Chapter 5
Single for Another Reason
WES
Callie crumples, and I catch her, feeling instantly bad for sedating her. I might do some questionable shit, but I would never intentionally hurt a woman or a girl.
But my curiosity is too strong to just let her go without getting some answers. I want to have an innocent conversation with her.
And she’s stalking me. It’s not like I went out to kidnap her. I’m innocent here, for fuck’s sake. This is not! A kidnapping!
I lift Callie into my arms, careful not to let her head loll back and hurt her neck. She’s as light as a feather, although her coat is puffy enough that it feels like carrying a marshmallow.
The snow is falling heavier now, and the air is cold and crisp in the way that predicts a big storm, but my face is protected by my balaclava.
I only have a few minutes to get her situated inside before she comes to, so I half-jog to my back door. She’s most likely going to freak out when she wakes up, and I want to be sufficiently prepared.
I push the unlocked door open and turn to sidestep into the cabin, careful of Callie’s head and the doorframe.
The heat feels good, and her cheeks pinken while I prop her on the wooden kitchen chair I have set in front of the fire.
But fuck, she’s going to be too hot if I zip-tie her while she’s still in her winter gear, and then she’ll want to take it off, and I’ll have to cut the ties, and she might not be ready for that. I might not be ready for that.
Feeling kind of like a creep, I unzip her puffy jacket.
The zipper gets stuck at the bottom, and I have to use two hands to hold the zipper together and tug it down.
Finally it comes undone, and I shimmy her coat off one arm.
Her head lolls to one side, and I shoot my hand up to catch her. Her cheeks are still so cold.
“Fuck me,” I mutter.
Sir Fluffy, watching me from in front of the fire, meows with deep judgement.
I finally get her jacket off and toss it to the side.
Underneath, she’s wearing a tight long-sleeved shirt, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take a second to admire the way her shirt is snug against her breasts.
And when I pull her arms behind the chair and secure the zip ties, that does an even better job of showcasing her tits.
I’m not a pervert, so I don’t let my gaze linger as I secure her legs.
This situation has not arisen because I think she’s hot—which she obviously is—it’s arisen because she was on my property.
But it has been a long time since I’ve even had a conversation with a woman I’m remotely attracted to.
There aren’t many eligible women under the age of sixty in Lake Savage, I don’t go to Portland searching for hookups, and I’m not into online dating like Noah.
The last time I let myself get involved with a woman was several years ago, and she didn’t appreciate the way I kept her safe.
By tracking her, obviously.
But that woman looked at it in all the wrong ways.
Late one night when I was following her, I realized she was meeting up with another man for a drink.
We weren’t exclusive, but I was furious anyway.
Furious and hurt. After their drink—during which I lurked in a dark corner of the bar, anger swirling inside me—they came out and walked down a quiet side street, then ducked into a dark alley.
He pushed her against a building and began kissing her roughly.
She was into it at first, and I probably should’ve walked away.
I shouldn’t have watched. But I stayed, hidden in a shadow.
And she’s lucky I did, because then she was pushing him away, and he wasn’t stopping, and they were in a dark, isolated alley so what would’ve happened if I hadn’t been there?
My temper got the best of me, and I intervened.
Everyone walked away from the incident, some in better shape than others.
She did not thank me for protecting her.
“There. Done.” I stand, then kneel to acknowledge Sir Fluffy as he walks over and purrs against my leg. Then he meows.
“Yeah, I know, her head is totally tilting to one side.” I tug Callie’s black beanie off her head, setting free dark, wavy hair that hangs halfway down her back.
She’s really beautiful. I have to clench my hand to stop myself from running my fingers through her locks, because that would be even creepier than this situation already is.
I’m not a creepy guy. Not really, anyway. But she’ll definitely be concerned when she comes to.
I sigh and drop my head. Focus. I stand and watch her for signs of waking up. Nothing yet, but her neck will not feel good if she stays in that position for much longer.
I don’t normally worry about the people I zip-tie getting a neck ache, but she’s different. Most aren’t good people and don’t have much of a future.
I shrug off my jacket, hang it on the hook by the front door, and pull my hoodie over my head before striding down the hall to my room.
My airplane pillow—which I was in too much of a rush to remember to grab for the Florida trip earlier this week—is sitting right on top of the small suitcase in my closet.
Back by the fire, Sir Fluffy watches as I adjust the pillow around Callie’s neck and fuck—I really am a psychopath, aren’t I?
Then her eyes flutter open.
I’d seen pictures of Callie during my online stalking, but the depth of her dark brown eyes wasn’t obvious in any of the images. Gorgeous.
“Hello.” Best to start simple, right? Maybe if I act normal, she won’t freak out.
Callie’s eyes widen. Nope, definitely terrified.
Then she screams.
It’s so loud and piercing that I wince and cover my ears. I guess I should’ve gagged her or duct-taped her mouth, but who knew she’d react like this?
Me. I did.
“Help. Help! Heeellllp!” Then she starts her piercing scream again, and I’m so fucking happy there’s no one within screaming distance of my cabin. Sir Fluffy zooms out of the living room and disappears down the hall.
“Hey. Hey!” I wave my hands in the air.
But Callie doesn’t stop. She shakes her body, moving the chair inch by inch.
What’s she gonna do, fling her zip-tied self out the front door? She locks her eyes with mine and then I realize she’s not just scared—although there’s definitely a layer of fear there—she’s also furious.
I stride into the kitchen, find a thin dishtowel, then dash back and attempt to wrap it around her head. She’s whipping her head back and snapping at me like an agitated alligator. Even the airplane pillow falls to the carpet.
