The call of nature pulled Sara from sleep, and she rolled from bed to stumble to the bathroom, only blinking half-awake once she washed her hands. Her muscles ached in fresh, old ways, and for the first time since moving into the house, the sight of her nude body in the mirror didn’t leave her horrified or wondering who it was staring back at her. There were scars, yes, but Cam and Josh loved her as she was. If they could ignore them, then so could she.
She was quiet as she slipped back into the bedroom, unwilling to wake the men up. She owed Josh a blow job, after all. Maybe she would just wake Cam up and they could blow him together. Except the planning in her mind came to a halt when she realized that the object of her attention wasn’t in the bed. Only Cam lay sprawled across the blankets, in the same position she’d left him in. It dawned on Sara, then, that she didn’t remember climbing over Josh to get out.
Her head turned to the door. He must’ve gotten up early, to work, most likely. Josh had been researching like crazy, trying to figure out who was responsible for kidnapping her. And he’d gone downstairs so she and Cam could sleep a little longer.
Grabbing her robe, Sara pulled it on and headed for the stairs. Cam could sleep. She wanted coffee and to thank Josh.
The house was eerily silent, slivers of light visible around the edges of the curtains. Sara paused at the bottom of the stairs, looking first one way toward the living room, and then the other toward the kitchen. She frowned. Josh wasn’t there. The only other option on the lower floor was Cam’s bedroom, but she knew he wouldn’t go in there to work, not with Cam still in their room.
That left only one of the spare rooms upstairs. She’d make a pot of coffee first, then take him up a cup once it was brewed. If he was up this early, she had no doubt he would need it.
The envelope was propped up in front of the coffee machine, hers and Cam’s names written across it in Josh’s careful script. With a frown, Sara picked it up and pulled out the single piece of folded paper.
You’re asleep while I’m writing this, and I know I don’t have the time to sit here and watch you, but I can’t help it. You moved in the night, like I expected you would, your bodies naturally seeking each other out. I can’t look away because you two look so right together. And I’ve been waiting so long to see it again.
I’m doing this because it’s my fault the two of you were ever separated. They took Sara because of my article. I promised it wouldn’t disrupt your lives. But it ruined everything. Sara, it kills me to look at you and know I took everything away from you. The people who kidnapped you worked for Iocor. No doubt, my supervisors authorized it, my colleagues, my friends, carried it out. It had to be my friends, because they were the only ones who ever saw my private notes.
I would never do anything to hurt you. You know how much I love you both, but you can’t trust me. You need to leave Vegas. They can trace the IP’s on the emails I sent JD back to this neighborhood. You can’t go to Delta, either. And because I foolishly trusted JD, you should avoid going to Cam’s family. Find another shifter community, one where you’ll be protected. And please, don’t try to contact me. Don’t tell me where you are. That’s how they’ll find you again. I won’t be contacting you either.
I’m so sorry. You were the best thing that ever happened to me. Thank you for last night, and for the last five years. I’m going to do what I can to fix things. Maybe one day you can forgive me for bringing this down on your heads, but I swear, I never thought they would do this. I never thought they could.
Sara, I know last night didn’t magically heal everything. When things get difficult, remember Cam loves you. Hold onto that. Cam, remember she loves you, even when she can’t say it, or show it. I don’t want to leave you ever, especially not now. But I don’t feel like I have a choice.
Love you, always.
Josh.
Her hands were shaking so badly by the time she finished the note, the paper rattled. She wanted to read it over, to prove Josh wasn’t saying goodbye, that he wasn’t telling them not to contact him, but the words were swimming, her eyes burning as the tears refused to fall down her cheeks.
Gone? How could he be gone? After everything he had done, knowing how much she needed him, how much they loved him, how could he just go?
He wanted to fix things. That’s what the note said. And maybe he was right and none of this would have happened if he hadn’t published his article, but leaving didn’t fix things. Leaving made things worse. Leaving tore them apart and left them weaker. He couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t.
Sara whirled on her heel and raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Heedless of how much noise she was making, she burst into the bedroom and rushed to the bed, calling out Cam’s name as she shook him awake.
