Sophia makes a soft, mmhhhing sound. “Cade obviously feels differently. That’s why he has a whole dossier on the guy in your office?”
“Yeah. Maybe.” I could explain to her that Cade’s just going through the motions now, but it’s too painful to admit out loud, even to myself. Laura’s been gone for so long that the possibility of ever finding her and bringing her home seems remote. I’m nearly positive that Cade thinks his sister is dead. It’s easier for him to believe that. If she’s dead, she’s not being raped repeatedly, over and over again. She’s not being abused and tortured. She’s not in pain and suffering because we can’t fucking find her anywhere on the surface of this godforsaken planet.
Sophia rolls onto her side, facing me. “I’ve been lying here for the past few hours, trying to decide if I should call the cops,” she says quietly. “If the police got involved, if they knew Ramirez has my father, they could storm the farmhouse and get him out of there before they could do anything to harm him.”
“God, Sophia—”
“But then I realized that there’s no way to get the authorities involved without implicating you in my kidnapping. They’d dig and discover something about the Widow Makers that would land you or Cade in trouble, not to mention the other guys. So I just lay here in the dark, trying to think of a way out of this situation, trying not to resent you because of it, and I’ve been so angry, Jamie. So fucking angry, I could taste it, and I didn’t like how it made me feel.”
She has every right to be angry. It would be a fucking miracle if she wasn’t. I asked her to stay here to help put Ramirez away; I asked her to testify, but Hector turning up on our doorstep, moving himself and his whole goddamn crew into town, less than four miles away, really threw a spanner in the works. He made it fucking personal. He threatened her, and the time for legal justice came and went. Instead, I’ve been holding my breath, waiting for Ramirez to make the first move, and that hasn’t done anyone any favors. “And what about now?” I whisper. “Are you still angry?”
She nods, tears welling in her eyes. “Yes. But I don’t want to be. I just want it to go away. I want my dad to be safe and sound back in Seattle. I want somehow for this all to be okay. Can you tell me that it will? Can you ease my mind? Because right now I’m teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and I’m pretty sure I’m about to lose my balance.”
Slowly, I brush the loose strands of hair out of her face that have escaped her messy ponytail. She closes her eyes, her eyelashes nothing more than the suggestion of black smudges against her cheeks in the darkness. “I can’t promise you anything, sugar. I wish I could, but I can’t. It would be unfair to lie. What I can tell you is that I’m going to do absolutely everything I can to make sure this doesn’t end in disaster. I’ll sacrifice everything I have to make sure your father gets back to Seattle, and I’ll bury anyone who tries to prevent that from happening. All I can promise you is my best. And in case you haven’t noticed—” I place a feather-light kiss on the end of her nose, “—I’m kind of a badass. So don’t fret yourself, beautiful girl.” I let the Louisiana creep into my voice as I speak, and a tiny smile plays over Sophia’s lips.
“You are kind of a badass. But you’re also a jerk,” she informs me.
I slide my hand underneath her head so I can wrap my arm around her, pulling her to me. “Do you love me?” I whisper.
She speaks so softly. So quietly. Like she’s almost afraid I might hear her. “Yes. I love you so much.”
I kiss her temple. “Good.”
“Do you love me?”
“So much it scares the shit out of me sometimes,” I whisper. And that’s the god’s honest truth. I care about this woman so much. Too much, I think. If I didn’t care about her one way or the other, I’d be free to do whatever the hell I pleased around here. I could have launched a Hail Mary, attacking Ramirez in his farmhouse and ending this bullshit months ago. I could have torched the place with everyone inside. I would have had to fight off the memories of all those women and children screaming out in the desert, but I could have done it. With with Sophia here, I have to remember who I am, though. Who I want to be. She told me once that I was still a good man, and over the past few months I’ve found myself craving to be that for her more and more. To be someone good and honest and kind. I thought those days were long gone for me. I’ve done too much, seen too much, hurt too many people to believe that I could ever go back to being wholesome again. But something about Soph makes me want to fucking try, and it’s so goddamn inconvenient that I could weep.