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“Innocent” and “Timothy” in the same sentence was damned terrifying.
“How the hell would I know,” Timothy protested. “I just thought that, knowing Eve’s intuition about people is pretty damned good, it seems funny she could be fooled by a man betraying his country, that’s all. ”
“That’s all, huh?”
Timothy nodded with apparent honesty. “That’s all. ” He held his hands out in a gesture of sincerity.
Sincerity and Timothy?
Had he just entered the fucking Twilight Zone?
“You’re pulling an op again and you’re allowing Eve to be dragged straight into the middle of it. Now tell me what the fuck is going on,” Dawg demanded.
“You’re asking the same questions I am, Dawg,” Timothy admitted. “Who Brogan Campbell really is, and what the hell is going on. What I am fairly certain of, based on the fact that he’s lived in the same house I do for the past two and a half years, is that he’s no traitor. And I’m fairly certain he’s not going to wait much longer before Eve’s little heart is torn in two between you and the only man I’ve seen her interested in since she came here. ”
Dawg straightened from his position against the door, stalked to the desk, and flattened his hands on the top of it as he leaned forward. “He will get her killed, Timothy. How do you think your lover, her mother, will feel when she finds out you let her walk smack into the middle of this and didn’t tell me what the hell is going on?”
Timothy shrugged. “If I knew what was going on, I would of course tell her first. That’s her daughter, and Mercedes has an amazing capacity to not just love her children, but also to accept the choices they make. ”
“Even if one of those choices gets them killed?” Dawg growled.
“That’s what we’re for. ” Timothy sighed then. “To keep that from happening. ” His smile was tinged with acceptance and resignation. “Isn’t that what loving them is all about, Dawg? Letting them find out who they are, and doing all we can to protect them as they do?”
“Fuck me. ” Dawg growled in resignation as he moved back and let himself fall into the chair behind him. “Just let me kill Campbell myself. That would be so much easier. ”
“Can your conscience handle it, then?” Timothy asked.
“Natches’s can,” Dawg suggested. And he was certain it could.
“No doubt,” Timothy agreed. “But we’ll be the ones who will know the truth as she cries. As she haunts the house and wonders what could have been. Is that what we want?”
“She’ll be alive,” Dawg pointed out logically.
“Will she? Are you sure about that?”
Dawg’s lips thinned.
“Would you have been, if something had happened to Christa in that first week after she returned to Somerset?”
No, he wouldn’t have been, Dawg admitted. He would have been a dead man walking.
Rising from the chair, he stared down at the Homeland Security agent. “You know what the hell is going on. ” Dawg was damned certain of it. “If anything happens to her, I’ll know whom to discuss it with. ”
“All we can do is pray, Dawg,” Timothy said heavily, the fact that he was worried about her clear in his voice as well as his expression.
Dawg would definitely pray.
His uncle Ray used to tell him, Rowdy, and Natches that praying was good, but God liked to help those who helped themselves.
It was time to back up those prayers with a little old-fashioned action.
Mackay style.
Turning, he stomped from the office without waiting for a reply or an argument. Neither would do any good.
She was his sister.
He hadn’t been able to protect her as she was growing up, and he hadn’t been able to ensure that her life was lived with at least a measure of security.
