In His Keeping (Slow Burn #2) (34 page)

When they reached the still closed door of the safe room, Caleb’s face drew into an expression of confusion. With shaking hands, he punched in the security code, cursing when, in his haste, he failed to enter the correct code on the first attempt.

Zack merely shoved him out of the way and punched in the right code. The door slid open and they rushed straight into the bowels of hell.

The entire room was in disarray. There was a huge hole in the ceiling, which meant the bastards had gained entry from the attic, through the goddamn
roof
. The room was hazy from dust and the remnants of smoke swirling erratically. The gaping hole was large enough for a damn elephant to fit through. They would be lucky if the explosion hadn’t killed one or both women, because to force entry into the safe room, regardless of direction, it would take a hell of a lot of explosives.

“Ramie!” Caleb shouted hoarsely. “Ari!”

Caleb’s cry was echoed by Beau’s own as he yelled for Ari.

And then they saw Ramie, huddled in the far corner, her knees drawn to her chest, a vacant look in her eyes. Her pupils were dilated and her stare fixed forward unseeingly as she rocked back and forth in obvious distress.

“Dear God,” Caleb whispered as he rushed to kneel beside his wife.

Beau searched the room furiously as the smoke and haze began to clear through the now-open door, his gaze catching the rope ladder dangling through the opening in the ceiling. Already, Zack was nimbly scaling upward, pistol in one hand, rifle slung over one shoulder from a strap, securely holding it in place. Dane scrambled up behind him to provide cover, and all Beau could do was stare numbly at the wreckage of the safe room, absorbing the knowledge that he’d utterly failed to protect the woman he loved with his entire heart and soul.

Rage. Sorrow. Horror so paralyzing that he literally couldn’t breathe. He was bombarded by pain. So much pain. Terrified for Ari and what she was enduring even now. Knowing she’d trusted him. Had put her faith in him. And how frightened and alone she must feel, realizing he’d
failed
her.

Slowly he turned, knowing the only answers lay with Ramie, who was clearly in a stupor as Caleb touched her, talking to her in urgent tones, trying to bring her back from whatever hell she had descended into.

Tears streaked silently down her face, and like Caleb, Beau knelt on her other side, biting his lip to keep from demanding the answers he so desperately wanted—
needed
.

“Ramie, baby, talk to me,” Caleb pleaded. “What happened? Are you all right? You’re scaring me. Please,
please
, come
back
to me.”

Slowly her head turned in his direction, eyes dull and lifeless as yet more tears slid in endless streaks down her cheeks.

“He touched me,” she whispered, then looked away from Caleb, resuming her rocking. He
touched
me.”

She chanted it over and over, and cold rage froze Caleb’s eyes into hard ice chips. His jaw was locked in fury, and gently, as though she were the most precious, fragile thing in the world, he pulled her toward him, carefully wrapping his arms around her. He closed his eyes, seemingly losing the battle over his own emotions. Tears of rage, fury . . . grief . . . trailed down his face, carving raw, anguished trails.

“What did they
do
?” Caleb choked out. “Talk to me, baby. Please. I have to know how to help you.”

Ramie lifted her head but she didn’t look at her husband. Her gaze found Beau, and Beau was gutted by the grief reflected in her gray eyes. Sorrow. Regret. Guilt? Beau’s brow furrowed, and he leaned in closer, seeking to offer his sister-in-law comfort when she seemed on the verge of shattering into a million pieces. A feeling he fully shared and was currently experiencing himself. Only the knowledge that he had to keep it together for Ari quelled the overwhelming despair clutching at his heart.

She seemed to come back from whatever faraway place she’d sheltered herself in, a self-protective measure to escape her horrific reality. God only knew what had happened in this room. The safe room. Beau wanted to level the entire goddamn house. It was cursed. He never should have rebuilt it. It had seen nothing but pain, devastation and loss. And now, yet again, it had failed to be the impenetrable fortress he’d intended.
Safe room
. He wanted to choke on the irony that the one place Ramie and Ari should have been the safest was in fact where they’d been the most vulnerable.

