Page 232 of The Night Shift

She watches me fall with a kind of detached amusement. “See you in a bit.”

I don’t see it coming, whatever she hits me with. I only feel it. Cold and heavy against my skull. Searing white pain.

Then everything goes dark.

Chapter 43

Holly

The first thing I notice when I come around is the blinding headache.

It’s sharp and splitting, like someone wedged a crowbar between my temples and twisted it. I can hear someone moaning. My body is shaking with chills. I can’t move my hands. Or my legs.

They’re tied tight. The rope bites into my wrists, slick with sweat, my ankles cinched to the legs of the chair. The metal frame creaks when I test it, but nothing gives. I blink hard against the throb in my head, willing the haze to clear.

Shapes start to form. Light slants in from a broken window, fractured through dust, and — what the fuck?

Theo?

My heart stutters in my chest. He’s slouched in a matching chair, his long legs bound at the ankles, one arm pinned behind him, the other tucked into the sling. At first, I think he's managed to stalk me all the way here, that he's dragged himself into the same hell I’m in out of devotion or insanity, but then I see the blood.

So much blood. Dried in thick, rust-colored streaks down his face. Some of it is caked in his curls. A deep gash slices across thebridge of his nose. His lower lip is split. His sling is streaked in red too, though it doesn’t look like the damage is from the injury itself, just external.

He lifts his head, and when he sees me, he tries to smile. He looks like shit, but my goodness, does that smile still manage to melt my heart.

“Holly?” his voice is sandpaper rough. “Am I dead? Is this…heaven?” His eyes move over me, and the joke drains instantly. “Baby, you’re hurt,” he says, even though he looks ten times worse than I feel.

I want to reach out and touch him.

My throat hurts when I talk. “How…what…why are you here?”

He swallows, the motion visible all the way down his neck. “The last thing I remember…was being at my flat after our date…and then everything went dark.”

“Cami?”

He nods.

I force myself to push past the panic.

“Okay.” My voice is steadier than I feel. “We’re gonna get out of here, all right? I’m going to get you out of here.” My eyes sweep over him again, cataloging injuries like I’m back in the ER. “Any acute pain? Are you bleeding anywhere I can’t see? Any dizziness? Nausea?”

His eyes stay on me like he’s memorizing something. Like he’s got all the time in the world. “I don’t think so, love.”

Tears bite at the backs of my eyes. I try to blink them away, but one slips down my cheek anyway.

“I’ve missed you,” he adds with a wounded smile.

My face crumples. Another tear follows the first, then another. I don’t stop them. I can’t. I just look at him — at the bruises, the cuts, the blood — and all I can think is that Ishould’ve listened. From the beginning. He told me it could be Cami. He had said the words out loud, and I didn’t believe him.

Because back then, I couldn’t come up with a single reason why she’d do something like this. I still can’t.

But that doesn’t matter now. None of it does. What matters is that he’s here. And I’m here. And I’m going to get him out even if it kills me.

I shift, trying to move my hands. The rope grinds against my raw skin. I test my legs. Same result. I try scooting my chair forward. The front legs catch on the uneven concrete, and I nearly tip forward, barely catching myself with a grunt.

“Theo,” I say quickly, “try to loosen the knots on your wrist. If you turn a little, maybe you can reach mine. Or I can reach yours. Just —”

The sound of a door opening makes me stop talking. Cami walks in.