Page 92 of Caretaker

He was truly dead.

I lost my breath for a second, but Miriam tugged my hand. “What did you realize?”

“That I truly do love him.” I smiled through my tears, but my smile wasn’t for her. “And I’d rather he be safe in his niche than alive at the end of your wicked fucking chain.”

She recoiled, her face paling further, her hands latched over her heart, a moan of pain and denial digging its way from her throat. “Fuck you,” she whispered. “No. You can’t love him. Not after what he did to me.”

“It’s not always about you.” I turned away from her and walked toward the door. “I don’t want to see you again, Miriam.” I stopped to look at her, a little flare of pity in my heart, despite everything. “I wish you were in hell, paying for everything you ever did to him. Don’t come near me again. I know I can’t kill you, but I can hurt you.”

“Go, then,” she screamed, as quickly furious as she’d been devastated. “Go love a dead man. You’ll never have him now.”

I strode from her stifling house, already forgetting her.

As soon as I left the house I drew in deep, cleansing breaths, trying to get rid of the dizzying closeness of her home.

But something stopped me before I climbed into the car. A feeling.

No, not a feeling. A lack of feeling.

How could Clayton be dead when my heart still beat as it always had? How could he be dead when I still felt his presence?

He couldn’t.

He was one of mine.

I’d know if he were dead. No matter what Miriam said, I would know. I had known, until I’d been pulled into her house, her presence, and had been convinced he was gone.

Convinced by her. Oh, she was good.

She was powerful.

And Clayton was not dead.

And as soon as I accepted that, I felt something else.

I felt him.

He wasn’t on that island in a million pieces.

He wassomewhere close, and he was waiting.

Waiting for me.

I just had to figure out how to find him.

It was a pretty safe assumption that Miriam was not going to lend me a helping hand, the crazy bitch.

I didn’t want her to know I believed Clayton was alive and that she held him. Maybe he was in her house, maybe she’d stashed him somewhere close—all I knew for sure was that he was still breathing.

She could have ordered him to do anything. She could have stuffed him anywhere and told him not to try to escape, not to speak, and he would have been forced to comply.

But he was still alive.

My heart sang with a relief so loud I could barely hear anything else. Therefore, when Amias Sato flew from the early night shadows, he had me stretched out on the ground beneath him before I was even aware he’d come.