deeply through her teeth.
“You’re doing it wrong,” the whiny voice snapped. “You’re supposed to inhale through your nose. It’s a filter. Are you sure you’re a scientist? You don’t seem to know very much.”
Alexia’s eyes popped open, followed quickly by her mouth. Luckily, she saw the gleam in his beady eyes before she spit a word of defense.
She clamped her lips shut.
“I’m not surprised, actually,” he mused, contemplating the slab of bloody red steak on his fork. “Disappointed, but after your lack of progress these few days, not surprised at all.”
Shifting that same contemplative stare to her face, he wrapped his fat lips around that huge chunk of meat and chewed. A trail of blood dripped down the side of his mouth, over his receding chin, then plopped on the front of his white shirt. He didn’t seem to notice.
He was waiting for her to rise to the bait.
Alexia refused.
His eyes gleamed, as if the more defiance she showed, the happier he was.
“I’d have thought a woman like yourself, with all those fancy degrees and who’s made a show of thumbing her nose at her family, would be a little smarter.”
Alexia’s blood froze. She’d figured this was all about her research. But if he knew who her family was, that changed things. Was this really about creating an anger switch? Or did it have something to do with her father? If the latter, why the elaborate charade?
“Please,” she said, trying to sound reasonable and calm instead of freaked out and frenzied. “Just let me go. I can’t do what you’re asking. You’re smart enough to have researched the technology yourself. You know the equipment you have here isn’t adequate. The research isn’t cohesive enough to work with.”
Yes, she was playing fast and loose with the terms smart and research there. But she figured saving her life was a good enough excuse to employ a few lies and fake flattery.
“You’re on the verge of a breakthrough. You just did an interview on TV last month. It’s in the papers, other scientists are commenting on it in their blogs,” he said, shaking his finger at her as if she had done something naughty.
Blogs? Seriously? Alexia’s nerves stretched tight, ravaged from alternately fearing for her life and peering into corners looking for the hidden cameras that would prove this was all some elaborate, sick hoax.
“So there’s no reason you can’t take the same research and give it a little twist. Passion is just as easily channeled into anger as it is into something as trivial as sex.”
“I told you, it’s not a simple matter of flipping a switch. My research has been focused on the physical body and healing. Not on the emotions. I don’t know how to tap into anger, fury or any of the other destructive emotions you want.”
His contemplative stare didn’t change. He didn’t even blink. Maybe he was more snake than rat.
“Perhaps you just need a little motivation,” he decided. That damn finger still tapping, he tilted his head to one side as he gave her body a thorough inspection. Her skin crawled as if someone had just dipped her in a vat of lice.
“You’re a pretty woman. Robert—” he indicated the henchman who most often guarded Alexia “—has expressed an interest in your charms. Perhaps I should reward his exemplary service, hmm?”
Her eyes blurry with fear, Alexia’s gaze slid to the henchman, whose own beady eyes were gleaming with lust. Bile rose in her throat, but she was too paralyzed with terror to even throw up.
“Of course, Robert did go a little far with his last reward,” the rat continued in that same contemplative tone. “She was useless to us when he was through. It’s hard to see much through the snowstorm, but if you look out your window, you can see her grave just on the other side of the electric fence.”
Black dots danced in front of Alexia’s eyes, her breathing so shallow she didn’t think any oxygen was reaching her brain.
“I’m more inclined to wait on the reward,” he said slowly, pausing to sip his wine, giving her time to take a small step back from the panicked cliff she’d been about to dive over. “Myself, I find rape a poor persuasion. If the mind is broken, the body isn’t good for much except more of the same. And I need your mind in good working order.”
Alexia wasn’t sure if her mind would ever work again, even as it shied away from the hideous images she couldn’t stop from running through it.
“So many possibilities to consider,” he mused, now tapping his lower lip as if that would help him decide. “I’ll have to sleep on it and let you know in the morning.”
His smile slid into a smirk. “In the meantime, I suggest you trot on over to the lab and see what you can do now that you’re a little more motivated.”
“You can’t do this,” she breathed, half denial, half prayer.
“I can do anything I want,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Go. Robert will see you to the lab.”
Alexia got to her feet, subtly resting her fingertips on the edge of the table until her knees stopped shaking enough to support her.
“Go on,” the rat ordered, flicking his fingers toward the door. “Get to work.”
Yeah, she decided, trying to find the fury through the choking waves of fear threatening to overwhelm her.
He was definitely a snake.
FOURTEEN HOURS LATER, Alexia finally understood what it was to have fear leach every ounce of energy from a body.
She was completely numb.
She cradled her head in her arms and tried to stop her teeth from chattering.
From her bare toes—made colder every time she glanced at the window to see the white blizzard of snow swirling outside—to the top of her aching head, she was ice.
Desperate for a focal point other than the hideous visions her captor had stuck in her head, she had resorted to digging into the books. Somewhere around hour three, she had filled a notebook. Not anything that’d produce the results he wanted. But maybe enough to make it look as if she could, which might buy her some time.
The words were a blur on the page now.
It took Alexia a minute to realize that was because she was crying, her tears making the ink run.
A sound, barely a whisper of the wind, caught her attention. Her body braced. Tension, so tight even her hair hurt, gripped her. Barely daring to breathe, she shifted her head just a bit in her cradling arms so she could peek over her shoulder.
Crap.
She blinked, trying to focus on the figure standing inside a window that should be too tiny for a body to fit through. The freezing air wrapped around her like a shroud, making her blink again.
