Disappointment coiled through her. She hated doing nothing, hated the idea of sitting idle while her life unravelled elsewhere. But she swallowed it, recognising the small victory she had already won. “All right,” she murmured.
He inclined his head slightly, as if granting her that point, and reached for the door again.
The memory of blood stained across his shirt flashed in her mind. Before he could step out, the words slipped from her lips. “Are you…Are you all right? You were bleeding.”
He paused, surprise flickering across his face, as though he hadn’t expected her to care. Then his mouth curved faintly, almost wry. “I’m fine. I’ve had worse.”
Her stomach tightened. Worse. The casualness of it, the weary certainty. It left her wondering again who these people were, and what kind of world she’d been dragged into.
He slipped out then, closing the door softly behind him, leaving her with too many questions and the faint echo of that strange spark still tingling across her skin.
Chapter 12
The bandages tugged uncomfortablywhen he shifted in the chair. He’d insisted he didn’t need to be here, that there were better uses of his time, but Bás had been immovable. And now he sat across from Peyton Lawson in the small therapy room tucked away at the edge of the compound, his palms flat on his thighs, every muscle taut.
Peyton was nothing like the interrogators he’d been conditioned to resist, and yet the weight of her calm gaze pricked at him all the same. She sat in an armchair opposite, a notebook on her lap, her dark hair around her shoulders. Her voice, when she spoke, was low and even, touched with empathy that softened the edges of her words.
After he’d been kidnapped, Peyton had offered to refer him to a friend of hers who dealt with complex trauma, but he’d only felt comfortable talking with her. The fact that she was the wife of his teammate helped in some ways. He didn’t feel the need to watch his words with her like he would’ve had to with anyone else, because Peyton knew the deal with the team.
“How’s the pain?”
Watchdog shrugged. “Manageable.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
His mouth twitched. He dropped his gaze to the floor, tracing the lines in the stone. “Four on the ten scale. Sometimes a five if I move wrong.”
“Thank you,” Peyton said simply, as though naming the number mattered more than the pain itself. She flipped her pencil idly, then looked back at him. “And the other pain? The one you didn’t get stitched up?”
His chest tightened. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“The guilt,” she said gently. “The weight. The thing that keeps you up at night and makes you think you’re the weak link.”
The words cut sharply. He stilled, jaw clenching, a thousand deflections clawing for release. He could spout facts. He could quote statistics about trauma recovery or the biochemical effects of stress hormones. He could disappear behind numbers.
But Peyton waited. She always did.
His fingers twitched against his knee. “Taking Clara,” he said finally, his voice hoarse, “it wasn’t part of the plan. I don’t…do things that aren’t planned. But when I saw her there, with them watching her…something in me snapped. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t let her be another name I failed to protect.”
Peyton’s eyes softened, but she didn’t interrupt.
“And then,” he went on, pressing the heel of his hand against his temple, “I felt…different. Jittery. Unsteady. But lighter too. Like maybe I’d done something right for once. Which is…” He exhaled hard, the words tumbling out before he could stop them. “Which is insane, because I kidnapped her. I’m no better than the men who took me.”
The room blurred. The walls pressed in.
It wasn’t Peyton in front of him anymore; it was Hansen’s men, their shadows looming, fists slamming into his ribs, the sharp sting of a boot on his ankle. He could smell the filth ofthe cell, metallic blood and rust, the sound of a chain dragging across the concrete floor. The laughter. Always the laughter.
His breath hitched, too fast, ragged. His palms curled into fists against his thighs, nails biting his skin.
“Jonas.” Peyton’s voice cut through, calm and steady, the only thing tethering him. “You’re here. You’re safe. Feel the chair under you. Feel your feet on the ground. Breathe with me.”
He tried. The air caught in his throat, his chest refusing to obey.
“Look at me.” Her voice sharpened just slightly, not loud but commanding. “Look at me, Watchdog.”
His eyes snapped up, locking on hers. She held his gaze, slow and deliberate, her hand lifting just enough to point. “What colour are my eyes?”
It took a second. “Brown.”
