Page 107 of It's Always Been You

“Don’t tell me you don’t know!” Caitlin flung out the accusation before she dug her fingers into her hair. “I was a part of this. I can’t believe I was a part of this.”

Travis held out a hand. “Caitlin, you’re not sure. Didn’t you tell me you had a feeling you had locked it up so tight because you didn’t want anyone getting anything out of it?”

She was hyperventilating, and muttering to herself in a closed-off, broken way as if she had retreated into herself. Travis took another step forward.

She ran to his desk and grabbed his letter knife, holding it against her carotid artery. Fuck! Travis’s entire body grew taut with tension and unadulterated fear.

“Caitlin!” His voice was loud and commanding. “Enough! Drop that knife and come here.”

“You’re not getting anything out of me!”

Her fingers tightened around the knife. Travis didn’t waste a second and jumped her, bending her arm and twisting her wrist that held the weapon. She yelped and dropped the knife. He immediately spun her around, locking her in an inescapable hug.

“Babe, you need to calm the fuck down,” he growled in her ear, giving her a firm shake. He looked up momentarily at Nate and Sam. Sam had picked up the letter opener. Why didn’t he have any sedatives in the house?

She didn’t fight him, but she was shuddering violently. It took a few more minutes for her tremors to subside. Finally, she whispered, “I’m calm now. You can let me go.”

His arms only clenched further, afraid she could still hurt herself.

“Travis, really, I’m okay. I just lost it for a moment.”

“Sorry. Not trusting you right now, sunshine,” he told her. “Now, you’re going to tell me exactly what freaked you out.”

Travis sat on his chair, dragging Caitlin on his lap. He didn’t like this development in her psyche. Threatening to kill herself—what the fuck? Now he had to think about protecting her from herself, too?

As if reading his thoughts, she said, “I wasn’t going to kill myself. I’m not suicidal. I was bluffing.”

“Well, excuse me if I don’t take it that way, Cat,” Travis snapped. “You just shaved fifty years off my life, damn it.”

“I said I was sorry.”

The other two men looked relieved.

“Why did you kill your laptop, Caitlin?” Nate asked, sagging into the chair in front of the desk.

“I figured out Hephaestus.”

“Fuck. What is it?”

“Hephaestus is the file that holds all the technical data—”

“Of what?”

“Seven tons of high-grade weaponized plutonium.”

17

The three menwere stunned speechless.

Good. Glad she didn’t overreact. Maybe the letter knife was overkill, but she really freaked out. The second she saw the look of horror on Travis’s face, she regretted what she did and forced herself to get it together.

Nate was on his phone searching for information. “Damn. The going rate is four thousand dollars per fucking gram. We’re talking about—” he crunched some numbers and gave a low whistle. He showed them his calculations. “Twenty-five billion dollars, give or take.”

Caitlin, who was still sitting on Travis’s lap, felt him turn rock solid.

“It’s reasonable to conclude that the stash is somewhere in the Carpathian mountain range, and the second file contains its exact coordinates.” Travis sighed. “However, twenty-five billion dollars is currently smashed into pieces on my damned floor.”

She shot out from Travis’s grasp. “Do you really think I’m giving them the coordinates?”

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