I gasped, my arms grabbing his neck in panic. But I didn’t need to. He cradled me against his chest as he returned to his bedroom. He moved to the side of the bed I’d been lying on, closest to the balcony, and laid me down.
He stared at me before pulling back, and I couldn’t move.
“I didn’t intend this, if it matters to you. You were supposed to be taken and put in a nice, comfortable room. You were supposed to be given anything you wanted, except your freedom, and your Network would hand-deliver my sister to me for your safety. I wasn’t even planning on talking to you, except to ask about Brooke, but here you are.”
His hand went to my face, his thumb on my bottom lip. He traced it, and I couldn’t suppress a shiver.
It wasn’t a bad shiver. That was the problem. I would never understand my reaction to him.
He stepped back, his hand falling away, and triumph flared in his eyes. “Sleep tonight, Riley. That is all I ask of you.” He moved to the other side of the bed.
I slipped under the covers and felt the bed move as he joined me. The light went off a second after that.
“What happens if I kill you in your sleep?” I asked. “You trust me to sleep here, with you?”
He laughed softly. “No, but for some reason I can’t make myself have the men take you away. So for now, you stay. If you kill me, then you’ll die as well.”
“Are you going to hurt your sister when you get her back?”
He didn’t laugh this time. “She thinks I will, but no. She ran with the wrong assumption in her mind. That is all I can say.”
“Why?”
He sighed, barely a foot away from me. I could feel it.
“Tomorrow we can talk. Perhaps you’ll find some answers. Until then, I am tired. I have been traveling all day and had many meetings. I want to sleep. Sleep, Riley.”
But I didn’t, even long after he did.
I heard his breathing even out, and I tried rallying inside.
I made myself remember that male Hider. I remembered seeing the guard pull the trigger, the spray of blood, and the way his body slumped to the floor.
He died because of me, and I vowed I would find his family.
I tried to summon the energy and courage to slip from the bed, get to the kitchen, and find a knife. I envisioned stabbing it deep inside Kai.
I had to make that guy’s death stand for something. I had to.
That promise was the only way to make it right in my head. Because instead of getting up, I fell asleep.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I slept three hours.
I could tell my body had caught up on sleep when I woke, because I felt good. I felt sane. And I watched Kai sleep for the next hour.
Now that I wasn’t sleep-deprived or in shock, I could think more clearly. I reviewed everything that had happened—with Kai, Tanner, Jonah, everyone, everything.
I was weak. That’s the only explanation I had for why I wasn’t running right now, or fighting right now.
I hadn’t had sex in six months. There was that too.
I was attracted to Kai Bennett. No matter who he was, that was just a fact. After last night—feeling my body wanting to go to him while my mind screamed at me to keep away—that was the only explanation I could justify. I was weak, and I hadn’t lusted after a man since that Tinder date. And even that guy’s effect on me had been minimal compared to Kai Bennett’s.
No. Brooke’s brother.
I had to pull back. I had to erect walls between him and me, because I knew what I needed to do. First names weren’t a part of it. Names weren’t a part of it. He was Brooke’s brother. He was the reason she’d run. He was Cord’s murderer, their father’s killer.
Murderer. Killer. He was those things too.
Hider training told us to strip away our humanity. It would be there in the times we needed it, but to get to the abused, we had to walk into hell. We had to be prepared for whatever was on the other side. When they’d taught us this, I’d thought of my mother. I’d thought about how she’d been beaten within an inch of her life, how he had left her to die and called someone else to take care of the body. That Hider—though my father