AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Really?” The fear had eased some from Bliss’s face, but the curiosity that filled it now had Angel instantly realizing she could be stepping into something she didn’t want to step into. At least not yet.
“The convent trick.” Angel cleared her throat. “There’s so many different ways of playing that one, I could write a book.”
Yeah, that cover was lame as hell, she admitted.
“Uh-huh.” The knowing look on the teenager’s face assured Angel she hadn’t pulled that one off. “That book’s going to be really boring, Angel.”
“Eh, I’ll fill it in with Mackay machinations. It’ll definitely sell then.” That was bestseller material there.
Picking up her fork once again, Bliss continued to play with the cold, now-unappetizing food on her plate. And Angel couldn’t ignore that tingle just beneath her neck any longer.
Glancing at Chaya, she saw the way her mother stayed focused on the property behind the house as though searching for something.
Moving to the window next to Bliss she looked between the slat and the wall. The sun-dappled yard looked peaceful, serene.
Which didn’t explain the chill crawling up her spine.
“Angel?” Bliss asked softly.
“Yeah, Bliss?” She searched the boundary line and as much of the shaded forest as she could see.
Davinov’s men, all Russian Special Forces, would be damned good. Not that she and the team hadn’t gone against them before; they had. They’d moved several individuals out of Russia with the Davinov organization hot on their tails. But that didn’t mean they could be taken for granted.
“Why did you wait so long to find us?” Bliss asked, her voice low. “Why didn’t you let us know who you were, that you were alive, sooner?”
The question had a wave of emotion straining at the mental gates she placed on them, had to place on them whenever she worked. But there were those that slipped free, that leaked past her guard and filled her mind.
Why hadn’t she come forward? It was more than just believing her mother had deserted her. As much as that had tormented her, memories of how much her mother had loved her before that trip to Iraq had tormented her more.
“I was fifteen before I remembered,” she told her sister. “And it took several years just to process what I was remembering, to accept the memories and make sense of them.” She was still trying to make sense of so much. “Maybe one day, when this is over, you and I will talk,” she assured her. “When both of us can think and make sense of what we have to say to one another.”
She remembered how she’d felt when she remembered.
Shame. Fear. Anger.
Those first memories had been of her time in that hotel and Craig’s phone conve
rsation. A conversation her mother swore had never taken place. That anger had followed her until she was trapped in the hospital at eighteen.
What she’d felt after that still confused her. She’d been at a bar several weeks later, the trash mouth she had running like it usually did, when something had awakened inside her.
Shame.
Pure, painful shame.
She had drunk far more whiskey than normal, was quickly becoming drunk enough that Tracker would have to carry her out of the bar. And Duke and Ethan had been there. Duke had been glaring at Tracker, Tracker staring into his drink.
And she’d just been finished.
Finished with the person she was, finished with so many things that didn’t make sense.
Evidently she’d been finished with living, too, because after that, the near-fatal injuries had begun. One per year. Keeping her out of the fighting, keeping her sidelined in logistics and planning only.
Maybe Duke had been right. Maybe she’d been desperate to get out of that life and find more time to grow hungrier for the family she knew she had in Kentucky.
Whatever the reasons, the hunger had grown after that, and she’d found it impossible to stay away for long.
The tightening at the back of her neck was driving her crazy. If she were there with her team and the safe room wasn’t set up to call everyone but the Air National Guard, then she would have already shoved Chaya and Bliss inside it and gone hunting.
