Chapter Twenty-Six
It wasn’t possible.
But the face staring down at her wasn’t an illusion. The mask had hidden his most striking features, but the eyes… She should’ve recognized his eyes, a piercing blue that matched his father’s rather than the dark intensity of Helen Russell’s. “You.”
Cieron cocked his head to one side. “Me.”
Her bones suddenly felt too big for her body, gravity too heavy on her muscles. “You killed Lauren.”
Her almost-brother-in-law—the closest man she’d had to a brother—rounded down the side of the table, setting himself up to her right. “I can tell this is coming as quite a shock for you, so I’ll give you a minute.”
The change in his positioning didn’t do much for the anxiety burning through her.
She still couldn’t breathe without aggravating the sutures in her still-leaking gut, couldn’t force her brain to catch up with reality.
Tears she’d swallowed back over and over finally broke that internal barrier she’d summoned since seeing Callen for the first time in a year. “You tried to kill Callen.”
“Would have, too, if you weren’t so damn determined to save everyone.
” His wide smile flashed with newly whitened teeth, but she’d seen the truth that night she’d found him in the warehouse.
What the drugs had done to him inside and out.
“That bullet was never meant for you, but you just couldn’t stop yourself from playing hero, Maeve.
Never could. I think it’s one of the things I love about you.
Why I fell in love with you, but no matter how many times I tried to tell you, I couldn’t.
Because I knew you would never choose me. ”
Love. No. That…that didn’t make sense. Cieron wasn’t in love with her.
Fisting her hands at her sides, Maeve focused on the sharpness of her nails in her palms rather than the steady drip coming from her stomach.
She didn’t know what the hell she’d done to tear the sutures, but she’d obviously done more damage than she thought.
“Listen to me, Cieron. You don’t love me.
You just think you do because we’ve been through hard things together.
It happens, and I don’t blame you for thinking that night I got you to the hospital was more than what really—”
“Don’t patronize me!” Cieron slammed his fist into the wood beside her head, and a ringing started in her ear.
Vibrations seemed to tremor through him as he stared down at her with an expression she’d never seen before.
Tight and full of rage. This wasn’t the man she’d known.
The man who’d driven her and Lauren to the movies or to a party their parents didn’t know about or bought them their first case of beer had always owned a sly smile that could slay any woman’s resistance, a lazy way of moving and sarcasm that ended in laughs.
He’d been the perfect brother looking out for them when they got in over their heads as teens, then the fun brother when they’d crossed over the eighteen-year threshold.
But this man…she didn’t know this man, and Maeve’s instincts told her she didn’t want to.
“I don’t have some kind of savior complex, Maeve.
Nothing changed for me the night you took me to the emergency room, though I appreciated your help from letting me die and promising to find my sister.
Unnecessary but appreciated. I’d already decided long before that night that you would be mine. And now you are.”
His. No. She wasn’t his, and the longer she remained strapped to this table, the more likely she wasn’t leaving whatever hellhole he’d dragged her to.
A gust of wind battered the wall behind him, the wood groaning under the force.
The entire room felt as though it would crash down around them given the slightest push.
She couldn’t stay here, but running out into the night blind, with a hole in her stomach, wouldn’t be any better for what he had planned. “You don’t want to do this. Callen—”
His growl reverberated off the already shaky walls.
Cieron planted both hands on the table, on each side of her, leaning in close enough she caught hints of marijuana on his clothing.
“Enough about my brother. He’s not coming for you, Maeve.
I saw him leave you at the funeral home without turning back and drive away.
Probably running back to Mommy and Daddy like he always does when things don’t go his way.
He and Lauren had that in common, as you know.
He lost his chance. Now it’s my turn, and as soon as I’m done getting what I want from you, I’ll finish what I started with him. After all, it’s the least he deserves.”
Callen. Her vision wavered again. It was getting harder to keep her eyes open, and she really, truly did not want to pass out in the presence of a man who felt entitled to her.
Her training directed her to memorize the layout of the small space.
The room itself didn’t have much in the way of furniture, the table she’d been zip-tied to taking up most of the space, though she was sure it’d been moved from one of the other walls into the center of the shack-like design.
No windows. No signs of anyone having lived here.
Not a house. Another gust of wind rattled the thin wood door with knots drilled straight through it.
A fire extinguisher had been installed on a hook near the hinges with a toolbox and thin sleeping cot off to one side.
“And what is it you want from me, Cieron? Why go through all this trouble? Why kill Lauren and Iliana and try to drown your brother?”
“You, Maeve. I just want you. I want you to want me as much as I want you, and if you don’t, I want you to hurt as much as I do watching you choose my brother over and over despite how he’s treated you.
” Shoving away from the table, he backed up until he hit what looked like a plain desk. “So what’s it going to be?”
“You’ve already hurt me.” She didn’t miss the flinch in his shoulders.
