Revelation (The Protectors 7)

I wanted to tell him to stay away from me, but I didn’t. He’d do whatever he wanted.

As he turned his back on me, another round of humiliation went through me and I felt a tear escape my eye. I wanted nothing more in that moment then to crawl under the blanket and stay there, but there was one thing I needed from this man so I quelled what little pride I had left and called his name.

Chapter Three

Cain

“Cain.”

I stopped at the sound of my name and turned around, though I didn’t want to.

I was still reeling from the discovery of how badly I’d wanted to comfort the man in the bed as he’d had to indirectly admit to being raped and what that admission had cost him.

I didn’t comfort people. I just didn’t. I did my job and nowhere in my job description did it require me to make someone feel better. I was here to keep the man safe and report back to Ronan so he could figure out the next steps. I’d asked about the rape because I’d needed to know if his injuries were any kind of potential problem, not because I wanted to tell him how sorry I was that that had happened to him or that if I ever came face to face with the man who’d done that to him, I’d rip his fucking head clean off his fucking body.

Even if that was exactly what I wanted to do.

Even now, it took everything in me not to fist my hands as rage coiled deep inside me. And that was only because I’d seen how Ethan had reacted to the sight of my fisted hand earlier.

“Yeah?” I managed to say.

I saw Ethan wipe at his uninjured eye and didn’t miss the dampness that was left behind.

“Don’t tell Lucy.”

I nodded. “I won’t.” Ethan’s eyes shifted back to the window. “Get some rest, Ethan.”

He nodded, but didn’t make a move to lie back down. I left the room, closing the door enough to give him some privacy, but leaving it open a crack so I could hear him if he called out. My next stop was the other bedroom. The door was open so I could easily see Lucy lying on the bed, her back to me. She’d taken off her coat, but her shoes were still on. Since they’d been wet, I knew they had to be uncomfortable for her to keep on, but I suspected she’d done so deliberately.

Because being on the run meant you literally needed to be able to run at a moment’s notice.

I closed the door just like I had Ethan’s, leaving it open a crack, and then went to the kitchen to gather my thoughts. The storm outside was starting to pick up and I knew it wouldn’t be long before it was considered a blizzard. If we got significant accumulation, it would make it nearly impossible to get down the mountain. On the drive up, it had looked like the narrow road had been plowed throughout the winter which once again led me to believe whoever owned the cabin was either well off enough to hire a private party to do the plowing or they had the means to do it themselves.

I debated what to do for a moment and then searched out my phone. There was still no reception so I began looking around the cabin until I found what I was looking for.

The keys to Ethan’s SUV.

I snatched them up from where they were sitting on a side table near the door and then headed outside. Since my own truck couldn’t handle the snow as well with an empty bed, I climbed into the rusted-out SUV. Pleased to see it had four-wheel drive, I started it up and then scanned the interior to see if there was anything inside of the vehicle that would help me figure out who the two traumatized people in the cabin were. A search of the glove box showed nothing except the owner’s manual for the car and the window sticker from the dealership it had been purchased at. I glanced at the sticker long enough to see that the asking price for the rattrap of a car was way more than it was worth and to see that the dealership was located in Scottsdale, Arizona.

It took me nearly twenty minutes to get down the mountain far enough to where I could finally get a weak signal on my phone and another ten minutes to actually find a spot where I could safely turn the SUV around on the narrow road. Once I was back on the road and facing the direction of the cabin, I put the SUV in park and then dialed Ronan’s number. It was late afternoon so I wasn’t sure if he’d still be at the hospital.