“So tired . . .” He frowned.
“I know. I’m sorry.” Callie wished she could leave behind a piece of herself for him. Maybe then, she could find the will to move on, knowing she’d done what she could to ease his hurt.
An idea flashed across her brain, and she leapt up, digging frantically in Sean’s pants until she found his phone. Then she shook him awake.
“Wha . . . ?”
Callie thrust his phone into his hands. “Unlock this for me. I need to make a call. My cell is dead.”
“Told you. Charge it.” He fought to peer at the screen and tap out the code.
On the third try, he finally managed. The phone clicked. His arm dropped to his side as deep slumber overtook him.
And that was it. Her last waking words to him were a fib. Leaving him a recording on his phone was the only way she could think to leave him the truth in her heart.
As she flipped through his apps, looking for a place to leave him a video message, she frowned when she stumbled over a picture of herself. But not a current one. It was the yearbook photo she’d taken her sophomore year, just before her family’s murder had forced her to flee Chicago and all she’d ever known.
Sean knew her identity. The thought beat through her brain. He knew. Her fingers went numb. She dropped the phone.
Every word he’d ever uttered to her was a lie.
Oh God.
Sucking in a terrified breath, Callie leapt away from him and fell to the floor. She fumbled through his pants. Was he a cop? An assassin? A private investigator? His trousers revealed nothing—no driver’s license, no wallet, no badge. She crawled over the carpet until she reached his coat. After patting it twice, she encountered a hard, cold lump. Folding back the fabric, she found the inside pocket and peeked down. A gun.
Callie bit back a shriek. Her heart beat a fast, staccato rhythm. Terror laced her veins with icy fire.
He knew who she was and he carried a gun. His plea for her to come away with him? He’d probably meant to kill her once he’d lured her away from Thorpe and Dominion. Whoever had shot her father and sister had come after her more than once to finish the job, but they’d never gotten close to her. This time, they’d found her weakness—her fucking foolish heart.
Sean Kirkpatrick, the beautiful Scot she’d stupidly fallen for, was trying to kill her. She bit back tears of betrayal and ran.
THORPE ended the call with Axel, stunned and blinking. A chill worked through his body.
Callie . . .
She was locked in her room with that son of a bitch.
Tearing down the hall, he rounded the corner, calling security as he ran and grabbing Lance, who still stood sentry in the hall.
“What the hell?” the other Dom asked.
As soon as Axel’s muscle picked up the phone in the booth, Thorpe growled, “Callie’s room. Now. She’s in danger.”
On the off chance this turned out to be a misunderstanding or a mistake, he’d worry about the repercussions of bursting in on them later.
Lance cursed. “What’s happened?”
Thorpe had a terrible feeling. God, why hadn’t he seen this coming? “Sean Kirkpatrick is a lying motherfucker. Nothing he’s told us about himself is true. And he’s here to take Callie.”
“Goddamn it!” Lance ran faster.
They reached her door at the same time as the security guards. Panic making his heart drum loudly in his ears, Thorpe pounded on the door. “Callie?”
No answer.
No, no, no . . . He couldn’t handle it. Please let her be asleep or in the shower or even busy with Kirkpatrick’s dick in her mouth. He couldn’t deal with her being gone.
Fucking fabulous time to admit how much he loved her.
Thorpe extracted her key from his pocket. His hands shook as he slammed it in, then turned the lock. Frantically, he twisted the knob. He couldn’t move fast enough, get to her quickly enough.
The moment he did, he took in the disheveled bed, a naked Kirkpatrick sprawled across it. Callie’s lingerie littered the floor. Her dress had been flung nearby. Her purse and phone sat on the dresser. But the window hung open . . . and the woman he loved was nowhere in sight.
Chapter Seven
TWO hours later, Thorpe had no doubt whatsoever that Callie was long gone. In addition to her car, she’d taken her laughter, her expressive blue eyes . . . and the other half of his heart with her.
Plowing his hands through his hair, he thought acidly that if he’d been going gray before, worrying about Callie would accelerate that process. Now, Kirkpatrick was his only hope for answers. So far, he’d been unable to shake the bastard awake. In the interim, Thorpe had rifled through every inch of her closet and each one of her drawers. He hadn’t come up with much.
The bottle of Ambien he’d gotten the doctor to prescribe her this summer had never been touched. He’d railed at her to take them and put a stop to her insomnia. The stubborn girl had refused. Suddenly, two of the tablets were gone. Between the wine on her dresser and Kirkpatrick still sacked out in her bed, Thorpe didn’t have to guess what had happened to them. Goddamn it.
Axel returned, and by the grim look on his face, his search of Callie’s few favorite haunts had turned up empty. He couldn’t call her cell phone or track it. She’d left it here. Ironically enough, with a full charge. She’d shed her siren red dress. It still smelled like her. In her wake, she’d abandoned every other stitch of clothing she owned, except the ones on her back. Also left behind were the cards and gifts she’d painstakingly packed away for the last four years, as if each one was a treasured memento. And she’d removed Sean’s collar, placing it in the center of the nightstand beside him, where he would certainly see it once he woke.
Thorpe knew exactly who was responsible for Callie’s abrupt departure. She’d been . . . well, maybe not perfectly happy, but content for the last four years. Kirkpatrick had entered the scene, turned her fairly ordered world upside down, and ultimately frightened her away. Then like a wild wind, she’d swept out the door. Only Callie and God knew where the hell she was.
Would she think she was all alone now that he wasn’t beside her to hold her hand?
“Nothing?” he asked Axel.
“Nada. I’ve looked everywhere. The guys have swept every inch of this place. The little minx crawled out the window—somehow—then she managed to avoid every one of the security cameras in the parking lot on her way to her car. The only images captured indicate that she wore black and drove out of the parking lot nearly three hours ago.”
How the fuck had his careful planning gone down the drain? What, exactly, had Kirkpatrick done to spook her and make Callie flee so suddenly? Thorpe intended to get answers.
“I’m going to find her.”
“I know you’ll try like hell.” Axel crossed his beefy arms over his massive chest. “I just don’t know where to go with the search from here.”
“I need to come up with some ideas. In the meantime, can you get me fake passports? When I find Callie, I’m going to move her out of the country. And I’m going to take care of her.”
Axel whistled. “The documents alone will cost you a small fortune.”
“I don’t care. Can you arrange it or not?”
“Yeah. But you have a business to run. How the hell are you going to do that from . . . El Salvador or wherever you wind up?”
“You said once that you wanted to buy me out. Here’s your chance.”