Nadine screamed before Rael could cover her mouth and when he did, she tried to bite. Releasing one of her hands—fool—allowed her to fight, but whatever she’d been dosed with was fast-acting and Rael still had a grip on one of her arms. She stumbled, as if the wooden boards beneath her feet were made of ice instead of weathered pine.
Cal stepped forward to catch her as Rael shoved her his way.
As soon as she felt his hands on her body, Nadine tried even harder to get away, but her struggle was more like the shudder of a creature in its final death throes.
“Please don’t hurt me,” she said, in a raw, thin voice.
Gideon grabbed her bag and rifled through it.
“Jesus,” he said. “Little Miss Nancy Drew had you by the balls, son.”
“Cal.” Nadine’s voice was as slow and thick as dripping molasses. Her eyes were trained on his face, the pupils blown out so large that the grey looked nearly black. “Please.”
“You flew too high, darling.” Working to keep his voice impassive for the benefit of his audience despite his aching heart, he traced along her wrist. Her pulse was slow—far slower than it should have been. “Now it’s time to clip your wings.”
She moaned a denial that could have been a final plea or a damning curse before going as still as death as his arms.
C H A P T E R
F O U R T E E N
no candlelight vigil
He tied her to the chair so she couldn’t hurt herself or get away while he figured out next steps. The hunt—that part was easy. It was what happened after the capture that was new, that made him question the darkness gilding his heart. She was the mirror to his graces; every time he looked at her, it was like seeing a new portrait of himself inked in unfamiliar colors and lights. That image was splintered now, gouged by his own cruel hand, but Cal longed for its beauty nonetheless, just as he longed for her.
“Wake up, darling,” he said. “Daddy wants a word with you.”
She woke as if in pain. Cal watched keenly, waiting for the first glimpse of her eyes. There had been a moment in Gideon’s office where he fully believed that the precise grey color of her irises would be lost to him, existing only in memory. Another shade in a catalogue of ghosts.
Her eyes focused dully. The pupils shrank and she backed against the chair, still confined by the bindings. Then she jerked, like an animal caught in a trap, and that wicked part of him whispered,She fights so beautifully.
“Hello, little sparrow.”
Her eyes swiveled around her, taking in the sight of the room—and him. She seemed to find him difficult to look at, however, and averted her gaze, lingering on the fire behind its grate. Her bound hands flexed behind her back as the flames danced in the whites of her eyes.
“Am I—dying?”
“No, Nadine,” he said coolly. “Despite your best efforts, you’re still very much alive.”
Her throat was so dry that he heard the click when she swallowed. “What did you do to me?”
His eyebrows lifted. “Nothing. I’m not sure what you were trying to accomplish, though. Running through town like that. Making wild accusations. I warned you about your sister.”
She lunged forward as far as the restraints would allow. “They were true accusations.”
“Nadine.” His touch made her flinch, even as he raised goosebumps in the wake of his gentle caress. “If you really want to find out what happened to Noelle, I’ll show you. But you’re going to have to give me something in return.”
“Like what,” she said, but her voice cracked and her eyes flicked to his fly and then away. “Like what?” she repeated again, when he didn’t respond.
He kept his eyes on her face. “We’ll come back to that. First, let me tell you a story.”
“I don’t want to hear it!”
“But you know part of it already, darling—that’s right. You read it in the journal.”
All the color drained from her face. “No.”
“Caledon Cullraven was a jaded and dissolute man who believed life wasn’t worth living if you didn’t burn it at both ends. The dictates of the Victorian uppercrust had no appeal for him and he left his home of England to come here, to the very edges of the mountainous California wilderness: a place where he could live as he wished,howhe wished. Which is how our story begins, because none of it was ever enough.”