“What? What?” Cam sat up into a sitting position, his body tense, poised for flight. “What’s going on? Is something wrong?”
She thrust the now-rumpled letter into his hands. “Josh left. He says he’s not coming back.”
“Josh…what?” He picked up the letter, as though he didn’t know what it was. “Josh left? He couldn’t leave.”
“He did. He says all this is his fault.” She didn’t have time to sit around and wait for Cam to read the letter. Leaping back off the bed, Sara tore off her robe as she went to the dresser. “We have to go and bring him back.”
Cam was silent for a long time. When she looked up, he was still staring at the letter. She didn’t think he was reading it. He just stared. She said his name and he looked up, and then over to Josh’s side of the bed, like he expected to see the other man there.
Sara’s heart clenched. “Cam,” she tried again. She forced her feet to take a step closer to the bed. “The longer we take, the further he gets away.”
“He led them to you,” Cam murmured, like he was trying on the words. “The entire time you were gone…No.” He jumped off the bed. “No. He wouldn’t just leave. He wouldn’t just write a letter and leave. How could he do this?”
She didn’t have an answer for him, but at least Cam was moving now. Turning back to the dresser, Sara resumed pulling out her clothes, leaning to pick up her underwear when she dropped them. “We’ll call him on his cell first. And if he doesn’t answer, we’ll just figure out where he’s going.” Her clothes slipped through her shaking fingers again, and Sara sank onto the edge of the bed, trying to get a hold of her tremulous limbs. “I just don’t get how he knows it was Iocor. Did he say anything to you about it?”
“No. No.” Cam ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it standing on end. He looked a little wild. “Yesterday, while we were waiting for you, he said he thought it was another research facility. He said he was going to go check things out. I told him he couldn’t leave, but he never mentioned Iocor. And he said he wasn’t going to leave. He wasn’t going to leave.”
She stared at him, aghast. “He told you yesterday he was leaving?”
“No. Yes. He said he was going to contact a few places to see if there was any interest in his research, and he might need to go for a few days. I told him I didn’t think he should leave right now. He agreed. That was all. He never mentioned Iocor, and he sure as fuck didn’t mention leaving forever.”
“Obviously, he lied to you. You should have said something.”
“I should have said something? What would you have done, Sara? And Josh doesn’t…Josh doesn’t lie to me. Josh never lies. Look at the goddamn letter, Sara. He didn’t even lie in his letter to protect himself. He told the truth even though he thinks we’ll hate him for it.”
“If that’s the case, then what the hell happened to convince him it was Iocor between yesterday and whenever he left?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He sat at the foot of the bed, his hands hanging uselessly between his knees. “When did he even have time to come to that conclusion? He was with us for nearly the entire night.”
She felt completely and utterly helpless. How much of this had been premeditated? Cam said Josh couldn’t lie, and before this morning, Sara would have agreed. But he’d said yesterday he was going to go, and Cam was right. There was no time for Josh to have learned anything new.
Sara felt hollow, like someone had taken a part of her and carved it out. Vaguely, she wondered if this was how Cam and Josh had felt when she had disappeared. How had they gone on for two years living like this? The tears that had begun to abate at her flurry of activity returned with a vengeance, spilling over her cheeks without a sound.
“I didn’t even hear the phone ring,” she said. “Do you think he was up in the middle of the night checking his email? He mentioned JD. Maybe JD said something.”
“He made it sound like trusting JD was a mistake. Do you think she’d send a confession to him? God, I don’t know the woman. Maybe that’s just what she’d do.” He looked up. “I have his password.”
Hope returned, brilliant and brief. “You can check his email?”
“Yeah. My computer is downstairs. It’s worth a shot.”
Sara followed Cam out without a word, trailing after him even when he headed unerringly to his bedroom. He went straight for his laptop, and she hovered at his side, her hand resting on his shoulder, as he logged in.
Cam navigated to the proper web page, explaining, “He has all his email go into this box, private and professional. He keeps every message, sent or received, archived here. When we were looking for you, he was in contact with several people he met online, looking for leads. He wanted me to have access to those. Just in case.”
