Keep Me Safe by Maya Banks Page A

Ramie and Caleb.
    â€œShe’ll hate me,” Ramie said softly. “She won’t be able to bear being in the same room with me. Because every time she looks at me, she’s going to know that I know. That I know things she’s tried to forget. Things she didn’t share with you—or anyone. And she’ll resent me with every breath.”
    â€œGood,” Beau said savagely. “At least then she resembles something of a human. Right now I’d take any emotion from her. Even hatred or anger. Anything but this lifeless apathy that has taken over my sister’s soul for the last year. You don’t deserve her anger, Ramie. But this is the first time I’ve seen so much as a glimmer of life from her. She’s lived in a fog for the last year and me and my brothers have been helpless to do anything but watch her die a little more each day. If having you here makes her feel anything at all then I don’t want you going anywhere.”
    Caleb shook his head, his frustration—and grief—palpable in the tension-filled room. “That’s not why I brought her here. We owe her. We all owe her. There’s some maniac out there who’s been stalking her for a year and a half. He almost got to her yesterday. She’s not here to be some punching bag for Tori, goddamn it. We owe her better than that. So you and Quinn keep Tori away from Ramie.”
    Beau went silent, his lips stretched into a thin line. Caleb put his hand on Ramie’s shoulder and gently pushed her back down onto the couch. Then he turned back to Beau.
    â€œRamie doesn’t think it’s safe here. The seclusion worries her. The woods. She thinks we’d never know if someone was out there.”
    Ramie could tell Beau was startled by Caleb’s words and then he glanced toward Ramie as if seeking confirmation of Caleb’s assessment.
    â€œSo before we show Ramie to her room, where she can get some much-needed rest,” Caleb continued, “you and I are going to show her why she has nothing to worry about.”

TWELVE
    RAMIE’S head floated effortlessly down onto the pillow, her eyelids fluttering closed. She felt swallowed up by the bed, wrapped in its comforting embrace, and she purposely shut out everything but the sensation of safety and well-being.
    Because if she allowed herself to think of anything else, she’d lose her tenuous grip on her sanity.
    Caleb and Beau had taken her into a room on the main floor that housed all kinds of electronics and television monitors. Every angle of the house was displayed in real time. Remote sensors dotted the entire landscape and would sound a warning if anyone ventured near the house. For that matter if anyone entered the wooded area surrounding the house, alarms would be triggered.
    There was a safe room on the main floor of the house. Fireproof, impenetrable, stocked with enough food and water to withstand a natural disaster. Or the zombie apocalypse.
    She suppressed the sudden burst of laughter that bubbled up from her chest. There was certainly nothing amusing about her situation, nor having absurd thoughts like withstanding a zombie apocalypse. Even if it was appropriate.
    The important thing was that this house was bulletproof. Or crazed, homicidal maniac proof. No one could as much as fart in the woods without Caleb and his brothers knowing. That should ease her worry, and yet here she was, lying on one of the most comfortable beds she’d ever lain in, exhausted, and yet unable to relax enough to go to sleep. She simply couldn’t shut off the fear, no matter how much her heart told her she was safe.
    Heart and mind were not in accord, which only added to the sensation of her sanity slipping further and further from her reach.
    Worse, on the way to the room Caleb had installed her in, they’d passed Tori’s room and the sound of her weeping filled Ramie with sorrow and her chest ached for the emotional upheaval