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“My grandmother doesn’t live with me,” she informed him. “She wouldn’t know if I was even-tempered or not.”
“Did she know you very well before the kidnapping?” he asked as he lifted his cup to his lips again. God, she wanted to be the cup.
“No. Jansen didn’t visit much and he didn’t like for her to visit. I’ve only gotten to know her in the past six years.”
Abigail had been a very infrequent visitor when Risa had lived in Virginia with Jansen and Elaine.
He nodded at that. “Jansen would have wanted to keep you from anyone who would have influenced you in any way counter to his wishes. I can see Abigail definitely protesting his treatment of you.”
She thought about that, then shrugged. “Until the kidnapping, he wasn’t cruel. Just rather strict.” He had been verbally abusive. He had made certain she understood that her lack of beauty placed her at a disadvantage. He had been mean. He had been hurtful.
“He convinced you that you had no worth, according to your psychologist’s reports,” he stated. “That’s untrue, Risa. You have much worth.”
Risa took another drink of her coffee before forcing more of her eggs down along with part of the bacon. She knew cruelty now. Nothing she had experienced before her kidnapping had prepared her for the true monster her father had been.
“I heard you talking to Reno last night when he came over,” she commented, refusing to acknowledge his topic of conversation. “You said you’d take Orion down with your last breath if you had to. Why?”
He leaned back in his chair, his bare shoulders flexing beneath the dark skin as he inhaled deeply.
“He killed someone close to me six years ago,” he finally stated. “A Mossad agent. She had been missing for more than twelve hours before her husband and…” He hesitated. “Before her husband and son were contacted and told her location.” His black eyes flashed for a moment with rage. “Six weeks later her husband was involved in a confrontation with a suicide bomber in Tel Aviv. He attacked the bomber, threw himself on top of the young man. I consider Orion responsible for both their deaths and Reno knows this.”
“Why their son?” she asked faintly. “What happened to him?”
He was silent for long moments. “He continued the investigation. He thought he was getting close when he was betrayed by a friend. He drowned.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “They must have been very close to you. Did you ever know why your friend’s mother was targeted?”
He shook his head. “She was involved in an investigation into the rumored sale of a biological weapon by an American scientist. She thought she was getting close to his identity; then she disappeared. I suspect it was tied to that.”
“So you went back to Israel to investigate?” She frowned.
He shook his head. “I’m American. There was little investigating that I could do.”
But that hadn’t stopped him, she guessed.
“I can hear the accent in your voice sometimes,” she told him. “Your parents were immigrants?”
He nodded sharply before picking up his cup and finishing his coffee. “There, I’ve answered your questions. Now we discuss what I want to discuss. Jansen Clay.”
“Jansen has nothing to do with this.” She couldn’t discuss the man who had donated the sperm to her birth. He had destroyed parts of her. There were still areas of her soul that were blackened with what he had done to her and the hatred she felt fo
r him.
“Jansen has everything to do with this, Risa.” Bare arms folded on the table as he pushed his plate away and stared back at her. “The FBI has been tracking your progress with the psychologist, going over the recordings made of your sessions, as well as the doctor’s notes. You gave them permission to do that, remember?”
“I’m not a moron,” she snapped back at him. “Nor am I so simpleminded that you need to patronize me. Yes, I remember giving them permission to follow my progress. But I haven’t remembered anything.”
“You haven’t remembered faces or names, yet, but you have remembered things,” he said gently. “You remember the rape now.”
She cringed, her arms going over her breasts as she fought to hold back the horror of what little she did remember.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “I can’t talk about this to you.”
“Why? What better person to discuss it with, Risa? Whatever they did to you doesn’t affect what’s between us. There is nothing you could remember that would change my perception of you.”
She shook her head, a mocking laugh passing her lips. “Well, isn’t that incentive enough to discuss it,” she stated bitterly. “Let it go, Micah. I talk to my psychologist and you are not my psychologist.”
“What you’ve remembered in the past months is the reason this assassin has been called out to kill you. If we could identify whoever it is hiding in your subconscious at the moment, then we could put a stop to this now. Orion never completes a project if his pay is jeopardized. His reputation is exacting; he never deviates from it. If we knew who hired him, we could stop this now.”
