Chapter 40
SHAWN
Once lunch was over, we each focused on business.
When the time was right, I was going to convince her to come to Osterh?gen. Incentive Systems had granted her as much leave as she needed to recover from her ordeal, and that should be more than enough time to persuade. The alternative, her seven hours away from me in Maastricht, was unacceptable.
When I was back on top of things, we still had five hours before landing.
“Let’s take a nap,” I suggested. “As long as you can be an adult and keep your hands to yourself.”
I’d said it as a joke, but the truth was I was hyperaware not to push. After what she’d been through, I didn’t want her to feel any pressure, and I wasn’t going to move faster than she was ready for.
She’d be the one to guide us forward.
Victoria turned down the couch, converting it into a bed. She drew the shades, plunging the cabin into near darkness before retreating to the galley and shutting the door to give us privacy.
I took off my tie, jacket, and shoes as I listened to Kara stretch out on one side of the bed.
Even though it wasn’t huge, it was double the size of the hospital bed she’d shared with me last night.
I climbed in beside her, settling onto my back until the wound there painfully reminded me not to do that.
“What happened to Ethan?” she asked. “I thought I saw him in the square.”
“When the cameras came out, he had to disappear.”
“Is he okay? He was bleeding pretty bad.”
“He’s all right. He stayed near, and he . . .” I was unsure whether to continue. “He helped Jason with the body.”
“Helped him?”
“Jason didn’t give me a lot of details. Ethan took the body and the authorities barely questioned either of them, or where the guns came from, or the fact that he shot a man dead in front of several witnesses, all caught on video.
” It had been stunning how quietly it had been handled.
“He took care of every aspect. The way he explained it, this was them putting right the wrong they’d done by letting Juric escape. ”
She paused. “Did you kill that man in the woods?”
I wasn’t sure if she’d seen that or not. “He was going to kill you, or Ethan, or both of you.”
There was acceptance in her eyes. She’d been forced to kill a man to protect us, and now I’d done the same.
Her small, soft hand found mine.
It was then that the story spilled from her.
She told me about the splatters of red the bodies left when she’d first been delivered to Juric.
The unexpected fall she’d taken into the basement.
The knife he used on her. How she’d hidden my business card, and how difficult it had been to sacrifice, and return to the monster.
Finding out that Juric had been the one to kill Rhodes was a shock, but his motive for doing so was even greater. That Juric’s obsession had completely shifted from Laurel to Kara.
Then came the topic I was dreading.
“He’d drugged me with ecstasy,” she said, “and because we were both covered in mud from the forest,” her voice wavered, “he took off my clothes, and his clothes, and forced me into the shower.”
Her breathing increased from the stress, and I was a breath away from telling her to stop. That she didn’t need to think about this so soon, not until she was ready. But she seemed to want to get through it.
“To go from so much pain and cold, to suddenly feeling okay and warm . . . He kissed me.” Her voice was like a ghost. “I closed my eyes, wanting to be somewhere else, and when I said your name, that’s what got him to stop.”
An invisible fist slipped inside my body, curling its sharp finger around my heart and squeezed until an ache filled my entire chest. Schei?e, at one of the worst moments of her life, when she’d sought comfort, she’d thought of me.
She’d chosen me.
If there was any doubt left about my feelings for her, this annihilated it.
She’d fought back against Juric, which accounted for most of her bruises.
Her worst was the one on her stomach where Juric had punched her so hard I could make out the perfect impression of a fist. It made me recall the damage my brother’s bullet had done, how Juric’s eye had been replaced with a black hole.
The rest of what went with the memory I didn’t like thinking about, her collapse and the worry she was dying. I shoved it aside so I could revel in the revenge for a moment longer. Still, the bastard got off far too easy.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
The dark thoughts evaporated at her voice. “That he can’t hurt you anymore.” The words tumbled from my lips easily. “That I love you.”
She took in a startled breath, her mouth falling open. “I . . .”
When the response I’d hoped for wasn’t instantaneous, I claimed her in a kiss that was about love and not sex. It pulled the connection between us taut, strengthening it to what I hoped would be unbreakable, and she softened beneath me, answering me.
The hum of the jet engines was steady and powerful, and it wasn’t five minutes before we were asleep.