Isaac closed his eyes, knowing that he and Shadow had guessed precisely what the sadistic bastard had subjected Jenna to in the long hours of her captivity.
“He won’t stop,” she said in an aching whisper. “He’ll never stop until he gets what he wants and he doesn’t care how many people he has to kill to achieve his goal or even how long it takes. He’ll always be out there, waiting and watching, and when we least expect it, he’ll attack. Even if it takes multiple times and even if he has to wait years, he’ll kill every single person who works at DSS and any family they have. You and I will never have a normal life together because every moment we’ll be in fear of when he’ll strike and I can’t lose you, Isaac. I can’t. You are the only person who has ever loved me, who has cared so deeply for me and who doesn’t care at all about my ability to heal or try to use it and me to his advantage. When I’m with you, I’m not a freak who spent twenty years trapped inside the walls of a compound with no knowledge or understanding of the vast outside world. When I’m with you is the only time I feel normal. Like a real person and not some commodity to be used, traded or sold like I’m an inanimate object with no feelings, heart, soul or intelligence. I don’t want you to ever leave me. I don’t want you to die!” she cried, diving back into his embrace, pressing her face so tightly to the side of his neck that he wondered if she could even breathe.
He was overwhelmed by her impassioned words. His chest was tight, not with panic now, but with emotion that swelled larger and larger until he felt the sting at his eyelids as tears formed. He blinked furiously, inhaling sharply as he sought to control the swell of love for her that threatened to completely overtake him.
“I will never leave you, baby,” he vowed, barely able to choke out the words through the constriction in his throat.
He kissed her temple and ran his fingers through her tangled hair, wanting her to not just hear his words of love and his vow never to leave her. He wanted her to feel them. Wanted her to feel how awed and off balance he felt over the power of her declaration and what it meant to him. What she meant to him.
She lifted her face, which was raw and hid nothing of what she thought or felt. She scrubbed away at her tears as if annoyed that she’d allowed herself that momentary weakness. Yet he was in awe that she’d been able to keep it together so well for so long from the very beginning. Quite simply, he was in awe of everything she was and the unbreakable inner strength she retained even after twenty years of daily subjugation.
“I believe that you don’t want to ever leave me,” she said. “What I fear is that choice being taken from both of us and you being killed because of me. I could never live, knowing you sacrificed your life for me. I would have nothing to live for.”
“Don’t talk like that,” he said fiercely, her sincere words nearly stopping his heart on the spot. “Never say that, Jenna. No matter what happens, I want you to promise me that you’ll never stop fighting, that you’ll never give up and that you’ll go on, free and able to make your own choices about your life and do anything you’ve ever dreamed of doing. You have to swear it, baby, or I won’t even be able to function. I’ll think of nothing else but the overwhelming fear of you giving up if something ever happened to me.”
He gripped her shoulders and melded his lips to hers, taking her mouth hungrily, desperation beating at him, an incessant, unrelenting force.
Her eyes glistened with tears, but slowly she nodded and in a halting voice, hoarse from the strain of holding back so much emotion, she said, “I promise, Isaac. But only if you promise me the same.”
His eyes narrowed as rage consumed him all over again. In no way, in no version of his life, would there ever not be a Jenna, but he’d forced the vow from her, even seeing the agony it caused her, so he could do no less than utter the same promise—even if he didn’t mean a damn word of it. A life without Jenna was unthinkable. He’d be a mere shadow of his former self, a shell going about the motions like a robot programmed to perform specific functions, but his heart, and his soul, would forever be wherever she was.
He nodded, unable to give voice to the statement she’d barely managed herself.
“What are we going to do?” she asked, her eyes begging him for a miraculous solution, and God, he wished he could give her one. He wanted to give her everything her heart had ever desired, but this was out of his hands and there were no miracles, save those God chose to bestow on the worthy, and Isaac had proved his unworthiness long before Jenna had swept into his life and restored the faith he’d discarded along the way.
“We knew as soon as we saw the newscast why the cult was eliminated, and in all honesty, the hit had most likely been ordered long before you escaped. It occurred mere days after the exchange was supposed to have happened. The cult still wanted access to you even after they turned you over to a drug kingpin and there was no way Jaysus would ever let anyone have use of his prized possession. If the exchange had taken place and you were now in his hands, the massacre would still have occurred because he didn’t want to chance leaving anyone who had knowledge of your existence or your ability to heal alive. With no one left who knew you existed, no one would have ever asked questions about your disappearance and Jaysus would never have to worry about anyone but him knowing anything about your gift.”
Her expression grew fearful once she realized how close she came to being swallowed up in a hole she could never escape from and having absolutely no one who would ever look for her.
“We have a plan that’s already been put into action,” he soothed. “Caleb, Beau and Zack took their wives to a safe house and they’ll have heavy guard at all time. Tori is with Dane and he has money and connections, not to mention firepower, that likely will come damn close to matching Jaysus’s own. Wade Sterling has taken Eliza to an undisclosed location not even known to us, and like Dane, he has not only a lot of money but a lot of power and an entire security team of trained professionals.”
“And us?” she asked anxiously. “The rest of the men?”
“We’re staying right here. It’s heavily fortified, stocked with six months of provisions, not to mention a very impressive arsenal, courtesy of Dane. We’re hiding in plain sight, and I don’t think even Jaysus would think to look for us in a downtown high-rise building, and even if he did, we have a safe room that he’d need serious firepower, as in military-grade weaponry, to breach it, and there are multiple escape exits if we ever need to get the hell out fast.”
“So we just stay here?” she asked hesitantly, biting into her bottom lip.
“That’s exactly what we do,” he said, injecting confidence and reassurance into his tone.