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He put on a CD of old-school country music classics, believing that even the most die-hard introvert couldn’t sit quietly through Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, and Dolly Parton.
Eventually, even though she never looked directly at him, she began tapping her foot, proving him right.
Good. An outward sign she was finally relaxing.
Again she glanced sideways at him, and then looked away without speaking. He didn’t ask her if she had a question or needed something. Not yet. Since it would be a long drive cross-country from Seattle to upstate New York, he had the luxury of taking things slow.
Her stomach rumbled, causing her to flush red.
“Are you hungry?” he asked quietly.
“I could eat,” she admitted, careful to keep her eyes firmly fixed on the passing terrain. “What did you have in mind?”
An image flashed before him. He saw himself, as vividly as if it were happening, slanting his lips over hers, plundering her mouth with his tongue.
Swallowing hard, he blinked to dispel the picture. “How about a burger?” he managed. “I’m sure we can find a fast-food place.”
She made a noncommittal sound that he chose to take as agreement. He stifled the urge to smile. After speaking to Lucas and agreeing to help, Kane hadn’t been sure what to expect. While he knew Lilly was emotionally and physically fragile, he hadn’t realized he’d have to continually fight the urge to pull her into his arms and swear to her he’d give his life to keep her safe.
This was a given, even though she didn’t realize it yet. Maybe she never would. None of that mattered. She was his to protect, no matter the cost. As a Pack Protector, recruited at an early age, he always took his duties seriously. Even in his real job as a veterinarian, he considered himself dedicated. His clients and their pets—his patients—loved him for it. They’d even understood when he’d taken a leave of absence from the veterinary clinic to help Lucas protect Lilly.
“How often do you shape-shift?” Though she asked the question casually, the intent way she fixed her sky-blue eyes on him told Kane it was important.
Since he knew she wanted him to think it wasn’t, he lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “As often as I can. How about you?”
“I’m the opposite. I’d be happiest if I could figure out a way to never shift again.”
He’d expected this. Lucas had mentioned that Lilly had issues with shape-shifting. After what she’d been through, Kane could well imagine.
“There.” She pointed at a sign for a well-known fast-food restaurant. Obliging her, he took the next exit and parked close to the entrance.
Her question pleased him. It showed a bit of natural curiosity, a spark of life, a quality he’d feared he’d have to help Lilly completely rebuild.
After they’d both eaten and freshened up, they got back on the road. Kane had barely driven thirty miles before Lilly fell asleep again. Eyeing her, he couldn’t resist a smile.
She slept well for several hours. A good, clean rest, he thought. She didn’t appear to suffer from nightmares or even dreams. Apparently she had no bad associations from riding in a car.
He drove until dusk, then a bit farther. His neck hurt, his hands were stiff from gripping the wheel and he needed to stretch his legs. In the passenger seat, Lilly had begun to stir, blinking sleepily and looking around her with the barely awake curiosity of the truly innocent.
“Where are we?” she finally asked, her voice rusty.
“Nearly to Billings, Montana. We’re going to stop in a little bit.”
“Okay.”
Relief flooded him, though he was careful not to show it. Driving so long with only his own thoughts had made him wonder how she would do in a hotel room alone with him. He’d calculated they’d need to stop three times and they’d have to share a room each time. No way was he letting her out of his sight, not even to sleep. While he’d make sure they’d have separate beds, she’d be spending the darkest part of the night with a virtual stranger. Apparently, she wasn’t concerned, which was much better than he’d expected. He nearly smiled at her. Only the notion that it would probably scare her kept his face expressionless.
With classic country music wailing away in the background, they continued on. He pulled off I-90 in Billings, figuring ten hours on the road was enough for the first day. Truth be told, since Lilly had slept for several hours, he could have gone farther, but having recently made the trip from Texas to Seattle, all that driving had begun to catch up with him and he needed to rest.
After stopping in the office and paying for one night, he returned to the car holding the plastic key card. They drove around to the back side of the building, looking for Room 149. Parking in front, he glanced again at Lilly and then killed the car engine. The exterior of the hotel appeared a bit shabby, but hopefully the rooms would be clean. He slid his key into the sensor and opened the door. Lilly drifted along behind him like a ghost.
Kane turned on the lights, inhaling the slightly musty scent, and looked around. Two beds, check. Worn carpet that had seen better days. But a working window air conditioner. The bathroom was large and had obviously been redone. There were four white towels, a bit thin but clean and serviceable. Exactly what he expected to find for thirty-nine dollars a night.
“After you,” he told Lilly, gesturing toward the bathroom. “I don’t know about you, but a hot shower would feel really good right now.”
Though she dipped her chin to acknowledge him, she didn’t comment. Instead, carrying her overnight bag, she brushed past him and closed the bathroom door behind her. A moment later, he heard the shower start. When he did, something that had been clenched inside of him relaxed. Odd, but he hadn’t even realized he’d been so tense.
