Chapter 36 Calder
Calder
I drove behind Cassius down the mountain.
Lara had chosen to stay with Rachel in Cassius’s truck, and now that I was alone, all I could think about was seeing Lara on her knees in the woods, Ben standing in front of her, a gun to her head.
That was all I needed to see, all I ever needed to see.
It wasn’t my life that flashed before my eyes—it was my love.
And I was an idiot for not telling her sooner.
Now the confession pulsed in my chest like a grenade clutched in my hand, threatening to blow.
I didn’t care if it was too much or too soon.
I didn’t care if she wanted to leave to go back to Arizona.
I would do anything and go anywhere as long as it was for her.
But I had to hold all that to myself until I could talk to her alone again.
As soon as Cassius pulled up to the house, he didn’t wait for me before lifting Rachel from the back seat and carrying her inside. Into his room.
“Are you sure, Cassius? I’m sure Colby—”
“She’ll stay here as long as she needs.” For a man who was skeptical of anyone who stepped onto our property, his tune had taken a complete 180 turn when it came to Rachel.
“Thank you,” Lara said and adjusted the pillow under her sister’s head. “I’m just going to shower and lay with her until she wakes up. I don’t want her to be afraid.”
I nodded. “Do you want me to sit with her while you—”
“I’ll sit with her,” Cassius declared, entering his room with a large weighted blanket from downstairs. He unfolded it and laid it over Rachel, arranging it with a degree of care that shocked me.
Cassius did care, could be caring . . . in his own way. But I’d only seen him like this very few times in my life, either when Mom was pregnant or once when Colby was sick with the flu. I folded my arms, watching him make sure every inch of her was covered.
Maybe seeing Rachel like this had brought back memories of Mom. Not that the circumstances were even close to the same, but here was a woman he could help, in a way he hadn’t been able to for Mom.
I looked to Lara. It was up to her to decide, though it didn’t sound like Cassius was really giving either of us a choice.
She bit her lip, hesitating for only a second before agreeing. “Thank you, Cassius.”
He didn’t do more than grunt as Lara and I stepped out of the room. As soon as the door closed, she sagged into my arms.
“Calder . . .”
“I’ve got you,” I promised, cupping her head even as she angled it back, her eyes swimming with a thousand emotions.
In the last hours spent saving her sister, saving herself, caring for the wounded, and looking over Rachel, Lara hadn’t let herself process all the emotions that came with being a victim.
“Kiss me.”
She never needed to ask me for that.
I slid my hand to her face, and her fingers curled into my shirt.
Our mouths collided in a hot and heavy mess, our bodies banging into the walls of the hall.
Tongues and teeth tore at each other, not soft or gentle, but savage, in search of safety.
Knowing she was okay. Knowing I was okay. Knowing we still had each other.
At the first quake of her knees, I hauled her up into my arms, my mouth never breaking from hers as I pinned her back to the wall.
I couldn’t think about where this was going or where I should have been taking it.
All I could focus on was the kiss. On her.
The sweet heat of her mouth. The hunger of mine.
She was safe. She was mine. I loved her.
“Lara.” I tore my mouth away, the words sitting right on the tip of my tongue. “I—”
“And they say I’m the savage,” Creighton’s deep voice mocked, and I turned, only to be greeted by my brother’s smirk. “At least I put up a sign.”
According to Colby, one time she’d gone to visit him at his apartment in town, there was a piece of paper nailed to the door that read Coitus in Progress.
Lara ducked into my chest, and I carefully lowered her feet to the ground.
“Creighton—”
“Who’s in Dad’s room?” he demanded, his scowl deepening.
“Lara’s sister, Rachel,” I answered. “We found her this morning. She’s resting.” He didn’t need the details.
A deep crease of confusion furrowed his brow. More than me, Creighton looked completely boggled by our father’s decision to offer up his bedroom to a virtual stranger.
“Interesting,” he remarked, dragging stained fingers through his long hair and then disappearing into his room.
Lara caught her breath, resting her head on my chest.
“Tell me what I can do,” I said, trailing my knuckles gently along her cheek.
She lifted her eyes to mine. “I killed him, didn’t I?”
“No.” My jaw locked. “He was dead before he could bleed out.”
Was it the truth? Honestly, I didn’t know and I wasn’t sure even the best medical examiner would be able to determine which injury had been the cause of death: the two slugs I’d fired into him, center mass, or the traumatic blood loss from where she’d stabbed him.
