Lethal (Lee Coburn)

“I will.”

He shot her a skeptical look.

“I swear.”

“We had a deal. You welshed on it. Twice. And almost shot one of us in the process.”

“I’ll lie here and not move. I promise I won’t do anything. Okay?”

Their recent tussle had reopened his scalp wound. A thin trickle of blood slid down his temple. He swiped at it, then looked at the red streaks on his fingers before wiping them on the leg of his jeans. Eddie’s jeans.

“Did you hear me?”

“I’m not deaf.”

“I won’t try to get away. I swear. Just untie my hands.”

“Sorry, lady. You blew what trust I had in you, and I didn’t have any to start with. Now lie still and be quiet or I’ll stuff something into your mouth and then you really will feel claustrophobic.”

He set the pistol on the nightstand, then switched off the lamp.

“We have to keep a light on,” she said, keeping her voice low. The thought of a gag terrified her. “Emily is afraid of the dark. If she wakes up and the light isn’t on, she’ll get scared and start crying. She’ll come looking for me. Please. I don’t want her to see me like this.”

He hesitated, then turned away. Her eyes followed his dark form as he went into the hallway and switched on the overhead light. His silhouette showed up large and menacing as he came back into the bedroom.

He seemed even more menacing when he lay down on his back inches from her. She hadn’t been in bed with anyone since Eddie. Emily, of course. But Emily’s forty pounds hardly made an impression in the mattress. She didn’t rock the bed when she climbed onto it or create a decline, which caused Honor to focus on keeping to her side rather than rolling against him.

The motions and sounds of his settling down beside her harkened back to the familiar, yet it felt strange. This man lying close to her wasn’t Eddie. His breathing was different. His sheer presence felt different from Eddie’s.

And somehow not touching seemed more intimate than if they were.

Once he was settled comfortably, he didn’t stir. From the corner of her eye, she looked over to see that he’d closed his eyes. His fingers were loosely clasped and resting on his abdomen.

She lay as straight, still, and stiff as a plank, trying to talk herself out of having a full-blown panic attack. She was bound and unable to get free, true. But, she told herself sternly, she wasn’t in mortal danger. She counted her heartbeats in order to keep the rate of them under control. She made each breath long and deep.

But these exercises worked no better than reason.

Her anxiety continued to mount until she began pulling against the bindings, straining against them with as much effort as she could muster.

“You’re only making them tighter,” he said.

“Undo them.”

“Go to sleep.”

A sob burbled out of her and she started jerking at the bindings until the headboard banged rhythmically against the wall.

“Stop that!”

“I can’t. I told you I couldn’t stand it, and I can’t.”

She began to pull so viciously against the stockings that the recoil caused the backs of her hands to rap painfully against the iron rails of the headboard. The pain caused her panic to rise until she was bucking like someone demented. Her legs bicycled as though trying to outrun the feeling of suffocation. Her heels pushed hard against the mattress. Her head thrashed from side to side on the pillow.

“Shh, shh. Calm down. You’re okay. Shh.”

Realization came to her gradually. Coburn was leaning over her. He was holding one of her hands in each of his, his thumbs planted solidly in her palms. His voice was a soothing whisper.

“Shh.” His thumbs began massaging small circles into her palms. “Take deep breaths. You’ll be fine.”