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“Why would you do that for me?” I asked, my throat tight.
“It’s just the kind of guy that I am,” he replied. “But I think you already knew that. You came here because you knew you were coming to a place where you’d find people who’d be able to see you through this.”
Shaking my head, not wanting him to have the wrong impression of me, I insisted, “I never intended for it to turn to this, though. I just wanted the skills to defend myself if and when something bad happened.”
Kane’s thumb stopped moving over my hand, but only so he could give it a reassuring squeeze. “There’s a difference between learning how to defend yourself from a random attacker and needing to learn to defend yourself from an active threat. Those are two very different scenarios, Ellery, and I can’t stand by doing nothing while leaving you to face this on your own. It’s just not in me to do that.”
He really was a true-life prince charming.
“Kane, I—”
“Let me help you,” he pleaded with me. “Please.”
What could I say? I couldn’t very well turn him down. Not when he was looking at me like that, and certainly not when he was holding my hand like he was.
He was right. I’d come to Harper Security Ops because the research I’d done led me here and told me this was the only place I should consider going to with something this serious. Maybe I hadn’t given him any of the details yet, but Kane knew enough to know this wasn’t something to mess around with.
So, I finally agreed, “Okay. If you want to help me, I’ll graciously accept it and say thank you.”
Something softened in his face at the same time some of the tension that he’d been holding in his shoulders vanished. I hadn’t realized until that moment just how much this was affecting him, but once I recognized it, I couldn’t say it did anything to help me from my promise to myself to not dream about what life could have been like with a man like him.
Seemingly prepared to jump right into it, Kane declared, “Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we need to get started right away.”
“With private lessons or the weapons training?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Neither.”
“Neither?” I repeated. “I don’t understand. You just said that you wanted to get started right away.”
“I do. But I was referring to you giving us whatever information you have that will help me keep you safe from your husband,” he clarified. “We need to know why you left wherever you were in West Virginia and what the scope of the threat is against you.”
That made sense. I don’t know why I just assumed he was ready to get down to teaching me all the skills I needed when he had signed on for something he didn’t even know everything about yet.
But there was one thing about what he said that struck me as strange. Maybe it should have the minute he walked into this room and indicated he knew I was married, but it was too much of a shock that I overlooked one important thing.
“Can you just explain something to me first?”
“Sure.”
“I understand Jake saw the news this morning and told you what he did, but I’m curious how either one of you knows that my husband is the one I’m running from,” I said.
For the first time since he reached out to touch me, Kane loosened his hold on my hand, let it go, and sat back in his chair. “I didn’t see anything, so I was just going off of what Jake told me. That said, I trust him with my life, so when he told me that your husband was interviewed and that the interview gave him a bad vibe, he put two and two together. Besides, you’re a beautiful woman who’s on the news because she’s been missing for days, and it’s clear to us that you’re physically safe right now. So, I don’t know, I guess in a normal situation, if you were in trouble, it would seem that your husband would be the person you’d confide in. Since that’s not the case here, it wasn’t difficult to figure out. We just don’t know the why of it.”
Though I missed the tender touch of his hand on mine, his words had enveloped me like a big hug. “Well, if I had any doubts about the capabilities of the people at Harper Security Ops before, I certainly don’t have any now. I can’t believe you figured all that out from a short interview.”
Kane smiled at me, the first since we’d walked into this room, and the sight of his shining eyes had me forgetting for a moment that I had any problems at all. “I’m happy we could boost your confidence in us.”
I allowed that look to settle somewhere inside me.
Once I had it tucked safely in the deepest corners of my mind, I said, “He won’t give up.”
“Your husband?”
I nodded. “His name is Patrick, and I’m telling you that he’s a very bad man. He’s going to keep searching until he finds me. I’m of no use to him, but Patrick isn’t a man who likes to look stupid. I honestly don’t know how or why my disappearance was made public, but I’m willing to bet he wasn’t the one responsible for it.”
Kane digested that information and asked, “Why did you leave?”
I licked my lips and swallowed hard. “I knew there was a level of corruption with Patrick that I’d never begun to understand years ago, but about two weeks ago, I learned just how bad things were. I feared for my life, so I knew I couldn’t stick around.”
