Chapter Seven
He’d made himself a hostage in his own house.
Callen tracked her movements from the bathroom in the hallway to the second bedroom through his closed door as he lay in bed.
Maeve had never been one of those women who indulged in a twenty-seven-step nighttime routine—more like only brushing her teeth as fast as possible to get back to whatever case she was working on—but minutes seemed to stretch into an hour before he registered the final click of her bedroom door.
They hadn’t talked much during the short tour he’d given her of the two-bedroom, one-bath two-story and a rushed dinner of Chinese takeout.
Almost like they were skirting some kind of explosion, careful not to trigger an invisible trip wire they would never recover from.
This… He hadn’t expected this. Her being here, in his space, in his life.
Catching hints of her perfume when she shifted on the couch, and the way she bit the inside of her mouth when she was trying to focus on whatever she was reading on her phone, had downshifted his nervous system in a matter of minutes.
It felt as though the past year hadn’t happened, that they each hadn’t lost one of the most important people in their lives, and they were going about their night as they would any other.
If he was being honest with himself, he’d felt more at ease during their silent standoff than he had all day.
They’d each reached their limit after a day of chasing ghosts and fallen into some kind of truce.
Or maybe he just liked having someone in the house again.
He hadn’t entirely been honest with her earlier.
His roommate had gone home for the offseason, but the part-time ranger had moved out weeks before then.
Turned out Callen wasn’t what the kind of roommate he’d signed up for.
His roommate’s words. Not Callen’s. Something about his inability to communicate in anything other than growls.
All Callen had now was semiregular check-ins with his parents through FaceTime and a dozen unanswered text messages sent to his brother when sleep refused to come.
Which was nearly every night, as long as he sat in this purgatory of dead ends and few clues as to where Lauren had vanished.
But Maeve had ignited a tendril of hope finding that Taser at the scene.
He knew the chances it’d play any kind of significance in his sister’s case were slim.
The device they’d recovered could’ve belonged to either victim, a hiker may have dropped it on an early-morning run, one of the investigators might’ve misplaced it during the searches along the bank.
Hell, it may have been there long before Iliana Meyer’s vehicle had been recovered and had nothing to do with the disappearance of either woman.
Except Callen didn’t believe any of that.
He didn’t know how to explain it other than a gut feeling.
Because it’d been that specific Taser. The same make and model he’d gifted to his sister before she moved to Springdale.
And it’d had a charge left. Not a lot, but enough to convince him it’d been left behind recently.
How many times had he walked that scene, leaving empty-handed over and over?
How many times had he prayed for something—anything—to stand out and give him the next step?
How many favors had he exhausted from his law enforcement friends, the most recent of which had landed him in Zion so he could stick close to a crime scene that’d gone cold a long time ago?
But now, after an entire year of running out of leads, Maeve had shown up and offered him a lifeline.
Callen turned onto his side, staring at the digital clock on his nightstand.
Close to midnight. His next shift started in six hours, when most of the world would still be sleeping and no one would be on the trails.
Problem was, he was too wound up. Previous experience from holding on to so much tension throughout the day told him sleep wouldn’t come for a while. Not as long as she was here.
Flipping onto his other side, he forced his eyes closed.
Instantly aware of the creak of the bed coming from the other room.
Maeve was an uneasy sleeper. She usually tossed and turned for hours, sometimes waking him in the middle of the night with a backhand to his chest or face or a kick to the shins, until he practically had to pin her to the mattress with his weight and her overactive mind let her settle.
Another creak reached through the walls, and he could picture her tossing from her back to her side, to her front and all over again as she tried to get comfortable.
It was a ritual, of sorts. Seemed not much had changed in that department, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she was restless because someone else had taken over his former duties to help her sleep and she didn’t have that now.
The bed creaked again. Damn it all. Callen wrapped the ends of his pillow around his head to drown the urge to go lube up the damn bedsprings.
Wouldn’t do any good. His awareness of her hadn’t shut down just because he’d added a couple of doors between them.
He shouldn’t have brought her here, but there was no going back now.
Scrubbing both hands down his face, he burrowed deeper into his pillows, and the sounds of her tossing quieted long enough that he somehow managed to drift off as he replayed every move she’d made today, every sign of frustration when forced to speak to him.
Every time her eyes had grown a little colder after he’d questioned her capabilities to lead this investigation.
Hell, he’d been an asshole. More than he’d realized in the moment, but now his accusations, his insults, were all he could hear.
Until those words contorted into screams.
