Keep Me Safe (Slow Burn #1)(66)

“Thanks, Eliza.”

“No need to thank me. Now, do we have a plan of action yet?” she asked pointedly.

“I’m setting up a safe house for them to stay in tonight,” Dane said. “It’ll take me until this afternoon to get surveillance and all security measures in place. Until then I think they should stay here and out of sight.”

Eliza nodded.

“We’ll split the team into threes and twelve-hour shifts,” Dane continued. “First shift gets seven P.M. tonight until seven A.M. tomorrow morning. Second shift will pick up seven A to seven P.”

Caleb couldn’t stomach the thought of sitting back, allowing his security team to babysit him and his brothers while he himself did nothing. He was pissed off and ready to take the bastard apart with his bare hands. If the murderous rage in his brothers’ eyes was anything to go by, they were every bit as frustrated as he was.

Fuck the rules and f**k the law. If Caleb ever got his hands on him he was a dead man.

“I’ll consult with the police and set up times for you to give statements,” Dane said to Caleb. “For now I don’t even want the police to know where you are.”

“It does you no good to hide if Ramie’s stalker still has an established link to her,” Eliza pointed out. “Won’t he know exactly where you are at all times?”

“Maybe you should keep her drugged until we take this bastard down,” Beau said in a serious tone.

“For God’s sake. I’m not going to keep her doped up so she doesn’t disclose our location,” Caleb said in disgust.

“No,” Eliza said thoughtfully. “But you could make it so even she doesn’t know where you are.”

Dane pointed a finger at Eliza. “That’s perfect. I don’t know why the hell I didn’t think of it before.”

“Because women are smarter?” Eliza smirked.

“Smarter assed,” Dane muttered.

“What are you suggesting?” Caleb asked impatiently.

“You blindfold her,” Eliza said simply. “Make sure no one talks in front of her. Keep her quiet and in the dark and you do the same to him. Ramie can hardly broadcast what she doesn’t know.”

“True,” Caleb said slowly. “The speed in which he’s escalated leads me to believe that we shouldn’t stay here any longer than absolutely necessary. He’s displayed an ability to act fast. If we keep Ramie in the dark then there’s no reason we can’t move to the safe house while you’re still installing security measures, right?”

“Right,” Dane confirmed.

“Then right now is better because she’s already out,” Caleb said. “If we move her now, he’ll never see anything but the inside of whatever room we stash her in at the safe house.”

“If we’re moving now then tomorrow’s seven A to seven P team needs to cover the safe house until seven P tonight,” Eliza said.

“We’re on it,” Eric Beckett, part of the security team present, replied.

“Let me get something for you to wrap around Ramie’s eyes,” Eliza said. “Make sure and explain to her when she wakes that she needs to keep her mind as blank as possible. The less this ass**le knows, the safer you all are.”

“I’ll keep her occupied,” Caleb said.

Eliza stifled her smile—almost. Caleb groaned when he realized what he’d said.

“Dirty-minded woman,” he grumbled.

Ramie frowned her displeasure over being jostled around like a sack of potatoes being tossed in the air. Then she realized that despite the fact she’d opened her eyes, she still couldn’t see a single thing.

Her fingers dug into solid flesh and then the jostling stopped abruptly.

“Ramie, I need you to trust me.”

Caleb’s voice instantly relieved her, soothing her fears.

“What’s going on, Caleb?” she whispered.

“Trust me, baby, okay? I need you to just lie still and keep your mind as blank as possible. Can you do that for me?”

Her brows knitted together in confusion. What on earth was he doing? Despite his reassurances, she couldn’t help but tense up in his arms. He was carrying her. Where she had no idea. He’d blindfolded her. Again, why she had no idea.

In light of the insane happenings over the last several days, this suddenly didn’t seem so crazy.

Deciding to go with it, she rested her cheek on his shoulders and allowed some of the tension to flow out of her. And then she marveled that she actually trusted another human being.

But in order to love someone you had to trust them, right?

And to think she’d once thought she would never be able to forget what Caleb Devereaux had done to her. It was funny how life turned out sometimes. If someone had told her six months ago that she’d be involved with someone much less fall in love with him she would have laughed her ass off.

“Almost there, baby,” Caleb murmured against the top of her head.

The sound of a door opening and then closing alerted her senses. Then Caleb eased her down onto a bed. A moment later, he tugged the blindfold from her eyes and her gaze met with his.

He looked tired. She slid her hand over his cheek and brushed the pad of her thumb over the dark shadow underneath his eye.

“Going to tell me what’s going on now?” she prompted.