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Jo-Ellen had come to Chaya’s home a handful of times to get to know Beth. When Chaya had taken her daughter to her sister’s home in Canada, she hadn’t gone past the living room. She saw a few toys and assumed Jo bought them for Beth. Chaya had tried every way imaginable to get out of her assignment, but neither her superiors nor Timothy would hear of it. Chaya knew it’d be too dangerous to leave Beth with Craig, so she had left her baby with her sister while she was deployed to Iraq.
“Momma . . . please don’t leave me. I’m scared, Momma. . . .”
Chaya’s breathing hitched, the tears of the past building once again.
She’d been in the hospital in Iraq recovering from the torture she’d been subjected to when a spy had captured her. If it hadn’t been for Natches and Declan, she would have died there. She’d been eager to heal, turn in her report, and leave for Canada with Natches, when she’d learned Beth was being held at the hotel by Craig. It was one of the agents she worked with who had forced her way past the guards at Chaya’s door to give her the information.
Chaya had hurriedly dressed and run from the hospital to the agent’s car. Nearly half a mile from the hotel they’d been forced to leave the car due to debris in the road. Natches had arrived as she’d begun running for the hotel, fighting to get to her daughter. He’d been there to throw her to the street and cover her as a rogue missile slammed into the building and destroyed it, along with Chaya’s heart.
She’d cried for what seemed forever. For twenty years. Every year on Beth’s birthday, every Christmas, every anniversary of that fucking explosion, every fucking nightmare . . .
She was barely aware of the broken cries that escaped her lips or the slow rocking motions of her body.
“Why do you have this room, Chaya? It’s morbid. A shrine to a child that’s not returning. Beth wasn’t taken, she wasn’t lost or missing, sweetheart. . . . She’s dead.” Timothy’s voice whispered around her, heavy with grief and with regret.
This was Beth’s room. The same type and color of carpeting, and every toy, piece of furniture, and article of clothing from Beth’s room. As though somehow she’d known. Had she known Beth was alive?
She had to have. Look at the bedroom, the presents from every year, the shrine, as Timothy called it. What was it, if not a knowledge that her baby wasn’t dead?
“Oh God . . . Oh God, baby, I’m so sorry. . . .” she whispered into the dark, the control she had always depended upon so thin now she knew it was nonexistent.
How could she have not realized her baby was still alive? How had she not known, even then, that something wasn’t right?
She was an interrogator, a profiler. If she’d found this room in a suspect’s home, she’d immediately have suspected the child wasn’t dead. For twenty years, her baby had lived in a hell Chaya couldn’t imagine. Training to kill from age three. Her baby had been forced to stab someone at six to keep from being raped.
Had her baby screamed? Cried? Had she wondered why her momma didn’t come for her? Why her momma hadn’t come for her and her half sister before her life exploded around her? Had she cried for the momma she’d loved? The momma she had stopped loving for some reason?
And now, hurt, unconscious, her daughter hadn’t wanted her with her. She’d wanted her mother to leave. Didn’t she know how desperately Chaya wanted to comfort her? How desperate she was to just ease a moment of the pain her daughter was suffering? How badly she wanted to just hold her, to touch her hair, her face, reassure her baby that she was going to be okay?
Instead, she’d left rather than have Angel awaken and know someone besides Duke and Ethan had seen her weak.
As though she couldn’t trust her mother enough to allow her to see her when she was weak, unconscious.
A movement at the door had her head lifting, her gaze connecting with her husband’s as he walked to her then eased down beside her on the chair. Touching her cheek, his fingers came away damp with her tears.
“I would have come for her, if I’d known,” she whispered, trying to hold back her sobs. “I would have come for her.”
“And I would have gone with you, baby,” he swore, drawing her into his arms. “I would have gone with you.”
THIRTEEN
Stepping into the kitchen the next morning after doing an excellent job of pretending Duke didn’t exist, Angel faced yet another morning of a full house. Didn’t her mother—Chaya—ever get tired of having so many people around her?
The work island with its large stove and small sink also held an array of food in warmers obviously kept on hand for just such emergencies. Scrambled eggs, pico de gallo, bacon, sausage, ham, pancakes, and piles of toast.
Christa, Kelly, and Dawg’s sisters and mother were all behind the stove working, their voices a quiet murmur as they filled plates and handed them out or refreshed the warmers. Folding tables and chairs were set up in the huge living room, and the murmur of voices from within the room assured her that most of the men were gathered there.
Peeking inside the living area, she saw Duke standing on the other side of the room talking to Rowdy and Dawg. Catching her look, he shot her a little wink but went back to his conversation rather than joining her.
“There you are.” Christa looked up from the fried potatoes she loaded a warmer with. “I thought you’d sleep awhile longer.”
Brushing back her fringe of bangs nervously, Angel lowered her hand and tucked both into the front pockets of the camo pants she wore, looking around.
“I slept enough.” She shrugged, uncomfortable as Mercedes Mackay turned from where she was unloading the dishwasher and handing off the dishes to one of her daughters to put away.
“This one, she likes to prowl the night like a little cat,” Mercedes said and Angel had to restrain a grimace as the other woman smiled back at her warmly. “Did you think I would not remember the young woman that stayed with us that summer? You can change your hair and your eyes, but many things will always remain the same.”
And some people were just too damned perceptive, now weren’t they?
