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Still no Pen. Not captured and dragged into someone’s room. Not trying to escape. Just more innocent people trying to sleep.
Swearing to himself, he bolted down the last steps of the stairwell and searched the dining room and the bar area of the inn.
Empty tables, everything cleaned and ready for the morning breakfast.
Outside.
Hell, if someone had grabbed her and pulled her out into the night…
Rage lit the blood in his veins and he sprinted to the door, bursting out into the cool night air.
The main road—nothing—no one. Silence. No screams. No wagons.
The stables.
He had to check the stables.
He ran around the inn, rushing straight toward the barns set further down the rolling hillside behind the coaching inn.
Movement out of the corner of his eye.
What was that?
He turned to the right only to see Pen in the moonlight, shifting her body upward from lying flat on the grassy knoll. She propped her torso up on her elbows, her eyes panicked for a moment before she found his face.
“Strider?”
“Pen?” Her name sliced through his teeth, fury shaking his voice.
Her head snapped back. “What are you doing out here?”
“What am I doing out here?” His voice thundered into the still of the night as he advanced on her. “What the hell are you doing out here? Did someone drag you out here? Where is he—tell me where that bastard went to and I’ll—”
“Strider, stop.” The snap in her voice cut him off and she pushed herself upright but stayed sitting. “I came out here on my own. No one inside is awake or roaming about and I couldn’t sleep so I came out here. No one knows I’m out here—I’m perfectly safe.”
“Safe?” His hands balled into fists and he stopped beside her, his chest heaving as he stared down at her, his voice still a loud rumble he couldn’t control. “You don’t know a blasted thing about whether or not you’re safe.”
Her neck craned so she could look up the full height of him, her voice irked. “Why do you even care?”
“Why would I not care, Pen?”
“There seem to be a thousand reasons why.”
He stopped, exhaling, and ran a hand across his eyes. “You weren’t there. You weren’t there in your room and then I couldn’t find you. You were gone. I checked every room in the damn place and you were gone and I didn’t know what happened to you.”
Her head tilted to the side as her voice softened. “What is going on in your mind right now, Strider?”
His hand fell away from his face, and he looked at her. He stood between her and the moon, and she was fully in his shadow now. But he could still see the concern in her eyes.
He shook his head. “It’s the nightmare—the nightmare that I started having after the fire.”
She reached up, grabbing his hand and tugging it downward. “Sit.”
With the adrenaline seeping out of his body and leaving him empty, woozy, he succumbed to her tugging. Against all his better judgement, he sat.
“You never told me you had nightmares after the fire.” She pulled her hand away from his, hiding it away in her skirts. “Tell me.”
He looked toward the treetops just behind the stables. He wanted to resist, but he couldn’t and his voice slowed, his throat raw. “You are by me, sleeping next to me in that cove that we used to sleep in sometimes just outside of Belize Town. You’re on your side and curled up in front of me like you always used to. But then I wake up and you are gone. Cold sand all around me. Gone and I can’t find you and it’s dark, and you’re gone…just gone. I can’t find you in the darkness. I never stopped having the damned dream and then just now, inside…” His thumb jabbed over his shoulder toward the inn. “Inside was just like that—the vicious terror of it—the dream.”
