A Prince's Ransom: Kidnapped by the Billionaire (31 page)

When she finally made it to the top of him, far from unaware of the fact that he wore nothing but black, she met a pair of brown eyes that seemed like they wanted to swallow her soul. Some part of her very distantly noticed that this stranger was handsome, with well-kept auburn hair and a certain woodsman-esque ruggedness to his jawline, but it was the stupidest thing in the world for her to care about that right now. She bit the inside of her cheek and looked away from him, her hair tangled around her face; desperately, she tried to stop shaking, even though she doubted anything she did would actually make them less aware of how afraid she was.

“Get up,” he growled at her all of a sudden, and his voice made her flinch. With her wrists caught behind her back, it took her a minute to get her feet beneath her and stand—and annoyed at her slowness, he was reaching out and roughly grabbing her arm, pulling her angrily across the large room of the warehouse toward a doorway, where he was shoving her inside. They passed at least two more guys, but they didn’t interfere, watching dispassionately as she was manhandled.

He let her go almost as soon as they were in the next room, and Tobin gasped in pain as she almost collided with a metal desk. She straightened herself a bit, her arm hurting, and looked around to see where she was now—only for her eyes to widen as she saw another guy. But this one didn’t seem like the others. He was skinnier, and looked entirely out of it. She realized a few seconds later that that was because he was weakly holding a blood-soaked cloth to his shoulder, like… like he had been shot.

“You’re a doctor, right?” the man who had grabbed her asked darkly, and she turned to look at him, only to flinch as he grabbed her wrists. She was startled a second later when she realized that that was in order to undo the zip tie that had been chafing at her skin.

Tobin stared at him, her mind racing. “I…”

His eyes flashed almost murderously, and he grabbed her shirt—near the name tag she was still wearing from work, many, many hours earlier. “You are a doctor, right?” he demanded again, more fiercely than before.

“N-not that kind,” she squeaked. “I’m not… I’m not a surgeon…”

“But you can fix him?”

“I’m not a people doctor!” she cried, trying to say it better. “I… I’m a vet… I was visiting my father in the hospital, but I’m a veterinarian, not… not what he needs. He needs to go to a hospital. I c-can’t…”

He released her and stepped away, and as she stared at him, she could see the cogs turning in his head. She could understand, unfortunately, why she had been taken instead of an actual doctor. She was dressed similar to one, with a ‘Dr. Emerson’ nametag, leaving a hospital really late at night. Yes, Tobin could understand the confusion. But that didn’t make her feel any better, now that she wasn’t…

“If you’re a vet, you still have medical training, don’t you?” he persisted instead. “A doctorate? Then you can still fix him—and you’re going to fix him.”

Her throat constricted. “N-no, I am not a surgeon. I can’t… operate on a person that way. I-I can’t—” Tobin started desperately, shaking her head.

A second later, she let out a scream as she was all but shoved against the desk with his hands slamming down on either side of her. “If you can’t do it,” he hissed at her as tears poured down her cheeks, “then you’re of no use to me. And I do not keep things that are of no use to me, Dr. Emerson. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes,” she breathed, shutting her eyes tightly. He drew back from her, silent as she tried to compose herself. At last, she opened her eyes again, reaching a hand up to rub away her mascara-stained tears, taking a deep breath. Tobin looked back at the other guy. “Do you have any… instruments? Anything I can use?” His eyes narrowed at her in silent response, and she swallowed. “Uhm… uhm, there’s a bag of medical supplies in my car. You brought my car, right?” They had kidnapped her in it, but she wasn’t sure where it was now.

“Yes.”

“Okay. There’s a bag, for pets who can’t be moved in emergencies. It, uhm, it has some stuff I can use. I… I need hot water, and, uh, more cloth. Towels or… or something,” she told him, trying to remain coherent. Maybe she could survive this if she fixed this guy up. Maybe they would let her go… Or maybe she was just being a completely naïve little girl who would never see her father or her friends or her cats ever again.

But he turned at her instruction and talked to the other two men in the other room, and they went off to get what she had specified. He looked back at her after that, and she moved slowly toward the guy who’d been shot. He’d been bleeding for a long time, leaving him pale and drowsy. Tobin had some pain relievers in her bag, but they were for pets, not for people, and she didn’t dare give those to him. The most she could do was try to stop the bleeding.

