“He’s gone.”

Case lets out a long breath and then slips his dick inside me. It’s painful, he goes too fast. But when I cry out, he stops and lets me settle. After a few seconds, he begins again. Slower this time. Softer than anything I’ve ever felt. I grab his shoulders and try to squeeze, but I have no strength. I open my mouth to ask why I’m so weak, but Case is there with his lips again, his tongue twisting up my thoughts and making me confused.

He flips me around, spooning me from behind, and then his cock fills me up again. He reaches around my waist and his fingers find my clit, strumming me like the song he played last night. The music plays in my head and my excitement builds with each stroke of his fingers and thrust of his hips.

“Where is Garrett, Syd?”

“He’s gone.”

“Where did he go?”

I’m about to answer, but the climax I’ve been driving towards is building. I hold my breath and press back against his body, into his cock, wanting him to take me deeper. The moment I find my release, he pulls out and spills his hot come all over my back.

“Did it feel good, Syd?”

“Mmmmm.”

“Now concentrate,” he says, wrapping his arms around me and pushing his mouth into my neck. “Where did Garrett go? Where can I find him?”

“You don’t need to find him,” I say back, feeling so, so sleepy. “I heard the trigger. He’s on his way here.”

Case throws me aside and is off the bed in an instant. But the time I gather enough sense to open my eyes, he’s already dressed at the end of the bed.

“Where are you going?” I slur out. “I need to go with you.”

“You’re staying here,” he says.

“No!” My heart begins to beat wildly as I try to sit up. I don’t even come close to sitting before I am slumped over, my face in the pillow. “You drugged me. You drugged me again, and you promised you wouldn’t.”

Case leans down and whispers in my ear, pulling my hair so I’m forced to look up at him. “I’ll take care of you when I get back.” And then he releases my hair and my head drops back to the bed.

“But you were nice to me. You said you weren’t going to kill me. You promised not to drug me!” I try to swing my legs out of the bed but he shoves me back.

“I lied, Sydney. But if you stay real still and go back to sleep, you’ll never have to think about it again.”

“Always have an ace in the hole.”

– Case

I turn away from her and hastily get dressed, wondering where Garrett is. How far he’s gotten, what his endgame is. How he’ll play this out.

“Sasha,” Sydney says from the bed.

I whirl around and look at her. Her eyes are drooping pretty bad from the drugs I put in her water. Her head is slick with sweat and she’s lying sideways across the sheets, like she’s been trying to get up while I was lost in thought.

“What?”

“He’s got Sasha.”

My stomach rolls as her words sink in.

“He’s got her and you do not want to know what he’s gonna do with her.”

I reach for Sydney’s hair, fisting it hard and pulling her face towards me. “Where the fuck is he?”

“He’s waiting for you, Case.” Sydney tries a smirk on for size, but it comes off as a grimace. “At the end of the trail.”

I let go of her hair and get up, pulling a thermal shirt on as I jump down the stairs.

Motherfucker. The call. The call Sasha made earlier. That was Garrett. That was the trigger Sydney was talking about—it has to be. She was in on this from the beginning. My ringtone must be a trigger for her. Which means that asshole has been close enough to me to hear it.

I clench my fists as the anger runs through me. But the anticipation is there too. I will end him today. Nothing else matters. Garrett is a dead man.

“In the end it all comes down to what you’re capable of. Rescue means debt. Save yourself and you owe no one.”

– Sydney

I don’t wait for Case to leave. The drugs are taking over and if he comes back to find me rifling through his medications and puts a stop to it, well, that’s the chance I have to take. Because I have about two minutes before I pass out for good and either way I’m dead.

I roll across the bed one more time and reach for the drawer in the nightstand. My hand misses it a few times, but finally I hook a fingertip through the pull and it slides open.

Downstairs a door closes with a slam.

My hand waves around inside the drawer for the first-aid kit and I’m just about to get frustrated when it hits me.

He took it downstairs to bandage my hand.

Fuck. Sixty-seven thousand fucks are running through my head right now. Do I not deserve to catch one break? One?

I roll over again and fall to the floor. I don’t know if I can make it downstairs—

“Syd,” beautiful Garrett says.

Is he Garrett or Case? Who is the man in my head?

“Grab the guns,” he says, the beautiful mountain landscape behind him shimmering. Aspen leaves, yellow, like it’s fall. No, golden. Everything about this dream man is golden.

“Grab his guns, Syd. The ones in the case. Then go downstairs and find the kit. You know what to do. They told you about overdosing in your training.”

I don’t care who that guy is at this point, I’m taking his advice. I grab the gun case and pull myself up. There’s furniture I can lean on to make my way to the door. But as I stand at the top of the hardwood stairs, I have serious doubts I will be able to get down them without breaking my neck.

Sit on your ass and scoot, that guy says, whoever he is.

I plop down and fall forward, my head hitting the banister with a crack. There’s no pain. I’m far too numb from the drugs to even know how badly I’m hurt. I grab hold of the banister and pull myself up again, then scoot down one step at a time. When I finally get to the bottom step I let out an ironic laugh. I got all this way—I can see the kit on the kitchen counter—and I’m gonna die here on the steps. Or maybe reaching for the kit, my hand outstretched—

Shut the fuck up and get over there!

That guy in my head is the one who needs to shut the fuck up, that’s what I think. In fact—I force my legs to stand. My eyes are almost closed, that’s how sleepy I am—I think I’m gonna kill that guy in my head with these guns…

Shit. The guns are up on the steps where I fell over.

I shake my head to try to snap out of the growing lethargy and drop to my hands and knees so I can crawl. My hair drags on the polished wood floor and I have a moment of relief that Case is so neat. No dust bunnies on his floor to soil my hair.

A laugh bursts out at that thought. I’m really fucking losing it.

I make to the bar and stand up. If I open that kit and there’s no antagonist in there to stop this drug, I will die laughing.

It’s in there, a little vial of clear liquid in a tightly sealed container. I rip the metal tab with my teeth, twisting the bottle, peeling it off. And then I rip open a sealed sterile syringe and push the needle into the rubber cap.

Poison training? I took that, right? Garrett told me how much of the drug to use for my body weight when we went over poisoning. I know he did.

But I have no clue. My arms are so heavy. My fingers barely work. So I draw in enough liquid to fill the syringe, pull it out of the rubber top, and stab myself in the upper arm.