Page 57 of Hero Unbound

He glanced over at the clothes stacked in a neat pile on the couch.So many clothes.Something twisted in the pit of his stomach.

“Yeah, that’s probably it.” Callum sounded about as convinced as Theo felt.

“I’m going to send Tucker and Lilah to help you with your lost hikers if that’s okay.” He finished tying his shoes and stood. “I have some things I need to handle around here.”

Like confirming that what his gut was telling him was true.

“Roger that. I’ll be glad for their help.” Callum paused for a second. “I hope I haven’t just made your life more complicated with this intel.”

“Eva Dempsey has been making my life more complicated from the second she walked into it.”

Callum was chuckling as he disconnected the call.

Theo wasn’t.

He was out to the garage and into his truck a few seconds later. The drive to where Eva’s car had gone off the road took much less time than it had last night.

He parked and got out so he could take a closer look. No flash flood hadoccurredhere, thankfully. Eva’s car was still pinned against the tree that had stopped it from sliding farther down the embankment.

He only needed a second of seeingher vehicle to confirm hissuspicions, but he stared at it for a long minute anyway. He could see where the mud had given way along the side of the road and how her car had slid down and into the tree.

He could also see an important detail he’d missed last night; she’d been leaving the Linear property, not coming back to it. There was no way her car had gotten spun around one hundred and eighty degrees. The mud tracks confirmed it.

She’d been trying to get out of there in the middle of the storm.

She’d been wearing damn near every piece of clothing she’d owned to try to keep dry and warm.

She hadn’t been staying at the hotel forthe entire time she’d been in Oak Creek.

He didn’t need any more pieces of the puzzle to see what had been going on. But he knew one thing.

It was damned well going to stop right fucking now.

18

Theo worked himself near to exhaustion picking up debris and clearing paths. There was always plenty to do around the property after any sort of storm. The obstacle course they used for training had taken the biggest hit, and he spent most of the afternoon repairing it.

He was careful to keep himself away from Eva.

After seeing her car, he’d gone to the shed by his house and taken a look inside, finding exactly what he’d expected: signs that Eva and the dogs had slept there more than once. Same was true at the shed by the bigger barn, the one in much worse shape. She must’ve moved in there once she’d discovered he lived near the nicer shed—making it unusable as a home base.

He muscled a wooden beam back into place on the obstacle course and tried to muscle his brain into a less furious place at the thought of Eva living with no running water, no stove, no bed.

He didn’t know why she hadn’t let anyone know she needed help, but if he was honest, he could understand it. She hadn’t known how long she was going to be here, probably hadn’t expected Becky to offer a job in the first place. And it was a hard topic to just bring up.

It still didn’t explain way too much.

He worked through the afternoon, reinforcing the obstacle course in a way it didn’t even need. The physical labor gave him something to focus his excess energy on. Normally, he would’ve called one of the guys, and they would’ve sparred until Theo had gotten rid of this fury coursing through his system.

He’d certainly done the same for his friends over the years. He and Tucker regularly sparred, although more to keep in top-notch form for their classes than anything else. Lilah could hold her own also. Hell, he even fought with Bear and Lincoln a couple times a month.

But with this much work to do, sparring would have to wait. And the work was doing what it needed to—burning the worst of the fury out of his system.

He had to figure out what he was going to say to Eva. How he could help her without being accusatory. Figure a way to get her to confide in him, beyond just spouting the wordstrust me.

Trust came from actions, not from words.

By dusk, Theo was finally feeling more in control. His body was exhausted, but his brain was clear. He still didn’t know exactly how he was going to handle this situation with Eva, but he knew it started by offering to let her stay at the big house.