In his and Caleb’s arrogance—hell, the arrogance of the entire DSS cooperative—they’d assumed that they could leave Ramie and Ari here, untouched. Safe from whatever evil lurked in the shadows that was coming for them. There was simply no such thing as a safe room. It was a naïve, stupid belief to think, no matter the measures they’d taken in its construction, that it would prove indestructible and impossible to compromise. It was a mistake he could well pay for and have to live with the rest of his life.

Ramie’s soulful eyes connected with Beau’s, and he flinched at the stark pain reflected in those stormy eyes.

“They
took
her. I’m so
sorry
, Beau. I couldn’t do
anything
. He
touched
me. Had his hands on me. And the evil. Oh God, the
evil
. It was so overpowering. It flooded every part of my soul, and there was nothing I could do to ward it off. I was defenseless,” she said in a broken voice. “And then . . .” She closed her eyes, her face contorted with abject misery. “They told her that she had two choices. Go peacefully with them and they’d spare me and everyone else, or they’d slaughter everyone and take her anyway. But the end result would be the same so it was a matter of whether she wanted to spare our lives. Not her own.
Ours
.”

Ramie began to weep in earnest, huge, gulping sobs, where before her tears had been silent in her daze. She buried her face in her hands even as Caleb drew her in even closer, nearly crushing her with his strength. Caleb was pale, and he too looked at Beau with so much remorse and . . . pity. It made Beau want to vomit.

“She willingly went so they wouldn’t kill
me
,” Ramie choked out between heaving sobs. “And there wasn’t a single thing I could do to help her. I was utterly helpless!”

She beat her fisted hand down on her leg, repeating the action until Caleb finally wrapped his hand protectively around hers and brought it to his chest so she wouldn’t harm herself further.

Ramie’s gaze was haunted, a lifetime of regret simmering in her stormy, sorrowful eyes.

“She sacrificed herself for all of us.”

Zack and Dane dropped softly from the ladder, in time to hear Ramie’s whispered statement. Silence fell over the room as everyone absorbed the sheer selflessness of Ari’s act. Discomfort and grim determination were reflected in every single DSS operative. Eliza’s eyes were ablaze with fury. Zack’s features had grown so cold that Beau felt the prickle of chill bumps cascade down his arms.

“They hopped a chopper and were already in the air by the time we got to them,” Dane said quietly. “We couldn’t stop them. We weren’t in time.”

Right that instant the grim reality of just what had occurred hit Beau square in the chest. His knees buckled, and he found himself right back on the floor after rising just seconds earlier when Zack and Dane had reappeared.

A roar shook the room, the sound terrible, much like a wounded, enraged animal who’d lost his mate. Beau dimly registered that it had come from
him
. An emphatic denial, though he knew every word Ramie had related was truth. Pain like he’d never experienced welled from the depths of his soul, filling his heart with such despair that it overwhelmed him. He couldn’t find his footing and so he knelt there on the floor, numb with terror. Grief. And love so staggering that he was awed that he had the capacity to feel such depth of emotion for another human being.

Love? He fucking
adored
her. Worshipped the ground she fucking walked on. Love was a paltry, inadequate word to describe his feelings for Ari. Maybe he’d
never
truly find the words. But he would
not
lose her.
Couldn’t
lose her. Because, even if he could never convey with words all that he held inside him, he would show her. Every single day for the rest of their lives. But his vow was empty, meaningless, because the woman who should be hearing it wasn’t
here
.

Ramie broke away from Caleb’s hold, though how, Beau wasn’t certain because Caleb had what amounted to a death grip on his wife, as if by merely holding her, he formed a barrier between her and the rest of the world. A barrier to the pain and grief she was experiencing even now.

But Ramie crawled the short distance to where Beau knelt on the floor, his face buried in his hands, shoulders shaking as though . . . He scrubbed at his face, shocked to feel dampness covering his cheeks. He stared down at the wetness on his palms in bewilderment just as Ramie’s much smaller fingers slid over and curled around his.

“I’m so sorry, Beau,” she said in a tortured voice. “I let them take her. I wish I had her powers. God, I wish I had anything but this wretched curse to feel the kind of evil that took her.”

