Delta Force Defender

by Megan Crane

  He was only slightly gratified when he saw that the rest of the team looked equally startled, something a person would notice only if they were looking for it. And it didn’t do Isaac’s chest any good to think about the fact that clearly, since Koa didn’t look surprised at all, Lindsay must laugh a lot more than her sister did.

  “I brought them drinks,” Lindsay was saying, her voice a little soft as she conjured up her memories. “Whatever they were talking about, it was bad. Dad was pissed.”

  Caradine rolled her eyes. “Mickey Sheeran existed in a state of perpetual rage. So when Lindsay says that he was pissed, that means he was much worse than usual.”

  “They obviously didn’t say anything sensitive when I was in the room, but I did get the impression that they were specifically mad at someone.” Lindsay looked over at Koa, and whatever she saw there made her straighten her shoulders a bit, then take a breath. “Sometimes something was wrong and you could tell that it was a deal gone bad or something like that. But Dad was wound up in a different way that night. It was weird.”

  Caradine nodded, sitting with her own shoulders squared next to her sister. “That’s what you texted me.”

  “I didn’t want her to come in,” Lindsay said. Her gaze traveled from Isaac to Jonas, then over to Blue and Templeton. But then she went back to Isaac, and stayed there. “It was too tense, and she always made Dad worse.”

  “That’s so hard to believe,” Isaac said idly.

  Caradine’s eyes actually gleamed, which was the version of her laughter that he knew best. “It’s hard to wrap your head around, I know.”

  “And sometimes, it was fine,” Lindsay continued. “She would wind him up and he would freak out, but in a normal way.”

  “What does that mean?” Koa asked quietly, his dark gaze on his wife. “Because I don’t think that what’s normal to you is going to strike me as particularly normal.”

  The two women looked at each other again, as the toddler pulled herself up to cling to her mother’s knees. Lindsay smoothed her hand over her daughter’s hair, and when she looked up, she was somehow soft and made of steel at once.

  “A normal amount of freaking out would be like a backhand.” She looked at her sister. “Right?”

  “The back of his hand, sure,” Caradine confirmed. “Or he would throw something at you. Or grab the back of your head by your ponytail and slam your face into the table if you weren’t paying proper attention.”

  “Little stuff,” Lindsay agreed. “Just a couple of bruises to get your attention.”

  Isaac met each one of his friends’ and colleagues’ gazes, then Koa’s, and saw the same stark, murderous gleam in each one of them.

  The sisters didn’t seem to notice how tense and furious their audience had become.

  “If you were paying attention the way you should have been, you could ward off any glasses or plates he threw at you.” Caradine lifted up her arms, moving her forearms as if she were batting away missiles with them. She and Lindsay even snickered. “Do you remember that time—?”

  “Oh my God.” Lindsay laughed again. Then remembered the men enough to explain. “He was yelling at Julia, about, I don’t know, how ungrateful she was.”

  Caradine smirked. “A common theme.”

  “So he picked up his dinner plate, loaded with food, and threw it at her.”

  “Again,” Caradine said dryly, “common.”

  “But, and she swore up and down this was an accident, she kind of caught it.” Lindsay demonstrated, putting up her hands as if she were preparing to hit a volleyball. “Then winged it back at him.”

  They both laughed again, and even sank into each other a little while they did, touching shoulders.

  And Isaac took another survey of the lanai, not surprised to find that everyone was as appalled as he was.

  “Totally worth it,” Caradine said after a moment, wiping at her eyes. “Really.”

  “What exactly did he do to you?” Isaac asked mildly.

  He did not feel mild at all. More like lethal.

  Caradine sobered. “That was less fun. That took a few days to recover from.” She considered. “Maybe a couple of weeks, now that I think about it.”

  “I hate that you both lived through this,” Koa said then, dark and furious. “It’s sick. And that you think it’s funny makes me want to break things.”

  “Cosign,” Blue belted out.

  “Tell us about that night,” Templeton invited the women, even pulling out a grin—likely because he was the only one who could manage one just then. Isaac was with Koa. He wanted to raze a city or two. “It was weird in the room . . . ?”

  “Right,” Lindsay said, smiling down at her daughter. “What I keep coming back to, over time, is who was closest to the door. Just in terms of getting to the kitchen, getting their cell phone, and getting out of the house, they would have had to be close to the door. Because I left the den, Julia texted when I got to the kitchen, and I ran outside. The two of us talked for maybe a minute? Two minutes?”

