Love Me (WITSEC #3)(6)

“And one of us proved that to you,” Knox said as his hardened expression shifted to one of suspicion.

Logan stepped toward him. They both stared each other down and the air in the room began to feel heavy. “You’ve no idea what the four of you are risking by being with her.” Logan shook his head slightly. Anger narrowed Knox’s eyes. Logan didn’t seem intimidated. “If he finds her, you four…” Logan trailed off and sighed heavily. “I can’t even imagine what he’ll do to you, but you should know that to X, you’ve touched what he thinks is his. Shiloh is his obsession. In his mind, they are in love and possessing her is all that matters to him. If he sees that she cares for you four, or worse, he finds out that she’s had sex with any of you, which I’m pretty sure has already happened with a few of you, he’ll come after you four like a jealous husband. Only this jealous husband is a psychotic serial killer.”

“We did research on X after Shiloh told us,” Colt said, surprising me. I hadn’t known that.

“Reading a few news articles you found on the internet isn’t enough to fully understand what you’re risking,” Logan said and then turned to look at me. “Did you tell them everything? Did you tell them about the girls he’s murdering? The years of stalking? That night?”

That night didn’t need to be clarified. I knew which one he referred to and he knew the lengths I’d gone to not to even think of it. “I haven’t told them everything that happened that night, but—”

Cutting me off, Logan let out a slew of curses. “You know better, Shi. What the fuck were you thinking dragging them into all of this?”

He was right. I’d known I’d messed up the moment I had told them the truth. A part of me at the time, though, hadn’t cared. I’d been so broken and alone and then the guys had come into my life. It was like this tiny light had finally appeared in the darkness, and the more I got to know them, the more that light grew. My desperation to keep that light from going out made me not care. Colt was wrong. I was selfish. A chance at happiness wasn’t worth this risk.

“If you want someone to blame, blame me,” Knox said. “I’m the one who made Shiloh tell us.”

“How did you even know to make her tell you anything?” Logan argued.

“All I had to do was look at her to know something wasn’t right,” Knox snapped. “Why would someone leave their eighteen-year-old niece behind alone who was clearly going through something she didn’t know how to handle? Almost every night since she moved in next door, we could hear her screaming from her nightmares. Afterward, she would go running before the sun was even up. She’d run for hours like she was running from something that would get her if she stopped. Then we got to know her. We saw the scars she refused to tell us how she got. We saw the way she would react to things with flinches. It became obvious she had been through something violently traumatic. So I began asking questions. I pushed her to answer because I could see she needed help. Don’t you dare shame her for doing the best she could and failing your expectations. Not when you failed to meet expectations as a parent.”

Logan’s jaw clenched. “Shiloh can’t afford to be reckless.”

“I mean this with the utmost disrespect—fuck you,” Creed seethed.

“Creed,” Keelan admonished, but there was zero oomph in his voice.

Creed shook his head. “I can’t stand this. The more this fucker talks, the more Shi is retreating into herself.”

Everyone glanced in my direction and Keelan’s arm tightened around me.

“Enough,” Ian snapped from where he stood by the door, drawing everyone's attention. Ian looked at Logan. “What’s done is done. She doesn’t want to be relocated and I don’t believe them knowing is a big enough risk to enforce that she be relocated, either. Apart from this sheriff, who we need to handle sooner rather than later, I don’t think she’s compromised here.”

“Do you think the sheriff will discover who she really is?” Knox asked.

Ian shook his head. “I’m sure he’s done a background check. With her being in WITSEC, all the information he’ll find was created for her new identity.”

“Is there a different way he could find who she truly is? Like with her fingerprints or something like that?” Creed asked.

Ian smirked at Logan. “WITSEC goes to extensive lengths to hide those in the program, and if we happened to miss something, well, I’m sure Logan called in a few favors to some old friends to make sure Shiloh’s true identity is unattainable.”

Everyone looked at Logan, who held a schooled expression. “I had her completely erased.”

Ian’s smirk stretched into a smile. “I noticed.”

Logan stared at Ian. “You’re the only one who has her information, the original police reports from the years of him stalking her to the night he murdered our family. I even left you Shi’s hospital records. I know you’re going to need it when we catch him.”

“Is that really why, or is it because Carlos or Eddie couldn’t get past the encryption I have protecting her file?” Ian asked him.

“Eddie can get past anything,” Logan said, admitting which of his ex-Navy SEAL buddies had helped him. “How do you think I knew about the hospital records?”