Her eyes widened as she saw the extent of their search, spelled out in email addresses and electronic bytes. A new emotion whisked through her, a sense of overwhelming awe, and she looked away to stare down at Cam’s intent face. “You did all that for me?”
“This is the least of it. Josh…didn’t really do anything besides conduct the search. I helped him when I could, but somebody had to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads.” Cam clicked the mouse and typed a few words. “Yeah, he’s talked to her. But it’s been nearly two weeks since she emailed. And…” He narrowed his eyes, skimming the messages. “Nothing that would indicate guilt.”
“But he mentioned JD by name.”
“Yeah. But if she emailed him, I’m pretty sure it would have been here. You know how he likes to keep his notes…” Cam looked down, his eyes narrowing. Without warning, he ran his thumb over a scar. The same scar Josh had noticed the day before. “Do you remember how this happened?”
She stepped back, breaking the contact. His attention to her scars made her self-conscious, but she masked her uneasiness by pretending to examine the mark more closely. It didn’t look all that special to her, just more history she’d rather forget. “It was…” Sara shook her head. “No, I don’t. It all blurs together.”
“Stay right here. Don’t move.”
Before she asked what he was doing, Cam disappeared, hurrying out of the bedroom. She heard him running up the stairs, but whatever he was looking for, it didn’t take him long to find. When he came back, he had a light blue envelope in his hand. He thrust it into her hands without speaking.
The California address meant nothing to her, but Sara’s gaze was captured by the logo in the corner. It was an elaborate I, with a lowercase c merged into its lower half, embossed on the expensive paper. At first glance, it didn’t resemble anything more than the Iocor symbol, but when she slowly turned the envelope upside down, her breath caught.
It was almost the same as her scar. There were a few more marks on her leg that might have been a part of the figure, or might have been unrelated, but it was the same pattern, same shape.
“Oh, God…” she murmured. “He figured it out from me.”
“They branded you.” He couldn’t hide the disbelief from his voice. “It wasn’t enough that they treated you like a lab rat?”
The shaking started almost immediately. “They did it because I was just a lab rat. I was their property.”
Cam’s glare was fierce. “You’re not a thing, Sara.”
“That’s not how they saw it. To them, I was just an experiment.”
“And what if you’d escaped?”
Sara shook her head. “You saw me. I wasn’t going anywhere on my own. Who would ever see it except for them?” The look on Josh’s face the night before came rushing back. “Except Josh did. Josh knew. And now he’s gone.”
“I think he might have already been blaming himself a little, if he suspected it was some research institution. But….seeing that…it was probably too much for him.” He went to the closet and started pulling out clothes. With his back turned, she couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders were squared and rigid. “God, Josh…”
“So I did this. He left because of me.”
“Don’t,” Cam said, spinning around. “Just don’t say that. God, don’t ever say that. You didn’t do this. Some asshole did this to us.”
“Yeah.” She tossed the envelope aside and headed for the door. She had to get out of there, she had to go find Josh, she had to stop thinking about all this, and she couldn’t do it without any clothes on. “And apparently that asshole is Iocor.”
“Sara, you really do think it’s your fault, don’t you?” Cam asked, following her out of the room. Clearly, he wasn’t just going to let her walk away.
“You talked him into staying, didn’t you?” Stopping at the bottom of the stairs, Sara whirled to face Cam, her knuckles white where she gripped the railing. “Josh is the most honest person I’ve ever known. If he told you yesterday he was going to stay, then he was going to stay. The only reason he’s gone is because he saw…he saw…” She choked on the words, and she felt her control slipping even further away. “Josh saw the scar last night,” she tried again. “And that’s when he changed his mind. So don’t tell me it’s not my fault.”
“No. No, goddammit, it’s not. It’s not Josh’s fault he was betrayed, and it’s not your fault you were kidnapped. It’s not his fault he was too good to believe the worst of somebody he knows, and it’s not your fault you weren’t jaded enough to believe somebody could hurt you. If he had found out some other way Iocor was involved, would you be standing here blaming yourself right now? He left because he blamed himself and he shouldn’t, and now God knows what could happen to him. Don’t go down the same path he did, Sara, please.”
