dark Grove Plantation (The Complete Collection)
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