Twenty minutes later, the car carrying him rolled up underneath the hotel awning and Caleb got out, striding into the entrance. He was met by Antonio, who reported that it was quiet and nothing had happened in the time since Ramie had checked in.
Caleb checked his watch, seeing that it was just past two in the morning. He hated to wake her up but then he doubted she was sleeping anyway. She’d sounded too panicked, too frightened on the phone. He didn’t imagine she’d slept in days, if not weeks.
“Maintain your post and direct the other two men to do the same,” Caleb said as they headed toward the elevator. “I want her under constant watch until I take her out of here.”
“Yes, sir,” Antonio said crisply. “We won’t stand down until you give us the order.”
“I appreciate you moving so quickly on this,” Caleb said.
Antonio’s face darkened. “Whoever the son of a bitch is, I’d say he got his hands on her at least for a few minutes. Her face is a mess. I’m surprised she was able to escape such a close call.”
Caleb’s thoughts immediately went black. Ramie had briefly mentioned that she’d had a run-in with the asshole, but he didn’t realize she didn’t escape unscathed. He shook his head, still mystified by a man roughing up a woman so small and delicate.
When he’d seen her the first and only time they’d met face-to-face, she’d looked hollow. Almost as if she’d been dealing with an extended illness. Only now he knew it was far worse and far more draining emotionally and physically than a period of sickness.
The fact that he’d added to her already overwhelming burden, things she had to live with every day, her sleep tortured by the taint of evil she’d confronted time and time again?. . .??his guilt—and genuine regret—ate at him with every passing day he’d been unable to locate her.
On his darkest days, he’d wondered if she was even still alive. Such desperation and despair as he’d seen in her eyes and then the resignation and fatalism in her features could well drive her to the ultimate act of finding rest at last.
Her death.
If she became reckless—careless—if she simply didn’t care any longer whether she lived or died it would make her bolder. Death may well represent her final escape from the hell of her day-to-day reality.
What the hell could he do to help her heal? If she could even ever be healed. He saw the toll the events of a year ago had taken—and still was taking—on his sister and she’d only suffered once. Once was enough. But Ramie? She’d undergone the same kind of horror not once or twice. But dozens of times. He had no idea how she coped with it all without shattering into a million pieces.
Maybe she already had. Maybe she’d never be able to pick up the pieces. Maybe there was simply nothing he could do but helplessly stand by while she lost another sliver of her soul, until there was simply nothing left of her but a mere shell of the woman she once was.
She was only twenty-five. Not even to the peak of her life. And yet when he saw her dull, lifeless eyes, she’d seemed far older than her age. More weary. The weight of ten lifetimes, more than most people would ever endure in a hundred lifetimes all pressing down on her, suffocating the life right out of her.
But then she’d been helping victims since she was a young girl, when the extent of worry for a child her age usually amounted to making good grades, hanging out with friends and having a boyfriend. Certainly not the oppressive responsibility of having the lives of kidnap victims hanging in the balance, their fate in the hands of someone so young and vulnerable.
It was obvious to him that she’d had no childhood at all and that she’d been forced to grow up and bear adult responsibility far too young.
His heart ached for the girl she once was and for the woman he may have irrevocably damaged in his desperation to save his loved one. Had Ramie ever been anyone’s loved one? It appeared from everything he’d read that she’d never had a stable family, never enjoyed the unconditional love of family and certainly had no comprehension of a life without the suffocating responsibility she’d been forced to take on at such a tender age.
Weariness and guilt assailed him because he knew in his heart that if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn’t have chosen differently. If he hadn’t found Ramie precisely when he did, his sister would have died the very next day. But knowing that didn’t make the bitter pill any easier to swallow. And it didn’t stop him from his determination to ensure she didn’t suffer any longer.