To reiterate his words, sobs echoed through the door, and now I was the one considering whether I was willing to kick it down. “It’ll make it worse,” I told him, aware that startling her awake in the middle of a terror could do further psychological damage. “She’s already afraid of being attacked, and us breaking her door down is quite violent.”
“If she wanted company, she wouldn’t have locked the door,” Andrew called in a hard voice, glaring at the both of us. “Haze, call Con and get more info about what the fuck went down out there. We can’t do shit if we don’t know what happened to her.”
He had a good point. I flipped him my middle finger but left Brodie sitting guard outside Eve’s room as I returned to my own. Connor had been heading to his family estate to visit his father, so I wasn’t going to risk calling him. Instead, I sent an encrypted message to his smartwatch, telling him to call when it was safe.
I didn’t wait long before my phone lit up, and I accepted the unknown caller.
“All good?” I asked carefully.
“Yeah, I’m on my way back to the house,” he replied in a tired voice. “Is she okay?”
There was no need to ask whichshehe was asking about,but I was surprised to hear his concern. He’d shown nothing but irritation and distrust for pretty little Eve and, for the past week, had practically ignored her existence entirely. And yet, there was undeniable vulnerability in that simple question.
“She’s alive,” I replied carefully. “You gonna give me the whole story?”
Connor gave a huffing groan. “Not that much to tell, Haze. I went out to warn Elijah and his dipshit thugs to stay the fuck out of Meadowridge. She fucking followed me like some sort of obsessed stalker, then screamed when one of the Crusades were about to put a bullet through my side. Fucking idiot.” He was gruff, but there was no heat in his words. What the hell hadactuallyhappened out there between them?
“So…she saved you from getting shot. How’d you end up across state lines in the middle of a fucking forest?” Because Connor wasn’t the type to willingly get kidnapped. Ever. He’d have rather been shot.
“Fucking reckless brat was about to be taken at gunpoint, so I volunteered to go along for the ride. Then dealt with the driver when he stopped to dump us in the forest. Then she freaked right the fuck out about one tiny little gunshot and went into shock so that’s when I hit the alert to link up with you.” Connor sounded cagey, like he was leaving out some of the finer details. Not that it really mattered. “Otherwise, I would have just brought her home myself and not bothered you.”
I drummed my fingers on the edge of my desk, cycling through our security cameras and locating the timestamp for when he’d left the house, then found the frame showing Eve following. Sneaky little panther, she blended beautifully with the shadows. Maybe she’d be good for espionage one day.
“Crusades,” I said, clicking through more cameras at dizzying speed. I wanted to see the attempt on the South gatethat Andrew mentioned. “Anything to do with a failed break-in here at school?”
Connor grunted. “Yeah. They had a kidnap-ransom job that they must have been paid big bucks for.”
I found the footage in question and watched it through, silent, inspecting every inch of the scene, then swapped to a different camera angle to do the same. Connor waited, not breaking my train of thought, until I was satisfied.
“They will be hurting after today. Between you and the gate security, they lost a few bodies.” I closed the campus video feeds and switched to our house account—to one camera feed in particular.
Eve’s bedroom.
She tossed and turned in her bed, sheets tangling her legs, but didn’t appear to be screaming and crying anymore. That was comforting. If it’d gone on much longer, I would have had to distract Brodie long enough to use my key and…
And then what? I couldn’t exactly comfort her like Ethan had last week, though the fantasy of it played out in technicolor within my mind.
“I should be back in a couple of hours,” Connor said, breaking through my suddenly pornographic thoughts. “Maybe tell Evelyn to book a session with the school psychiatrist or something. She can’t keep falling to pieces at the sight of guns, not in ouror her father’sworld anyway.”
Shit, he was right about that. “Will do,” I muttered. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, make sure she eats something. She must be starving and she vomited up what little she’d eaten for dinner last night.” Connor—of all fucking people,Connor Sullivan—actually sounded like he cared. Then I grinned.
“She vomited? Eth and Brodes both kissed her when we got back.” I said it like I wouldn’t have if I were in their shoes. I would’ve.
A heavy silence filled the phone line for a minute, then Connor made a strangled noise. “Excuse me? Brodie didwhat?”
I rolled my eyes. “As if you’re shocked. I’ll go sort out some dinner in case Eve wakes up.”
Another grunt from Connor. “She likes pasta.”
My brows shot up. “I’m aware.” I just didn’t realize he’d been paying attention toanythingEve liked. I ended the call without offering any further conversation. I’d already reached my max capacity for small talk and gossip and, frankly, my head hurt.
I sat there for a few minutes, watching Eve sleeping on my huge computer monitor. If she ever found out I’d placed a camera in her room…ifanyonefound out…I’d be toast. Worse if they found out about the one in the shower. That feed was my favorite, for totally perverse reasons.
The way I figured, I could never actually touch her. My trauma wouldn’t let me. So where was the harm in spying?
Deciding she was still fast asleep, if still in the grips of a nightmare, I closed my browsers and headed downstairs to cook. Maybe she’d wake up if she smelled dinner on the stove, since she’d cooked every night of the past week.