  “Not much more than that,” Caradine agreed.

  Lindsay shrugged. “So whoever did it had to be right behind me.”

  Isaac considered. “Do you think they followed you out? Meaning, whoever it is has known you were alive this whole time?”

  “No one followed me out. I went out the front door, and if they’d gone to pick up their phone, it would make sense to go out the back and call in the ignition code more quickly.” The look Lindsay aimed at Isaac was level. Steady. “And I would have known if someone was right behind me. You get attuned to that kind of thing, or you get hit.”

  “So you’re out front with Caradine,” Templeton said. Lindsay and Caradine nodded. “You think someone went out the back door.”

  On the coffee table, he set up a little scene, using the coffee that Koa had brought out when the whole team had appeared. One mug for the house. One mug for Lindsay and Caradine. Another for whomever they were talking about.

  Templeton pointed to each mug in turn, then looked at the sisters. “Theoretically, could you have lived through the explosion and then walked away from it without someone coming out of the backyard to see you?”

  The two women looked at each other.

  “Absolutely,” Lindsay said.

  “The backyard wasn’t accessible from the street,” Caradine said. “I mean, there was this big, locked fence. And besides, it would have been on fire.”

  “Then who was closest to the door in that room?” Jonas asked.

  “Two people.” Lindsay cleared her throat. “Francis, because he liked to stand there so he could watch what I was doing. And then punish me for it later if he felt I was looking at anyone the wrong way. Or not looking at him the right way.”

  “I hope it’s Francis,” Koa said softly. “Because I don’t think going up in a bomb is enough. Not for him.”

  “He hated Dad enough,” Lindsay said, her gaze bleak. “That was part of why he liked to punish me.”

  “Who’s the other one?” Isaac asked, though he agreed with Koa.

  Again, the sisters looked at each other.

  “Our brother,” Lindsay said after a moment.

  “Not Danny, the drug addict,” Caradine said, in a way that made it clear this was something they’d discussed before. Or something so obvious they’d never had to discuss it. “Or Patrick, who was always in debt to someone or something, because he liked to gamble.”

  “It was Jimmy,” Lindsay said flatly. “The oldest. And the meanest. And if I had to guess, the only one who was capable of going against Dad like that.”

  Twenty

  “Let’s say it is Jimmy,” Isaac said, his voice so cold and focused that Caradine almost forgot that they were sitting on a Hawaiian island. “Does he think that you have some kind of information? Does he think that you being alive means t
hat you’ll blow his cover? Why would he come after you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Lindsay laughed a little. “Jimmy was a pig. It would never occur to him in a million years that we could harm him in any way.”

  Her sister laughed a lot, Caradine thought, and she didn’t quite know where to put that. It felt like an indictment of the way that Caradine had spent these past five years. Locked down. Hiding. Pushing anything that felt like a real life away while Lindsay had been out here . . . actually living.

  What she couldn’t figure out was if she was jealous—or if the very notion scared her half to death.

  Or, more likely, both.

  “Jimmy once told me that he thought Dad was too lenient with me,” Caradine said, trying to focus on the point instead of all the things she’d lost. Or made herself give up. “If it was up to him, he wanted me to know, he would have nipped my attitude in the bud long before I got so full of myself I actually went to college.”

  “Was college really such a bad thing?” Koa asked, sounding charmingly baffled. “Isn’t it supposed to be a life goal?”

  “Only if you believe women get to think for themselves.” Caradine arched a brow. “Do you?”

  “He’d better.” Lindsay grinned at her husband. But her grin faded almost as quickly as it came. “And as I remember it, Jimmy didn’t just talk about nipping things in the bud. He was happy to jump in and do it himself.”

  “The problem with Jimmy was that he was smart.” Caradine remembered her oldest brother’s mean, dead eyes, so much like their father’s, and repressed a shudder. “He could wait. Our other two brothers, and freaking Francis, for that matter, had impulse-control issues. But not Jimmy. He was patient.”

  “He could hold a grudge forever,” Lindsay agreed. “If you said something to him that he didn’t like when he was ten, he would hold on to it and make you pay for it when he was thirty. You wouldn’t even remember it, but he would. In detail.”

  “Jimmy was a psychopath,” Caradine said flatly. “It makes my stomach hurt to think that he’s still alive and coming after us, but if it’s a member of our family, it would be him.”

  “Because he would take it as a personal insult that we dared to live through that explosion and then ran away on top of it.” Lindsay made a face. “He never reacted to personal insults very well.”

