His to Take (Wicked Lovers #9)(29)
Author: Shayla Black

Joaquin locked his jaw. In frustration, yes. But Bailey couldn’t fail to see concern before he turned to the others.

Her stomach flipped over as she listened to Joaquin explain the bodies of women cropping up across the country, explained their similarities—age, background, coloring. As she listened again, Bailey closed her eyes, wondering how this could be happening. Less than twenty-four hours ago, she’d been a just another Houston woman prepping for an audition and vaguely contemplating where her life would lead.

Now she was in Dallas with a dark, dangerous man she barely knew, wondering exactly who she was and if she’d make it out of this ordeal alive.

“So they’re after you?” Sean concluded at the end of Joaquin’s story, leveling a heavy stare at her. The affectionate fiancé had been replaced by a cold agent.

“That’s what Joaquin thinks.”

“Yes,” he answered Sean.

“Did you see any evidence of anyone else pursuing you before yesterday?”

“No.”

“Were you watching for that?” Joaquin challenged.

“Why would I? I never imagined anyone would be after me. I was an ordinary woman living an ordinary life. I just did my thing.”

“If you’re Tatiana Aslanov and LOSS is onto you, that’s not the case anymore.” Sean tried to soften his warning with a compassionate stare. “Even if you’re not the missing girl, they believe you might be. So you’re still very much in danger.”

His words reverberated through her system, echoing the worry in her head. Bailey sat back in her chair and blinked. Confusion, anxiety, horror—it all hovered just under a blanket of smothering shock. Everything was coming at her so fast . . .

She jumped out of her chair and paced away, not caring that Joaquin stared after her. She didn’t even want to think about how surreal all this was again. But that part was becoming harder and harder to ignore.

Heels clicked across the floor. Bailey tensed just before someone laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. She whirled to see Callie standing beside her.

“I know this is difficult. They’re so focused on the who, when, why, what, and how to crush the danger that they forget we can be overwhelmed and scared.”

Bailey nodded. The woman appeared so collected. Not just that, but whole—both inside and out. Looking at her, no one would ever guess that she’d run for her life for almost ten years, that as a teenager she’d been hunted from state to state, identity to identity. But Callie had overcome and found her future.

Whether she was Tatiana Aslanov or not, if anyone believed she was, they would hunt her. She had to focus on that now. Hopefully, the rest would sort itself out.

Pressing her lips together to try to keep her composure, Bailey blinked away more tears. “When you were running from these killers, did you ever have anything that felt like a normal life?”

Callie opened her mouth, then closed it. She shook her head. “I’d love to make you feel better, but I would rather prepare you for reality. No. I was always looking over my shoulder.” With a squeeze of her arm, the woman went on. “We can hide you here for a while. Sean, Thorpe, and Axel will move mountains to keep you safe.” She glanced back at the three men, now in deep discussion about LOSS and how to keep them off Bailey’s tail. “I think Joaquin would do the same and more.”

“I-I don’t even know him. We were ‘introduced’ when he stuck a needle in my neck to drug me and bring me here.”

“He did it to keep you safe,” Callie pointed out. “That’s a tough way to meet, and I’m sure it doesn’t inspire confidence. But if it makes you feel any better, the men he knows, Logan and Hunter Edgington, they’re protectors through and through. They saved my friend, London, from someone trying to kill her. They’re both former SEALs. You don’t know them or me, but I swear if they have anything to do with Joaquin, then you’re in no danger from that man. Besides, I see the way he looks at you . . .”

Bailey glanced past Callie and found Joaquin’s stare drilling into her. Protective. Hot. Full of unspoken intent. As their gazes locked, it impacted her somewhere in the middle of her chest, then boomed uncomfortably lower. Taking a breath got difficult. As she fell into his green eyes, a wave of dizziness floated through her head.

She jerked her gaze free. God, she sounded like an idiot swooning over a good-looking man. He was a dangerous stranger dragging her into dangerous crap.

“I’m focused on staying alive,” she told Callie. “But hearing that I might not be who I believed . . . That’s a lot to accept.”