The inner turmoil was still brewing when she pulled her eyes away from him and headed for the door. He didn’t say anything, and she took that as a good sign because she fully expected him to tell her to go to hell. Once she was downstairs and the night air hit her directly in the face, a tear sprang free, but she brushed it away with the back of her hand and kept walking, unwilling to admit that whatever he had become had been able to get to her.
Though she understood she needed to visit Cass so her sister could go to sleep, she decided to swing by and check on Meagan first. She knew the Hunter had gone in to see Jamie, and she wanted to make sure her friend was okay. Since she had to walk right past his office to get to her sister’s apartment anyway, she went ahead and made the detour.
“Looks good,” Jamie was saying to Meagan who had a gown on over her black leather pants. The bandage was gone so that the place where she’d been shot was exposed, but it was hard to tell where she’d been hit now. He yawned, which told Cadence he had done a bit of healing himself, but he didn’t look on the verge of passing out. Shane was standing at the end of the small examination table, and he looked relieved at Jamie’s words. “As long as it doesn’t bother you any, I should think you’re all healed up.”
“Glad to hear you’re gonna be all right, girlfriend,” Cadence said, smiling at Meagan as she stood and picked up a bag Cadence assumed Shane had brought her, likely with a blood-free change of clothing.
“All in a good night’s work,” Meagan joked. She went into the restroom to change, but Shane was shooting daggers at Cadence, and she assumed that meant he didn’t think it was worth it. She’d have to deal with him later since Cassidy was next on her list.
Cadence started to back out the door again when Jamie said, “Actually, do you have a minute? I wanted to talk to you about something odd that happened earlier.”
He had her attention now, and Cadence stopped walking. “Sure. What’s going on?”
Jamie looked at Shane, whose expression showed he felt a little awkward now, and Cadence headed over to one of the chairs across from Jamie’s desk, assuming Meagan would be done soon, and then she and Shane would go. Jamie tidied up the examination table, and by the time he was finished, Meagan walked out of the restroom. “Ready to go? I’m exhausted.”
“Yeah, let’s get you to bed,” Shane said, his eyes locked on his girlfriend now. Cadence noticed Meagan wasn’t as pale as she had been when Cadence had first arrived, just a couple of minutes ago.
“See you guys later,” Cadence called, waving at them as they echoed their goodbyes, and Meagan thanked Jamie again for his help.
As soon as the couple was out the door, Jamie closed it behind them and then took the seat next to her, his forehead crinkled as if he wasn’t quite sure how to word whatever it was he needed to tell her. “Okay, I think this may sound a little crazy, but while you guys were gone, just for a little bit, I really think Aaron was back to his former self.”
Cadence raised an eyebrow at her friend, whose eyes were nothing but sincere. She remembered Elliott’s story from earlier in the day and wondered if anyone had told Jamie about that. Holding the thought, she asked, “What do you mean?”
“Well, after I said goodbye to Ashley, I came back here to do some work. I wanted to look back over the scans I’d done on Aaron since the serum was administered, to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. There was no way I wanted Christian to be right. About anything.” He chuckled, probably to lighten the mood, and Cadence forced herself to laugh, too. “I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, on the scans, but I did out the front window. A moving truck.”
She nodded. “Right.”
“So… since it’s the middle of the night, I figured that wasn’t just some overzealous new recruit already convinced he was joining our team. It was about the time your group was getting out of the vehicle. I was following along.”
“I know,” she said with a smile. Of course he was. Not only were all the team members on the hunt his friends, his new girlfriend was part of it as well.
“I decided I needed to go ask him if he thought perhaps he was being a little rash, moving Elliott and Brandon’s stuff out while they were gone, so I went over to the office. At first, he was the same way he has been—arrogant and short. Said that Elliott and Brandon knew what they were getting into.”
“Sounds a lot like the conversation I just had with him,” she mumbled.
“But then… about the time Elliott busted down that door, something odd happened. His countenance completely changed. I wondered if maybe he was so caught up in watching the hunt he wasn’t paying attention to how horrible a person he was being, but he said he didn’t have it on. He called over to the apartment building and had them stop packing. I was then able to talk to him about the possibilities of moving on some of the other cells we’ve been watching, the ones that are actually dangerous, and he even said since Holland’s not in Melbourne right now, this would be the time to attack. We started to get a plan together, made some notes, and then your hunt ended and….”
“And what?” Cadence asked, leaning forward on the edge of her seat. Hearing all of this interaction with the man she loved, someone she felt like she hadn’t seen in weeks, was promising. She could picture it in her mind, the twinkle in Aaron’s eye as his plan started to come together.
“And then all of a sudden, he started ripping everything up and throwing it in the trash can, yelling that this will never work, this is a waste of time, this is so stupid, etc. He called and had the moving company start packing up again, even made some of our employees help them so they could get done before Elliott got back. I was like, ‘What happened to you? You were you for a few minutes,’ and he told me to go to hell and to get out of his office, and if I didn’t like who he is now, then I could transfer, too.”
