Page 84 of Nora's Kraken

Nothing.

Dialing Blair next, he answers on the third ring.

“I need you to do a check on Sorenson.”

Whether it’s the tone of my voice or his own lingering suspicions about the bastard, he says he’ll try to get in touch with his contact in Washington and call me back in a few minutes. We disconnect, and I shift from one foot to the other, restless energy coursing through me.

I could drive to her apartment, see if she’s there, but the idea of it feels wrong. Leaving downtown feels wrong, like I’d be taking myself further away from her rather than closer.

Closing my eyes, I try to tap into the instinct I haven’t fully let myself connect with. I’ve held back, pushed it down and kept it quiet for fear of it leading me to make a mistake with Nora. Better I denied that part of myself and dealt with the consequences alone than do something that might frighten her or drive her away from me.

But now? Now it’s the only thing I can think to do.

All the feelings come rushing back immediately. The wave of possession and protectiveness I felt when I first saw her. The instinct to find her, keep her, shelter her, I felt the morning we ran into each other at the Bureau.

It’s an awareness of her that seems etched into my blood and bones. It tugs at something deep in the center of my chest, something that tells me she’s not too far from here.

Before I can make a move to head back out into the rain and start searching, start following that pull to her, my phone rings again.

When I answer and hear Blair’s clipped, angry tone on the other end of the line, all of my restlessness and my need to protect my mate crystallize into one single instinct.

Find her.

33

Nora

The fact that Daniel didn’t just kidnap me, or shoot me, or do whatever the hell it is he intends to do with me, is so, so much more chilling than any of the alternatives.

Sitting at a table in the back of the bar, two untouched drinks on the tabletop between us, Daniel crosses his arms over his chest and leans back in his chair. He looks so casual, like this is any normal date we might have gone on while we were together.

God, this is so fucked.

This game, whatever he thinks he’s going to accomplish, the disgusting power trip he must be on right now. He still thinks I’m the same Nora he knew. He still thinks I’m pliable and easy to manipulate, that he can spin pretty lies around me and I’ll nod my head and agree.

Or maybe it’s just about control. The freak probably gets off on it.

“I was thinking about pressing charges,” he says, reaching forward and picking up his old fashioned off the table. “For the jewelry you stole when you ran off.”

The jewelry was mine. Gifts, all of it. He knows that, but I’m not about to argue with him. I stay silent and wait for him to finish the sip of his drink.

“How did you get out here, anyway? I’ve always wondered. You never really worked, so I can’t imagine you had much cash lying around.”

I didn’t work because you said it was more important for me to support you.The words simmer in the back of my throat. I swallow them.

“A bus.”

“Ah,” he says, taking another sip. “That explains it. I can’t imagine that was very comfortable for you.”

No. It wasn’t. Neither was struggling to start over in a city where I knew no one, or trying to pick up all the pieces of myself you shattered.

“Do you remember when we first met?” he asks, abruptly changing the topic.

My stomach rolls at the question. Of course I do. We met when I was in the middle of my third year of college. I was volunteering with a voter registration organization doing outreach to get young people registered to vote. Daniel had come to one of the events and singled me out almost immediately.

He’d been so handsome to me back then. Older, charming, so much more sophisticated than anyone I’d ever met. He’d asked for my number that day, and when I went back to my dorm that night I remember laying down in my bunk bed, staring up at the ceiling with butterflies flitting through my stomach, wondering what it was he saw in me.

I’d assumed it was because he could somehow seeme. I thought maybe he’d admired my passion for advocacy and community service, that he’d been able to see past my shy, awkward exterior and recognize something that made him like me.

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