herself to stillness, to silence, while her heartbeat shuddered uncomfortably against her rib cage, Kaitlin desperately wanted to know what was happening. But she was afraid to find out. She was afraid to move.
She was lying down, curled up in a fetal position with her knees almost to her chin, and she hurt everywhere—head, body, skin, and all the way to the roots of her hair. Pain lashed out each time she attempted a shallow breath, that pain just barely tolerable.
The urge came to whimper, shout, cry. But not to die. No matter what, she did not want to die, or be dead already.
“Can you answer me?” he asked.
Above her pounding heart she perceived another beat—slower than her own, steady against her shoulder blades. Puffs of air skittered along her neck, telling her that the guy was very close to her. She nearly cried out against this kind of intrusion as a fresh wave of panic struck.
Struggling to keep her eyes open, she looked straight ahead at something that had to be a length of chocolate-brown fabric. She was almost positive it wasn’t dirt.
Fire sang through her skull when she tried to place even that one small thing. Her lungs ached. Her eye sockets throbbed. She welcomed the discomfort because those things had to mean she was alive.
Focus.
The brown surface had white lines that looked like stitching. White thread. She was on a blanket. This was good. She hadn’t been left in the park for early morning foot traffic to find.
More relief and another round of chills accompanied a further perception. She wasn’t cold. She rested on a blanket, and the man who had rescued her was here. She remembered the hardness of his chest in what still seemed like a dream. Though she had stopped shaking, she felt like she might throw up.
“Can you speak?” he asked again.
Was he casually posing a question when she had no idea where she was, who he was or what had happened to her? When she couldn’t have uttered one word if she’d wanted to? Her throat was tight, raw and constricted, because a fiend had chomped on it.
Yes. A fiend. I remember that, too.
Swallowing was a chore. Something tight had been wrapped around her throat, from which a distinctive smell arose.
Gauze?
It was a scent out of childhood memory—of scraped knees and knuckles. In this instance, it was the smell of a treated bandage and implied that not only had she survived, but the man beside her had to be a good guy. Still...hospitals didn’t have brown blankets or intimate sleeping accommodations.
More panic threatened with a dangerous undertow. Why hadn’t she been taken to a hospital?
Kaitlin waited to find out if she was wrong about her rescuer and if this guy might have saved her for nefarious purposes of his own. She’d have to rally somehow. She would have to run.
“You’re in my room,” her companion explained, his voice producing a familiar tingling vibration inside her chest. “I didn’t know where else to take you. Didn’t know where you belonged. In truth, taking you anywhere else might have been bad for both of us.”
His voice had the mesmerizing quality of a dangerous animal temporarily appeased. While the words themselves were gentle, they were underscored by a hint of something scary that chilled Kaitlin to the bone.
She gasped and managed to suck in a lungful of daylight-filled air. Stripes of light filled with dancing dust particles lay across the blanket beside her, she now saw. Sunlight was seeping through curtains or shutters.
She withheld a shout of relief. Daylight would chase the nightmares away; keep the horrors out of reach.
Any time now.
“Hospitals are out of the question,” her host continued. “I’m afraid they don’t deal well with people like us. Their physicians wouldn’t know what to do or what we’d need.”
People like us. Kaitlin hoped to God he meant doctorate students without health insurance. She hoped with all her might this guy would turn out to be from the campus police.
She was twenty-three years old and felt terribly small and inadequate. More than anything, she wanted to hear her parents’ voices. Without the people she loved, sunlight and fresh blankets weren’t completely normal things or as comforting as they could be.
She fought back tears.
Squeaking bedsprings made her heart flutter. Her center of gravity shifted as the man behind her moved on the bed.
“You will heal, though it will take some time. The worst is over, but there will be more trials to come. That can’t be helped. That’s just the way it is.”
“No,” Kaitlin sputtered with a ferocious effort. No more of this.
“Luckily, you rode some of this out while unconscious. Our bodies are quick to repair and you’ll soon find this to be true. Your body is trying to adapt right now.”
Kaitlin moved her lips. “Thank you.”
This had to be the man who had come to her aid in the park, and had put her on a blanket. Whatever else came to pass, she was grateful for that.
“You’re welcome,” he said hesitantly, sounding both relieved and wary.
“Angel,” she managed to get out, her throat throbbing like crazy with each uttered syllable. “You?”
His response came in the form of a deep cascade of laughter that sent more dust motes dancing. “No angel,” he said. “Not by a long shot. I’m Michael. Can you tell me your name?”
“Kaitlin.”
“Right now you’re still very sick, Kaitlin. But it’s a new day and you’re mending.”
Taking a chance, encouraged by his kind words, Kaitlin unfurled her fingers slowly, glad when they soaked in the blanket’s softness.
“Don’t worry about anything right now,” Michael soothed. “Rest. Heal some more. Get used to what’s going on in your body.”
Squeezing her eyes shut, Kaitlin whispered, “Afraid.”
“I know.”
“Home.”
“In a while,” he said.
“Home,” she repeated.
“As soon as you’re feeling better, I’ll take you there.”
His words were immensely reassuring. Why, though, when he could have an agenda of his own?
“Sleep now,” he suggested. “Heal.”
“Heal,” Kaitlin echoed, wondering how she could sleep when she had been mauled by a monster and nearly killed. She would be screaming right now if her throat worked properly, and be running if she had the use of her legs.
“Sleep a while longer,”