He took to roaming the room, stopping occasionally at the single window and peering out through the middle of the closed curtains. Not that he expected to see anything—he was 100 percent certain they hadn’t been followed—but old habits were hard to break. Plus, during his twice-yearly stints working for the Protectors, he’d come to appreciate the value of being overly vigilant.
The shower cut off, drawing his attention to the closed bathroom door. Though he knew it might be a bit of a cliché, he was a man and couldn’t help but picture her reaching for a towel, her pale and creamy skin glistening with water.
A few minutes later, she emerged, a towel piled high on her head. Her long legs were bare under a soft black T-shirt that skimmed her knees. She barely glanced at him, claiming the bed farthest from the door. He watched her pull the ugly, patterned bedspread down and fold it neatly, before she slid under the worn sheets.
“Here,” he said, tossing the television remote on the bed near her. “I’ll just be a few minutes.”
Still keeping her profile averted, she ignored him.
Since he could well understand her nerves, he moved past her, careful to act as if everything was perfectly ordinary. He hoped she’d be able to relax once he closed himself in the bathroom. Maybe find something banal on television to help lull herself back to sleep.
The hot, as close to scalding as he could stand, shower improved his mood 100 percent. He dried off, dressing in loose gym shorts and an old T-shirt even though he preferred to sleep naked. After brushing his teeth, he opened the door, listening for the sound of the TV. Instead, only silence greeted him. Not completely unsurprised, he saw she hadn’t turned it on. Instead, she lay curled into a ball, her long lashes fanning the curve of her cheek. She didn’t move as he quietly approached her, though he could tell from the uneven rise and fall of her chest that she only pretended sleep. Even so, she was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Then, while he stood drinking in the sight of her, she began trembling. A horrible, violent shivering, reminding him where she’d been and what a man looming over her bed most likely meant to her.
Horrified, he stepped back. His inner wolf snarled, evidently unsettled by the sudden, sharp ache just below his heart. Moving carefully, he crossed over to his own bed and pulled back the covers. A quick glance over his shoulder at her revealed her shaking hadn’t abated in the slightest. Poor Lilly was clearly terrified.
His chest tight, he considered his options. Deciding, he snagged his car keys from the dresser. “Be right back,” he murmured, even though he knew she wouldn’t acknowledge his words.
Unlocking his car, he reached into the backseat and retrieved his battered guitar case. While he was out there, he did a quick scope of the parking lot, reassured by the emptiness of the well-lit area. Even the highway seemed quiet. Not a lot of activity on I-90 near Billings at night.
Back inside the room, he bolted the door behind him. Lilly continued to lie in the same position, her slender body still wracked by shudders. Cursing under his breath, he sat down on the edge of his bed and fumbled with the latches on his case, careful not to look too long at her.
Once he had the old acoustic guitar out, he considered. He needed something soothing, not the rollicking bluesy-country music he generally favored. His entire family played one instrument or another. One of the first things he’d learned on the guitar was the old Beatles song “Let It Be.” Perfect.
She gave a reflexive jerk of her shoulders when he strummed the first chord. Ignoring this, he continued softly playing, singing the words in his low voice. While he sang, his wolf tried to sense hers. So far, even though such a thing was common among Shape-shifters, he hadn’t been able to do this with her, not even the most minute fraction of contact. Kane couldn’t understand why her wolf seemed to be locked away most of the time, though he guessed this was the result of the torture and experiments she’d suffered while locked away in the basement of Sanctuary. He had hopes that eventually, with the passage of time, she’d be able to return to a semblance of normalcy.
So he continued to play music for her, and for her wolf. He’d learned music not only calmed the savage beast, but provided a soothing balm to troubled souls.
Gradually, her trembling appeared to lessen. Encouraged, he began another song. This time the old Bob Dylan tune “Blowing in the Wind.” Though several artists had done covers of this song, in Kane’s head he always heard Bob Dylan’s gravelly voice. Kane knew all the words to this one, too, and he sang with his heart, quietly paying homage to a beautiful woman who should never have had to endure what she had.
Midway through this second song, Lilly opened her eyes. She turned her head and, after a moment of silent scrutiny, she pushed up on one elbow to watch him.
Progress. He barely managed to suppress an encouraging smile. Instead, pretending not to notice, he launched into some old Judy Collins, refusing to reflect on how every soothing song he could think of was from four or five decades ago. What could he say? He’d always liked oldies.
Once the last notes of the music died away, he placed the guitar on the chair next to his bed. “Good night,” he told her, inclining his head in a sort of salute before reaching up and quickly extinguishing the light.
As he lay in the darkness, his heart inexplicably pounding in his chest, with his wolf wanting to howl mournfully, he listened. The faint sounds of the nearby interstate were muted, and the rest of the motel was quiet. But these things barely registered in his consciousness, because he attuned every fiber of his being to hearing her.
