Page 16 of Fate's Unseen Shadow

She ate, considering him. She’d been willing to work at Cager alone, without his presence, but the immediate relief of him being there was unexpected. “Are you staying because of me?”

“Yes.” He lifted his gaze, holding hers. “I won’t leave you unprotected until this is resolved.”

Her thank-yous were sounding insufficient for how much he’d done for her in the last day. A perfect stranger had done more to help her than anyone she’d known since her father died. She pushed away the sad thought.

“Why do you have this apartment already set up?” Ella asked.

Damon sipped his coffee. “For our runaways, mostly. We don’t typically invite them into our houses to stay. Sometimes, we need a place for them to sleep a night or two before we can figure out our next step or wait for their family to come.”

She took the lid off her coffee, the smell so familiar it brought up another wave of emotion. “Are you the leader of your group? The others seem to do what you say.”

He shrugged. “There’s not really a leader, but we all have our own skill set, I guess you could call it. If we’re going after a criminal, Slater takes point. He used to be a detective and saw a lot of action. Xavier is usually the one that backs him up.”

“Why him?”

“They both carry.”

“Guns?” She slowed in her chewing. “And you and Ryker don’t?”

“Ryker does, and he knows how to use it, but it’s not the same level of training as the rest of us. Runaways usually default to me.”

“Why?”

Watching her as he chewed a large bite of his sandwich, he seemed to consider how to answer her. He could watch her all day if he wanted. It gave her an excuse to look at him, too. She’d almost convinced herself he wasn’t as handsome as she imagined yesterday. Nope. Not her imagination at all. The timing of meeting him would suck except for the clear fact that if she’d run into Damon as Elizabeth, nothing would’ve happened. Her old self worked too hard to eat a breakfast sandwich acrossfrom a man and enjoy his company. She’d be on her phone, working. And he wouldn’t have noticed her regardless.

“We don’t usually give people the background of how we got started.”

“I won’t tell anyone if you’re worried about that.” She tried for a smile, but her lips barely moved. “I have no one left to tell.”

She was alone. That hit her. Teddy had been her closest friend. The fact everyone thought she was his killer stung deeper than the simple false accusation.

“Focus on eating, Ella. Not crying. Why don’t you make your coffee?”

Frowning, she set down her sandwich and switched to fixing her coffee like he suggested. No one could read her this easily before.

“And it’s not so much a worry as it is telling you about the other guys’ personal business. It’s not mine to tell.”

She looked up from stirring her coffee. “I’m only interested in your story.”

He relaxed in his chair, wiping his mouth with a napkin before giving her a nod. “Alright. My seven-year-old niece was abducted. She was at an amusement park, and my sister let her go to the bathroom alone while she stood in the line to get her an ice cream. Hayley never returned and wasn’t in the bathroom when my sister went to look. At first, they thought she’d wandered off. But by the end of the day, they’d reported it as a missing child.”

“Oh, Damon. I’m so sorry. That must’ve been horrible for you and your family.”

“My sister is a single mom, so after she called the police, she called me. Thankfully, I’d left the Marines about three months earlier. The police passively accepted the amusement park’s explanation for why they couldn’t pull the footage from the security cameras. I knew that was bullshit, so I called Xavier.”

“I saw his Marines shirt yesterday. So you were there together?”

“Yes. Xavier suggested we talk to a guy who he had met a month earlier. So, we took a trip and met with Ryker. The only thing we hoped for was that Ryker could tell us if the amusement park told the truth. He did us better than that. Within an hour, he’d pulled their footage, caught the man leaving the park with her, and identified the car that had her. He tracked the car through traffic cams and got a clear enough shot to run facial recognition on the man driving. It produced a hit for a mug shot from ten years prior.”

“That’s incredible.” She sipped her coffee. “What happened?”

“With that information, I went to the police and”—he set his hand on the table, fisting it before laying it flat—“they did fucking nothing. They said they were working on the investigation, and we needed to step back. They wouldn’t even let me show them the pictures. Threatened to arrest me if I didn’t leave the station.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t listen to them.”

“Of course not. Xavier and I took off to the location Ryker found. Found Hayley. AndthenI went to prison.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “Wait. Why did you go to prison? For interfering in the investigation?”

---