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As much as those girls looked like they could belong to him or his cousins, Rowdy and Natches, he had to admit there were times, like this, when he realized they looked just like their mother.
“Then I’ll have Alex put out an APB on her,” he warned, trepidation beginning to tighten the back of his neck.
Hell, he hadn’t expected levelheaded Piper to be the one to test her safety first.
“No. You will not. Attempt it. Dare to take this from her, Dawg Mackay, and I promise you neither I, my daughters, nor Timothy will ever allow you to forget it.”
He turned away from her, rubbed at the back of his neck, and grimaced in frustration.
“I don’t feel good about this,” he muttered as he turned back to her. “Mercedes, I don’t feel good about this at all.”
The anger beginning to brighten her brown eyes dimmed, but he could see the concern in them as well.
“I don’t like it myself,” she admitted quietly. “She didn’t tell me where she was going,
Dawg; I found out by accident. All she told me was that she had to get away. She slipped out in the dead of night because she trusted none of us to allow her the freedom she hungers for. Let her have her freedom, before we smother her to death.”
“A freedom that has the potential to get her killed?” he asked her wearily. “I understand the need, Mercedes, more than you know. But you know what nearly happened to Eve last summer. If someone targets one of the other girls in retaliation, and there’s no one there to protect them, what do we do then?”
“We pray that doesn’t happen,” she whispered as the concern in her gaze threatened to turn to pure fear. “But you also have to understand, Dawg: Piper’s not a liar; nor is she one to make decisions such as this rashly. She was driven to it.”
He had driven her to it. He could hear the accusation in her tone.
Christa had warned him more than once that the girls were going to rebel against his protection and begin making decisions that would only endanger them. He hadn’t believed they would do so without first confronting him.
His sisters were fighters; they weren’t cowards.
“How can you be certain she’s safe?” he finally asked her worriedly.
“I can’t, Dawg.” Her smile was gentle, compassionate. “All I can do is pray that if she’s in trouble she’ll call me. That and trust in the man Timothy has watching her.” She winked at him. “Watching her, Dawg. Allowing her to do what she has to do, what she wants to do, while an impartial third person stands ready to protect her rather than standing between her and what she needs. That’s the difference.”
He shook his head, worry tearing at him as he stared down at her, wishing, just as he had over the past six years, that he’d been able to protect Mercedes and the sisters he’d grown to love so much from his father’s cruelties before he had died.
He hadn’t known about them. No one had known about them but Chandler Mackay, and Chandler had done nothing to ensure their protection should anything happen to him.
“They’ll still get hurt.” That was part of what he couldn’t bear. “If not physically, then otherwise. They’re too trusting, Mercedes, and too innocent. If we don’t watch out for them—”
“Then they might get their feelings hurt or their hearts broken?” she suggested as she turned and began cleaning the stove. “We can’t keep them from getting hurt, Dawg. It’s life. You know that as well as I do.”
No, he damned well didn’t know that.
They were innocent, gentle, and deserved far more than he knew they had waiting for them if no one was close enough to protect them.
“You do know it, Dawg,” she stated as she turned back to him, watching him as though she could read the silent denial raging through him. “You don’t like it. You don’t want to admit it, but you know it.”
He refused to accept it.
“I won’t let them get hurt, Mercedes. I promised you that when you brought them home to me. I told you I’d look out for them.”
He had promised them he would look out for them, and he was breaking that promise.
She shook her head slowly. “There’s only so much you can do, Dawg.” The compassion in her expression tightened his chest as he suddenly wished he had brought Christa with him for this confrontation. Maybe she could have talked some sense into Mercedes. On the other hand, she would have probably agreed with her.
“Dawg, give her this time, she needs it,” Mercedes said softly. “More than you know, she needs it.”
She needed it.
But what happened if it was the chance an enemy needed to strike out at her?
