The Insiders (The Insiders Trilogy #1) - Tijan Page 0,39
most terrifying thing a person could experience.
I couldn’t endure that again.
Matt’s voice dropped low, breaking. “They tried to take Cyclone once, too.”
Oh, God.
Cyclone.
Kid.
Matt spoke as I kept pacing around the table. “He was four and he doesn’t remember it, but it was the most traumatizing day of our lives. They got him. They actually got him for a few minutes. Then Kash found ’em and he tore them apart. Those kidnappers are in prison now and they’ll never be free. And they’re in the kind of prison where no one knows it even exists, that kind. My dad made sure of that. Kash made sure of that.” He paused, hesitating. “There’s been two other rings who have tried to take us. Both times, Kash caught them. He stopped them, and he’ll stop who’s tried to take you too. I promise.”
I didn’t know I was crying till then, till my hand raised to wipe something tickling my cheek. Feeling the tears, I looked at my hand oddly. I didn’t cry. Hayes women did not do tears. What was this wetness?
My eyeballs were sweating.
Kash. I needed to talk to Kash. I didn’t know why. I wasn’t questioning it. I just needed him. He had texted earlier in the day, but I hadn’t had the heart to reply. Now he was all I had the heart to hear from.
“Where’s Kash?”
Matt paused, frowning. “You want to talk to Kash?”
I jerked my head in a nod. “Please.”
I had stopped. I hadn’t realized that, either. There was a whole bunch I wasn’t paying attention to, but that was the point of walking, of getting numb. I wanted to turn off the world. That’s how it worked. Once I felt safe, I’d come back.
I was still waiting.
“I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t know.” Matt was speaking closer to me. He had a phone in his hand. “I wanted to talk to you, but when you reacted … I knew what happened to you. I’m really, really sorry, Bailey. Truly sorry. Cyclone gets nightmares. He doesn’t remember what happened, but it’s like his mind does, or whatever part where dreams still remember. Not that often, but maybe once or twice a year. I’ve heard them. They send chills down my back when I hear ’em. I feel sick thinking about what could’ve happened. I am so sorry. So sorry.” He kept repeating those last two words as he gently, slowly, and so tenderly stepped in so he could hug me.
Once I was there, he felt my heart racing and cursed before hugging me tighter.
“Why haven’t you come to us sooner? God.”
I hugged him back, and I saw the faces watching us. It was almost too much to take in. The guards. Marie. Theresa was behind Marie. And still farther, down the hallway, I saw Quinn holding Cyclone’s hand. A younger girl was next to her, her hand over her mouth. They shouldn’t have been able to see us, but somehow an opening had formed. The guards shifted to the side, almost like they weren’t sure whether to stay or to leave, and that was how we were on display for more than twenty people in that hallway.
I just closed my eyes.
I wanted two things.
I wished I had come to them sooner.
And I wished that it was Kash holding me.
* * *
“No one overheard me that didn’t already know,” Matt was saying into the phone, with Kash on the other end. He was walking in a circle, his hand pressed in his other ear to help him hear. “I know. I know.… No. Trust me. No one heard. I mean, Marie knew. The guards knew. Well … shit. Theresa knows now, too, but that’s it. Theresa is Marie’s daughter, so it’s cool. She wouldn’t say anything anyways. No one else could’ve heard.”
He raised his hand to get one of the guards’ attention. He motioned to the hallway, saying over the phone, “Theresa needs to sign that NDA, just in case. It’s a specific one about—” He nodded to where I was sitting.
If sitting was even the appropriate word to describe how I was.
I was half crouched on the floor, half curled in a ball, and half resting on the balls of my heels, bouncing in place. It would be a killer on my leg muscles tomorrow, but I still wasn’t feeling any pain. Slowly, over the last hour, the shock had started to subside, but there was still a healthy amount with me.