“Smarter assed,” Dane muttered.
“What are you suggesting?” Caleb asked impatiently.
“You blindfold her,” Eliza said simply. “Make sure no one talks in front of her. Keep her quiet and in the dark and you do the same to him. Ramie can hardly broadcast what she doesn’t know.”
“True,” Caleb said slowly. “The speed in which he’s escalated leads me to believe that we shouldn’t stay here any longer than absolutely necessary. He’s displayed an ability to act fast. If we keep Ramie in the dark then there’s no reason we can’t move to the safe house while you’re still installing security measures, right?”
“Right,” Dane confirmed.
“Then right now is better because she’s already out,” Caleb said. “If we move her now, he’ll never see anything but the inside of whatever room we stash her in at the safe house.”
“If we’re moving now then tomorrow’s seven A to seven P team needs to cover the safe house until seven P tonight,” Eliza said.
“We’re on it,” Eric Beckett, part of the security team present, replied.
“Let me get something for you to wrap around Ramie’s eyes,” Eliza said. “Make sure and explain to her when she wakes that she needs to keep her mind as blank as possible. The less this ass**le knows, the safer you all are.”
“I’ll keep her occupied,” Caleb said.
Eliza stifled her smile—almost. Caleb groaned when he realized what he’d said.
“Dirty-minded woman,” he grumbled.
Ramie frowned her displeasure over being jostled around like a sack of potatoes being tossed in the air. Then she realized that despite the fact she’d opened her eyes, she still couldn’t see a single thing.
Her fingers dug into solid flesh and then the jostling stopped abruptly.
“Ramie, I need you to trust me.”
Caleb’s voice instantly relieved her, soothing her fears.
“What’s going on, Caleb?” she whispered.
“Trust me, baby, okay? I need you to just lie still and keep your mind as blank as possible. Can you do that for me?”
Her brows knitted together in confusion. What on earth was he doing? Despite his reassurances, she couldn’t help but tense up in his arms. He was carrying her. Where she had no idea. He’d blindfolded her. Again, why she had no idea.
In light of the insane happenings over the last several days, this suddenly didn’t seem so crazy.
Deciding to go with it, she rested her cheek on his shoulders and allowed some of the tension to flow out of her. And then she marveled that she actually trusted another human being.
But in order to love someone you had to trust them, right?
And to think she’d once thought she would never be able to forget what Caleb Devereaux had done to her. It was funny how life turned out sometimes. If someone had told her six months ago that she’d be involved with someone much less fall in love with him she would have laughed her ass off.
“Almost there, baby,” Caleb murmured against the top of her head.
The sound of a door opening and then closing alerted her senses. Then Caleb eased her down onto a bed. A moment later, he tugged the blindfold from her eyes and her gaze met with his.
He looked tired. She slid her hand over his cheek and brushed the pad of her thumb over the dark shadow underneath his eye.
“Going to tell me what’s going on now?” she prompted.
He smiled. “The way we figured it, if you don’t know where you’re at and haven’t seen where you’re at then our bomber can’t very well tap into your mind, which means that he won’t know where you are either.”
She blinked in astonishment. “I never thought about that. It’s . . . ?genius!”
“As much as I’d like to take credit, Eliza is the one who came up with this one.”
“She’s a smart cookie,” Ramie said with a smile. But then she rapidly sobered as the prior night’s events came crashing back around her. “Caleb, what about your house?”
He sat on the bed next to her and laced their fingers together between their thighs.
“It’s just a house,” he said. “Houses can always be rebuilt. But people can’t be replaced. I’m just thankful that we all got out alive. This entire situation has escalated out of control. He’s got to be taken down soon or there’s no telling what he’ll do next. He’s getting bolder, and that’s the last thing you want from a savvy, extremely intelligent, cunning serial killer.”
“I didn’t like your house,” she said honestly.
He chuckled. “By all means don’t spare my feelings.”
“It was so cold and austere,” she said, pursing her lips. After a moment she added, “There wasn’t any . . . ?warmth there.”
“Well, what do you say the next house I build you oversee construction and decoration. You can knock yourself out making it a home.”
She pretended to give it thought. “I may have to take you up on that.”
Smiling, he leaned over and kissed her. “Are you hungry? I can go rustle up something to eat and bring it back so you aren’t alone in solitary confinement.”
“Am I allowed to take a shower and change?”
“Of course. Just don’t stick your head out of this room. I made sure and gave you the only room in the place that doesn’t have a window so there’s no possibility of you giving our location away.”