“No.” Frustrated and flustered, Caroline shook her head. “I just couldn’t risk anyone knowing—not then, anyway. I can’t protect myself. Heck, I can’t even shoot straight.” She held up her right hand. “Too much damage from the broken bones, and I lost what muscle strength I had.” She paused, pushed her hair from her face. “Lucille’s been giving me self-defense training. In another month or so, I would have been ready to tell you the truth.”
He wouldn’t understand the need she had to stay sheltered and protected until she could fend for herself. But then, Jack hadn’t been held hostage by a serial killer.
Caroline watched the debate Jack was having with himself, and she wasn’t sure if he would hold his ground and continue to stand here and press her for every detail of information in her head, or if he’d continue to be her protector.
The protector won out.
“Lucille,” he called out. “Go ahead and get Caroline’s and your things packed. Bring only some essentials, one bag each. I need to take you to a new location and will have someone come for the rest of your things later.”
Caroline released the breath that she didn’t even know she’d been holding. “Please don’t bring your brothers in on this,” she insisted. “Don’t bring anyone else in on it. Not yet.”
Jack certainly didn’t agree to that, but he did head in the direction of the bedrooms. There were only two of them, hers and Lucille’s, and Lucille was in Caroline’s room, shoving meds and the laptop into a small duffel bag. Caroline jumped right in to help her.
Jack stood in the doorway, continuing to view the footage from the cameras. “Caroline, did you contact anyone when you did those internet searches?” he asked. Lucille left the room, probably realizing this was a good time for her to get her own things ready.
Caroline supposed that was a necessary question, but it sent a coil of anger through her. “No. I didn’t have anyone I could completely trust to contact. Not even Gemma. Because, as I said, she would have told Kellan.”
She left it at that, but Jack probably knew that some of those searches would have brought up pictures of Eric’s victims. So many of them. Those images would haunt her, too.
“I couldn’t access anything about the investigation into your father’s murder.” Caroline added a change of clothes to the duffel. She was about to ask him if he had any new leads, but his phone dinged before she could.
“Kingston Morris,” he read aloud. Obviously, someone had run a background check for him. “Age twenty-four. Address in Dallas. No record. Trust fund baby. His folks own a successful export business.” Jack held up Kingston’s DMV photo for her to see.
“That’s him,” she verified. “But he’s not in Dallas. He was by the pond about a half hour ago. Maybe you can put out an APB on him—”
“I’ve already done that.” Jack’s attention landed on her again. “Still believe I’m trying to kill you?”
“I never believed that,” she snapped. “I just thought...” But she waved that off and zipped up the duffel with a hard jerk as if it’d been the cause for the fit of temper she was feeling.
And the frustration, doubt and fear.
“I hate being afraid,” she said under her breath. She hadn’t meant for Jack to hear that, but judging from the way he huffed and cursed, he had. Worse, he was probably analyzing her nowas the shrinks had done after she’d tracked down her mother’s killer.
“Then you need to trust me.” He didn’t say it as a request or plea. It was an order, and he tipped his head to indicate he wanted her on the move.
Jack also drew his gun.
Her pulse hadn’t exactly been at a resting pace, but the sight of the weapon jacked it up even more, as it did the hit of adrenaline. It didn’t mesh well with that knot already in her stomach.
With a small suitcase gripped in her hand, Lucille joined them in the hall. “How close are you parked to the house?” she asked.
“Close,” Jack assured the nurse. “I’ll go out first. When I motion for you to leave the house, move fast and get in the truck. Understand?”
The moment Lucille and Caroline nodded, Jack disengaged the security system and went out onto the porch. As he’d done at that kitchen window, he glanced around. So did Caroline, and she wished she had a gun or some other weapon that she could actually use with her still-weak hand. There was no chance of Jack giving her anything like that.
Because he didn’t trust her.
She knew plenty about distrust and had spent every waking moment of the past year feeling the same thing. It’d been worse when she hadn’t even known who she was. Well, in some ways it had been. Once she’d remembered, the distrust had collided with the fear that someone out there could still want her dead.
Not Jack.
She knew that now. But while she could trust him, she couldn’t trust the others who were in his life. Part of her wanted to strike out on her own. But that would involve plenty of risks, too.
Still keeping watch, Jack went down the porch steps and started his truck. He motioned for them to move only after he threw open the passenger-side door.
“Now,” he called out.
She and Lucille hurried off the porch, and even though it hadn’t been Caroline’s intention, she ended up in the middle of the seat, right next to Jack. Since she’d arrived at the safe house she had avoided touching him, but that was impossible now. They were shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip.
