The dark head nodded once, grimly. Yet when Jenna glanced up at him, the big man called Brock met her gaze with the same gentling calm that had greeted her when she'd first opened her eyes in this strange place.
Jenna swallowed past a knot of dread that was climbing steadily into her throat. "Alex, tell me what's happening. I know I was ... attacked. I was bitten. Oh, Jesus ... there was a ... a creature. It somehow got into my cabin and it attacked me."
Alex's expression was heavy, her hand tender where it came to rest on Jenna's. "I know, honey. I know what you went through must have been awful. But you're here now. You survived, thank God."
Jenna closed her eyes as a raw sob choked her. "Alex, it ... it fed off me."
Brock had moved closer to the bed without her notice. He stood directly beside her and reached out to stroke his fingertips along the side of her neck. His big hands were warm, and impossibly tender. It was the oddest sensation, the peace that emanated from his light caress.
Part of her wanted to reject his uninvited touch, but another part of her--a needy, vulnerable part that she hated to acknowledge, let alone indulge--could not refuse the comfort. Her banging pulse slowed under the gentle rhythm of his fingers as they traveled lightly up and down the length of her throat.
"Better?" he asked quietly as he drew his hand away from her.
She exhaled a slow sigh with her weak nod. "I really need to see my brother. Does Zach know I'm here?"
Alex's lips pressed together as an aching silence grew long in the room. "Jenna, honey, don't worry about anything or anybody else right now, okay? You've been through so much. For now, let's just focus on you and on making sure you're well. Zach would want that, too."
"Where is he, Alex?" Despite the fact that it had been years since Jenna wore the badge and uniform of an Alaska State Trooper, she knew when someone was sidestepping the facts. She knew when someone was trying to protect another person, trying to spare them from pain. As Alex was doing with her this very moment. "What's happened to my brother? I need to see him. Something's wrong with him, Alex, I can see it in your face.
I need to get out of here, right now."
Brock's big, broad hand came toward her again, but this time, Jenna swept it away. It had only been a slight flick of her wrist, but it knocked aside his hand as though she'd put all of her strength--and then some--into the motion.
"What the hell?" Brock's eyes narrowed, something bright and dangerous crackling in his dark gaze, there and gone before she could fully register what she was seeing.
And at that very moment, Kade returned to the room, two other men with him. One was tall and lean, athletically built, his disheveled crown of blond hair and rimless, pale blue sunglasses that rode low on the bridge of his nose giving him something of a geeky mad-scientist vibe. The other, dark haired and grim faced, strode inside the small room like a medieval king, his very presence commanding attention and seeming to suck all of the air out of the place.
Jenna swallowed. As former law enforcement, she'd been accustomed to facing down men twice her size without flinching. She'd never been easy to intimidate, but looking at the likely thousand-plus pounds of muscle and brute strength that now surrounded her in these four men--to say nothing of the distinctly lethal air they seemed to wear as casually as their own skin--
she found it damned hard to hold the scrutinizing, almost suspicious, gazes that were locked onto her from each man in the room.
Wherever she'd been brought, whoever these men were whom Kade associated with, Jenna got the very distinct impression that the so-called private facility wasn't a hospital at all. It sure as hell wasn't a country club.
"She's been awake only for a few minutes?" asked the blond, his voice carrying just the barest hint of an English accent. At Brock and Alex's joint nods, he walked up to the bed. "Hello, Jenna. I'm Gideon. This is Lucan," he said, gesturing to his mountain of a companion, who now stood next to Brock on the other side of the room. Gideon frowned at her over the top of his shades. "How do you feel?"
She frowned back at him. "Like a bus ran me over. A bus that apparently dragged me from Alaska all the way to Boston."
"It was the only way," Lucan interjected, command palpable in his level, ask-no-permission tone. He was the leader here, no question about that. "You hold too much information, and you needed specialized care and observation."
She didn't like the sound of that at all. "What I need is to be back at home. Whatever that monster did to me, I survived it. I won't be needing any kind of care or observation because I'm fine."
"No," Lucan countered grimly. "You are not fine. Far from it, in fact."
Although it was said without cruelty or threat, an icy cold dread seeped through her. She looked to Alex and Brock--the two people who'd assured her just a few minutes ago that she was all right, that she was safe.
The two people who'd actually managed to make her feel safe, after waking up from the nightmare that she could still taste on her tongue. Neither of them said a thing now.
She glanced away, stung and not a little afraid of what that silence might truly mean. "I have to get out of here. I want to go home."
When she started to swing her legs over the edge of the bed to get up, it wasn't Lucan or Brock or any of the other huge men who stopped her, but Alex. Jenna's best friend moved to block her, the sober look on her face more effective than any of the brute strength standing ready elsewhere in the room.
"Jen, you have to listen to me now. To all of us. There are things you need to understand ... about what happened back in Alaska, and about the things we still need to figure out. Things only you may be able to answer."