Page 62 of Forged in Peril

He was right.

She had walked directly into danger, and so far as she could tell, only Providence had prevented the situation ending with her tied up in the back of a van, or worse.

“I stood there paralyzed while the woman that I–” Cameron started to yell again, but as he glimpsed the look on her face, he lowered his voice. “I almost let someone I care about get hurt because I couldn’t think of a plan. It was like my mind went blank. I panicked back there, and in this business, that’s not something I can afford to do.”

She nodded numbly, feeling even worse than she had a few moments before.

Whatever he’d been about to let slip, it proved her fears true.

Why did he have to care about her so much?

All she’d ever done was hurt him, and make him feel like he’d never be good enough.

Was that how he felt now?

She watched as he blinked away what might have been tears, resting his forehead in his hands.

If he honestly thought that this was his fault, nothing she could say would change anything.

The adrenaline had faded away now, and all at once she realized that all she could feel was the ache in her spine where the thug had repeatedly jabbed her with his gun.

CAMERON

“Why did they let me go?” Bristol asked after several long seconds, releasing a shaky breath as she spoke.

“I have no clue. None of it makes any sense,” Cam said.

He looked over at her, his heart shattering anew as he watched her brush at her eyes with the pink sleeve of her now-ruined shirt.

How much trauma could one person be expected to endure, even someone as tough as Bristol?

He doubted that God would give him an answer, and the thought filled him with bitterness that made him feel even more ashamed than he did already.

“I saw the guy who grabbed you take a phone call before he bolted,” he said. “Did you hear anything?”

She shook her head, her brow furrowed in concentration. “Not a whole lot. But I know that he called whoever was on the other end ‘boss’, and I could hear said ‘boss’ yelling. I just couldn’t make out the words on his end.”

“So it was a male voice? Could you tell how old? Any accent?”

“I’m certain it was a man. But I couldn’t make out anything else.”

Cameron picked at a hangnail on his thumb, trying to think of something she might have overlooked.

Even if she had been able to guess at the man’s age or ethnicity, he doubted her judgment in regard to either would have been accurate, anyway. Eyewitnesses were notorious for getting the details wrong, especially in moments of extreme stress, and in any case, he was a security operative, not a trained police interviewer.

Still, it was worth trying to get as clear of a picture as he could of what had taken place.

“Okay,” he said, letting out a breath. “Can you tell me what happened, from the beginning?”

Bristol recounted how she had gone to lunch with Grace, and how their friend had left for her trip directly from the restaurant instead of from FBS as she’d planned.

Cameron was frustrated with Hinton’s role in the whole mess, but decided to hold his tongue. When news of the day’s excitement reached her in Montana, she’d be angry enough at herself already. There was no point in placing blame.

What was done was done, Bristol had made it back in one piece in the end, and all that he could do was make sure that there was no next time.

“So after Grace left, you didn’t see anyone suspicious on the sidewalk out front, correct?” he prompted.

“I was looking over my shoulder constantly, and no, I saw no one. Not out front and not on the connecting street. I turned the corner and that street was quiet, too. Someone grabbed me from behind. I never got a good look at him, just at his back as he took off. It’s possible he blended in so well that I didn’t take note of him as I walked back to FBS.”

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