“Uhm… h-hi, sir. How are you feeling? What’s your name?” she asked, needing to know more about what happened.

“No names,” the man behind her barked, and she swallowed with a little nod.

“How are you feeling?” she repeated nervously.

“Tired,” he mumbled.

Tobin nodded a little. “Yeah. It’s really good that you’re still awake. Uhm, just stay focused on me, okay? You need to stay awake.” Footsteps approached and she glanced over her shoulder to see her bag of supplies and several towels being put on one of the tables in the room. The other guy left after that, and she glanced nervously at the gun of the guy giving orders around here. Clearly the one in charge of… whatever all of this was, and whatever had gone wrong.

“Can you tell me what happened?” she asked, turning back to her… patient.

“We… we were in a jewelry…”

“He was shot in the shoulder. What more do you need to know?” the other man interrupted, before she learned things he did not want her to. He had to know she would go to the police if she made it out of this alive. But that was the big rub, wasn’t it? If.

This skinny guy was not coherent enough not to tell her things that would get her killed, though, and she turned to the auburn. “What… kind of gun was it?”

“A revolver.”

“Is there an exit wound? I don’t… want to move him too much if I can help it.”

“No, the bullet is still in his shoulder.”

“Okay.” Tobin turned back and opened her bag, pulling out some gauze and needles and suture thread. Her eyes widened to see an IV fluid bag at the bottom of the bag—from the really bad accident last week, she reminded herself distantly. She pulled that out and looked around a little bit, trying to find something to hang it on. A moment later, she flinched when the guy was loudly putting a metal rack beside her, but she mumbled a thank you and carefully hung it up, returning to the side of her patient. She took his other arm from where his hand was holding the cloth over the bullet hole, wincing at the blood that drenched the front of his shirt, and carefully located the vein. Her hands were shaking. She was used to doing this with dogs, and with cats, not…

She stopped, closing her eyes and forcing herself to breathe. She needed to stop shaking; she needed to focus. She could make it out of this if she just stopped shaking.

But before Tobin could work up the nerve, the needle was being pulled from her grasp, and she looked up in surprise, watching silently as he bent over his friend’s arm and slid it with nurse-like precision into the vein. She stared at him when he withdrew, and he met her gaze but didn’t offer a single word of explanation. Licking her lips, she moved back to the IV and started the drip before grabbing a pair of scissors out of her own bag. Carefully, she cut away his bloody shirt, exposing the bullet hole a bit better, though it was covered in both dry and wet blood. She heard more footsteps, and as she glanced back, someone was setting a large, steaming pot of hot water on the table.

She took one of the cloths and dipped it in the water before turning back. He yelped as she started to clean around the wound, and she winced, but kept going, needing to be able to see what she was doing. Careful not to dunk the blood back in the water, she dipped the cloth several times before the dried blood was washed away, then grabbed a section of gauze and a bottle of alcohol from her bag. Opening it, she poured out some of the pungent liquid onto the gauze before turning back.

“Okay… okay, uhm,” she murmured, and he looked at her blearily. “This… this is going to sting a lot, but just… just try not to move too much, okay? I need to sterilize the wound.” Holding the back of his shoulder, she pressed the alcohol-soaked gauze against him—and he howled in furious, gut-wrenching pain. Tobin’s face contorted unhappily as she did her best to carefully clean the wound, even as the man thrashed and howled in pain, until at last she could take no more herself and quickly pulled away.

She turned around to look back at the other guy. “I can’t do this,” she insisted, knowing her voice was full of fright and tears and not able to help that right now. “I’m not this kind of doctor. I am not trained for something like—” Tobin yelped in pain as his brown eyes glowered at her and he grabbed her arm, slamming her against a wall. The pained moans of the other suddenly seemed nonexistent as he towered over her menacingly.

“You would prefer not to be useful this way, then?” he growled at her, and she pressed herself against the wall, eyes wide with terror. “You would prefer to be useless?” He sneered at her with derision, and then his gaze dropped from hers. “Or maybe you would prefer being useful in a different way, hm?”