At first, there was nothing, as if she was frozen in place. But then Lilly must have accepted the need to sleep or resigned herself to the inevitable. He heard the slight rustle of her sheets as she tried to make herself comfortable, the soft sigh that escaped her lips. And finally, her breathing slowed, became even and deep.
The tightness eased in his chest. She’d fallen asleep. Why he should feel as if he’d accomplished a victory, he couldn’t say. This drive would take four long days, with three overnight stops. They’d made it through the first. He could only hope the next two would be easier for her.
Eventually, he drifted into a restless slumber of his own.
* * *
Lilly came awake sometime in the dark of the night. As was her habit, she held herself utterly still while she gathered her bearings. The even breathing of the man in the bed next to her told her he was out, safely locked in the throes of REM sleep.
Kane. He looked like a fallen angel, or at least how she’d always pictured them when her father had ranted. Maybe not Lucifer, but one of the others caught in the fallout. She thought this because she detected no malice in those amazing silver eyes of his.
Everything about him affected her. Her experience outside of Sanctuary was too small for her to know why. She couldn’t understand her reaction toward him. Lucas had told her she could trust him, and she took what her twin brother told her as gospel. But the effect Kane had on her wasn’t like fear. He exerted some kind of magnetic pull on her, the way a candle attracts a moth. She wasn’t sure what it was exactly. An odd combination of trepidation and fascination, maybe. The latter worried her.
Of course, it seemed as if everything made her anxious these days—ever since gaining her freedom, something she’d once hoped for but had given up on. Now she wished for normalcy, to understand how to interact with others without the crippling sense of trepidation. Lucas had said she needed to be patient, to give it time.
But she couldn’t lie, not to herself. She suspected that the fear would always be with her. Even in Lucas’s home, she couldn’t control her immediate reaction if someone inadvertently startled her. The first few times that she’d dropped into a feral crouch and bared her teeth had been humiliating, to say the least. She’d just begun to try to train herself to relax when Kane had shown up and she’d learned she’d have to travel.
Among the many things she was working on was trying to blur her memory of the years of her captivity. Sometimes, she held out hope that she could be successful, but then the dreams would come and she’d wake panicked, believing herself to be still shackled to a bed, a helpless prisoner while nameless people shoved needles into her or hooked her up to machines that brought nothing but pain.
At such times, she’d learned the trick of leaving her body, a sort of disassociation that allowed her to travel far, far away. It was this ability, she now knew, that had enabled her to hang on to the last shreds of her sanity.
Had this been a good thing? Often, she found herself wondering. She certainly hadn’t expected life after captivity to be so painful. Sometimes she thought life might have been easier if she was mindless and drooling.
Pushing aside her dark thoughts, she wondered what the followers of Jacob Gideon and his church of Sanctuary found so valuable about her that would make them continue to hunt her. As far as she knew, none of the multitude of experiments they’d performed on her had been even remotely successful.
The man in the bed next to her, Kane, made a sound, low in his throat. More like a growl than a snore, even though she knew he was still deeply asleep. She wondered if he knew she sensed his wolf and how much such a thing terrified her. The only other wolf she’d ever been able to be aware of was her twin brother’s. And even that had been before the man who’d called himself their father had discovered that they were abominations.
His music... She smiled to herself in the darkness. She’d never heard anything like it—or hadn’t in at least fifteen years. The thing inside her, the abomination, had actually gone quiet for once.
Should she tell Kane this? Or would doing so somehow give him a weapon to use against her?
Trust, no matter what her brother said, had to be earned. As of yet, she trusted no one. Least of all herself. Unable to sleep, she lay awake waiting for sunrise, listening for any sounds that might mean danger had found her.
Once the sky began to lighten and Kane began to stir, she sat up, pushed back the sheets and padded to the bathroom, where she brushed her teeth and got dressed. When she returned, Kane sat on the edge of his bed with the television on. Some sort of daybreak news show played.
“Mornin’,” he drawled, the kindness of his smile making her feel warm all over. Struck speechless, she could only dip her chin in a nod.
He didn’t seem to notice. “My turn.” Pushing off from the bed, he headed for the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
With nothing to do but wait, Lilly sat down to watch the television. A commercial about laundry detergent wrapped up, and then the perky woman anchor appeared, her hot-pink suit matching her bright voice.
“Breaking news,” she exclaimed. “Police in Maine have rescued two women who have been held captive for twelve years. This is eerily similar to the case in Ohio, where two girls were abducted as teens and held for ten years.”
Lilly froze. There were others like her? As the women’s photos appeared on the screen, first the older ones from Missing posters showing them as teens, and then shots of them as they emerged from the house that had been their prison, she wrapped her arms around her waist and her eyes filled with tears. She knew these women, not personally but in spirit. In their sad gazes, the tightness around their mouths, and the way they walked, shoulders rounded as if they expected a blow, she recognized herself.
