Page 54 of Stockholm (Angel of Mercy #1)

The Keeper

M y knuckles scream from my grip on the door handle, every muscle in my body tense as Jesse whips us from the main road onto the hidden gravel drive toward the cabin.

It had been a fucking ruse. The lead about Eric attempting to leave the area, to disappear. Someone who knew what we were up to, intimately knew about the plans we had for him, had fed us a line that we were about to lose him completely.

And we had run from the house, Jesse and I, falling for it hook, line and sinker.

“Fuck!” I scream, as he accelerates toward the cabin. “Why? This doesn’t make any fucking sense. I’ve done everything right. I’ve done everything to keep us hidden.”

All humor is missing from Jesse’s expression, a blank look all he offers. His eyes are the only thing that betrays the desperate need to get back, to check on them.

Who could have possibly known so much about Mercy—about our plans for Eric—that they could trick us so easily?

When the wood cabin comes into sight I scan it for signs of forced entry, but the windows are unbroken and the door is shut.

I’d expected Em and Bo to be on the porch, or reading in the patch of sun to the side of the house.

Something. Instead all I see is Molly, tucked under one of the bushes in front of the house, as if hidden away.

Jesse screeches to a halt, throwing the door open.

“I really thought the worst when we realized it was a fake tip. I thought—” His words catch as we shut the car doors and start up the porch steps.

“I kept thinking it would be on fire for some reason.” He shakes his head, but I see the haunted way his face looks.

I get it. Though Jesse had gotten us back in record time, the entire drive had been my imagination enduring one terrible scenario after another, about what we could be returning to.

How could Bundy’s people know who our insider is, to get us to flee the house?

Had they done it to make it easier to take Emma, Bo?

I’d pictured everything, the house blown up.

Both of them in the yard, murdered. Even the possibility of an ambush waiting for us when we got here.

It would have taken all of the men of Mercy to keep me from coming back and checking on her. My need to know she’s okay was all that mattered, whipping my head into a frenzy.

She’s mine. Mine . And not as a tool anymore to hurt Eric. She’s more than that, taking up more space in my head and heart than I realized until I considered that she could be gone .

She’s everything. Every-fucking-thing.

I need to tell her, I need to hold her so I can stop this bleeding feeling inside me that’s still panicking that I’ve lost her.

I’m right on Jesse’s heels as he bounds up the porch stairs. Molly meows loudly when she recognizes us and darts out from under the bush. Not normal. She’s never usually out here alone.

“What the—” Jesse starts when he turns the key easily. It’s unlocked already. He glances back at me but I shrug as if the sight hasn’t turned my mouth to ash. “They were probably out here earlier and forgot to lock it when they went back inside.”

But my heart picks up and I push the door open heading right for the stairs.

“Bo?” Jesse calls, checking the couches where they usually are sitting. It’s empty. “Bo!”

I take the stairs two at a time, unable to call for her. My heart feels like it’s lodged in my throat, and I just know I’m a second away from my steely demeanor shattering. My nerves fray as Jesse runs up the stairs, his next call for Bo painful to listen to.

Her door is shut, and the realization that she hasn’t thrown it open to see what the commotion is about claws its way to the forefront of my mind.

But then my eyes catch the chain on the outside of her door, and I realize she’s locked inside.

Someone locked her in her room.

Someone had come in this fucking house, and did something to her. On my watch. To my fucking girl and my vision reddens as I undo the latch and brace myself for any of the one million things I could see on the other side of the door.

Pushing it open, my eyes fight to take in everything at once, hampered by the limited light filtering in through her window. The storm clouds are gathering and the air is charged with the coming rain.

“Em, baby?” I stalk to her bed, checking the covers, but it’s empty and cold. Ducking down, I see she isn’t hiding underneath it either.

“Emma!” I shout, jogging to the bathroom and flipping the lights on. She’s not here, but I see what looks like tiny pieces of broken plastic on the ground. Brow furrowing, I check behind the door and turn, heart thundering in my chest, to ransack the rest of the house.

For the briefest moment, I feel pure relief. Because she’s right there , stepping out from her hiding spot behind the door when I spin. There’s this unfamiliar clench in my heart at laying eyes on her. She’s not fucking dead.

