“All the king’s horses! All the king’s men! All the king’s horses!”

I’m not listening to her, though. I’m sitting up on the gurney, reaching into my chest, searching for the instruments that were left behind. My fingers don’t touch upon anything for a moment, and then I find what I’m looking for. I remove both hands, covered in blood and gore, but I’m not holding scalpels and swabs. In one hand, I’m holding my fake ID, smeared with blood—Sophia Letitia Marne, smiling out of the photo. In the other hand, I’m holding a gun.

I jerk myself awake, my heart slamming in my chest. For a brief, terrifying moment I think my chest is still open. I clutch both hands to my body, feeling solid ribs and breast and sternum, all rising up and down, up and down way too fast.

“Bad dream?”

I barely bite back the scream that’s building in my throat. Rebel’s standing at the foot of the bed, watching me with his arms folded. With no shirt on. His tattoos aren’t limited to his arms and shoulders. They fan out across his pecs, too, down each side of his body in swirling lines of black and red and green and blue. He looks like he’s posing for Men’s Fitness. Admittedly, with a physique like that, he could legitimately earn good money modeling for those guys. I push myself back in the bed, horrified when I realize I’ve worn that god-awful oversized  T-shirt to bed again. “What the hell are you doing?” I ask.

“Getting ready to go to my father’s place. I’m taking you with me. Sound good?”

“Only if your father’s place is actually a police station.”

He pouts at me, barely hiding a smile. He looks good when he smiles; I hate myself for acknowledging that, but my brain is still reeling from my nightmare. I’m not equipped to be fending off visions of his near-nakedness right now. “My father’s the governor for the state of Alabama. He’s the chief of police’s boss. Does that count?” he says.

“You’re not from Alabama.”

He smirks now, taking a step closer to the bed. “Why am I not from Alabama?”

“Because you don’t have an accent.”

“Oh, that’s definitive evidence right there. You must be on the money if I don’t drawl, huh?”

I shake my head, trying to pull myself together. “If your father’s the governor for Alabama, why would you take me to see him?”

“Because he’s a righteous asshole and I hate going back there on my own.” Rebel turns away, opening up a closet and pulling out T-shirts and full, button-down shirts. He starts making a pile on the end of the bed.

“No, why would you take me, the girl you’re holding against her will? You have to know I’ll tell him what you’ve done as soon as we walk through the door.”

Rebel reaches up high into the closet and pulls down a North Face duffel bag; he proceeds to place the piles of clothes inside. “You could do that. Or,” he says, looking up at me, “you can come with me and keep your mouth shut. You could let me tell you a little more about the guy you saw stabbed to death in that alleyway. You could listen to everything I have to say, and then, when our trip’s over, you could make your decision—whether you’ll help me or you won’t—based on everything you’ve learned. And then, either way, I’ll let you go.”

“I told you. I’ve already made my decision.”

“Based on no information whatsoever,” he says.

“I’m sorry. Like I said, I have family to protect.”

He carries on placing clothes into the bag at the foot of the bed. I watch for a moment, distracted by the shift of his muscles and the powerful lines of his shoulder blades. He’s quiet, not looking at me as he works, but then he says, “Okay. Fine. I’m gonna be gone five days. You can stay here and stare at the television. And when I get back, we’ll fit you out in a room in the clubhouse. You should be relatively safe in there. Though, there’s a lot less to do, of course. And no TV. Just four walls and a bed.”

“You just said you’d let me go either way!”

“Only if you come with me to my father’s place and suffer though his annual charity gala with me.”

I just stare at him. I can’t figure out what the hell is going on with this guy. He’s rude, abrasive and pushy, and now he wants me to go on a road trip with him? “All right, fine. I’ll come with you. But this is a complete waste of time. I’m not going to change my mind. You may not like your family very much, but I love mine. I won’t do anything to jeopardize their safety.”

I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this. I must be crazy. Scrambling out of the bed, I tug the  T-shirt down in an attempt to cover my thighs. Rebel stops what he’s doing and watches me, a smile clearly itching at the corners of his mouth.

“If I come with you to Alabama, you have to swear you’re not going to rape me.”

He almost chokes on his laughter. “I swear, I’m not planning on raping you.”

“And you have to promise you’re not going to sell me or loan me out to any of your friends so they can rape me.”

Rebel holds up three fingers—scout’s honor. I doubt this man was ever a scout, and even if he was, the bastard never had any honor. “There will be no raping of any kind, performed by anyone while you are under my protection. Louis’ old Princeton pals get a bit frisky when they’re on the sauce, but I swear I will defend you to the hilt.”

I fold my arms across my chest, shooting daggers at him. “Well, all right then.”

“And Sophia?”

“You’d better swear the same. From your choice of  T-shirt slogan, I’m a little worried.”

“What? What do you mean?” I look down at the shirt. It Ain’t Gonna Suck Itself.

“One of my boys went to Thailand last year. Said half the chicks there had dicks. Are you—”

“No! God! This is your shirt.”

He runs his hand through his thick dark hair, sending it sticking up in eight different directions. It still somehow looks like it was styled that way by a hairdresser. “Nope. That is not mine,” he tells me. “I would hate to hazard a guess as to who it does belong to.”

“Urgh!” I’m about to reach for the hem and tear the thing off over my head when I realize I’m not wearing anything underneath. Rebel has the look of a positively evil school kid when I glance up at him. He probably thought he was going to get a free show. I shove past him, into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. This room has fast become my safe place. How am I going to cope without a separate space to shut myself away when I need to? How am I—

“Hey, Soph?” Rebel’s muffled voice comes through the door. He sounds close, as though he’s leaning into the wood, speaking softly. There must only be a couple of inches between our bodies. I take a step back.

“What?”

“Y’all should know, ah’m definitely from ’Bama, baby. Any tahm y’all wan’ proof, alls y’all gotta do is holler.” He laughs as he moves away from the door, and I rip the T-shirt off over my head, growling under my breath.

The man is a nightmare.

REBEL

I started out murdering people from a very early age, killing my mother as I made my way out of her body. I took a twenty-two-year sabbatical after that. Since then, I’ve put a good many people in the ground. I like to console myself sometimes, when I’m feeling shitty about things, by reminding myself who those people were. They were violent, evil men. Men who made a living from the abuse of others much smaller or weaker than they were. Afghanistan left me with a zero tolerance for that kind of thing. It’s just not in me to let it slide.

As Sophia’s showering, I’m wondering whether I should start by telling her how many people I’ve shot or stabbed, y’know, just to get it out of the way. Shay comes by the cabin with the clothes I asked her to go buy first thing this morning; she’s weighted down by all the bags she’s holding in her arms, and she’s mighty pissed off. But then, that’s her usual expression: resting bitch face.