Rachael screamed, the sound tearing up through her ragged throat to pierce the walls of the house. She tried to fight him, tried to jerk into a sitting position, but his strength was implacable. He held her down easily. “I can’t tell you anything. I don’t know anything.” The words were strangled between trying to breathe through the pain and her swollen throat. “I swear I don’t. Torturing me isn’t going to do you any good.” She looked at him, pleading, tears swimming in her dark eyes. “Please, I really don’t know anything.”

“Ssh.” Distaste for hurting her was bile in his mouth and he didn’t know why. Most tasks were done without feeling. Rio had no idea why he would suddenly develop compassion for a woman sent to kill him. He filed her blurted revelations away for a better time to study them. The need to reassure her took precedence and that worried him. He was a man who always wanted knowledge. Information. He wasn’t the type to offer sympathy—especially for someone who had tried to take his head off. “It’s only to kill the germs and fight infection.” He found himself murmuring the words, his tone odd. Unfamiliar. “I know it burns. I’ve used it on myself more than once. Just lie still while I try to repair the damage.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.” It was the last humiliating straw. Rachael couldn’t believe it was happening to her. She had planned everything so carefully, worked so hard, come so far. Everything was lost now. This man was going to torture her. Kill her. She should have known she couldn’t escape.

“Damn it.” He held her head while she was sick over and over into a bucket he dragged out from under the bed. She didn’t want to think what the bucket was used for. She didn’t want to think how she was going to get away from him with a mangled leg, in the middle of a storm with the river flooding.

Rachael lay back, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand, trying desperately to force her brain to work. Weakness was an insidious enemy, creeping through her body so her arms felt leaden and she didn’t want to lift her head.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” he said tersely, as if reading her mind.

“What are you?” The words came out a whisper.

The wind stilled for a moment so only the rain could be heard pounding on the roof. Rachael held her breath when he turned the full impact of his cold, merciless eyes on her. He didn’t blink. She saw that his pupils were dilated. She saw that same piercing intelligence, glimpsed the dangerous fire smoldering. Her heart pounded in time with the driving rain.