Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Autumn wanted so badly to help him, but she could only love him. And she’d do that fiercely.
As long as he’d let her.
He murmured the word Macau again. He’d said that same word in his sleep before. Was it a place? A person? His murmuring became louder. He sounded so upset, his expression distraught. She wanted to let him sleep, but she also so badly wanted to comfort him. “Sam,” she whispered, laying her hand on his shoulder.
He whimpered, thrashing his head, suddenly bolting up and turning toward her, his hands rising as though he was fending off an attack.
“Sam,” she said again, a note of fear in her hushed voice this time. “Sam, it’s me.”
He let out a groan, collapsing back to the pillow, his forehead glistening with perspiration. “Autumn,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She turned to him, bringing her palm to his cheek. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Sam. Nothing.” For several moments, she simply soothed him, running her hand along his cheek, his damp forehead, over his hair. She leaned over and kissed his shoulder, wrapping her arm around him and holding him close. “Tell me about Macau,” she said softly.
If she hadn’t felt his muscles tighten, she might have thought he didn’t hear her. But they had, so she waited for him to speak.
The curtains rustled in the light breeze coming through the slip of the open window. It was cold outside but warm under the heavy blankets, and Sam was like a personal heater, warmth emanating from his large body. The house was quiet around them, only the distant hoot of an owl and the soft sounds of the water kissing the shore beyond. The room felt dreamy, intimate, almost unreal. And maybe because of it, Sam would find it safe to open up to her about the things that haunted his dreams.
“I was sent to kill a man in Macau,” he said very quietly.
A shiver of dread moved through her. He’d been sent to take a life. Just like Amon. “Who?” she whispered.
“I didn’t know his name. All I knew was where he lived and that he was powerful. I don’t know in what capacity. It mattered to someone but not to me. I cased this man’s house. I gathered what information I could from the locals. I heard people saying that his daughter was dying.”
“Dying from what?”
“I didn’t know.” He sighed softly, and she sensed how hard this was for him as he gathered the words to describe something that still haunted his dreams. “I heard a woman who worked in his home say his daughter was disabled and considered a…burden. I got the impression she’d been left to die.”
“A burden?” Autumn breathed, her heart constricting. Oh God. That description hit Autumn particularly hard. It was exactly what Mercy Hospital had represented—a place where the unwanted, the burdensome, the children society preferred not to see were sent to die.
Sam was silent for a moment, perhaps to let her digest that, perhaps to gather his words. “I didn’t think much about it. I didn’t even know if it was true or just gossip. I entered the property, prepared to complete my mission.”
“To kill this unnamed man.”
“Yes.” She saw by the set of his jaw in the dim room that he was struggling.
“But?”
“But I saw…her.”
“Who?”
“The child. The little girl. I entered through the back of the house. I passed a door, and I heard…I heard a tiny voice, a moan. I almost kept going. I told myself to keep going. But…but I didn’t. I opened the door. I went inside.”
She continued to hold him. It was all she could do.
“She was so small. Her legs were atrophied. But her eyes…her eyes were like yours. Large and dark and…they contained a whole world. They reminded me…” He let out a gusty breath. “Her body was mostly dead…” He made a sound, something between a choke and a moan, and Autumn ached for this tenderhearted man. “But her eyes were beautiful. Her eyes…”
“What did you do, Sam?”
“It wasn’t any of my business. To do anything other than kill the man I’d been sent to kill meant failure.”
“Did you leave her there?”
“No. Sometimes I wish I had.”
“Do you?”
He scrubbed his face with his palm. “I don’t know.”
Autumn pictured it then, though it hurt. The tiny, emaciated girl, alone in a room, left there for God knew how long to suffer and die because she was considered a burden. Useless. And Sam’s hulking body, a shadow at first, drawing nearer. Had she been afraid? Had she thought he was death himself? Or had she seen him as the savior he’d been?
“I picked her up. She weighed nothing. She felt like a rag doll in my arms. I tried to leave the same way I came in, but I couldn’t because I was carrying her. I was spotted by the man’s security, and they chased me. Us. I was able to get back to my vehicle, and I put her in the front seat. I laid her head on my lap, and I drove. They followed. It was a bumpy ride. I tried to keep her head still. But…”