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“Looks like.”
* * *
Liam shook his head. How was this even possible? Aubrey Starr was Cat? The girl he’d met in a filthy prison was the beautiful, talented woman he’d been snarling and growling at from the moment he’d met her?
“Something else,” Serena said. “When you started talking in the meeting, before the op, did you see her reaction? She was sitting quietly, attentively, but the moment you began to speak, it was like she’d been knocked for a loop. She got pale and still.”
Because she had recognized his voice. It wasn’t hard to believe that after all this time she would still know his voice. They had talked incessantly. Actually, he had talked much more than she had. Her voice had often been so hoarse, she’d had laryngitis much of the time. Which was why he hadn’t recognized her voice.
“When we were in Colombia,” Serena continued, “I mentioned Syria, and I thought she was going to pass out. She made light of it, said it was all the excitement, but the more I thought about it—along with all the other clues—I couldn’t stop thinking that we might have completely missed the obvious.”
His eyes closed in regret. “That’s why she asked me about Syria.”
“When was that?” Serena asked.
“On the plane, when we were headed home. She brought up Syria. I shut her down. Told her to forget about Syria. That it wasn’t a topic up for discussion.”
“You didn’t know.”
No, but he should have. How could he not know? Okay, yes, her voice had been hoarse when they’d been in prison. She’d had an awful upper respiratory illness that had sometimes taken her voice completely away. But still, why hadn’t he known? How could he not know? And what had she thought when he hadn’t recognized her? Or had she thought he did and didn’t want to acknowledge her?
She had known, that much was obvious. Or at least suspected. Why hadn’t she told him? Why couldn’t she have just blurted it out? I’m Cat.
Was that why she’d come to talk to him? Had she been about to tell him, and he’d told her to forget about Syria? Hell, had she thought he knew who she was and didn’t want to acknowledge her? The pain in her eyes when she’d gotten up from her seat told him in retrospect that was likely the case.
“Where is she now?”
“St. Augustine,” Ash said.
His heart thudded with dread. “Alone?”
“No. Gideon and Eve are with her. Which is a good thing. When they arrived, they found her house had been ransacked. Everything was destroyed.”
Liam closed his eyes. He should’ve been there with her. He could’ve if he’d taken his head out of his ass for a moment and realized what was going on.
All this time, he’d been looking for a victim. But Aubrey Starr was no victim. She was a warrior on a crusade to inform the world to help put a stop to human trafficking.
“She’s at a safe house now. Eve and Gideon will stay with her until we can get her full-time security.”
“I’ll take care of that. I’ll head there now.”
“I figured. Plane’s tied up, but I went ahead and chartered one for you.”
Not for the first time did he thank God for Asher Drake. And Serena…
Turning to her, he grabbed her into a hard hug. “Thank you. You are the absolute best.”
Her eyes sparkling with tears, she beamed up at him. “It was my pleasure. Now go get your Cat.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
St. Augustine, Florida
She stood in a kitchen that wasn’t hers, washing dishes in a sink that wasn’t hers, looking out a window at a backyard that wasn’t hers.
Ever since she’d returned to Florida, she felt as though she moved in slow motion. Thoughts whirled through her brain, but she felt slow, awkward. Shock, Eve had told her, could do that. While the world went on around her, she was in a cocoon of numbness.
Thankfully, even though she was moving at a snail’s pace, other people were not. Things were already in place to protect her loved ones, thanks to Eve and Gideon. She wouldn’t tell her family what had happened. They would only worry.