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The hell? "Of course, it's your fault. If I had never met Saint, I would have been able to ask Connor Lohman my questions, and then gone on my way and found out about what happened to my mother. Come back to my life. But no, there you were."
He grinned. "I would actually argue that you were born for this. From what Saint tells me and what was on Ryan’s and James's body cams, you're a hell of a fighter. You didn't get that way by accident."
"They had body cams?"
He nodded slowly. "They did. The way Saint tells it, you're nearly as good as my sister."
"I'm not a fighter. I'm a woman who wants to go back to her life."
"Okay. What does that look like? Because you had a choice, you know. Your normal life was still normal, but you chose to be at that auction. You chose to get answers from Connor Lohman. That was a choiceyoumade. That was you choosing chaos, because you could have done nothing. You could have told the police and hoped for the best. Instead, you went after him. And from what Saff and Saint told me, you were quite insistent that Connor Lohman had the answers you needed."
"This has to do with Connor? Are you working with him?"
Gabe scoffed. "Pay attention, Kaya. We're not working with Connor Lohman. You are at a secret government facility. Her Majesty knows we are here and how we operate. We take on missions that the Crown can't take on publicly. We are Rogues Division. Jasper Saint is one of mine. He's a billionaire Rogue. A man who walks that fine line between military and society. A man who can get close with his money and access and power. The Rogues make sure the boogeymen don't bother the good normal people. You activated the boogeyman by going to that auction."
I shook my head. "All I wanted was Lohman, and he vanished into thin air."
"He didn't vanish. My men took him."
My eyes went wide. "I knew it. Iknewit."
"That was the mission. One you interrupted."
"I did no such thing. You didn't have to involve me."
"But I did. You see, when you met Lohman at the bar and touched his phone, you set off a chain reaction you weren't even aware of."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Gabe sighed. "Okay, let me break it down. You've been looking for your mother, wanting answers about her disappearance, right?"
I swallowed, my stomach falling out, because I knew he was going to tell me something I wasn’t ready to hear. At the same time, I was so desperate for information, desperate for any knowledge, that I subconsciously leaned toward.
"Your mother, Keilani Cassandra Reynolds, she was a Rogues agent. Her call sign was Dove."
I shook my head. "No, she wasn't. I would have known. She wasn't sneaking off on missions. She was with me."
Gabe nodded. "Yes, she was. Twenty years ago, she was undercover on an assignment. Antonio Igno had started to make a name for himself in the underworld. Guns, trafficking, drugs, you name it, he had a finger in it. She went undercover as his girlfriend until suddenly, one day she called in asking to come in from the cold. Then she vanished into thin air. Our agents looked for her, worried that Igno had discovered who she was and done something to hurt her. We only found her because of a fingerprint at the hospital where she gave birth to you. It was completely by accident. They were checking in on another patient. Someone who'd been brought in on a stabbing, and she touched something of his. When it got processed, her fingerprint was picked up by the system. And that's how we knew where she was. And how we knew she'd delivered a baby girl."
I swallowed hard. Sweat started to roll down my back and into that little dip behind my bra. I could feel it gathering steam as it rolled down my lower back.
"She'd gone to great lengths to conceal her pregnancy. We'd already gotten approval to bluff the assignment and pull her out. She went to great lengths to conceal you. Oversight didn't want anyone discovering that you existed because she clearly didn't want that."
"You just left her on her own?"
"I wasn’t in charge at that time, I was just a teenager. My father was the one who made the call. Rogues was under his direction then and he was her handler. I don't know how much communication they had before or even after she was in the wind. He left her fresh IDs and money at a safe house. We have confirmation that she picked it up. Whether she knew that my father had given her support or not, I don't know. Either way, she was in the wind for fifteen years. She was very good at hiding. And then suddenly, you turned up.
"What you’re saying is it's been you and your men chasing me?"
"No. I wanted to leave your life intact. I think it's what my father would have wanted. It's certainly what your mother wanted. Your problem is that there was never any hiding for you once you came out into the light."
"I don't understand what that means."
"It means Kaya, that you are the spitting image of your mother. You must know that."
"I look a little like her, I think."
He shook his head. "No, you're essentially her identical twin." He turned his monitor around and showed me a photo of my mother. She was in workout gear, her hair natural, long, springing curls that flowed down to the middle of her back. Her dark skin, luminous. She was laughing with someone. She’d never looked like that with me. Never once carefree. But I could see now that Gabe was right. It wasn't just mere resemblance. I looked exactly like her.
