Chapter One

ERIN WOKE ONCE AGAIN IN A DARK ROOM, BUT this time it didn’t feel like a dream. She thought she had fallen asleep in her father’s car, which was unusual. The only times she really remembered blacking out like that . . .

Where was she?

What had she done?

She pushed herself up and then gasped. Her body ached. She shoved her hair out of her face and groped blindly for the edge of the bed, and from there for a lamp. She needed light. She needed–

Don’t freak out again, Erin. Deep breaths. She consciously controlled her breathing as she located the bedside table.

Instead of finding a lamp, she touched a small box, maybe for jewelry. A . . . pair of handcuffs? A little less carefully and a little more frantically, she searched further, and then she bit back a scream as she grabbed something sharp, cutting her hand.
She recoiled, hugging her injured hand to her chest, and ended up in the middle of the dark room. She shuffled forward, her uninjured hand in front of her face, until she found the wall and breathed a sigh of relief.

The relief was short-lived. In that moment, a door behind her opened, letting in a stream of muted but much-appreciated light and a man she had never seen before.

He looked a little older than Erin–maybe a college student–though he had a quality about him that made Erin think he was older than that. His skin was caramel-bronze, and his short, tousled hair was the color of French roast coffee beans.

What didn’t match were his silver and blue eyes, which made her think of a blue jay dipped in mercury. He didn’t look like anyone she remembered ever knowing, but at