Kaci leaned against the wall and pushed one sleeve up to expose her upper arm, which was ringed with a single deep bruise, thicker on the front than the back. “Just bruises.” Talon marks. I pushed my own left sleeve up as I inched slowly toward the window, trying to avoid creaks in the obviously aged wooden floor.

My left arm was similarly marked, and I knew from the tenderness in my right arm that it would match. As would my right ankle. “Anything else?”

“I’m cold and hungry.”

“Me, too.” I made it to the window without a creak from the floor and noticed two things immediately. First, it wouldn’t open. It was a single pane of glass built into place along with the house. Or whatever kind of building we were in.

Second, we couldn’t have snuck out even if we could break the window without attracting attention. We were a couple hundred feet off the ground, jutting out over a cliff. And there was no balcony.

“Damn it!” That one came out louder than I’d intended, though it was still a whisper. I let my forehead fall against the glass and immediately regretted it. After my most recent flight, I wasn’t eager to see the earth from on high ever again.

“What?” Kaci whispered, and the bed creaked again as she leaned forward.

“We’re in their nest. And it’s not exactly built in the treetops.” The window was directly opposite the only door, so I edged my way along the wall to the corner, then made the turn, still hugging the wooden planks. The floor was much more likely to creak in the middle than along the edges.

“What do they want?”

“Oddly enough, I think they were trying to protect us.” From the violence they brought forth.

Kaci glanced from the window back to my face. “I don’t feel very safe.”

“Me, neither.” When I reached the door, I bent to study the knob. It was a plain, old-fashioned brass sphere with a small round hole in the center. Which meant the other side held a simple push lock. I twisted it slowly and the knob resisted. It was locked.

I could have forced the lock with one quick twist, but the pop might be heard, and I didn’t want our captors to know we were awake until we knew a little more about our surroundings.

“How the hell did they get us here?” I wondered aloud, barely breathing the sound. “There’s no way they could have flown us all the way here.” I didn’t know exactly where “here” was, but I couldn’t think of a single cliff of any size within several hundred miles of the ranch.

“They didn’t,” Kaci said, and I turned to see her twisting the edge of the coarse navy blanket in one fist. “I must have passed out when they were carrying us, but I woke up later, in the back of a car. Something like Jace’s, with a big area in the back for luggage and stuff. We were all tied up, and you were still out cold.”