Nobody's Hero by Liz Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

again, this time holding his hand as she tried to remember anything from her past.
    Nothing came. Only darkness that never ended. Cold that never warmed.
    She opened her eyes and shook her head. “I didn’t know. I thought they were nightmares. But my dad knew. He took me for ice cream. He made the nightmares go away, Riley. We’ve got to reach my dad.”

Chapter Five
    Riley watched the realizations crash into Callah one after another and wished he could stop them. She didn’t need these kinds of truths.
    When she grabbed onto his hand, he wanted to tell her to open her eyes. But he didn’t. Because somewhere in the recesses of her mind were the answers that just might save her life. When she finally said her father knew the truth, he knew what he needed to do.
    “Okay. You said no one’s answering his phone. Is that usual?”
    She shook her head. “No. But anything’s possible. I’ll call again. Leave a message. He’ll call back. I know he hasn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t send that man after me. I know it.”
    Riley wasn’t so sure. Right now they had to operate on the everyone is evil wavelength. Granted, Callah’s family had protected her for years. Her father probably had no idea that all hell had broken loose. Still, he’d kept a dangerous truth from her. That didn’t classify him as a hero in his book.
    But he wasn’t going to send her down that road right now. “I’m sure you’re right. We’ll get my brother to find him, and he’ll make sure your father knows what’s going on.”
    As if he’d connected with his brother on some psychic level, his cell phone rang. The ring tone set to Pink Panther let him know Rand was on the line. Finally.
    Riley hit talk and explained everything he knew so far.
    When the conversation ended, he looked at Callah and wished he could pretend the phone hadn’t rung at all. “You’re not going to like it.”
    “Of course I’m not going to like it, Riley. I’m in some crazy X-Files alternative reality. What did he say?”
    “He looked up your name just to be on the safe side. Usually that wouldn’t be a problem. But with you, everything’s a problem. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but you’ve been flagged. And he can’t get answers. He’s giving it a couple hours. If he still doesn’t hear anything he’s catching a flight here.”
    “My name’s been flagged?”
    Riley shrugged. He didn’t know what it meant any more than she did. But he knew Rand was worried. And if Rand was worried, this was all worse than he’d even imagined. A girl with Callah’s name was dead. Others were scattered across the states and Europe. Did it have anything to do with the dog walker and the envelope? He didn’t know. But he wasn’t taking chances. The guns in the safe in the bedroom closet were coming out along with the ammunition.
    He might be a reporter and she might be the ex-wife of a dead Hollywood has-been, but if the bad guys came knocking they weren’t going down without a fight.

    A couple of hours. She could wait a couple of hours.
    Callah watched Riley prop a rifle against the door then disappear back into the bedroom. When he returned, he handed her a small handgun and dropped a box of bullets on the cabinet next to his computer. They rattled, and she jumped.
    “You know how to use this?”
    The small gun was light, cold. She nodded. “My father,” She stopped, swallowed down the lump in her throat that threatened to break her voice, said the words again. “My father taught me. I thought it was our bonding time. My Mom teased him about turning me into a master marksman. We’d go to the range, and while we were gone she’d make homemade cookies. Tollhouse. Every time. I thought….”
    She stopped and bit her lip at all the lies. Her stomach churned.
    “It’s going to be okay, Callah.”
    She laughed and shook her head, a tear escaped down her cheek as she closed her eyes, remembered the peace she’d always found in the memories of