She sighed, or she tried to. It was difficult with tape over her mouth and a nose that was so swollen she could barely breathe. Still, big words from the little lady all tied up in the trunk. She shifted awkwardly, but there was no comfortable way to lie scrunched up in this small space with her hands bound behind her back. They could have at least kidnapped her in a bigger car. Her head throbbed, her shoulders ached, and there was a hard something digging into the side of her belly. She tried moving again, but the hard thing kept digging… Sid froze. The hard thing was her gun! They must not have searched her, or at least not very well. The knowledge made her more determined than ever to get her hands free, but it didn’t make it easier. The more she struggled, the deeper the plastic seemed to bury itself in her skin.

She made a frustrated sound behind the thick tape then forced herself to calm down, to think rationally. Her gun was useless if she couldn’t get to it. She still needed her hands free, but it wasn’t serving any purpose for her to thrash about. She had to think smart, and that meant planning ahead. Eventually, they’d have to open the trunk and get her out of here. Even if the plan was to use her as bait, they’d have to have a place to lure Aden to, someplace better than this car. There was no way to predict where that would be, though. So, the only thing she could do for now was be ready to take advantage of whatever opportunity presented itself. As impossible as it seemed, what she needed to do now was to rest, to turn off her head and sleep.

Good luck with that, she thought. But she closed her eyes and focused on relaxing one muscle at a time, feeling the dregs of the drug still in her system, letting the exhaustion take her . . .

She jerked awake when someone pounded on the trunk lid, surprised to realize she’d actually managed to sleep. The pounding came again, simply to scare her, she thought, because a moment later a key scraped in the lock, and the lid popped open. Her first reaction was surprise that it was nearly as dark outside the trunk as it had been inside. She must have been stuck in there for hours. But her next reaction was pure relief as cold, fresh air washed over her face, and she drew a strained breath that didn’t reek of fumes and death.

Her relief was short-lived as one of two men staring down at her grabbed her upper arm and dragged her from the trunk, jerking her shoulder and whacking her ankle painfully against some sort of trailer hitch on the back of the car. Her legs, cramped from too long in a small space, couldn’t hold her when she tried to stand, but her abductor didn’t even try to catch her. He let her fall onto an asphalt driveway, and her elbow cracked against the hard surface. Her cry of pain was muffled by the tape still covering her mouth, but at the same time she registered the fact that the tape was no longer as tight as it had been. The heat and stress of hours in the small space had left her sweaty, her face tear-streaked, and all of that had combined to loosen the tape a little. The knowledge didn’t do much to free her, but it made her feel better somehow. It gave her hope.

The man gripped her arm once more, and every muscle shrieked in protest as she stumbled upright. She closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of her abductors, wishing she could shut out the whole experience as easily. Everything hurt, from her swollen nose to her right ankle and everything in between.

“Walk, bitch. I ain’t carrying you.”

Sid really looked at her guards for the first time. She couldn’t be positive—everything had happened so fast—but she didn’t think either one of these two had been among her abductors this morning. Maybe that was what had taken so long. Maybe they’d driven her around until these two could pick her up. Or maybe they’d been parked somewhere while she slept. Or, hell, maybe she was simply mistaken about who’d been in on the original kidnapping. One thing she felt sure of . . . whoever was behind all of this was waiting for her in the small clapboard house at the end of this driveway.

She swiveled her head around as much as she could. The neighborhood was familiar in a way that told her she’d either been here before, or, equally possible, she’d been to someplace just like it. Badly run-down houses were squeezed onto tiny lots and surrounded by apartment buildings in even worse shape. Cars lined both sides of the street, some up on blocks and all of them old and badly used. The street was dark, lit mostly by the light of the half moon, the street lights either shot or burned out. And it struck her. This was the same neighborhood where she’d staked out some of Klemens’s drug dealers. Not this house, but it was close enough that it worried her.

Her captor caught her looking around and shook her like a rag doll.

“Don’t be looking at my ’hood, bitch. This place got nothin’ to do with you.”

