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“Come on, babe,” Natches urged his wife as he stepped to her. “Let’s see if she really knows what she’s doing or if she’s just trying to impress us.”
Thankfully, Chaya allowed him to draw her away from the stove.
Angel had mastered the ability to follow recipes before she was ten and seemed to have a knack for it. She loved cooking. Or more to the point, she loved eating something edible, and with J.T. and Mara, you ate MREs, or you learned how to cook yourself.
Angel had learned to cook.
It didn’t take Natches long to lead his wife, along with her coffee, to the table, where Duke was taking a seat. Within minutes the two men were discussing the property and its security as Chaya continued to watch Angel.
Angel ignored the steady regard. She’d learned how to do that as well over the years. The team often worked with others, mostly men, and they didn’t care a damned bit to sit and stare. She’d learned to deal with it, but she had to admit, ignoring Chaya wasn’t as easy.
Bliss stood at the counter, still excited to see Angel and delighted that her “friend” knew how to cook. She was a willing gopher to gather ingredients and a distraction Angel desperately needed.
In less than an hour, Angel had breakfast on the table and everyone was busy eating. Bliss wasn’t in the least afraid to call out her mother’s inability to cook, but she said Dad could fix a mean steak and hamburger.
Once breakfast was over, Angel waved Chaya back to her chair when she rose to clean up, but firmly asked Bliss for her help. She knew Chaya rarely had her youngest daughter accept household responsibilities, something Tracker’s mother had never done. Mara couldn’t cook either, but once she’d seen that Angel could, she’d made certain there was someone to teach her. And not just on a nice stove but a campfire and a fireplace as well.
As she and Bliss cleaned, Natches and Chaya outlined the weaknesses and strengths in security around the property, as well as the security training of Harley Matthews and Natches’s adopted son, Declan, until the kitchen was finished and Chaya sent her daughter to the living room.
“Dawg, Rowdy, Graham, and Dawg’s brothers-in-law will be here later this evening,” Natches informed them as Angel poured herself a fresh cup of coffee before carrying the pot to the table to refill the other cups. “They’ve been working on the search for the men that hit the house. They haven’t located them yet, but what they did manage to find was a black gear bag hidden behind some shrubbery at the back of the house.” Natches shot his daughter a worried look where she sat in the living room in front of the television. “The only information we found in it was a picture of Bliss and Angel. There was a red X drawn on Angel’s forehead with the message on the back that Angel would have to be dealt with.” He shook his head as he gripped his wife’s hand. “Whatever’s going on, whatever they want, you’re the one they consider a threat,” he told Angel quietly. “Do you have any idea what it could be?”
“There’s no way anyone could know who I am,” she assured him. “And I rather doubt Duke told anyone.” She shot Duke a narrow-eyed look.
“Not me,” he snorted. “It was all I could do in the course of five years to prove it myself.”
“How long have you known for certain?” Chaya asked, her voice carefully modulated, reflecting very little emotion.
“Now is the wrong time to worry about that,” Angel suggested.
“Like hell,” Chaya hissed, her brown eyes narrowing back at her as her expression tightened angrily. “He could have told us long before now, couldn’t he? How many additional years did I lose with you?”
No one could say her mother didn’t have sheer nerve.
“None, because I could have told you long before your dutiful husband sent him nosing into my life,” Angel pointed out, then widened her eyes in false surprise. “Oh wait, I did try to tell you. You didn’t believe me.”
Chaya’s nostrils flared, her lips parting.
“Enough.” Duke and Natches seemed to speak at the same time.
Natches drew in a heavy, patience-gathering breath as he shot his wife a silencing look.
“I suspected for several years, Chaya,” Duke answered her as Angel rolled her eyes in disgust. “Proof was another matter. I didn’t have much evidence. Nothing concrete that I would have brought to you and Natches until the past year, and I had to verify it first. And I still had no idea why no one knew about Jo-Ellen’s child.”
“The birth took place in Canada,” Natches said, still keeping his eye on Bliss. “Jo lived and worked in Canada, and they’d sort of lost touch.”
“How?” Angel couldn’t stop the question. “How do you lose touch with your sister? One you were raised with? I’ve known about Bliss since I was fifteen years old and I’ve been checking on her and making certain she was safe since I learned she existed.”
She couldn’t understand that, couldn’t make herself accept it. Chaya and Jo-Ellen’s parents had died years before Chaya had married. They had only had each other.
Chaya pushed her fingers through her hair, a momentary flash of grief shadowing her expression before she seemed to push it aside. When her eyes met Angel’s, there was regret there, sadness.
“I was taken into Army Intelligence for training the first week I joined ROTC at sixteen, because of an aptitude I showed in questioning others.” Chaya’s voice seemed to shake. “Jo was four years older, already in college. . . .” She looked away for a moment then shook her head. “We were just never close. You and Bliss are closer now than Jo and I ever were.”
And that still wasn’t something she understood. She was eight years older than Bliss, but she could never betray the trust her sister was slowly giving her.
“I hadn’t seen Jo for years when I invited her to my wedding,” she continued. “She returned immediately afterward to Canada, where she was working. According to what Timothy learned, the affair with your father began not long after our honeymoon. I didn’t see her often, but I wanted to be a part of her life.” There was so much sincerity in her voice, her eyes. “We talked on the phone every few weeks. She knew everything about Beth, but I had no idea about her child.”
“According to what I found, the police report of the murder scene mentioned toys and child’s clothing, but all this time everyone assumed they were Beth’s,” Duke interjected.