Callen shot upright as his bedroom came into focus. His shoulders rose and fell in big gasps for air. Streetlight penetrated around the edges of his curtains, the clock reading three in the morning. He pressed his hand against his chest. Had it been a nightmare?
A low moan drifted through the thin bedroom door.
“Maeve.” His heart galloped out of control as he pressed his thumbprint into the reader on his gun safe and wrapped his hand around the grip of the pistol inside.
Within two breaths, he’d ripped through his bedroom door and raised his weapon, clearing the living room and kitchen.
The front door was secure. No signs of a break-in at the back door or from any of the windows.
But the screams…
Shoving through the second bedroom door, Callen flipped on the light.
And deflated. Curled into a fetal position, she’d kicked her blankets to the floor.
Racking sobs shook through her and the bed frame.
Damn it. The nightmares. He’d forgotten about the nightmares.
Another howl clawed free from her chest, so raw and terrible his stomach seized.
He set his pistol on the long dresser tucked against the wall and took that first step.
Then pulled up short.
He shouldn’t be in here. They weren’t together anymore. He didn’t have any right to touch her, nor did he have the inclination to offer her any kind of comfort after what she’d done. But leaving her trapped in that hell, helpless to the memories she had to carry from her dad’s murder…
Callen fisted both hands at his sides. Didn’t help relieve any of the urgency in his blood. “Maeve.”
No sign she’d heard him, lost to her own mind.
“Maeve.” He’d been through this cycle enough times before. There was no pulling her out when the dreams got this bad. At least not just by yelling at her. And this one was bad.
She kicked out, her heel colliding with the end of the bed frame. Callen latched one hand around her bare ankle to keep her from hurting herself. Setting his other hand against her shoulder, he willed her to still under his touch. “Come on, Maeve. Wake up.”
The full-body flinches and wrenching of her head every few seconds told him she was in too deep. All he could do was be here when she finally surfaced. Skimming his thumb across her bottom lip with one hand, he tracked her pulse with the other. “Come back to me, Maeve.”
Careful not to shift her too much, Callen stretched behind her, tucking his arm beneath his head and setting one hand on her hip.
The pajamas she’d gone to bed in rode higher up her flat stomach, exposing warm, smooth skin.
He drew little circles around her navel, as he had a thousand nights before.
He’d convinced himself tracking down the man who’d butchered her father—a serial offender who’d taken more than ten innocent lives, as far as the police were able to put together—would offer her some kind of closure, but the terror persisted, drove her to the next case and to push herself harder.
Sometimes past her limits. Once upon a time, he’d been there to pull her back, but now?
Who did she have to remind her she had to eat, that she had to sleep and to make sure she wasn’t getting too invested in the victims she sought justice for? And why the hell did he care?
A sigh escaped from between her lips, as if she’d found some kind of release. The worst had passed, but Callen still drew those small circles over her skin. Waited as her breathing evened out and the muscles down her spine relaxed.
He wasn’t sure how long he lay there just…
absorbing her body heat. Touching her, pulling the last hints of her perfume into his lungs.
When was the last time he’d just held still like this?
When he’d felt warm? His gaze shifted to the rise and fall of Maeve’s shoulder.
The answer was right there in front of him, throwing him back to the night before he’d ended their engagement.
Before he’d learned she’d compromised Lauren’s case.
If he’d known that night would’ve been his last chance to feel this…
connection to another person, would he have gone through with the breakup?
Would he have kicked her out of their apartment and cut off contact?
Maeve shifted, and he held himself frozen, suddenly aware that he’d crawled into her bed and put his hands on her after everything he’d thrown in her face today. He really was a bastard. “Callen?”
“You had a nightmare.” His voice sounded as though it’d been dragged over gravel. He didn’t want to think too much on the sensations pooling in his gut at hearing his name on her lips. “You were screaming.”
She moved to sit up, but Callen only held on to her tighter. Unwilling for her to break the peace he’d found the past few minutes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake—”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” Removing his hand from her stomach took more effort than he expected as she rolled over to face him.
“You don’t… You don’t have to stay. I’ve managed this long without you.” Maeve tucked both hands beneath her face. The sight was absolutely ridiculous and completely her, and he couldn’t stop the smile tugging at his mouth.
“Have you?” He hadn’t meant to ask. And he certainly had no business running the side of his index finger along her jaw. But an unquestionable craving exploded as his hand brushed her collarbone and her pupils expanded to the rims of those dark eyes he thought of so often.
And Callen crushed his mouth to hers.