“You’re sure?”
I nodded. I hadn’t taken an oath to save lives, and I didn’t have a problem killing when the circumstances warranted, and for those things alone, I would assume the responsibility for Ben’s death.
“I wanted to kill him, though,” she confessed in the smallest whisper, not sounding like she felt guilty for the thought but to prove she was strong enough to have it.
“I know.” I kissed her forehead. “It’s over now. You’re both safe.”
She angled her head higher, her mouth orbiting for another kiss, but then she drew back. “I need to shower and get back to my sister,” she said softly.
“Yeah.” Of course. This . . . us . . . was a priority, but it would have to wait. I would have to wait and live with the tightness in my chest for several more hours.
I couldn’t take my hand from hers as I guided her to the bathroom she’d used the other night. “I’m going to check in with Callum.”
And I needed to figure out how to tell Lara how I felt . . . and what the hell I would do if she didn’t want to stay. Not because I couldn’t leave. I could. I could live anywhere. But the possibility had just then occurred to me: What if she didn’t want me to come with her?
She turned in the doorway and I kissed her again. “I’ll have Colby bring you some clothes.”
“Thank you.”
My hand wore a path along my beard as I walked to Callum’s. He hadn’t followed through on his threat to change the locks on his door, so I let myself inside to Twister’s welcoming committee.
Stationed in his chair at his computers, Callum greeted me without turning. “You’re alive.”
“Yeah.” I went to stand by him, Twister circling my feet. “Thanks for all your help . . . with this.”
Callum didn’t take gratitude well. Actually, he preferred to not take it at all by ignoring the sentiment. “I wasn’t expecting to hear Lara’s voice on the phone this morning, worried about you. Is the great Calder Stone losing his touch?”
She worried about me. I tried not to let the thought sink in too deep. It didn’t change the reality that her life was back in Phoenix.
“Things didn’t go as expected.”
“That’s one way of explaining two dead bodies,” he mumbled. “Can’t say I’m surprised that Eden and Braun were the same person.”
“Neither was I. But realizing Maxwell’s bodyguard, Matthew, was Hannah’s boyfriend was not on my bingo card.”
His hands stopped moving on his keyboard, and he finally looked at me. “Her boyfriend went to work for them? I thought his name was Jack.”
“His middle name is Jack. He wanted to find proof of what Eden was doing to women.” I’d come across a lot over the years in the retrieval business, but from memory, this quest for vengeance certainly topped the charts.
“No shit.” Callum blew out a breath, his hands flying over the keys before he grabbed his mouse, panning over a storm cell. “Talk about the long game.”
I grunted and briefly recounted what had happened when Lara found her sister.
I wasn’t sure what was more tragic—what had happened to the young girl, or that her boyfriend had spent years tracking down the people responsible to bring them to justice, only to sacrifice himself to their end.
“So that was how Lara made it back to camp without you.” My brother shook his head. “I tried to tell her there was no way you weren’t okay.”
The unbidden compliment surprised me, but responding to it would only make Callum more miserly with his emotion. I didn’t need the vote of confidence, but I had to believe if he could acknowledge it in others, one day, he’d do it for himself.
“After we left Wilderness Within, Matthew worried his window of opportunity was closing, so he decided to kill Eden instead,” I began and told him what happened once I’d entered the cabin.
“So, Eden isn’t dead? I thought for sure he was the one under the tarp.”
“You saw?”
He shrugged. “I already had a drone out there in case. When Lara said she was going to look for you, I figured something went wrong, so I sent it low in case I could be of any help.” And there was the bitterness curling at the edge of his voice.
“It was the other guard from the retreat. Ben.” Even though he was dead, I still felt rage thinking about him. “He went after Lara.”
“Understood.” Out here, we preferred pacifism but accepted killing on principle. “Well, if you’re wondering, I finished looking into the UnitedLife angle. They’ve paid out on ten death by misadventure claims to Adam Eden over the last three years, totaling almost eight million dollars.”
I shook my head. “Guess we found where the money was coming from.”
“I’ll send what I found to the police. I’m sure once they process all the records from Wilderness Within, they’ll find some matching names.”
“I wonder if their partners even know they died or if he just told them they left the compound,” I mused.
“Were the women hurt?”