Her stance is strange, angled for the door with her hand outstretched, holding something shiny.

I step forward to check her out, to make sure she’s unharmed but she holds her hand out toward me and the expression on her face is strangled with fear.

Her eyes, though, burn with uncut anger—and it’s directed right at me.

“Emma, come here. What happened?” I ask, taking another step forward. Of course she’s scared, someone had been here and fucked with her in some way. Locked her in, and who knows what else. But why the hell is she looking at me like that ?

“Don’t you dare come near me.” Her voice cuts through me, stronger than I’ve heard her speak before. “I don’t want to hurt you but I will.”

My step stutters and I halt. There’s a tiny piece of metal in her hand and I realize it’s a razor, probably from the smashed one on the floor of the shower.

I laugh, the confusion too much after the mental strain of the last few hours. I’m on the fucking edge and this version of Emma is like being face to face with a terrifying stranger. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Her lip curls and I hate it. I hate that expression on her beautiful face, only because it’s directed at me. “I mean it Noah, let me go and I won’t hurt you.”

“Hurt me?” I repeat, trying the words out for myself as if they’ll make sense that way. Her hand is shaking. “Do you really think you could?”

“That’s a stupid question,” she spits. “After what you did, of course I can.”

After what I did. Her words sink into me, my body heavy with the knowledge that something here has changed her. Is it just now hitting her that I’ve shaken up her entire life? Is the resentment just now starting to grow?

No. Someone has been here, and she’s in danger. We are in danger.

“Do it then,” I taunt her, knowing she won’t. Not my Emma. Not the Emma that looked at me like I was an anchor in this fucking ocean of insanity we’re adrift in.

I step forward to grab her wrist because we don’t have time for this—someone could still fucking be here—when she strikes. Her arm swings wildly, a sick look on her face. Yet underneath the stress I can feel rolling off of her, is a satisfied look in her eye when she catches my face with the blade.

I freeze, the bite of the razor dangerously close to my eye but mostly catching across my brow. As I reach up to the wound, needing to confirm that this insanity is real, she darts out the open door and takes off down the hall, screaming for Bo .

I look down and the tiny razor is on the floor, abandoned as she fled the room.

The shocking red dripping from my hand confirms that this is real. This feeling of being lost is foreign to me. Everything is surreal, because the Emma that dug her way into the armor of my chest, who had pulled me closer with that soft way she had about her, just cut me.

And is now trying to escape.

She can’t go. She won’t go.

My thoughts snap back to the reality of the moment, and how a fucking deranged psychopath of a man is obsessed with her, and how we don’t know why or who he sent here to the house. Why they lured me away just to fucking lock Emma in her room.

It doesn’t make sense and I need time to figure this shit out, not chase down this infuriating woman who is clearly fucking confused.

“Emma,” I shout as I stalk out the door, catching sight of her petrified face as she darts down the stairs.

Fucking hell. They could be down there, they could be anywhere. “Emma, goddammit, get back here now!”

Racing down the hall, I reach the spiral staircase and try to gain on her by jumping from the midway point to the floor below. A panicked scream trails behind her as she yanks the front door open and loses her footing on the porch, stumbling down the front stairs.

She’s going to hurt herself, and I’m growling in frustration at her bizarre behavior. If she would just stop and fucking listen we could figure this out. If she would just trust me.

“Stop, Emma,” I roar after her, as her bare feet catch on the gravel and propel her forward. She throws a terrified glance over her shoulder and it’s infuriating. “You can’t fucking leave, quit running! ”

I don’t know what game she’s playing, but there’s a trickle of excitement against my will to be chasing her again.

Blood paints one side of my face and my heart hammers as I gain in on her.

That scared look on her face when she looks back and sees me thrums in my veins, reminding me of her first days here.

When she was genuinely scared to be close to me.

It’s cut short when she missteps, her ankle twisting and her ragged scream of pain breaking me from that predatory moment. “Fuck,” I grit out, trying to reach her as she throws her arms forward to brace herself against the rocky ground.

“Please let me go,” she sobs, holding her ankle as I approach, noticing the wound on her leg. I ignore her and crouch down to look over her injury as her head falls back to the ground.

She looks defeated, miserable that I’m here. That she can’t escape me.