Page 38 of Crave Me

“Sure,” I said, stepping up to the window.

I was just about to climb out when the door to the room opened and a big guy dressed in sweats strode in. “Were you serious about that offer you made me, Rowland, and—” He pulled up short when he caught sight of us.

Before he could utter another word, Caleb was on him, capturing him in a body lock, his arm slapped over his mouth as the guy yelled into his palm, struggling wildly.

“I was dead serious about it. I would’ve compensated you big time for letting me go. Good news is, you did. As far as Elijah is gonna know, anyway. Bad news is I can’t risk you telling him any different from the story I just told you. He can’t know Bastian is the one who liberated me, nor that he’s broken out of the room he’d been confined to.”

In the next breath, Caleb stabbed the shiv into the guy’s throat, blood spurting everywhere, all over him too, as he hit his carotid artery. He lowered the guy to the floor, leaving him wheezing and choking on his own blood.

Then he crouched down and pulled a knife from the guy’s holster and tossed it on the bed, right by the ropes, clearly to make it look like it was the guy who’d cut them. Once he was done, he yanked a Beretta out of the guy’s other holster, then strode back to me.

“Let’s go,” he said, mechanically, as though he hadn’t just murdered somebody.

“Cal—”

“Don’t. Just move, all right?” He wiped away some of the blood on his face, wincing. “I can’t, not right now.”

Shit.

He tucked the gun into his sweatpants and I turned and climbed out of the window.

I managed to drop down onto the little roof below and duck and roll properly, despite my body protesting every movement. I rolled over smoothly and landed in a deep crouch on the ground. My hands wouldn’t bear my weight, though, not after that exertion, and I collapsed onto my ass.

In the next few moments, though, Cal was there giving me a hand-up.

Once I was stable enough on my feet again, he released me, then pulled the gun, cocking it and readying his aim. “Trying to commandeer one of their vehicles over by the courtyard is too risky. They’ve got two guards manning the gates and another two at the courtyard itself. A couple more watch the house while some are sleeping, and another few will be patrolling around the mansion itself.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“Elijah delighted in telling me how hard it would be to break out of here, even if I somehow made it out of those restraints. It was part of him trying to fill my head with negativity and hopelessness.”

“Jesus, Cal.”

“He was trying to break me. He failed. Don’t worry your pretty little head about that.”

I grimaced internally, knowing him so well as to recognize his bravado hiding what really lurked beneath, the damage Elijah had clearly done. He might not have fully broken him, but he’d made a dent at least. I could see it through this intense need of his to downplay it, the way he’d killed that guy, and most of all, from the haunted look in his eyes.

We couldn’t deal with it right now, though. None of it.

“We’ll scale that chain-link fence over there,” I said, pointing to the twelve-foot-high monstrosity with a forest just a few feet from it. “We can use the trees as cover.”

He nodded and flanked me with the gun as I led the way over there.

Just as we reached it, the sound of voices had us both spinning around to see two guards strolling down the side of the mansion shooting the shit.

One second they spotted us, the next, two shots rang out, driving through each of their skulls, killing them instantly.

I looked to see Caleb’s eyes cold, his gun still in firing position.

A second later, the lights inside the mansion went on.

The gunfire had alerted the assholes within. Shit.

“Go, B,” he told me, gesturing wildly at the fence with his free hand, looking back and forth between me and the mansion.

His eyes fell on my necklace briefly and he told me, “I got a look at Elijah’s signal jammer when he was boasting about his successful abduction. The type he has, we’re looking at a two-mile range. Get beyond that and the pendant will be able to transmit again. Cas will come.”

I nodded my understanding. “We will. We’ll get outside of that fucking thing’s range. Let’s go.”

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