Page 11 of Freeing Camila

A low growl rumbled in Jeeves’ chest, a primal urge to snap at his teammate, but he forced it down. “I met her this morning. She was stuck in a tree.”

The men and Haley all looked at him as if he’d said something ridiculous and if he thought about it hard enough it was a little crazy. Encountering a grown woman in a tree was not an everyday occurrence.

“You met Camila in a tree?” Haley reiterated unnecessarily pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

“Cammie,” he corrected for some unknown reason. “She goes by Cammie.”

“Just how well do you know this woman?” Eggs asked with a knowing smirk.

“Get your head out of the gutter,” he growled. “It’s not like that. I just helped her out.”

“Helped her out how?” Haley wondered.

“She was stuck. Her clothes got snagged by some branches. I climbed up and helped her down.”

“Interesting,” Eggs, the asshole, uttered in a tone that made Jeeves’ fists clench. “Youhelpedher down,” he continued, making the deed sound dirty.

“Oh my God. Would you stop,” Haley cried. “He just helped the woman out. Why do you have to make everything sound so dirty?”

“It’s just who I am, darlin’,” he replied with an obnoxiously confident grin.

“You must have done more than just helped her down if you know what she prefers to be called,” Sparks mused. Sparks was the quietest one of the bunch, but when he did speak, you listened.

Jeeves felt an unfamiliar heat flare in his cheeks. “She had a cut on her back from the branches. I treated it.”

“I bet you did,” Eggs murmured suggestively under his breath. Haley took a pencil out of her hair and threw it across the room at him. Of course, the man caught it and threw it back causing Haley to duck. The pencil flew past her and hit the wall behind her before rolling under the table.

“The woman’s in trouble,” Haley scolded, ignoring the pencil. “Have some common decency.”

“Not familiar with the term,” Eggs teased.

“You’re impossible.”

“So, how do we handle Baker’s request?” Hoot, wisely sensing a need for course correction, asked.

“When I spoke to Baker earlier, he got the sense that she wasn’t sharing everything with him. He thought she might have been too scared. All he knew was that she was desperate to get away from her father,” Flint said. Jeeves didn’t doubt that Cammie was scared of Baker. He was a big guy even though he’d heard most women refer to him as a silver fox. But Baker wouldn’t hurt a fly, unless that fly hurt someone he’d taken responsibility for.

“So, we watch her?” Voodoo asked.

Flint nodded. “Covertly. The new identity he’d created for her is solid, so he doesn’t think there will be an issue. He just wanted to let us know she was here.”

“Piras’s company is in LA, right?” Voodoo mused.

“Correct. The chances of him coming to Bell Creek is slim. Still . . .” He let the thought go unsaid. They all knew the best laid plans could go FUBAR in an instant.

“So we watch her,” Hoot reiterated.

“Not we,” Flint started before his eyes landed directly on Jeeves. A cold knot of dread tightened in his stomach. He knew what that look meant. “Just Jeeves. The rest of you have other assignments that take priority. And since Jeeves already has a relationship with the woman, he’s responsible for her.”

And there it was. He was so fucked.

“Sir?” Jeeves started to protest but was cut off by the bossman himself.

“That’s all for now,” Flint said, dismissing the team before standing and leaving the room.

“Shit,” Jeeves cursed and wanted to hurry out after his boss, but the rest of the group was blocking his exit.

Although he was a highly trained and skilled operator, a wave of panic unexpectedly washed over him, overwhelming his composure. He couldn’t do it. He wouldn't risk another tragedy; the memory of past mistakes made him incapable of taking on anyone’s safety. The idea of repeating the past filled him with such dread that he shuddered, the potential for loss being simply too overwhelming to consider.

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