Free Fever by Joan Swan Page B

“Okay. I get it. Jesus, you’re lucky I haven’t puked on you yet.”
    “With my luck, that’ll change soon, won’t it?”
     
    Alyssa didn’t know if Creek’s luck would change anytime soon, but she was about to give her own lousy luck a kick in the butt. This was the first public location she’d been to since Creek had kidnapped her, and he could tell her every gruesome story he could dream up, but she wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass.
    Creek pulled a shirt from his bag of clothes and tossed it on the seat, then released the cuff attached to the door. “Let’s get you into something clean. It may be October, but somehow I doubt all this blood will come across as a Halloween prank.”
    Alyssa wanted the blood to show. She wanted her bruises and burns exposed. They were bound to garner attention. She didn’t have to fake the exhaustion slumping her against the seat. It was bone-deep real. “I can’t change clothes. I hurt too much.”
    Creek thought a second, then brought both hands to the collar of her tank. “I’m going to tear it. Don’t scream.”
    Before Alyssa had time to process the information, he yanked. She tensed, anticipating a rip of pain in her side, but amazingly, her body hardly moved. The tank however, halved like tissue paper, exposing her chest to hips. The cold air hit her skin and made her shiver.
    Creek inspected the gash in her side. “The bleeding’s stopped.”
    She knew that. Knew that whatever he’d done with his hand behind that Dumpster had clotted the main flow of blood. Something beyond counterpressure. She let herself acknowledge that much, but her mind continued to search for another possible, if not logical, explanation.
    She’d come up with cauterization. The heat he seemed to harbor in his body must have performed some type of cauterization of the bleeding tissues. While that eased her mind, it didn’t alleviate the fatigue from the blood she’d already lost. Or the radiating pain in her torso. Or the knowledge she’d have an ugly, welted scar that would need plastic surgery if she ever planned on wearing a bikini again.
    “You know I need a hospital,” she said.
    Creek ignored her. He drew the soggy fabric off her body and eased her into a white, collared T-shirt with a colorful NASCAR logo across the chest. He slid her left arm in first, then stretched the fabric and eased her right arm in.
    He was amazingly deft and gentle, yet efficient. He was also all business, without any hint of interest in her body, which irritated her, considering how she seemed to react to his every touch.
    He reached across the seat, and with one tug, covered the swastika on his fuzzy head with the baseball cap. Then, to her surprise, he unlocked the remaining cuff and pulled the metal off her wrist.
    A giddy wave rolled through her stomach. Her first step toward freedom. But, now what? She scanned the parking lot, searching for ... something. But only found a smattering of cars dotting the darkened asphalt.
    “What time is it?” she asked.
    “About nine last time I looked.” He adjusted the collar of her shirt up around her neck and over the injuries. “Why?”
    “Just wondering.” Wondering where everyone was. Wondering if this sparse crowd would be any help to her at all. Wondering if this night would ever end.
    “Remember.” Creek lifted the bottom of his tee to reveal the handle of the gun. “I still have this.”
    Alyssa’s eyes skipped past the weapon to the delineated abdominal muscles beneath. This guy had blown right by a six-pack. He had an eight-pack going, and then some.
    “You’re going to be a good girl,” he said. “Right?” Alyssa’s mind took a wrong turn somewhere. It veered from the clean city streets and headed straight to a seedy alley, picking up a dozen different innuendos on the trip.
    Looks mean nothing. He is a criminal. A lifer .
    Those facts gave her mind the kick it needed to get back on track. “Don’t talk to me like I’m