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My mouth tightened as I folded my arms across my chest. Ignoring her question, I stated, “She wasn’t in the car alone.”
“I know you’re fostering her. I recognized your alias—”
“I’m asking the goddamn questions,” I snarled.
Ovianar bowed her head. “Her cousin was with her. He was with Bogdan because the kid was his ‘heir.’ Never seen Dagda so cut up in my life when he found the dead boy. He’s like a robot when he’s on the job. After he’d settled the kid at the church, he came back to our motel room and he cried.”
Reaching up to rub my temples, I muttered, “She’s never mentioned any of this.”
“Retrograde amnesia?” D queried.
“Maybe. She was fucked up when I got her. The trauma… it would explain a lot.”
My poor little girl.
Misery twisted inside me, making me wish she were close by so I could give her a hug. So I could try to make this better. But, for all my concern, Kat was fine now. The nightmares still happened from time to time but there hadn’t been a bed-wetting incident in years.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t a ticking time bomb.
“No one came for her when she was in my care.”
Ovianar shrugged. “I buried her file once I knew you had her.”
That made sense. Once I knew I wanted to keep her, when she’d stopped being ‘my foster daughter’ and had become simplymine, I’d done the same.
It’d probably explain why, whenever I’d peeked into the system in Ohio, the ID I’d burned on Kat’s behalf hadn’t been on the state’s most wanted list.
Though I should thank her for that, I wasn’t about to.
Conor, keeping things on track, asked, “What about the other team and their target?” He moved closer to me though, not stopping until only inches separated us.
When his pinkie brushed up against mine, I swallowed.
The need to be held by him was intense, but I fought it. I had to keep my shit together. We were drowning in filthy fucking lies and conspiracies. I needed the truth or I felt like I was going to choke on it all.
“Was the second target a guy called Kuznetsov?” D asked.
“How did you know that?” Ovianar demanded, twisting around to glower at her.
“Lucky guess,” D mocked, but we shared a knowing glance.
Kat wasn’t my blood.
I guessed I’d known that already but maybe a smidgen of wishful thinking had made me hope she was.
“What happened with the kid?”
“There was a pile-up. The kid—she was only a toddler—wandered into traffic. The team seemed to think she got hit.”
“Do you think she was?”
Ovianar hitched a shoulder. “No. I think they said that to give her a fighting chance.”
“We need to find that girl,” I rasped.
“Why?”
“Because my foster daughter isn’t the only one who needed to be kept safe.” Kuznetsov didn’t mean her any harm, but if the bastards behind that mission ever found out my cousin and Katina were alive, they were screwed. “But you and Dagda,” I almost choked on the name, “were kind and put her in the path of someone who’d care for her. The other team didn’t.”