She barely heard Kane emerge from the bathroom. Engrossed in the story, she didn’t look up. Nor did she make a move to wipe away the tears streaming down her face.
“What’s wrong?” He sounded alarmed. When she didn’t respond, he dropped down onto the bed next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. “Lilly?”
Gathering her shredded composure, and überconscious of his arm, she gestured at the TV, where they were wrapping up the segment. Then she whispered, “Those women were held captive for twelve years. And they mentioned there were others, held somewhere else for ten.”
“Yes.” He hugged her. She wasn’t sure whether to stiffen, push him away or simply accept the comfort he offered. In the end, she stayed where she was.
“You’re not alone,” he continued.
Enough of this wallowing in emotion. “They told me that in therapy.” Pushing to her feet, she swiped the back of her hand across her wet face. “Are you about ready to go?”
Watching her carefully, he nodded.
“Give me just a minute.” And she hurried to the bathroom, where she blew her nose, splashed some cold water on her face and shook her head at her image in the mirror.
They ran through a drive-through and grabbed breakfast sandwiches and coffee. In a few minutes they were back on I-90, heading east. Something about the motion of the car made her sleepy, and she accepted this as a gift. When she opened her eyes again, she saw several hours had passed. They stopped for lunch and this time when they got back on the road, she felt jittery and wide-awake.
Noticing this, Kane turned down the radio. Stomach sinking, Lilly glanced sideways at him. He was going to ask questions. She recognized the signs.
“You know, I’ll never forget when we found you,” Kane said. “All those years, with both you and Lucas believing the other one dead.”
She nodded. Lucas was the only one with whom she’d spoken honestly. As twins, their emotions usually were mirror images of each other’s. But Kane had been kind to her and he was her brother’s friend. Trying like hell to calm her jangled nerves, she took a deep breath and braced herself for his curiosity.
“Seeing my brother was the highlight of my life,” she told him honestly. “At first, I thought I was dreaming. I’d carried the knowledge of his death for so many years.”
“What was it like?” Kane asked, his casual tone not fooling her one bit. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I can’t imagine.... It must have been pretty awful.”
“Awful doesn’t begin to describe it.” She gave a rueful smile, settling back in her seat and folding her hands in her lap. This, discussing her captivity, was something she’d actually grown accustomed to. After all, she’d been dutifully attending therapy sessions twice a week ever since she’d gotten out of the hospital. And before that, she’d had to tell her story numerous times to the police, the FBI and the media.
She had gotten quite adept at giving details without revealing any of her inner turmoil.
Glancing at the large man behind the steering wheel, she launched into the standard, memorized description she’d given so many times before.
“You saw where he kept me,” she said, grimacing. “Dark, cold, isolated. Exactly where demons should be kept, according to him. Sometimes I was left alone for days at a time. They fed me just enough to keep me alive. I craved water more than food, maybe because that was doled out sporadically. I had a large bucket to use as my bathroom. It was rarely emptied and stank, but after a while I didn’t even notice the smell.”
Rote stuff. She’d said it a hundred times in exactly the same way. Usually, it was enough. She raised her eyes to find him watching her. The observant look in his narrowed gaze told her for him, it wasn’t. Somehow, he knew.
Such a look... The sharpness of it might have stripped another woman naked. But Lilly had been through much worse. Though the slightly guilty pang she felt inside surprised her. She didn’t care what he thought. Or she shouldn’t. It was all so puzzling.
Confusion exhausted her. Instead of continuing, she closed her eyes and tried to pretend he wasn’t making her remember, making her hurt. In fact, she tried to act as if he didn’t exist.
“Are you okay?” The gentle tone in his whiskey voice made her insides quiver.
“Yes.” Short answer, total untruth. Keeping her eyes closed, she averted her profile, hoping he’d take the hint.
“If you don’t want to discuss it, that’s fine,” he said. “But don’t feed me all that bullshit you rehearsed for the press. I saw the interviews. I read the news magazine reports. If I could find one right now, it’d probably show you parroting the same exact thing you said then. Why is that?”
Was that anger vibrating under his words? She took a moment, mulling over the fact that she felt no fear, instead a sort of baffled curiosity.
She understood what he was saying, even if it made absolutely no sense. Kane barely knew her. Why did he want so badly to know the inner her? She’d shared that with no one, including her own twin brother. Though she suspected Lucas had a good idea, not only since they were so much alike, but because he too had briefly suffered at the hands of their father.
At her lack of response, he gave a slow shake of his head. “If you don’t want to talk about it, all you have to do is say so.”
Clenching her teeth, she swallowed. “I. Don’t. Want. To. Talk. About. It.”