  “If he wanted to kill his entire family, why would he care if a couple of them got away?” Blue asked. “Out of sight, out of mind, I would have thought.”

  “You’re not thinking like a raging psychopath, obviously.” Caradine settled into her seat. She glanced at her sister, then back at their audience. “If you were, you’d know that it’s all about him. He decided to make a power move that he no doubt thought he richly deserved.”

  “Or he was mad at Dad for whatever reason,” Lindsay chimed in. “Maybe Jimmy wanted the business. Maybe he just wanted to kill people. Hard to say.”

  Caradine nodded. “Obviously, once he made this decision, if his two sisters defied him in any way, they would need to be punished. Severely.”

  “What about this Francis?” Templeton asked. “We think he’s less of a contender?”

  Again, Caradine looked at Lindsay and saw the bruises, always on her abdomen and sides so no one could see them. And the fragile way she’d walked sometimes when she’d come in from a “date.”

  The way she’d stood in that dark street and looked at Caradine so bleakly. I love that you think it matters what I say.

  “The bottom line is that if either of them are coming after us, it’s for the same reason.” Luana was babbling, standing between her mother’s knees and drumming something on one leg. It seemed to take Lindsay extra time to look up, and when she did, her mouth was a flat line. “If it’s Francis, he always thought that I was his property. And he hated Julia.”

  “I was a bad influence,” Caradine agreed, almost cheerfully. Or possibly just manic. “Destined for a bad end.”

  “Either way, they thought they owned us.” Lindsay’s laugh was harsh then. “And whatever we like to tell ourselves now, they did.”

  That sat on Caradine wrong. It made her feel as if the world were spinning too fast. Like she’d had too much to drink and one false move might force her stomach to betray her.

  “Well,” Templeton said, drawing out one syllable to about three. “Looks like we’re going to Boston.”

  Caradine glanced at her sister. Then looked around at these big, capable men arrayed around them in the shade of the lanai. And she knew the kinds of things that they could do. She’d seen a number of those things with her own eyes. But deep down, she wasn’t sure she believed that they or anyone could save her from this.

  “Do you really think that you can end this?” Lindsay asked. She was also sizing up the Alaska Force team, but she looked even less convinced than Caradine felt. “You look like you know how to get in a fight, sure. But can you actually end a war?”

  “That’s what we do,” Jonas said quietly, his dark gaze level.

  And by now, it was familiar to see the way they sprang into action once a decision was made. Isaac called Oz and put him on speaker. They started talking strategy and possibilities, producing tablets and batting around ideas.

  All the while Caradine sat on the couch with her sister and the niece she hadn’t known existed, and couldn’t tell if the weight that felt trapped inside her chest was joy, a sob, or some heavy combination of both.

  “Looks like they think they can do it,” Lindsay observed in a low voice, eyeing her husband and the way he’d joined in the conversation. “But don’t men always think they can do anything? Despite reality?”

  “They have a good record,” Caradine said, surprising herself.

  “How did you end up tangled up with a militia? Or are they mercenaries?”

  “Neither. They’re actually good men.” She caught her sister’s sideways glance. “I know. Believe me, I know. But they are.”

  They both sat there a moment, listening to the two-year-old babble mostly incoherent words. As if she were singing herself the kind of song neither one of them would have dared sing in their silent, scared house growing up.

  “I might look like Mom these days,” Lindsay said in a low voice, her gaze on her daughter. “But I’m no martyr. And there’s no way in hell I would sit by and watch someone brutalize my kids the way she did. I can’t even get my head around it.”

  Caradine looked at the little girl, her own heart jarring unpleasantly in her chest. “No. I don’t have to be a mother myself to feel the same way.”

  “Most days I forget,” Lindsay said softly. “I live my life in one of the most beautiful places on earth. We don’t have a lot, but we own everything we do have. And Koa’s family is wonderful. They actually love each other, if you can imagine such a thing. That isn’t to say they don’t fight, but it’s different. They don’t . . .”

  Caradine thought of that scene in the lodge, with all those people determined to learn the truth and love her anyway. Or before that, even, in Isaac’s cabin. With the hugging.

  Family, whether she liked it or not.

  “They don’t want to hurt each other,” Caradine finished for her sister. “They disagree, but they don’t try to take each other out when they do. I don’t really understand it, either.”

  Lindsay looked at her a moment, then cut her gaze to Isaac. “You and him? