CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I had to bite my lip against the protest that wanted to arise. I would not be doing myself any favours if I challenged him on every move he made.

“Tomorrow, you can gather your things and we’ll see what we can do about getting you back home. I’ll have a word with Sharkey for you.”

“No,” I said with a little more force than necessary. If the volume of my voice shocked me, James looked stunned.

“No?” The look he gave me was not friendly.

“No. I need to do this.”

He stopped dead, and we came to a rather painful abrupt halt. “You need to walk into a certain death trap and have sex with lots of random men?” He raised his eyebrows at me, and his icy blue irises could have given me another dose of hypothermia.

“You don’t know that,” I countered.

His voice went low and soft as he said, “Au contraire, Lois. I do know that for certain. Sharkey knows it too, but you’re just a number to her.”

That little snippet of information was not news to me, so I made no comment.

Leading me into a sterile be