CHAPTER 173

LAURA DIEGO

I spat out the clumps of blood in my mouth as the wood-walled room whirled and blurred dramatically in my vision.

It had taken me longer than I would have liked to realize I wasn't alone, the gray-eyed man with the dark linen of clothes hanging off his lithe, sinewy frame still standing only feet from me, the black plastic of my mobile pressed firmly against his ear.

I let out a small breath, surprise choking my frame so that I couldn't call out to the Umbrella Man, and warn him that he was exposing us to the enemy.

“Mmmph,” I groaned, sagging against the restraints the man must have put on me when I had been passed out and throwing back my head to meet his emotionless gray eyes as the whirl of the ceiling fan above us grounded.

Goosebumps broke across my skin as I watched the man as though seeing him for the first time and letting him watch me too, predator to predator, as though we were sizing up ourselves.

There was something wrong with the picture, the rake of a man a