Liam's Witness Protection (Man On A Mission 4) by Amelia Autin Read Free Book Online

the bed, the bedspread pulled around her slender body. Fast asleep.
    He trod quietly over to the bed, hesitated for a second, then touched her arm lightly. “Cate.” She jumped as if he’d shot her, jerking upward so quickly Liam was startled back. “Hey, sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. Just wanted to tell you dinner’s ready.”
    She pushed her hair away from her face and blinked at him. Then she rubbed her eyes—tired eyes, he saw now. Sad eyes. Ancient eyes that were the window into a soul in torment. How had he missed it before? “It’s okay,” she said finally. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I was just resting my eyes, and...” She stared at Liam through the shadows in the room. “Thanks for waking me. I wouldn’t want to miss dinner.” She smiled, a slight movement of her lips that came and went so quickly it almost couldn’t even be called a smile. “I’ve been smelling that roasted chicken for hours, it seems.”
    Any other woman Liam would have offered a hand to help her off the bed. But Cate wasn’t any other woman. And now that he knew—well, he didn’t know exactly what he
knew
, but his imagination was working overtime, supplying details he didn’t want to think about. Not about Cate, or any woman. So no way was he going to touch her. It made sense now why she hadn’t wanted him to touch her before. It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t
Liam Jones
she was rejecting—she didn’t want
any
man touching her. And he didn’t blame her. Not one bit.
    * * *
    Dinner wasn’t the silent affair Liam had expected. The agents, who went by the last name of Morgan, carried on a conversation between the four of them by sheer will. They refused to let Cate withdraw within herself, and asked a series of innocuous questions designed to put her at her ease. She answered haltingly at first—as if she wasn’t in the habit of carrying on dinner conversation—then with increased confidence. And Liam was convinced that whatever else she was, whatever else she’d been, she was well-read.
Self-educated?
he wondered. Cate let something slip that made him suspect libraries were her only recreational outlet...in large part because they were free.
    Liam answered when questions were addressed to him, but in between he watched Cate. Surreptitiously. He remembered watching her that morning—was it only that morning?—arguing with the prosecutors. Her hand gestures graceful and fluid. Now he watched her hands close up, fascinated by everything she said and did. And that’s when he saw it. It wasn’t obvious—just a slight darkening of the skin. But it shouldn’t have been there. Not twin bands circling both wrists in almost exactly the same location. And suddenly he knew what they were. And how she’d gotten them.
    Scars. Scars left by something bound tightly around her wrists, bindings she must have fought against until her skin was raw and bleeding. Repeatedly. Then he heard Alec’s voice saying,
“...Made me sick to my stomach. Literally. Then I wanted to cry. For her...”
    Bile welled up in his throat as his stomach churned violently and he wanted to cry for her too, despite his deceased father’s long-ago strictures on crying. But more than that he wanted punish the man who’d done this to her. He wanted to pummel him into a bloody pulp, wait a few minutes, then come back and do it again. And again. Until the man had paid for those scars, and what they had to mean. As if he could erase his own mistaken thoughts about Cate by exacting two years’ worth of vengeance. For her.
    Shaken more than he cared to admit, Liam swallowed hard and glanced away. His eyes caught those of Dave Morgan across the table, and knew the other man had spotted the same thing he had. Was having the same kind of reaction any decent man would have to the knowledge that Cate had been abused. Bound. And most likely raped—repeatedly.
    Guilt slammed into him again. Guilt that he’d judged her from the beginning, that he’d