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The fear he always held that everything was close to falling apart was blatant.
And somehow, I knew whatever it was had everything to do with whatever was in that letter.
“What happened out there?” I whispered it as I slowly approached, footsteps so careful I might as well have been walking through a field of landmines.
He didn’t speak, caught in the disorder that whipped around him.
I was standing behind him before I knew it, my hand on his back that shivered with unfound rage.
He jerked at the connection, though I just pressed my palm flatter, like I was pressing myself into the darkness that stirred his spirit and scourged his soul.
“You can tell me, Caleb.”
A shudder ripped down his spine.
“You should leave.” It was gravel.
“Maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe right here is where I’m supposed to be.”
“You’re asking to go somewhere that is only going to cause you pain.”
“But that’s what you open yourself up to when you care about someone. Their pain. Sharing it with them.”
“I’m the last person you should care about.”
“Too late.” It wisped out on the connection I couldn’t contain.
Energy crackled.
Dark, dark light.
“That was a letter from my sister’s murderer.”
Shock stumbled me back a foot. I was not expecting that. Not even close. No word had ever been given of what had happened to her.
I’d thought an accident or cancer or something equally as terrible.
Grief speared through me when I realized where Evelyn’s fragile mind had gone when I’d said Dakota would kill for the kitchen downstairs. How she’d taken it literally. How the idea of it had to have been scarred into her psyche.
Caleb turned around then. Viciousness carved his face into severity.
“When?”
“A year ago.”
My uncle said she’s gone forever.
Dark misery passed through his features.
“I’m so sorry.”
A sneer twisted his mouth. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry for me, Paisley. Not when it was my fault.”
My heart hitched on the magnitude of his pain.
Fracturing.
Shattering.
So devastating I had to reach behind me to hold onto the edge of his desk to keep myself steady.
He acted as if he wasn’t capable of love, but there was no missing the truth of it right then.
You didn’t hurt this badly without love.
“How could it possibly be your fault?”
Hatred puffed from his nose. I could feel the way it was directed at himself.
“I told you I wasn’t a good man. Someone was looking to retaliate against me. Some sin I committed. Some selfish act. I don’t know which because the list is so long. Two of my employees were slaughtered, the same as my sister. I hadn’t spoken to her in five-fucking-years, and still, some twisted monster used her to get back at me.”
He kept coming closer and closer, his aura covering me whole.
Power and wealth and deep-seated secrets.
I wanted to reach out and hold them. Take some of what was pouring out of him and dip my fingers in to experience them.
“I can’t believe it’s your fault.”
It was a whisper.
A promise.
Belief.
Because I’d seen glimpses of what was inside him.
“You keep trying to make up your own reality, Paisley. Make me someone I’m not. But the proof of who I am lay strewn across Seattle. Their bodies left mangled, close to unrecognizable, all a message to me. And now, he sent another.”
His attention shifted to the desk behind me. Off to the side was an unfolded letter.
The words imprinted so deep into the paper they might as well have been written with the tip of a knife.
The destroyer hunts, and the casualty watches and sees. He knows what has been stolen from him, and he will not rest until it has been reclaimed. He who suffers will mete the suffering.
Oh God.
My knees went weak, and I was having a hard time remaining upright.
This person was free.
Roaming.
And I suddenly made the connection to the news stories from a year ago. The three gruesome murders connected to the richest man in Washington.
The way Ryder hadn’t mentioned him or given any details.
“He knew I was in Seattle. He’s watching. Calculating. Planning.” It was haggard, his chest heaving with each pant.
“And you brought Evelyn here to protect her.”
“I told you I would do whatever it took to ensure it. To make sure she’s safe until I find him. Snuff him out. And you can rest assured that I will.” He’d moved to murmur those words at my ear.
A threat.
A warning telling me to run.
“You think that makes you a bad person? That you want to end him for what he did?”
God, who wouldn’t want revenge?
“It’s not just a want, Paisley. I won’t stop until I see to his end. Until I bury him six feet under. And I will do it slowly. Painfully. The same as he did to them.”
My spirit quivered, and I tipped up my chin, the man right there, consuming everything.
Dark and dangerous.
Boiling with wrath.
