Keep Me Safe (Slow Burn #1)(31)

“Now, let’s get you something to eat,” he said. “After you’ve had a decent meal, we’ll sit down with my team of investigators so we can get an idea of what we’re dealing with here.”

FIFTEEN

IT was a frightening concept for the hunted to become the hunter. Ramie had spent all her time running, trying to avoid being captured, and yet now she was suddenly on offense. Going after the man who wanted nothing more than her death. Was she insane for agreeing to stay in one place for any length of time? Shouldn’t she be constantly on the move, remaining one step ahead of her stalker?

She rubbed her hands repeatedly over the tops of her thighs, the denim of her jeans worn and faded. Holes had formed, a look people paid good money for on perfectly new pants. For Ramie it was just the result of having no way to buy new clothing.

“Ramie?”

Caleb’s voice drifted through her consciousness and she guiltily turned her head in his direction. She could feel the tightening pressure of an impending panic attack, but she was determined not to give in and not to freak out in front of the people Caleb had hired to bring down the man hunting her.

“I’m sorry. Can you repeat the question?”

Caleb sighed but at least he didn’t look angry. He wore a look of understanding. And then, as if realizing how perilously close to the edge she was, he sat down beside her on the couch and slid his fingers through hers. Perhaps it was so she could share in his resolve and determination. She could certainly use a transfusion of those qualities.

“Can you describe the man who attacked you?” Caleb asked.

She drew a complete blank. Her forehead wrinkled and her skin tightened around her eyes as she focused her absolute attention on trying to grab an image of her stalker from the fragments of her mind.

“It will be helpful if we can get a sketch of him,” the woman who’d introduced herself as Eliza said gently. “If we plaster his face in enough places, sooner or later we’ll ferret him out.”

Ramie swallowed, her mouth going dry. Was he out there even now looking into her mind, seeing what she was seeing, hearing what she was hearing? Did it do any good for them to plan traps for him if he knew about them because he was a constant presence in her mind?

Which was why she didn’t need to know.

She bolted off the couch as the realization hit her. She spun to explain to Caleb just as he grabbed her arm, a confused look on his face.

“I can’t know,” she babbled out. “Because if I know, he knows. So you have to leave me out of it. I can’t see or know any of it.”

“Whoa, slow down,” Dane Elliot, one of Caleb’s security specialists, said, holding his hands up in a placating manner.

He wanted her to calm down. He thought she was being hysterical. A nitwit. No, she was finally being smart.

“He’s there,” she said, including each of the people in the room in her sweeping gaze. “He has a psychic link to me. It’s like having someone sit on your shoulder all the time. He has an unobscured line of vision, a pathway into everything I see or do. So you see, it does us little good to plot and plan because he’ll know exactly what we’re doing.”

Caleb swore and murmurs arose from the occupants of the room. They likely all thought she’d lost her mind. She had no idea what if anything Caleb had told them about her. If they even knew psychic abilities were involved.

“I can’t be in here. Sorry,” she whispered.

She turned and fled from the room. There was an invisible hand clutching at her neck, choking her, preventing her from getting oxygen into her lungs. The oppressive weight of evil was so heavy on her chest that it felt like she was being crushed.

She stumbled into the downstairs bathroom and hastily turned on the cold water in the sink. She splashed water on her cheeks and then leaned on the countertop with her elbows, hands covering her face as the water still ran full blast.

Her hand clutched her neck in an effort to remove the invisible grip. But it was as bruising as if she were really being choked.

“Ramie? Are you all right? What the hell is going on?” Caleb demanded.

He reached around her and turned off the water and then he grasped her by the shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. She held up her hand to halt him, straining to find the words around the strangling sensation in her neck.

“I have to learn to beat him,” she bit out. “I have to close myself off to him. I have to be better about knowing when he’s there and I have to be able to shut him out. Or maybe he’s simply there all the time. I don’t know. Why don’t I know?”

“Is he . . . ​there . . . ​right now?” Caleb asked as he stared holes through her.

It was as if he were looking for her stalker in her. Her eyes, or expression or like she’d developed a split personality and one half of her thought she was a sick monster who preyed on women. Or maybe he thought she was demonically possessed. It wasn’t as though she’d given him any other explanation.

She couldn’t bear the disgust—or the worry—in his eyes.

“You do think I’m crazy,” she whispered. “Maybe I am crazy.”

“Goddamn it, no, I don’t think you’re crazy,” Caleb said in a frustrated voice. “I just want to know who the hell I’m talking to and if it’s you or the ass**le who’s trying to kill you.”