Page 77 of Hunted

“Alright, Miss Sinclair. In a moment, we’re going to give you the room, and you’ll change into this gown here”—he held up a sky blue hospital gown, paper-thin and scratchy-textured—“after which my nurse will come in and wheel you on over to the OR.”

“I’ll walk.”

“You’ll—alright, then. A nurse will show you to the OR, and you’ll go to sleep, won’t feel a thing, and will wake up good as new.”

I huffed a laugh. “Sure, doc. New and broken all at once.”

Doctor Rick didn’t know how to take that one. He frowned, placed the gown on the bed beside me, and opened the door, indicating my men were to escort themselves out.

My men. Funny how quickly a phrase like that had popped into my head.

Except—none of the three moved.

“Orders, Rick,” Van said.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I grumbled, leaping to my feet.

All four men stared as I kicked my boots off and peeled out of my black long-sleeve tee.

“Uh,” Doctor Rick stammered, before he was promptly thrown out of his own office by a glaring Pearce.

I removed the rest of my clothes quickly but unashamedly, pointedly ignoring the trio of gaping buffoons, then donned the sensory nightmare of a gown.

“Ready?” Van asked softly, closer than expected.

“Wait,” I snapped, not willing to leave my clothes in a haphazard pile on the floor. I bent to retrieve them, but a tattooed arm beat me to it.

Pearce placed the pile on the bed and started folding while I just stared up at him, completely flummoxed by his hot-and-cold behaviour—at least until he reached for my underwear.

My hand darted out, snatching them from the pile as he chuckled.

“Allow me,” a deep, rough voice rumbled from my left.

Beckett plucked them out of my hand and folded them into a neat square, placing it atop Pearce’s finished pile.

“What?” He shrugged. “It’s not like I haven’t held a pair of your underwear before, Adelaide.”

I blushed furiously, snatching the neatly folded pair from the top of the pile, only to tuck it beneath my freshly folded shirt.

Van laughed softly, opening the door.

A nurse stood just beyond the threshold, poised and youthful, and completely out of place in a setting such as this. She turned on her heel neatly, padding down the hall, then round to the right in her immaculate Dolce and Gabbana sneakers.

I guess that’s why she willingly worked here—Blackwing paid her for her silence.

I didn’t wait for permission, nor for the clacking of footsteps behind me. I trudged after the nurse, feeling like I was marching to my own execution rather than the promise of freedom.

Doctor Rick waited in the operating room, clad in his sterile surgical attire—fitting since he was about to make me sterile, too—and instructed Nurse Rachael to get me into position on the table.

I followed her instructions to a tee, lay back and waited for sleep to find me. Someone placed an IV in my arm, someone else stuck an oxygen mask over my face, and a third someone else asked me to count backwards from ten.

I twisted, meeting a familiar green gaze, then started counting.

“Dix, neuf, huit, sept, six, cinq…”

[ 26 ]

DEK