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What had she done?
“I know women like you. . . .” Her accusation had shattered the cool, remote look on Angel’s face.
“A mercenary . . . a killer . . .” Her words had caused the younger woman to pale.
“Bliss is my sister. . . .” The desperation in Angel’s voice had caused Chaya to freeze.
She had fought to deny Angel’s claim. She’d stared at the girl, fighting to see past the vulnerable hunger that reached out to her to the deception she’d seen in the girl every other time Angel had stared back at her.
“Is Bliss your only child, Mrs. Mackay?” Angel had whispered, and Chaya had been unable to answer her.
Sobs broke from her chest, agony ruptured inside her and caused her to tighten violently in her husband’s arms, to fight to be free of him. She had to get away from this; she couldn’t accept this. . . .
Oh God, she had found happiness all these years while her daughter had suffered. . . .
She tried to scream for her baby, to scream out to God for mercy, but all she could do was collapse against the bands of steel wrapped around her as Natches turned her to him, held her to his heart.
Memories ravaged her soul. Her baby from birth. Her first smile, the first time she said “ma.” Her laughter. How she formed words early, walked early, then as she watched her mother practicing with the knife she’d trained most of her life to use, Beth began to try to mimic it.
At three. Three years old and she would try to turn, to thrust and parry, then laugh as she landed on her rear, her pretty gray-blue eyes alight with laughter.
The teddy bear Binny . . .
Beth’s sobs when Chaya had been forced to leave her with Jo-Ellen.
The knowledge that Jo-Ellen’s daughter had died, and Chaya had never known Beth had a sister.
And she hadn’t known her baby was still alive. . . .
How could she have not known?
How could she have allowed her baby to suffer?
“Who held her?” she whispered brokenly, staring up at her husband, her fingers clawing at his shirt, grief ripping her apart. “Who held my baby?”
• • •
Sitting in the dimly lit hotel room Tracker had arranged for her, Angel peeled back the bandage on the knife wound she’d gotten the day before returning to Somerset. The long, deep gash in her leg was over a week old and still showing no signs of healing. It was actually all she could do to keep it from slipping into an infection.
Had Tracker or Chance known the condition of the wound, they would have sent her straight to home base rather than flying away and leaving her there in Somerset.
Applying an antibiotic salve to the inflamed skin barely held together by the stitches Tracker had sewn so carefully, she covered it again with a waterproof bandage, secured the edges, then took another dose of the antibiotics she kept in her pack.
She was almost out of the powerful pills, though. That, along with the inflamed edges of the wound, the growing sensitivity in her leg, and her tiredness, assured her she was going to have problems very soon. And the doctor Tracker had arranged to be on call for the team the year before would surely report back to him if she called.
Lying on the bed, simply too damned drained to dress after her shower, she threw her arm over her eyes and bit back the emotions threatening to swamp her.
She could call Duke. She’d even pulled up his number on her sat phone earlier. He and Ethan were close, she knew. Duke had sent her a message the day before asking her to contact him. But it wasn’t the first such message he’d sent her in the past eight months after Tracker learned who he was. It was the first one she considered replying to, though.
They fought like children sometimes, but if Duke knew she needed him or his medic brother, then he wouldn’t refuse to come to her.
Calling Duke would create a whole set of problems she wasn’t certain she wanted to deal with, though. Her response to him had been particularly strong the last time she’d seen him. Her body became hypersensitive whenever he was around and all she wanted to do was taste those totally kissable lips.
No matter how mad he was at her at the time. No matter how mad she was at him now.
She was insane. That knowledge had a sigh escaping her lips as she settled more comfortably on her bed. He was something else, someone else, she couldn’t allow herself to have.
The bastard.
