Page 45 of Callen's Captive
Chapter Nine
KATE
Kate shoved her face into the pillow where Callen had laid his head. Breathing in his scent was heaven, but he wasn’t beside her. She missed having his breath on the back of her neck and the way he fell asleep yesterday, with his hand on her hip. Nothing forward, but just resting it there, protective. He had rushed out of the treehouse without any explanation last night. That bothered her more than it should.
She was a grown woman. She could handle rejection. What she couldn’t handle was the thought of him taking off in the middle of the night.
Callen had pulled away from her, to keep from going too far because she was human, and she could respect that, even if she didn’t fully understand it. Maybe he pulled away for the same reason Janie had never shared her secret with her. He didn’t think she could relate to who he was.
He was right. She couldn’t shift, and she wasn’t treated as a second-class citizen. Strike that. Shifters weren’t considered citizens. They were tolerated as another species at best, like bears and mountain lions. Animal but not. Human-like, but not human. The U.S. and other governments across the globe didn’t know how to classify shifters, so they didn’t bother. There was a basic understanding between humans and shifters; don’t cause trouble and you’ll be left alone.
Really, the only thing she and Callen had in common was being hunted by the WSSO, and that was a pitiful basis for any relationship beyond being allies. So, allies. . . She’d take what he could give. It was still better than what she had before, which was a big fat nothing. Sure, she met up with Logan once every few months to trade intel, and she had her online connections, but it wasn’t the same as what she had–what she wanted–with Callen.
“You okay, Princess?” Callen said, standing at the top of the ladder, with only his head showing through the doorway. His brows pinched together, his worry clear. She had such a desire to kiss him. A small kiss, one that said, ‘Good morning, I’ve missed you.’ She really needed to figure out how she was going to be near him, without constantly thinking of how she wanted to touch him, kiss, or simply lean against him and have his arms wrap around her.
“I’m fine.” She forced herself to smile. “I-I thought you left.”
“I gave you my word, didn’t I? I’m going to make sure you get out of Riverview, to some place safe.”
“There is no place that’s safe, Callen. At least here I know the terrain, the people even. Briggs and his goons will leave, eventually. I just have to lie low until then. This treehouse will work for a while. It’s cozy, has a great view—”
“No,” he said.
“I’ll see you to the woods, and then I’ll do what I need to do,” she added, ignoring that frown of his, and how he climbed the rest of the way up the ladder to stand over her with all those glorious muscles just begging to be touched. He wasn’t doing the begging, but man-oh-man she really wanted to touch him.
Callen raised his chin, his spine going stiff and quite tense. She was starting to wonder what it was about her that unnerved him. Or if he simply didn’t want to be there.
She held up her hand before he could protest again. “Before the WSSO raided my apartment last week, I came across some plans involving a few shifter communities. I think the WSSO is targeting them for an assault.”
The growl she heard made her shudder, though not as much as last time. At least she no longer felt like she had to run every time she heard him growl. She was starting to associate his growls with extreme displeasure aimed at the situation, not her.
“You’re endangering yourself and you act as if you don’t even care.”
“Oh, I care. If they catch me, who will hack into their servers and create havoc,” she said with a smile.
“Not funny,” he said, those sweet lips of his thinning again.
She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I have to hack into their servers again, and I won’t have long before they trace my location and send a response team. It doesn’t matter where I go, Callen, where I hack from. The WSSO will send a team. Once I hack into their servers, I’ll have a narrow window of opportunity to escape. Even though Briggs is already in the area, I have the advantage here. This is my home turf. I know every nook and cranny of this place. Then I can leave until all the mercenaries give up and move on.”
“We, Princess. You keep forgetting the plural of ‘I’ is ‘we’.”
He wanted to stick with her through this? Unbelievable. And yet her heart raced. She didn’t try to hide the smile that surfaced. “We.” It seemed they’d be working as a team for now.
“Good,” he said with a nod. “We do this together. You hack their servers one last time and thenweescape to the woods whereIhave the advantage.”
“Not the woods. I won’t, can’t go into the woods again. It’s too soon. The library has Wi-Fi and several escape routes. We can split up then, if you’d like. You head to the woods, I’ll grab a ride and head north on the interstate. One of my online contacts gave me the location of a spot I might be able to get over the border into Canada without a passport.”
“We’re not splitting up.”
“I hope you like the idea of Canada then.”
“I prefer the woods.”
“They have a lot of woods in Canada.”
“We have plenty of woods here, too. You’ll be safe with my pack.”
“I’m a city girl, Callen. You should know that by now. Are you coming with me then? To Canada? They have really good maple syrup there. It might taste good with peanut butter.”