Beau roused himself from his agonizing suffering because this was in
no way
Ramie’s fault, and he would
not
allow her to torture herself one second longer. Even as Caleb’s lips pursed to form a protest, Beau held up his hand to his brother, sending him a look that instantly quelled his response.

“This is
not
your fault,” Beau said fiercely. “It’s mine and
only
mine. We spoke of moving her, of keeping her on the move constantly, never at one place for too long a time. I had yet to set that into motion. I was arrogant and careless. But maybe . . .” He cast a look of despair in Caleb’s direction, knowing he had no other choice. “Maybe you could help us locate her.”

Ramie was nodding vehemently when Zack broke in.

“No need, man. We injected her with the tracking device, remember? Dane’s already working on getting a bead on her location. I vote we go in, wherever she is, with some serious shock and awe and lay waste to the entire fucking lot of them.”

“Fuck me,” Beau said in frustration as he glanced over to where Dane was booting up one of computers. He just hoped to fuck it worked after the utter chaos that had occurred. “I can’t even goddamn think straight! Of course! Jesus, how could I have forgotten the one thing I was the most adamant about? The one thing that would give us a chance if exactly what happened tonight occurred.”

“Keep it together, man,” Zack said softly, his eyes brimming with sympathy. “I know well the frustration in not knowing where someone important to you is. I’ve lived it over a decade. But we’ll get your girl back. You can take that to the bank.”

THIRTY

ARI
’s eyes slitted open and bright fluorescent lights stabbed her pupils like shards of glass. Wincing, she slammed her eyelids shut once more and emitted a soft moan. Where was she? What had happened?

Her brain was effectively scrambled. Maybe she’d finally had the big one. The super psychic bleed Beau had feared. Or maybe she’d simply had a stroke. But weren’t they essentially one and the same? A stroke was a bleed in the brain, right? Hers just wasn’t the normal kind of bleed most stroke victims incurred. Her mind was so fuzzy that she strained to remember anything at all.

The ache in her head intensified as she tried to focus. To concentrate enough to make sense of her surroundings. Because something wasn’t right.

She couldn’t move.

Her arms and legs were restrained and cold
metal
surrounded her neck.

Her neck?

Her eyes flew open in alarm and this time she ignored the splintering pain the action caused, and she forced her gaze to her surroundings, panic billowing like a thunderstorm. Oh God, where
was
she? Was she ensconced in her worst nightmare? And if so, why couldn’t she awaken and seek comfort in Beau’s arms? Her shield against all hurts and fears.

And then the events of the night crashed into her, staggering her and leaving her breathless. Tears stung her eyelids. Were the others even alive? Was
Beau
alive? Oh God, he couldn’t be dead. No! The men who’d taken her were completely without honor. But she’d known
her
fate was inevitable once the safe room had been breached. Her only choice was to take a shot that they actually
would
leave Ramie and the others alone. Content themselves with finally achieving their primary objective.
Her
.

Now she would finally know what these . . . fanatics . . . wanted, and honestly, she was terrified to have that question answered. But if these people had her parents, would she finally see them? At least know they were safe? Alive?

Her pulse ratcheted upward until her breaths came in shallow bursts.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

The sound speared through her skull like someone pounding a pickaxe through her head. Nausea boiled in her stomach, and she swallowed convulsively even as she knew that swallowing the accumulating saliva would only nauseate her more.

“What do you want?” she rasped, shocked at the effort it took to even speak.

“We have a few tests we want to perform,” the man said as calmly as if he were discussing something as mundane as the weather. “You have a higher purpose, Arial. It’s time to embrace your destiny.”

Destiny? She didn’t want to embrace this freak’s idea of her destiny. Her destiny lay with Beau. And finding her parents so she could have her family back. So she could start her own. Share her new family with her mother and father. She just wanted a normal life!

The disembodied voice was seriously freaking her out, so she twisted left and right, craning her neck until her gaze finally found the source of the voice. Her heart leapt. Not at the sight of the gaunt medical-looking person wearing a lab coat, but rather the two men who flanked him.