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  They’d started assuming he was a sociopath.

  Samantha had grown up among sociopaths and didn’t believe Jed fit that diagnosis. On the subject of telepathy, she wasn’t certain, but right now, she was going to try.

  She concentrated, not sure what exactly she was even trying to convey, other than a sense of...comfort? Protection? Reassurance, she thought, though watching Jed scowl, she didn’t feel like he was very reassured.

  As his caregiver for the past eighteen months, she’d done little more than check his vitals and bring him food once in a while. Their conversations had been necessarily limited. Their physical connection even less so. So why, then, did she feel closer to this man than she’d felt to anyone else in her entire life?

  “You’re going to feel sleepy,” she told him quietly as she put the sharp into the small red box in her pocket. Her eyes searched his for any sign he was on board with this, but there was no way to know what would happen.

  “I’ll be fine,” Jed said.

  Something sifted through the air between them like a breeze, moving the tendrils of hair that had escaped around her face to tickle her cheeks. She closed her eyes at the embrace—and it was an embrace. A caress. As soft and specific as if he’d reached a hand to cup her face.

  She hadn’t meant to go off plan, but the idea of sedating him had not settled well with her, no matter what Vadim had said. Jed had not lost his talents. She felt it. She wasn’t sure how much control he still had over them, but the last thing in the world she wanted was for him to be left unable to defend himself.

  They’d tried to make him into a soldier, she thought. When the time came for it, she might need him to be able to fight.

  She risked squeezing his shoulder, a definite no-no on the list of rules regarding the Wyrmwood patients, but what were they going to do? Fire her? Beneath her fingers, Jed’s muscles bunched and tensed, although he remained stone-faced. Hands in his lap. Something about it broke her heart in a way she wasn’t expecting.

  “Are you sure I can’t call down to the kitchen for you?”

  Jed shook his head without answering. She backed up a few steps. Samantha pressed her fingertip to the door lock and stepped through it. At the sight of the two armed guards, neither of whom she recognized, she quickly shook her head and stepped back into the room, locking the door behind her. Hands flat on it. Facing Jed.

  Her heart raced, but she didn’t let it show. Instantly she’d begun the mental countdown. The list in her head of every escape route she’d planned since starting here. That had been her father’s training—always be ready with a way out.

  “I didn’t write down your vitals,” she said brightly, with a clap of her hands. She moved toward him with a pasted-on smile. “I’m going to have to check you again.”

  Jed narrowed his eyes. “You never...”

  “They’re coming,” she said in a low voice. Not caring so much now if whoever was watching overheard her.

  They were beyond that now.

  She didn’t hear any muffled voices outside the door. Nothing like a warning. She wouldn’t have—the doors here were thick, lined with metal. Soundproof.

  Jed stood. “You should go. I don’t want you to see this.”

  Surprised, Samantha shot him a look. She wanted to reassure him again, to tell him that she had this covered, that they weren’t going to kill him right there. She drew in a long breath, then let it out. They had guns. This was it. It was happening.

  When the door opened, she stepped in front of Jed, addressing the guards in a loud, hard voice. “What’s going on? I didn’t get any updates about this.”

  “Step aside, ma’am. We’re here to take the patient for some routine testing.”

  “You’ll have to show me your paperwork.” She put her hands on her hips, playing up the irate nurse. “You should know this patient is not to be removed from this room without the appropriate precautions. This is highly irregular.”

  The shorter guard stepped forward. They were both armed, but their weapons were not in hand. She was going to assume they both had hidden weapons in addition to the ones she’d already noticed, but for now she had to worry about the guns she could see.

  “Just send him forward,” the shorter guard said. “We have directions to take him.”

  Let them take him, Vadim had said. Then follow.

  The plan didn’t feel right.

  “I’m not going with you,” Jed said matter-of-factly, as though he was commenting on the weather.

  The guard on the left smiled. “Sure, kid.”

  The other one wasn’t as nice. “Shut up. You, get out of the way.”

  He jerked his chin at Samantha. She settled him with a steady, imperious look. Wyrmwood had a lot of rules, but taking shit from a pair of goons was not one of them.

  “C’mon, kid,” said the nicer guard as he stepped forward. “I don’t want to have to get harsh.”

  Before he could get any closer, he let out a loud, long cough and stumbled. He tried to take another step but looked as though he was struggling against a glass wall. The other guard let out a startled noise, a muttered curse.

  “I’m not going with you,” Jed repeated. “But keep on coming. Let’s see what happens.”

  That’s when everything started going wrong. The guards moved, one toward Jed and the other toward Samantha. She slipped a hairpin from the heavy bun at the base of her neck, pulling the edges open. With the pin between her fingers, she stepped forward. Ducking low before either of the guards could say a word, she swept the taller guard’s leg, not expecting to send him down, just push him off balance. It worked. The taller guard took a hopping step away from her. Without stopping, Samantha moved again, jamming the hairpin into the meat of his calf and pulling it free to stab upward into the hand reaching to grab her.

  The shorter guard shouted and grabbed her hair. Without the pin to hold the bun in place, he got a handful, but the thick length of it slipped free as she twisted. Then she was up, ramming her head into his chin and sending him back against the wall.

  She acted without thinking ahead more than a move or two. Anticipating what would come next, but ready to adjust if she was wrong. Punch, kick, jab for the eyes.

  The taller one caught her by the throat, hauling her upright. Neither of them had pulled their weapons—a fact she noticed even with the wind being strangled out of her. They might be there to take Jed away, but they had not been ordered to kill him. Not here, at least. As the red spots began dancing in the edges of her vision, though, she had time to think that they’d have no trouble killing her.

  Not that she was going to let them, of course.

  She let her body go limp, not fighting, and the sudden weight pushed the guard off balance. In the next second she was up again. His gun was in her hand.

  He was on the ground. Then his partner. She’d shot both of them in the legs. The other guard had a hand reaching for his weapon, which she grabbed. Her ears rang from the sound of the shots, but she took the time to aim once more, this time at the camera. When the red light went out, she turned to Jed, who’d stood without moving the entire time.

  “I’m a little insulted,” he said. “You’d think they’d have hired way more competent guards.”

  Chapter 15

  The woman staring back at him, a gun in each hand, had barely broken a sweat. Her blond hair had come loose from the tight bun she always wore. Her shoulders and chest heaved with her breathing, but her expression was calm. She was still Samantha, but somehow she had become a stranger.

  “More will be coming, and they will be more prepared,” she told him. “We should get out of here. Now. We don’t have much time.”

  Jed didn’t move. “The first attempt on my life came when I was twelve. One of the orderlies had managed to bring in a shiv. He cut me with