Black splotches swam in her vision, but Sid fought them away, determined to remain conscious. She needed to see as much as she could in order to plan her escape. Some people might consider thoughts of escape ridiculous in her current situation, but that didn’t stop Sid. Situations could change. People could grow lazy or complacent and give her an opening. She wouldn’t need much. Although, she thought, frowning, she would need to get her hands free.

That thought had a deflating effect, and for the first time since her abduction, she felt the full weight of her predicament. Her shoulders slumped dejectedly. Her captors saw and laughed as they dragged her through the side door and into the house.

The sturdy door and elaborate lock confirmed that this wasn’t an ordinary house, that it was probably used by drug dealers. But Sid couldn’t imagine what they’d want with her. She’d done an article or two on the drug culture in Chicago, but that had been more than a year ago, and the stories hadn’t garnered enough attention to inconvenience anyone, much less do real damage.

As they hustled her through a filthy kitchen smelling of grease and old trash, however, she had a second, chilling thought. Aden had wiped out the heart of the slave network, but he hadn’t caught the one vampire Sid was absolutely sure had been the driver behind the whole thing. Carl Pinto. And Klemens’s slave trade had always been closely tied to his drug dealings.

She felt a tremor that started in her stomach and radiated outward, shaking her entire body before it was finished. She wanted to attribute it to the drugs they’d given her, or to the adrenaline overload, but it was fear, pure and simple. She’d seen what Pinto was capable of, his cruelty and callousness. The women he’d trafficked had been nothing but meat to him. Objects to be bought and sold, and if they weren’t profitable, they were crushed and thrown away.

“That’s right, bitch,” her captor said, reacting to her trembling. “The man’s lookin’ forward to takin’ care of you.”

Sid couldn’t have responded to the taunt if she’d wanted to, not with the tape still covering her mouth. As it was, however, she was too busy trying to stay on her feet, trying to come up with a scenario that didn’t end up with her dead or shipped off as a slave. She was pretty sure she’d rather be dead.

“Sidonie Reid,” someone growled, and she looked up to find the very vampire she’d most feared. Carl Pinto sat in a big leather chair, the only piece of furniture in the room that wasn’t falling apart.

Sid swallowed hard, her heart pounding so violently that it felt like it was crawling up her throat and had to be forced back to where it belonged.

“You’ve caused me a lot of trouble, little girl. A lot of trouble,” he repeated thoughtfully, almost as if he was talking to himself. “But no matter. I’ve got you now.” He nodded to the guard holding her arm, and she was shoved forward and to her knees, so that she had to look up at Pinto as the tape was ripped off her mouth.

“That’s better,” he said, gazing down at her with cold eyes. “That’s where you belong, where all of you belong.”

“All of us,” Sid croaked, ignoring the voice inside her head that was telling her to shut up. She knew that it would be smarter, but if she was going to die, she was going to go down fighting, even if all she had to fight with were her words. “You mean all of us humans, or all of us women? You have a problem with women, Pinto?”

She saw the rage fill his face seconds before he leaned over and backhanded her hard enough to spin her around and slam her to the floor. He’d used his open hand, which was the only reason she was still alive. He was a vampire. She’d have to remember that. His strength was several times that of a human. A casual slap could break her jaw. And that had been no casual slap. Her ears were still ringing, and she was having trouble seeing straight.

“Watch your mouth, whore, or I’ll put it to better use.”

Sid lay on the floor, blinking, trying to come up with the energy, the desire, to force herself upright, to confront this monster with whatever dignity she had left.

“Get up,” Pinto demanded.

Sid made the effort, but she’d been hit twice today, both times hard enough to have her seeing stars, and it was taking longer for her to recover. That her hands were still bound behind her back didn’t exactly make it any easier, either. She made a show of trying to drag herself off the floor and nearly made it before falling to her side, unable to catch herself with her hands tied.

“I like seeing you like this,” Pinto said, chuckling. “Rich bitch Sidonie Reid crawling on the floor.”

Sid felt the heavy weight of his booted foot against her side, digging into her ribs hard enough to hurt as he shoved her back and forth, almost idly.