AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lying fucking Mackay.
Reece Duquaine was actually Reece Duquaine Mackay. A former Army Intelligence investigator rumored to be working for his cousins, Rowdy, Dawg, and Natches Mackay. Tracker had learned too late that she was the important investigation they’d had him working on—for, like, five fucking years.
And even though they hadn’t heard of him before he arrived in Uzbekistan with his brother, Ethan, the summer she turned eighteen, the fact that they’d been there, that they’d helped save her at the time, had overridden the normal hesitancy in trusting them.
Background checks on Reece and Ethan Duquaine had come back squeaky-clean, though. Army, a few years in military intelligence for Duke, training as a field surgeon for Ethan. It was a chance encounter, a drunk on a military base, and Tracker’s suspicions—or so her foster brother claimed—that finally led to the truth.
The black hair and green eyes should have given him away, but hell, she knew plenty of black-haired, green-eyed men. It wasn’t as though they were scarce.
The brilliance of Duke’s dark, mossy green eyes was different, though. That tall, broad body and the tight, lean muscles. She almost grinned at the memory of him. He was tough, hard, not exactly handsome, more rough-hewn. And though he didn’t so much look like the Mackays now, she knew he resembled Dawg Mackay when the older man had been the same age.
But he was still a Mackay, she reminded herself. Dangerous to her and her secrets at the time and even more dangerous now that Natches Mackay wanted her head on a platter.
Hell, she was actually surprised Duke hadn’t tracked her down yet. No doubt he was in town. Come to think of it, he was likely most definitely in town. He was probably trying to help Natches find her at that moment.
A wave of desolation threatened to overtake her at that thought.
Her mother hated her, the man she lusted after on a daily basis had been betraying her for five years, and the sister she only wanted to be friends with would be kept from her now.
The ties she was starving for were moving further and further out of her reach.
Not that she wasn’t aware that what she wanted so desperately was unrealistic. Her mother hadn’t wanted her twenty years ago, why would she change her mind now? When Angel’s birth father, Craig Dane, had called, demanding Chaya come for Beth and Jenny when he learned he couldn’t use them to secure his trip to wherever he was going, Chaya had refused. She was too busy with her new lover to bother with the child she’d had with another man. The child who had idolized her, had been so certain her mother would come for her and her newly discovered sister, Jenny.
And Angel had promised . . . she had promised Jenny. As the younger child cried for the mother whose arms she’d been torn from, Angel had been certain her mother would rescue them. Everything would be okay, she had sworn to her sister; her momma would find them.
But her momma hadn’t found them. She hadn’t cared.
Her mother had a new lover, a new life to live, and that life hadn’t included the baby whose heart was broken that day.
And now, it didn’t include the woman that child had become. But it wasn’t the mother that concerned her as much as her baby sister, Bliss. Another sister in danger, another sister that could be taken from her.
The vibration of the sat phone on the table next to her bed had her reaching over to retrieve it, her arm lowering from her eyes as she brought it up to read the message.
Duke requests a call. Do I need to return? Tracker’s message had her lips snarling.
Coward. Duke couldn’t just message her, he’d gone through Tracker instead. And Tracker had liked Duke just enough that he hadn’t killed him for being a Mackay. But this demand was a surprise.
Only if you want my head served up to his cousin, she messaged back.
Call Duke. Now. Regardless. She frowned at the message.
The wording was more a warning.
Do as he said or he was returning. Questions would likely piss him off and have him turning the plane around no matter the importance of the job he was flying to.
Fine. I want roses on my grave. Put lilies on it and I haunt you. Because calling Duke was going to ensure Natches found her.
Don’t piss me off or I’ll have you cremated when the time comes.
His response had her cursing. The words so vile she was certain they would cause him to give her one of those disgusted male looks of disappointment.
Stop cursing me. The next call I get from him, I’m turning around. Then I’ll call the parents.
Call J.T. and Mara?
They were more soldiers than parents and therein lay the pr
oblem. They claimed Angel as theirs, so they’d damned sure head to Kentucky if they thought she needed them. Them as well as the extended family.