“What the fuck?” Now I’m sweating, but I finally get the dishtowel tied and the volume of the noise coming out of her decreases greatly.
I take a deep breath and walk back around to the front of her.
“You need to calm the fuck down.”
She growls at me, and I take an involuntary step back, as if I’m not six foot three and two hundred pounds of muscle. Callie’s gotta be a foot shorter than me and scrawny, except for those tits, the ones that keep bouncing as she shakes and squirms in the chair.
She’s terrifying. And beautiful.
Embarrassingly, I feel my dick getting hard.
“Alright, listen. I don’t want to have you zip-tied. I definitely don’t want to have you gagged.”
Callie growls at me again. I hold up a finger.
“But if you recall, I found you on my property.” I point to her, then myself. I don’t think she appreciates my charades. “You hired me to find someone, but you showed up here, which honestly wasn’t at all what I expected.”
She narrows her eyes at me.
“You were stalking me?” I nod, looking for her acknowledgment. “Well, I guess following me home once isn’t really stalking, it’s more like staking out. Like a complete amateur, I might add.”
She has the audacity to roll her eyes. I sink down onto my couch and lean my elbows on my knees.
“And you followed me here from Portland. I don’t know, you could be dangerous.” I throw my hands in the air. “You could’ve had a gun. I hate guns.”
It’s true. As inconvenient as it can be for our line of work, both Noah and I avoid using guns as much as possible. They give us PTSD. The world would have far fewer problems if there weren’t any guns.
She shakes her head, then shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling.
“Mmmffffp.” She opens and then narrows her eyes at me. “Rrrfff ifff offff.”
“Sorry, I didn’t understand that.” I touch my ear and lean forward. “It’s almost like you are asking me to take something off. What would you like me to take off?”
She just stares at me.
“My shirt? I get asked to do that sometimes. I don’t go to the gym, but I do a lot of manual labor around the cabin.” I flex my biceps for her. She sighs deeply instead of looking impressed, her eyes only fleetingly glancing at my bulging muscles. “Oh, your shirt?” I ask hopefully.
I wonder if I’ve gone too far in my attempt to make her smile.
She said in her messages she’s looking to serve her husband divorce papers, but who knows if they really are splitting up.
Maybe she wants to find him and try to reconcile first. Maybe she’s highly offended by me in general. I should back off.
“Fffff eww.”
Or maybe she’s just mad at her current situation.
“Fuck you? I think I’m starting to understand your language.” I chuckle and stand, walking around to the back of her. “But if I take this off, no screaming. Just talking. Okay?”
She nods aggressively.
I untie the knot and tug the towel off her face, then step back around to the front of her. Not too close, though, because now her mouth—and teeth—are free.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she shrieks and lets out a frustrated scream.
“Ahhh, you promised.” I step away from her. Her screaming really hurts my damn ears.
She huffs and grinds her teeth, as if holding herself back from continuing to scream.
“But isn’t this better now?” I ask, hope filling me. I pull a chair from my kitchen table and spin it around, sitting on it backwards a safe distance away from her. “Let’s start over. I’m Wes.”
Her eyes flit over my face, and I wish I knew what she was thinking. Now she looks anxious, like once I’m right here in front of her she loses her nerve.
“Wes? I thought it was Hawk?”
“That’s my Gone name. You didn’t use your real name on Gone, did you?”
Callie’s cheeks flush even pinker, and not from the warm fire contrasting the cold outside.
“My name is Callie,” she says through gritted teeth. “Which you know.”
“Hm.” I raise a single eyebrow at her.
“Hm what?” She puts extra emphasis on the T in what.
God, the attitude on this one? Amazing. And while I’m almost positive she’s not flirting with me, maybe she is.
Nah. I need to get out more.
But while finding someone to flirt with is not super hard—the barista from Maine Coffee Co comes to mind—dating someone is impossible.
I haven’t been a normal human being since the murder of my family. Something broke in me that day, just like something broke in my brother.
Noah makes fun of me for never dating, but I’m not sure why he thinks his online-only dating is more respectable.
The guy won’t date a woman who lives within five hundred miles of us.
That way, he can keep his dating life separate from his normal life, which is very much not normal. Five hundred miles.
“Hello? Where’d you just go? I need you to focus, Wes-Hawk, because I’m literally fucking zip-tied to your chair.”
I blink out of my daydream and focus on the beautiful, angry woman in front of me.
“Just Wes. And we are—as you know because you followed me here—in my isolated cabin in the Maine woods.”
“Oh fuck off, we’re forty-five minutes from Portland.”
I let out a chuckle, and she looks surprised for a split second, then one side of her mouth twitches, and I almost think she’s going to smile. Then it’s gone.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say fuck off. I’m just a little unnerved by the situation. Can you pretty please un-zip-tie me?”
“No. You definitely did mean to say it, and I’m frankly pretty terrified as to what you’d do if I set you free.” I tilt my head at her.
She sighs like I’m an infuriating child on the thousandth round of the why game.
I hang my arms over the chair back and don’t miss how her eyes flit to my exposed forearms, tattoos partially visible due to my hoodie sleeves pushed up.
“Okay, so if you won’t cut me loose, can you please let me know what you plan on doing to me?”
Her words sink in, and my stomach twists. I wouldn’t do anything to her. To any woman. Men—bad men—sure. We fuck them all the way up. Noah and I might not like guns, but that’s not the only way to take care of business.
But a woman? Our whole purpose is to eliminate bad men who target women and girls. Because what haunts both of us is the fact that the asshole who came for my father didn’t blink an eye before he shot my defenseless mother and then turned on my innocent younger sister.
If only that man—the one who is already dead—had the same reservations we do about hurting women.
But he didn’t.