Page 16 of Callen's Captive
“I feel so helpless without my laptop,” she said as she flipped through the contents.
“Where is it?”
“I had to leave it across town, with the program running. I couldn’t take the chance they’d trace an open connection to me again.”
“Again?”
She hesitated, and then her eyes traveled the length of him. She’d done that half a dozen times now, as if she could assess his character by the state of his body. Maybe she was simply questioning if she could outrun him. Gaining her trust had been an uphill battle so far.
“Back at the house, before we had breakfast, I logged onto one of my email accounts. . . It’s not a risk I’d normally take, but there’s something I needed to check. They must have traced the activity back to me. That’s how they found us. Why they came so close to killing you.”
“Ah. At least that solves one question. I thought I was getting rusty and had left a trail.”
She tilted her head as her brows scrunched together, which he found rather cute, but it was the way she retreated to the far wall out of his reach that bothered him. “You’re not mad?” she asked.
“Did you lead them to us intentionally?”
“No.”
“Then there’s nothing to be mad about. Even if I were upset, Kate, I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“You keep saying that.”
“You need to hear it.”
She shrugged. “They’re just words, anyway.”
He closed his eyes, a wave of nausea made talking rather difficult at the moment. When the nausea finally passed, and he opened his eyes, she was still there, staring at him.
“You’re not what I expected.”
“You mean for a shifter?”
She nodded, and then quickly shoved the file she’d been leafing through into the top drawer of the desk. “How are you so calm after what that guy Briggs did to you?”
“I don’t blame you, Kate.”
She graced him with a cautious smile. That smile alone would go far in healing him. “Others would hold me responsible,” she added, her smile quickly fading. “Briggs cut you, beat you, hung you upside down, and then he left you there to die for no reason other than to get me to surrender.”
How many times had he beaten someone, cut them, all to coax a prisoner to cooperate or reveal information? She didn’t know it, but he was no better than Briggs.
“This is not on you. It’s on Briggs. Let it go.”
“I’m not sure how.” Her fingers gently traced over the ‘A’ on his chest, her pain clear on her face. “Only a psychopath could do that to another person.”
* * *
KATE
Kate could barely look at what Briggs had done to Callen’s chest, a chest that had been smooth and strong, but now bore an insult. . . a brand to wear down the mind as much as the body. She couldn’t understand how Callen was being so calm about it. She was struggling not to throw up every time she saw the bloody mess.
Letting him get involved had been a huge mistake. If she didn’t go her own way soon, Briggs or another psychopath from the WSSO would track them down and use Callen against her again, or kill him outright, without warning or playing any games this time. She couldn’t handle having another death on her hands, especially not Callen’s. He was a sweet guy, really sweet, and genuine. Not the type to tell a girl what she wanted to hear so he could get in her pants.
What amazed her the most was that he didn’t blame her for any of this mess, even though she was at the center of it. Then again, Callen didn’t appear as enraged about the torture as she was. He was hurting, she could see that in his face every time he moved, and even when he didn’t. Amazingly, he had come to terms with what Briggs had done, as if he understood it in a way that made it more business-like and less personal. Where was the rage, the need for revenge, the grief even? Or did Callen internalize it all? Would he explode at some distant time?
She didn’t know what to expect from Callen, but she wanted to. Sure, he was handsome and tall, dreamy tall, and had a lot of muscles that a girl could take her time admiring up close and personal, but he seemed so easy-going, not at all high-strung like the WSSO said was natural to all shifters. It was their wild side—their wolf, according to the dribble the WSSO spouted. She of all people knew better than to listen to WSSO propaganda, but it appeared she had allowed some of their stereotyping to leach into her being without even realizing it.
“Why aren’t you mad at Briggs, or me, or the world?” She didn’t like unanswered questions or mysteries and Callen’s reaction—or lack of reaction to what had been done to him—was beginning to unnerve her.
