Page 14 of Fury

He didn't answer right away and after a while she began to wonder if he'd heard her. His gaze seemed transfixed on the building remains and the only visible sign that he was paying any attention was that muscle in his jaw hopping again.

She didn't like that she couldn’t see his eyes. He was difficult to get a read on by body language alone. Although common sense said this couldn't be easy on him.

The physical scars she could see had healed, but from her experiences she knew the scars you couldn't see were the deadliest. And in cases of severe trauma they often never healed.

"My memories are muddy when I try to force them. Instead of vivid details, I remember random things. Like the heat pressing at my back as I ran for the door. Or the sound of Creed's hoarse voice as he got closer to me and Dani."

"Dani?" She mentally flipped through all the research she'd memorized. "She was one of the regular dancers here that night, right?"

He nodded. "She was the last to get out. I had to go back in to get her."

His eyes were beginning to glaze over the more they talked. It made her sad to watch him slipping away into what were probably very painful memories. A sudden wave of guilt washed over her.

"I'm sorry you keep having to relive it. We can stop if you'd like."

He shook his head. "Might as well get it over with. But this is the last time. So do whatever you got to do to remember the details." He took a deep breath and watched her turn her notebook to a fresh page and with pencil in hand she nodded up at him, ready to hear his nightmares.

The notebook wasn’t necessary considering her rare gift. Although a lot of times being able to remember every single detail and fact she was exposed to felt like a curse. However, the notebook seemed to comfort people more than the truth. It gave the illusion she wouldn’t remember after the case was closed. But she would. And it would haunt her.

* * *

As his brainreadied the words to fill her in, he watched her as intently as she did him. She scribbled a few words on the page, but the look in her eyes was something more than an agent taking notes.

The look on her face seemed one of pain, almost as severe as the pain coursing through him as he relived this nightmare one more time despite it being the last thing on the planet he wanted to do.

What could explain such empathy for a nobody like him? They’d just met. Yet, his instincts told him she understood exactly how this felt and it terrified him.

No one else deserved the memories that regularly tortured him and especially not someone as innocent as her. He cocked his head and looked closer.

Except she wasn't innocent, was she? If her work consumed her, and he'd bet everything he had it did, then she lived with a lot of ugly day and night.

This world had no shortage of people willing to do bad things to each other. Time had a way of repeating that lesson far too clearly. Now he would add to her burden and that didn't sit well with him at all.

Instead he felt the need to wrap her in his arms and shelter her from the bad. Maybe in a weird way they were meant to go through this together. Not that that made a bit of sense. He was a shifter and she was investigating a case on dangerous ground that held far too many secrets for her kind.

That would never mix well.

He shook his head and sucked in air. Whatever happened he needed to get his head in the game and out of the fucking clouds. Whatever "this" weird feeling was, it wasn't real. He rubbed his chest as the ache of rage refilled him. That was real. The need to find the hunters and make them pay too.

He’d use that anger to fuel his days, until everyone who’d dared to take someone away from him was deleted from this earth.

First though. He had to get this woman off the island and out of his hair. She could be more than a simple distraction. So he started the story at the beginning. "I had just arrived at the club when the explosion happened. Except I didn't know at the time what had caused it. I only knew the building was going to come down and I had to get out..."

---