Page 31 of Protective Assignment
“What happened to your face?”she asked, reaching up to touch the bruise on his jaw without thinking.He winced and pulled back.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she blurted out.“Did someone hurt you?”
“I got attacked when we were at the warehouse,” he explained, and her stomach clenched with panic.
“Attacked?”she whispered.
“It’s okay, though,” he replied.“He didn’t manage to do much to me.We got him under control.”
He?Her mind began to race as she tried to figure out who it might be.Surely it couldn’t be Ryker, right?They wouldn’t have been able to subdue him so easily.He would need a whole army to take him down.That man was evil.And he probably wouldn’t have let Cade walk away with nothing more than a bruise on his face.
“This is my fault,” she muttered under her breath, she was sure of it.
“What are you talking about?”he replied with a frown, cupping her face in his hand.
She shook her head and drew her gaze away from him.She didn’t want to tell him, but the truth was she had dragged them into this.If she hadn’t arrived here, he would never have gotten hurt.
And if she stayed, he was only going to get hurt again, and again, and other people would too.Other people who had come here for safety only to be met with the danger that would follow her wherever she went.Guilt stabbed at her hard.She needed to go.She should have left the night before when she’d had the chance.But after she had spoken to Hannah, she had made herself believe for a moment that she could find a way to make it all work.
But looking at Cade now, she knew she couldn’t.Tears brimmed in her eyes and dripped down her cheek, and Cade wiped them away with his thumb.She squeezed her eyes shut and tilted her head into the palm of his hand, wishing she could stay here, in this moment.She wished she could tell him everything and promise that it would all be okay,even though she knew it wasn’t the truth.How could anything ever be okay again after what had happened?She knew what the Shepards were capable of, and it was only going to get worse from here.She didn’t want to put more of a target on the lodge or the people living here than she already had.
Before her mind could stray any further back down that path, she heard voices behind her.One voice she recognized.A voice that made her feel as though she was about to throw up on the spot.She spun around, trying to place it.
All at once, she figured it out.Cade turned back to the truck and helped Lawson and Xavier guide out someone she had never seen at the lodge before.
But he wasn’t a stranger to her.He lifted his gaze up from the ground as though he could sense her presence, and his face drained of color when he saw her.He froze on the spot, not taking his eyes off her.Staring at her like he had seen a ghost.
“River?”he breathed.
Hearing the man say her name made her knees tremble, the panic starting to set in.After all this time, after as far as she had managed to get from them.Right here in front of her was a remnant of her old life—a part of her past she had prayed she would be able to get away from for good.
“River, what are you doing here?”he demanded.
Chapter Nineteen
Cade looked from the man to River and back again.River looked as though she was about to be sick right there, hardly able to draw in a breath, and the man stood frozen, like he had seen someone he had never expected to lay eyes on again.
“Wait, do you two know each other?”Xavier asked with a frown.
River shook her head and looked at the ground, but the man nodded.
“River, don’t you remember me?It’s Louis.Dr.Louis.”
She wouldn’t even look at him.Wouldn’t look at any of them.Cade put an arm around her waist and she leaned into him like he was the only thing keeping her upright in that moment.He squeezed her in close, and felt her body trembling helplessly against him as she tried to pull herself together.
“I want the two of them in my office,now,” Lawson demanded, snapping his fingers and making her flinch.“River and Dr.Louis both have some explaining to do.”
River tried to pull away from Cade, but he kept a firm grip on her.She needed to face this, whatever it was, but he wasn’t going to let her do it alone.No matter how sheknew this guy, no matter what had happened between them in the past, she had to come clean and tell them what she knew.This man had been found at the location of a break-in by the Shepards, after all.Did that mean she knew something about them, too?
Cade guided River into the lodge, where Xavier and Lawson steered the man—the doctor—to Lawson’s office.Cade’s mind reeled as he took it all in.Maybe it was the hit he’d taken from the doctor still scrambling his head, but he couldn’t make sense of it.
Xavier and Lawson went to get coffee before they began their interrogation, leaving Cade, River and the man who called himself Dr.Louis waiting in the office.Louis stared at River but she wouldn’t look him in the eyes.Instead, her eyes darted nervously around the room.
“River, you must remember me,” he said in a soft voice.
She stood stock-still, eyes pinned to the wall next to him.A tear ran down her cheek, but she hardly seemed to notice it was there.
“You’re looking for Haven, aren’t you?”he asked her.
