“I’ll get you some aspirin, and you need another shot of antibiotics,” Cookie told her.
“Then you should get back to bed, you’re still recovering and you need to rebuild your strength,” Spider told her.
She looked at him, opened her mouth and he could have sworn she was going to ask if he was coming up to stay with her while she slept, but she snapped her lips back together and followed Cookie out of the kitchen.
“I’ll be up in a minute,” he called after her, his Abby was too stubborn to ask for help when she needed it, but right now, he knew she was afraid to be alone. “Someone targeted her specifically, she either knows him or he used a con of some sort to get close to her. In her dreams last night she said that she didn’t know anything. Someone took her for a reason and I think they broke her fingers to try to get her to talk.”
The grave faces of the others indicated they were all on the same page.
“Until we get a handle on this, someone needs to be watching her at all times,” Wolf said.
“I’ll be with her,” Spider said, standing to follow Abby up to her bedroom. “I promised her that I wasn’t walking away this time and I’m not. No one is going to hurt her on my watch.”
Chapter 5
June 18th
10:39 A.M.
“So?” Abigail asked, watching Ryder as he set the blood pressure cuff down. He had checked her vitals, taken her temperature, and received the results from the blood tests they’d had done, now she was waiting for him to tell her how she was doing. She knew how she felt, she was doing better, but she still wanted to make sure that she hadn’t picked up some awful disease while she was imprisoned in Mexico.
“You’re doing much better.” Ryder was crouched before her as she sat on the edge of the bed, his hands rested lightly on her knees, and although she should tell him not to touch her, she didn’t. She didn’t want to lose the comfort his touch brought.
“Temperature is down to normal, vitals are all normal, blood tests all came back …”
“Normal,” she finished for him.
“Right.” Ryder grinned at her. “It’s going to take time to build your strength up so you’re going to need to take things slowly. Once you go back home, you should visit your doctor and get a proper medical professional to check you out. And, Abby,” Ryder’s face and voice had sobered, “I think you should go have a, uh, gynecological exam done.”
Abigail jerked backward.
Why would he say that?
No one had touched her while she’d been held captive.
No one had done … that …. to her.
“Why would you say that?” she demanded. Was he trying to freak her out? Trying to lash out at her? Push her away?
“Honey, I’m not trying to hurt you, and I’m not saying anyone touched you there, but you don’t remember some of the time you were missing, and we don’t know what happened to you during that time.”
Right.
Her fingers.
Absently, she lifted her left hand and looked at her slightly crooked fingers. Had she broken them trying to fight off her attackers or had someone done it to her on purpose?
A flicker of a memory drifted through her mind but when she tried to reach for it, it floated from her grasp.
For the first time since she had been found, she realized that she didn’t have any answers about her abduction. How many times had she wondered why her when she was curled up in that cell? Why had that happened to her? Why hadn’t it been someone else? Not that she would have wished what she went through on anyone else. Now she realized there might have been more to her abduction than she had thought.
“Ryder?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think someone chose me specifically? Was I targeted?”
“Abby …”
“Don’t lie to me, Ryder. After everything you put me through the least you owe me is an honest answer to my question.” She knew she probably wasn’t being fair, from what Kason had told her while they were in the jungle, Ryder had a reason for leaving her, but she knew that if she played the guilt card he would fold like a deck of cards.
“Yes. I think you were targeted.”
She gasped even though it was the answer she had been expecting. “Why?” Why would anyone target her? She wasn’t special, there was nothing about her that should make anyone want to target her. She went to work, hung out with her friends, went shopping, and loved to go to the movie theatre just up the block from her apartment building. She ate out more than she should, and she had a favorite café where her friend Lavender worked. She had a slight obsession with Halloween and went a little overboard decorating her apartment and her small courtyard.
She was normal.
Boring.
“I don’t know why, Abby.” Ryder reached out to touch her, his hand hovering between them for a moment before he touched the side of her head, letting his hand smooth her hair before settling on her neck. “But I promise you I’ll figure it out. For now your job is to rest, heal, and get better. And I’d like you to consider finding a professional to speak with. I have the name and a number of someone I trust to help you. What you went through was horrific and I know you, you’ll try to brush it under the carpet, plow on like nothing happened. This is serious, Abby, it won’t just go away because you want it to, you need to deal with it and that starts with talking to someone.”
Because she knew Ryder and she knew how stubborn he was she huffed. “I’ll take the card.” It wasn’t a lie, she’d take the card she just wouldn’t commit to calling the number on it.
“Good,” he said, seemingly satisfied.
His long fingers curled around the back of her neck, and he applied just enough pressure to move her slightly forward. He leaned in and of their own accord her lips parted. He kissed her on the forehead then released her leaving her feeling oddly disappointed. She didn’t want him to kiss her and yet she did. It was silly. Crazy. Definitely self-destructive, after he had left her the second time she had promised herself she would never get dragged into Ryder Flynn’s orbit ever again.
“I have good news for you,” Ryder told her, standing and setting the medical kit on the chair by the bed.
“Yeah?” If there was one thing she could use right now it was good news.
“You can go home tomorrow. You’re feeling better, getting your strength back, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to go back to your place.”
The grin he gave her told her that he thought he was giving her great news, and he was. Right?
It should be good news.
She should be happy to be going home and moving on with her life.
She should be thrilled that Eric had made sure to keep her apartment and all her things, that he had no doubt made sure all her bills got paid and her bank accounts and everything remained open.
She should be excited that she had her life back. She could call her friends, call the studio and see if they still had a place for her, or maybe start her own dance studio like she had always wanted to do.
She should be a whole lot of things, but she wasn’t.
What she was, was scared.