Page 38 of Catch Me When I Fall

My hand formed into a fist at my side, and the longer I stared, the more irritated I became.

“Get it together, Grayson,” I whispered, pulling my gaze from the flowers and walking over to the small hallway to find a small half bath and an empty room. Inside the spare room, I spotted a closet. Something inside me told me to look, and I wasn’t a man who overlooked shit. Pulling open the closet door, my eyes dropped to the floor to find two cans of unopened paint and new paint supplies. The walls in this room were white, and she was planning on painting them…pink.

Why the fuck would she paint the room pink?

“Of all the fucking colors in the world…” I mumbled, closing the closet door before heading up the narrow stairway.

I halted at the top of the stairs, my eyes on her feminine bed, taking in the flowers and how her bed was made. It looked like something out of one of those home decor magazines that Hayes’ sister always bought. Perfect, not one thing out of place, something to be proud of. This surprised me. I was fully expecting her bedroom to look like the aftermath of a tornado. The notes from her stay at the rehab indicated she was a messy person.

What if everything in her file was wrong?

I looked over the window seat next, spotting her laptop and a single notebook. I moved, not stopping until the notebook was in my hands. Without a second thought or giving one single fuck about her privacy, I opened it. My chest stilled as I read the first entry.

This was her journal.

She was keeping a fucking journal.

She thought she was a prisoner?

A twinge of discomfort formed in my chest as I flipped the page, reading the next entry about her being pulled over by Sheriff Humbly, meeting his wife, and getting this house. My brows came together as I pieced together the timeline of her time in Astoria. She’d had a stroke of fucking luck, that was for damn sure. I took a seat on her window bench, scooting her laptop to the side as I continued reading.

I needed to know why she felt like a prisoner.

I didn’t need some doctor’s diagnosis or the crime photos of her husband’s murder. I needed to hear it from Carrie.

Why? The fuck if I knew. As my jaw jumped, I went on to read to the third entry.

Her handwriting in the second part of the entry was rushed, like she had to scribble everything down before she ran out of time.

In one hand, I was holding her journal, her delicate, chaotic writing filling the pages. In the other hand, my fist was gripping the note she had received the second day she was here.

My eyes stared at the words, scratched in a deep red ink. Whoever wrote this note said she was going to get what was coming to her.

“Fuck,” I bit out, tossing the journal onto the seat beside me as I surged up, yanking out my phone in the process. I called Ash, and he answered on the first ring.

“What do you need?” he asked, no bullshit.

“The target is in danger,” I seethed, my heart booming inside my chest as something else twisted in my soul.

What the fuck was this?

“What?” he shot back, sounding more alert. “Do you need backup?”

I paced back and forth in front of her pretty bed, my presence alone tainting its perfection. “No. The extraction is set. I’ll be on the road soon,” I told him.

“Do you need me to—”

“No,” I cut him off, running a hand through my hair. “Don’t—don’t do anything. This isn’t our job. The objective is to get her and nothing more.” I shook my head, turning back around to pace, my mind running rapidly. I don’t know why I’d even called him in the first place. This wasn’t a part of the fucking job. Why was I so fucking worried? As soon as she was back in St. Louis, she would be safe. Jeremy Jones would make damn sure of that.

He can’t protect her like I can.

“Grayson?” Ash called, sounding unsure.

“What?” I barked, crushing the note in my hand, my muscles tense. I wanted to shoot something.

“If you don’t want me to do anything, then why did you call?”

His question settled into me, and I slowly came to a stop, facing the bench. The feeling in my chest grew more, and I felt a drop of sweat trickling down the back of my neck. “I…” I trailed off.

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