Something flashed over my head. I looked up, and saw the wire. My hands shot up to block it, but it flew down, passing right through my outstretched palms and into my throat.

I couldn’t breathe. I kicked and flailed, but the wire only cut deeper. Then it changed. Not Wilkes’s wire, but a knife point, digging into my throat.

Aldrich laughed.

No! He couldn’t have followed. He’d finished with me and was busy with Amy now. I had to get help. To save her—

“Save her?” His voice whispered in my ear. “You aren’t saving her, Nadia. You’re running away. Abandoning her.”

“No!”

As the word ripped from my throat, the world dipped into black. Something whispered across my cheek. A touch, a hand, brushing back my sweaty hair. Cool skin against mine. The faint smell of soap.

“Nadia…?”

I opened my eyes. Jack sat on the edge of the sofa, his hands smoothing my hair.

I groaned. “I’m making a habit of this, aren’t I? How many partners have you had to comfort after nightmares?”

“Don’t work with partners.”

“And this is why, isn’t it?”

A small smile. He traced his fingertips down my cheek, then stopped, his gaze flicking to his hand as if surprised to see it there. He pulled back and shifted to adjust my blanket.

“Sorry,” I said. “Two nights in a row…that’s not normal for me.”

For a moment, he crouched beside the sofa, gaze averted, as if thinking. Then his eyes swung back to me. To my throat. To the ghost of a scar. I pulled the blanket higher. His face turned from mine. Then he pushed to his feet.

“Gotta get you to sleep.”

He walked toward the minibar.

“Uh-uh,” I said. “Booze isn’t—”

He took out a bottle of brown liquid and held it up. “Saw this earlier.”

“Yoo-hoo?” I said, squinting at the label. “What’s in it? Looks like chocolate milk, but…”

“Thought it was.” He looked at it and frowned. “Not sure. Huh. Ingredients…” His lips moved as he read the list. Then his frown deepened. “Still not sure.”

He put the bottle down. “Let me go downstairs. Find you some real stuff. Heat it up.”

“Ah, hot chocolate. Now I get it.” I sat up. “Here, we’ll use that. I’ll just stand back from the microwave, in case it’s explosive.”

He waved me down. “Stay.”

He poured the stuff into a coffee mug, and microwaved it for me. As he brought it over, I gestured at the cigarette pack on the table, where he’d tossed them down earlier.

“You didn’t finish them, I see. Go ahead if you want.”

“Nonsmoking room.”

“I think you’ve broken worse laws.”

“Yeah. But I’d feel bad about this one.”

He handed me my mug and sat beside me on the sofa.