It took a moment for his meaning to cut through her anger. “You really think I would leave you again? After everything last night, after letting you touch me, after everything I’ve done to try and see you and not that bastard in the cage, do you honestly believe I’d do that to you? Or to myself?”
“I never, ever, for a second, thought Josh would leave me…leave us. How could he? How could he leave the woman he’s been looking for and dreaming about for the past two years? How could he leave me when he knows how much I need him?” Cam shook his head. “But guilt can do odd things to a person.”
“There’s a difference. He thinks he’s protecting us. He left because he loves us so much he’d rather we were safe than satisfy his own desires, his own needs. But the difference between him and me, Cam, is I’ve always been more selfish than Josh. I’d rather spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, than spend it without you.”
He pulled her into a loose embrace, burying his face in her neck. “Good, because if I lost you again, that’d be it for me.”
She held onto him, relishing the strong bands of his arms around her back, and listened to the ragged music of their breathing fill the empty house. The memory of Josh’s final words in his letter joined in the song, until Sara pressed her mouth to Cam’s jaw and whispered, “We need to find him. We need to show Josh he’s too big a part of us to just walk away. Without Josh, we’re both lost.”
Cam stepped back, nodding. “We need to get a plan together, then. When I woke up this morning around two, he was still in bed, so at most he’s got a four hour head start on us. The problem is, we don’t know where. He might be going to JD’s, but I don’t know exactly where she lives.”
“He won’t have her contact information in his email somewhere?”
“He might. I’ll check that out. You get us packed up. If nothing else, he’s probably right about the fact we need to leave.”
With a nod, Sara turned to go upstairs and get their things together. Before she’d gone two steps, she turned on her heel and chased after Cam, surprising him with a hard kiss when she caught him. His arms came around her without pause, but she kept the caress as brief as she could.
“I love you.” She pulled away. “Listen to Josh. Don’t forget that.”
And with his smile burning onto her brain, Sara raced back upstairs.
* * * *
“Oh, fuckity fuck,” JD muttered, sliding her finger along the run in her stocking she hadn’t noticed until she was about to walk out the door. “I do not have time for this shit today.”
A quick glance at the clock confirmed she didn’t. It would take forty-five minutes to get through traffic, and that was being optimistic. Hurrying over to the full-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door, she eyed her outfit critically. Nobody would notice, unless they happened to see her in a room with a light on.
Kicking off her shoes, she half-walked, half-stumbled over to her dresser. Did she have any other clean pantyhose? Or, barring that, a clean pair of slacks? After tearing through her drawers, her closet, and her drawers once again, she realized the answer to both questions was a negative.
If it had been any other morning, she would have thrown on a pair of jeans and called it good. But this wasn’t any other morning. It was the morning of her annual review, and if she didn’t get her ass on the road, she’d miss it, and get fired, and it wouldn’t matter if she showed up in a skirt, slacks, or her birthday suit.
Hoping they’d be more dazzled by her performance than worried about her legs, she stepped into her shoes and grabbed her purse. Her hand was just on the knob when the phone rang. JD ignored it. That’s what voicemail was for, after all.
Plus, if she lost her job because she was late and looked like a bag lady, she’d have plenty of time later to return it.
JD yanked the door open and stopped short. Her annual review, her pantyhose and the phone call were completely forgotten.
“Josh? What are you doing here?”
He smiled, only it wasn’t a smile that belonged to Joshua Ames. It belonged to a much older man than the person she once knew. A much older, much scarier man. His eyes were bloodshot, and he hadn’t shaved or combed his hair. He had a bag over his shoulder, and the taxi pulling away indicated he had just come from the airport.
“Surprised to see me?”
“A little. I thought you were in Vegas.”
The smile turned menacing. “Did you? I never told you that, JD.”
“Oh.” She laughed nervously. “You didn’t? I could have sworn you mentioned Vegas.”
“I didn’t.” He pushed the door open wider and shoved his way into her house. “Sit down, JD. We’re going to have a chat.”