Keep Me Safe (Slow Burn 1)

He buried his face in his hands and rocked back and forth, so utterly sick at heart that he’d never be right again.

“Caleb, what is it, damn it?” Beau demanded.

Eliza and Dane exchanged worried glances, for the first time uneasy, worried that maybe somehow they had been wrong? But the proof didn’t lie.

Tears streamed down Caleb’s face in a never-ending river of grief. Oh God, how could he have done it? He wanted to die. He deserved to die for his sickening betrayal of an innocent.

He’d killed her. No one else. She’d died by his hand, the man who loved her. The same man who’d sadistically carved her up at the behest of a madman.

Caleb had been responsible for the bomb that had destroyed his home and could have killed his family. He’d worried about protecting her from evil when it was him who proved to be the monster.

“Arrest me,” Caleb said in a hollow voice that in no way sounded like the same man. “I did it. Take me to the police.”

Beau glanced worriedly up at Dane and Eliza.

“The poor bastard,” Dane muttered.

“I don’t think he did it,” Eliza said slowly as she reached for the phone in Dane’s outstretched hand. A phone that Caleb refused to even look at now.

Beau yanked his head in Eliza’s direction. “What? You saw what I saw. What on earth would make you say something like that?”

“I didn’t want to watch—I stopped watching when it began,” Eliza said, her eyes dark and haunted. “But just now . . . ?Oh God, it’s sick but I don’t think he did it. Or maybe that’s just what I want to believe or not believe.”

“You aren’t making any goddamn sense,” Beau snarled. “Now, if there is a chance, any chance that my brother didn’t do this then you need to tell me what you know before it’s too late for him.”

Her hands shaking, she took the phone, pain and grief swamping her eyes. She hit a button and winced when the video began playing just as Caleb brought the knife down and Ramie screamed.

“T-there,” Eliza stammered, pausing the video clip. She turned the phone around and shoved it in Dane’s face. “Tell me what you see.”

Dane frowned, studying the still shot of Caleb kneeling over Ramie’s body. Then his heart slammed against his chest and his breath expelled in a rush, as though someone had just sucker-punched him.

“His nose is bleeding. Sweet mother of God,” Dane said in horror. “A psychic bleed. The bastard was controlling him the entire time and Caleb was trying to fight back. Just like Ramie did when she saw the bomb.”

“What?” Beau said in disbelief.

“He’s fighting the compulsion. Fighting himself and what he knows he’s doing,” Dane said quietly.

“You’re saying Caleb wasn’t cognizant of doing this?” Beau demanded.

“Dane, look,” Eliza hissed.

Dane and Beau swung around to see Caleb on his knees, his face drawn in a black rage, blood streaming from his nose and over his mouth. It was a macabre sight but not as gruesome as the video footage of Ramie being systematically carved up by an unwilling hand.

Caleb’s face was stony, his features rigid, his eyes glazed over with a faraway look to them.

“I think he just went after the bastard,” Dane murmured.

THIRTY-FIVE

CALEB was pale and sweaty, his hands shaking, his head throbbing from the effort of trying to trace the mental pathway back to the killer.

Realization was slick and oily with fear. His head pounded, his heart broken into a million pieces.

“Dear God,” he whispered. “It was him. Goddamn it! That f**ker used me to get to her.”

“What the f**k is going on, Caleb?” Dane shouted.

“He bumped into me on the street. I didn’t think a thing of it. How could I have? Psychic links are hokey bullshit. He set me up. He established the link when he grabbed my arm and then he used me to turn off parts of the surveillance system so he could get in to plant the bomb. He used me to torment Ramie and hand her over to him on a silver platter,” Caleb choked out, grief consuming him.

Eliza, Dane and Beau stared at Caleb in abject horror. Then Eliza stepped forward, her expression determined as she got down on her knees in front of Caleb. She framed his face in her hands and shook him fiercely.

“You have to find her, Caleb. If the killer established a link to you then you have a link to him as well. Just like Ramie had. It will enable you to see into the killer’s mind and through his eyes.”

“I can’t do what Ramie does,” Caleb said in frustration. “I’m not psychic like her.”

“You’re not doing anything,” Eliza said impatiently. “The killer is. All you have to do is use the already established pathway into his mind.”

“Do it, Caleb. What have you got to lose?” Beau said tersely. “If we don’t get Ramie back, you’ll go to jail for her murder. Time is of the essence. We may already be too late.”

“Don’t goddamn say that!” Caleb roared. “We aren’t too late. We can’t be too late.”

He closed his eyes and tried to shut down everything around him. Frustrated by his inability to trace any sort of pathway back to the killer, he rammed his fist into the floor.

Eliza slid her cool hand over Caleb’s shoulder and squeezed. “You’re trying too hard,” she said softly. “Relax and let it happen. Think only about finding Ramie and then open your mind.”