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Son of a bitch. What in the hell were they doing here?
PenandSydney. They froze on the stairs.
He hadn’t even known they werethere.
Murdoch stepped closer. “Do not move, you sick bastard.”
Another man was there. Climbing out of the SUV. Driver? Paid goon? Brunette, young, tall and slim. He raised a weapon, aimed at Murdoch.
Murdoch didn’t hesitate. He’d had enough of playing target tonight.
Murdoch pulled the trigger. Multiple times.
Zoey screamed his name. Pen and Sydney screamed, too.
Murdoch lurched to the left, fast. Fire slammed into the side of his neck. Too damned close for comfort.
Murdoch went down.
* * *
Zoey ran.Murdoch was on the ground. The man who had shot him wasn’t moving. She checked his vitals.
Murdoch had struck true. Multiple shots.
None. Good. Bastard deserved what he got.
She grabbed the man’s gun.
“I’m good. Get to your sister!” Murdoch was pulling himself to his feet now.
Zoey checked him once. “There’s a little girl in here.”
Eastman was bellowing. Yelling for that girl and his precious Denita.
Zoey turned to the monster who had caused this all. That’s when she saw what he held in his hand. “Put the gun down, Eastman! Now!”
“I just wanted the world to never forget her. This was her grandfather’s gun. Your great-grandfather’s. He died. Protecting people so far from home. That was hislegacy.Your mother…always wanted a legacy, Zoey. That was all. She didn’t want to just be forgotten. She always felt forgotten by the world. From the day her mother died, she feltforgotten. Her father forgot her, when he had his new wife, new baby. Denita didn’t want to be invisible. She wanted the legacy I had planned for her. Like her father’s, and grandfather’s. She didn’t want to be forgotten like her mother had. Denita didn’t want to be forgotten. Now she has been. And it’s our fault. Ours.”
Fury filled Zoey at his words. Like her mother was some poor, little woundedangel? With what she had done to her children? Hell, no. Denise or Denita, or whoever she had been had left a critically ill infant outside a hospital. She had sold multiple children. Agoodmother didn’t do that. She just didn’t.
Zoey had had friends who were adopted as infants or toddlers before, whose first mothers had given them up so they could have a better future. They’d given their children for adoption out of love.
What Denita had done hadn’t beenlove.It had been selfishness and greed. And evil. Period.
“She didn’t have to be. She could have raised her children, kept them,lovedthem! What more of a legacy could she have wanted than that? She didn’t have to sell her children. Or just dump them off like trash.”
“She neversoldher children. I did that. I did that. I gave her some of the money, but I kept the rest for her. For herlegacy.She was so afraid, so afraid she would lose them, like she did our Cole. She loved him so much, Zoey.. Just as much as she did her little Davie. But Cole was so ill, you see. She just couldn’t take care of him. And he died. He just died. Left her, just like her mother had. And she felt so helpless again. Denita…never truly recovered.”
Eastman was focused on her now. Looking at her with the madness in his blue eyes.
There was a light in the garage, but it was dim. It flickered. Smoke was everywhere. Growing.
“Where is Oakley? I know you have here in here somewhere.” Zoey had to find that little girl. Now.
“Oakley. My greatest disappointment. She was supposed to be my prized creation, my pinnacle. Interviews, television appearances, Oakley would have made the experiment perfect. She and Orion. My boy is dead now, I suspect. Smoke inhalation, most likely. He was quite asthmatic. I treated it as best I could without hospital intervention, but…so flawed. Pity, but neither were perfectenough.”
“No he’s not dead, you asshole! I got him out!He’s safe!Far away from you!” Sydney yelled. “He’s never going to be yours again!”