Confused, she shook her head. “What? No, I just can’t—hey!” she nearly screamed as his body was grinding against hers. He was still holding the gun, but that didn’t stop him from digging his fingers into her brown hair and wrenching her head painfully back. Tobin did scream as his mouth slammed down onto hers, painfully, uninvited. Tears surged against the rims of her eyes and she squirmed desperately against him, trying to get herself free enough that she could pull away from him, that she could stop him—before thinking of the obvious, the best way to get him off of her.

Her legs were still free enough. And he was close enough. And she didn’t think twice about slamming her knee up between his legs, aiming for that oh-so-sensitive part of the male anatomy.

Instantly, he pulled back with a howl of pain, and with his fingers still in her hair, she was yanked away from the wall and sent slamming into the floor. Tobin cried out in pain as she landed on the hard concrete, her breath quick and her lips feeling like they had been slammed in a car door. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she turned her head and looked back up at him. A part of her was terrified that, despite her very clear refusal, she’d turn around to see him pushing his pants away and grabbing for her again, but despite the fact that he was standing over her, clearly furious, he didn’t make a move toward her again.

“We understand each other, right?” he muttered down at her, and she nodded a little bit.

“Yes.”

“Good. Then finish the job.”

Her throat tightened, but she managed to get to her feet and move back to the table and her patient. She pulled a pair of forceps from her bag and turned her attention back to the bullet hole, even though there were still tears on her cheeks, clouding her vision. Tobin rubbed them away on the shoulder of her shirt and took a deep breath before wiping away the fresh blood with a clean piece of gauze, only able to hope that she’d be able to get to the bullet in his shoulder easily. But she had to try, either way—she had to try if her only other options were death, or being raped by this bastard.

Sebastian leaned against the wall again, his nails digging into the muscles of his arms as he glared at the doctor’s—sorry, the vet’s—back, while she bent over Jesse. Damn bitch could certainly lay a good blow, despite how afraid she was. Admittedly, he couldn’t blame her for being afraid, when she had been kidnapped by a bunch of large men with guns. But he’d be damned before he let her fear screw with his life. If she couldn’t save Jesse, Sebastian’s own life was about as good as over.

Tobin. Her name was Tobin—he’d rifled through her wallet after his boys had brought her to the warehouse. He was the only one with any sort of medical knowledge, ironically enough—just not enough to actually patch up the little asshole. She was Tobin Emerson. Twenty-five. Blue eyes, brown hair. A figure that wouldn’t stop a truck, but it would certainly get a few wolf whistles from the driver. Little bitch had kneed him in the balls.

Sebastian shifted the gun a little bit, glancing at the bullet hole in Jesse’s shoulder as she tried to find the bullet itself with those pincers. Her hands were still shaking like a leaf in a tornado, and some part of him knew he probably shouldn’t have scared her more than he already had. It was just making it more difficult for her to focus on the task at hand. But he had been listening to this prick whine all day about the pain when he had botched up the operation, and how he was going to tell his uncle what had happened. Sebastian had no doubt he would do that, but if the problem was already taken care of, hopefully that wouldn’t go the way he was concerned it would go. No, if Jesse was alive, and Joe was dead, and this little vet was taken care of…

He wondered how much she believed him—that he would let her live, let her go, if she patched up the other guy. She was a vet, she was still a doctor—he doubted she was that stupid. She had seen their faces, had overheard a few things she shouldn’t have. No, he couldn’t just let her go, regardless of the small part of him that said he shouldn’t be that cruel to some girl who’d happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who had never done anything to him or anyone else in his circle. Killing people on the fly wasn’t the Family’s agenda, even on their worst days. But she had seen them.

Twisted as it was, he could still feel her against him—caught between the wall and his chest, his fingers tangled in her hair. The taste of her, by no means truly fresh or even appealing—and, yes, something about that taste made him want more of it. And more of her soft warmth, her curves, her hair. He had been scaring her, he admitted to himself with chagrin; he had wanted her to stop panicking, which in a situation like this could best be accomplished by scaring the crap out of someone. They always did what you wanted after that.