With a Pull of a Trigger

Chapter Twenty-Nine

She opened her eyes.

Ah, yes. She was still in the office. She was safe. She was sitting in front of her superior’s desk. Her lungs weren’t damaged. There was no threat to her life. She was safe.

Gil wasn’t safe.

Gil was somewhere, being tortured because his money was important.

A strangled laugh threatened to escape her throat.

Who was she kidding? She wasn’t safe. Not there, in her superior’s office and not ever. In that moment, she was safe from opponents, sure, but she wasn’t safe.

She wasn’t safe from the memories that kept haunting her with every breath she took, every beat her heart made. She wasn’t safe from the nightmares that embraced her at night, or the thoughts that she struggled to forget during her every waking moment.

She wasn’t safe from herself.

Catherine looked into deep pools of concern and looked away quickly. She stood up, her knuckles white, her face pale. “I have to go,” she said hurriedly before getting to the door in two, long strides. Wrenching the door open, she left, running away from the office, from her superior, from everything.

She knew that despite how fast she ran, she wouldn’t be able to run from herself or her memories.

She was running from something that was embedded into her, a part of her character, of her person like a code was part of a robot.

She was running, yes, but she will never, ever be able to hide.

Joshua looked at the scene before him with a frown. His eyes refused to move from their view of Charles and Greg…flirting.

He knew he shouldn’t be there, hiding away like some fool outside the office, listening in to a conversation he knew he shouldn’t know about, but some part of him made him stay, and there he was.

He didn’t know what to feel, honestly. He knew without a doubt that Greg would never cheat on him with a stranger, much less a mutual friend, but he couldn’t stop the rollercoaster ride his heart was apparently on.

His heart fell, and bile rose to his throat. He wanted to puke. He wanted to leave.

His feet remained on the ground and his eyes continued staring.

No matter how much he willed his feet to walk away, they wouldn’t.

Was this what jealousy felt like?

He shook his head, about to go inside the room when another agent ran inside.

“Sir,” the agent said, nodding to Greg, and then directing his focus back to Charles, “an agent called. Agent Saunders flew from Seattle to Virginia about a week or so ago.”

Charles nodded, exiting the room, Greg and the agent behind him.

Joshua remained unnoticed.

Paris, France

Reini sipped her cup of coffee daintily, both of her hands supporting the coffee cup. She was seated across Samantha Milton outside the pastry shop, the sounds of the very much alive city all around them.

Samantha had her legs crossed, her cup of hot chocolate on the table. Her face was turned away, and from Reini’s vantage point, Samantha looked utterly ethereal, a beauty nothing could quite compare to. She was unreachable, just like her brother.

Samuel, the man who was unreachable then and continued to be unreachable now, the man who she will never be able to compare to, the very man she wanted to protect, was the one reason she was somehow treading a very thin line of sanity and insanity.