The Damaged (The Insiders Trilogy 2)

“Where are you?”

Now I stopped, my body almost tipping over from how quick I put the brakes on. “Why?”

Kash’s voice was low, insistent, and I heard the urgency. My pulse spiked.

Suddenly, my phone was plucked out of my hands. Fitz spoke into it, his eyes hard and fixed over my shoulder to the crowd. “I’m getting her out of here.”

I heard Kash’s voice, but couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Fitz: “On it. We’re moving.”

His hand came back to my arm this time, and he began walking me forward, back toward the building we’d just left.

“Hey—hey! Where are you going?” That was Melissa yelling at us.

Fitz ignored her, giving me the phone and still pulling me to the computer building.

“What’s going on?” I asked Kash.

Looking back over my shoulder, I saw that the crowd stopped growing, but the not moving part. It was heading toward us, and I say “us” because Fitz and I were thirty yards away by now and that crowd seemed to be zeroing right in on our location. Melissa began trotting to keep up with us. Liam was transfixed by the crowd. Hoda was frowning back and forth, and the other guys were gone. They were either swallowed up by the crowd or had taken off somewhere else.

I’d been looking forward to eating, not going to lie.

Then Kash’s words cut through everything. “My grandfather is touring Hawking today.”

I felt rocked.

“What?”

“That’s him behind you. I want you gone and away from him now,” he clipped out, and I could hear sounds from his end.

“Where are you?”

“Coming to you.”

“What?”

I heard beeping, then silence on his end.

“Do what Fitz said. I’ll be there in ten.”

He ended the call.

I stared at the phone, turning to Fitz, who was super focused on dragging me out of there. We were weaving and dodging people, and it wasn’t just students. Personnel were coming out of the woodwork. Work badges on lanyards and ties were flying in the air as two people rushed past us. A frenzy was taking over. It was unsettling me, right after I just got settled.

A guy started to cross in front of us. Fitz caught his head in his palm, held him as we passed, then let him go.

The guy’s mouth dropped open, but we were far past him by the time he had regrouped enough to say anything.

“Bailey! Wait up.” Melissa had been caught in the crowd traffic. A group of sorority-looking girls was blocking her way and she couldn’t edge through them.

Fitz suddenly drew up short, cursing under his breath.

I saw why, a split second later, when we were face-to-face with Busich, the middle-aged woman, the older man, and Calhoun Bastian. How they got here before us, I had no clue, but there they were. As if they’d been waiting for me, standing in a semicircle. If Fitz and I stepped forward, we would’ve completed that circle.

A small clearing had formed around them, but I saw a couple of guards moving people backward.

Calhoun Bastian had been all over the local news, so this reaction wasn’t something shocking to me. What was shocking was that he was here, and I knew right then, as those dark eyes found mine, that he’d come for me.

I swallowed over a knot.

He smiled at me. “Hello, Bailey.”

EIGHT

He looked like Kevin Costner, which pissed me off. I love Kevin Costner. He also looked like Antonio Banderas, which still pained me.

This guy, Kash’s grandfather, who had dark, penetrating eyes, rich black hair with specks of gray peppered in it, and a jawline that was a box square, didn’t deserve to have the looks he did. As he stared back at me, taking me in, oxygen in my chest ceased. I felt him, like I felt his grandson, as if he could read my insides, but I didn’t want him in there.

My stomach churned. My insides squeezed, rolling over.

I wanted him out.

Block him.

I envisioned an actual wall coming down in place. My eyes went dead. My mouth flattened. I didn’t move, like a prey waiting out a predator that couldn’t see them, just waiting for them to pass along.

An approving but calculating smile formed on his face.

The personnel with him blinked in surprise.

“Your file does not do you justice.”

My skin crawled.

Fitz moved in front of me, blocking me. He held a hand up. “Excuse us.”

Kash had never let me see his grandfather when he came to the apartment. Hotel security, Kash’s own security, and the police swarmed within moments. His grandfather had been long gone by then, but the impact wasn’t lost on me.

Kash shut down that night, and I’d been fighting to get him to open up again.

Since then, I saw the news. I saw the articles. I read the headlines. Calhoun was in town in a big way, and he and Kash started going head to head. But him coming here, making contact with me … A shiver went down my spine.