“Are you going to hurt your sister when you get her back?”

He didn’t laugh this time. “She thinks I will, but no. She ran with the wrong assumption in her mind. That is all I can say.”

“Why?”

He sighed, barely a foot away from me. I could feel it.

“Tomorrow we can talk. Perhaps you’ll find some answers. Until then, I am tired. I have been traveling all day and had many meetings. I want to sleep. Sleep, Riley.”

But I didn’t, even long after he did.

I heard his breathing even out, and I tried rallying inside.

I made myself remember that male Hider. I remembered seeing the guard pull the trigger, the spray of blood, and the way his body slumped to the floor.

He died because of me, and I vowed I would find his family.

I tried to summon the energy and courage to slip from the bed, get to the kitchen, and find a knife. I envisioned stabbing it deep inside Kai.

I had to make that guy’s death stand for something. I had to.

That promise was the only way to make it right in my head. Because instead of getting up, I fell asleep.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I slept three hours.

I could tell my body had caught up on sleep when I woke, because I felt good. I felt sane. And I watched Kai sleep for the next hour.

Now that I wasn’t sleep-deprived or in shock, I could think more clearly. I reviewed everything that had happened—with Kai, Tanner, Jonah, everyone, everything.

I was weak. That’s the only explanation I had for why I wasn’t running right now, or fighting right now.

I hadn’t had sex in six months. There was that too.

I was attracted to Kai Bennett. No matter who he was, that was just a fact. After last night—feeling my body wanting to go to him while my mind screamed at me to keep away—that was the only explanation I could justify. I was weak, and I hadn’t lusted after a man since that Tinder date. And even that guy’s effect on me had been minimal compared to Kai Bennett’s.

No. Brooke’s brother.

I had to pull back. I had to erect walls between him and me, because I knew what I needed to do. First names weren’t a part of it. Names weren’t a part of it. He was Brooke’s brother. He was the reason she’d run. He was Cord’s murderer, their father’s killer.

Murderer. Killer. He was those things too.

Hider training told us to strip away our humanity. It would be there in the times we needed it, but to get to the abused, we had to walk into hell. We had to be prepared for whatever was on the other side. When they’d taught us this, I’d thought of my mother. I’d thought about how she’d been beaten within an inch of her life, how he had left her to die and called someone else to take care of the body. That Hider—though my father had no idea he was with the Network—hadn’t known what he was walking into. If my father had caught him, backtracked for some reason, or followed up, that Hider would’ve had to kill him. Because if he hadn’t, I had no doubt Bruce Bello would’ve killed the Hider and my mother.

That’s what I needed to do this morning. I lie here, beside this man, and began to strip away my humanity.

When we Hiders opened the door, saw the survivor, realized the scene was safe, our humanity came back to us.

Except sometimes it didn’t.

I hated that, and I was ashamed because of it.

It was why we did what we did, but when we opened those doors, sometimes I didn’t feel a thing for the survivor. I wouldn’t feel a thing until we had already taken them where they needed to go. It was usually on the drive home that my humanity came back to me.

The car would be silent. I would be riding in the back or next to either Carol or Blade in the front, and I would gasp when it returned.

No one ever looked over at me. No one asked. I didn’t know if they knew or understood, but it wasn’t until then that I shed a tear for what we’d done. We’d helped someone, and I was grateful.

But I was also thankful because I’d gotten through it, and so had my team. Blade and Carol were like my family by now. I’d spent almost more time with them than anyone else. Almost.

Sitting up, I slipped from the bed, stood, and looked down at this man sleeping.

It wasn’t right, because at a time when I needed not to feel, that’s all I was doing. I still felt so much confusion over how I could lust so much for this murderer. I felt the same disgust with myself that I’d felt all those times when I’d needed to feel my heart and hadn’t.

I usually pushed it down. Now I didn’t.

I allowed the disgust to grow to loathing. I loathed myself. It filled every inch of my body, every pore, every cell, every hair until finally, finally it moved past me and onto him.

It was my own self-hatred, but I allowed it to spread beyond me.

I couldn’t think. If I did, it wouldn’t work. Padding around the bed, I did what I’d vowed to do two days ago.

There was a knife block in the kitchen, and I took one of the smaller ones. I knew it was just as sharp as the others, and I could wield it with better precision.

I went back to the bedroom.

The sun had begun to rise outside.

A small glimmer of light was beginning to warm the room. It was just enough. I could make out his sleeping form.

I paused in the doorway, gripping the knife.