He didn’t like the fact that she was bleeding out.
The gunshot wound most likely ruined whatever plans he’d had in bringing her here, but if she was being honest, it was ruining hers too.
She wouldn’t make it far when she ran. Maeve twisted her left wrist—the one most likely out of his line of vision—until the edge of the zip tie cut through the first layer of skin.
This would hurt, but it would be quick once she followed through.
She just had to keep him distracted enough not to notice.
“You see that, don’t you, Cieron? Killing Lauren, abducting Iliana and driving Callen’s truck into the river with him inside, the bullet wound.
All those things have already hurt me, are still hurting me.
You’re not supposed to hurt the people you love, and you’ve hurt me far more than Callen ever has. ”
Her heart threatened to give under the lie.
Because the truth was, Callen had hurt her, but the scars and the wounds weren’t visible to the naked eye.
They’d cut much deeper. From ending their engagement to the barbs he’d thrown at her over the past few days, she wasn’t sure whether there was anything left for her and Callen to salvage.
But she wanted there to be. She wanted to tell him how sorry she was that she’d lied, that she hadn’t gotten to Lauren in time, that she hadn’t seen the threat before now.
She wanted him to know she might’ve taken that bullet to save his life but that he’d saved hers more times than she could count in some of the smallest ways.
By ordering takeout for them after an especially hard day in the field, for showing her what it felt like to be wanted when no one else had stepped forward to claim her after her father’s death, by hunting down the man who’d destroyed everything she’d known and never shying away from the nightmares that chased her until she woke screaming.
Callen had been there to shape her from the moment she’d stepped over the Russells’ threshold.
He’d trained her to adapt and crawl out onto the other side when things got too overwhelming, and he’d handed her the weapons and the courage to stand her ground against some of the worst threats she’d ever faced.
Breaking her heart, ending their future—neither of those things held a candle to all the good he’d brought into her life. And she wasn’t ready to let the darkness win. Not then and not now.
Maeve clenched her jaw against the sharp pain lancing through her as she arched her wrist upward, straining the plastic.
All she needed was a little more pressure.
What was this place? A shed? No. Nobody installed a fire extinguisher in a storage shed.
Well, except for Callen, but his storage container had been different.
He’d turned it into an impressive arsenal she could only attribute to him.
The man loved his weapons, always wanting to be prepared.
But he wouldn’t be prepared for this. Things had changed between them, but she had to believe there was still something worth saving from their relationship.
Cieron closed his eyes, and she took her chance, risking the pain. “You forced my hand. I didn’t want to hurt them, but you made me. By not seeing I was right there in front of you. By choosing him.”
The zip tie snapped, though Maeve didn’t give any hint as to the change in her circumstances. “I didn’t make you do anything. You’re the one who chose to hurt them, Cieron. You’re responsible for your actions. Nobody else.”
“No!” He charged the table again, quickly losing the short sense of calm. “You did this. You got into my head and refused to leave. Every time I saw you, you paraded yourself in front of me until you were all I could think about, all I could dream about. But you’ve haunted me long enough.”
Reaching to the back of his waistband, Cieron withdrew a blade like the ones she’d seen in Callen’s arsenal. Serrated and deadly enough to kill. “Don’t worry, Maeve. This won’t take long. You’re already halfway there, and once you’re gone, I’ll be sure to pay my brother a visit.”
No. “Cieron—”
He arched the knife down.
Maeve snapped her free hand up, stopping the blade a mere inch from her heart. Her mouth parted just as Cieron’s eyes widened.
His breath huffed against her jawline, prickling her skin. “What the…”
She didn’t give him a chance to recover.
Curving the side of her index finger over his knuckles, she made contact with the blade’s rough grip and shoved everything she had into turning the sharp end into his gut.
The steel cut deep and quick. Lodging in his stomach.
Grief that had no business surfacing flooded through her. “I’m sorry.”
His laugh rumbled from the half-cocked smile she’d come to love. “No, you’re not, but that’s okay. You will be.”
She didn’t understand his meaning but couldn’t risk giving him another opportunity to strike.
Tugging the bloody metal from his gut, she ignored Cieron’s stumble into the desk behind him as she cut through the remaining zip ties.
Curling off the table was impossible, so instead she rolled off the side.
Her knees screamed as she hit uneven floorboards.
Another gush of blood slid down into her waistband, warm and sticky and setting an invisible hourglass in motion. She had to get out of here.
“Run, Maeve. Hide if you can.” He pressed his hand into his wound, the blood trickling through his fingers. “Because when I find you, my face will be the last thing you see.”
Gripping the serrated blade, she pried herself off the floor and lunged for the door. She wrenched it hard enough to break one of the hinges and burst into a star-speckled night.
To find herself in the middle of nowhere, facing off with Kolob Arch.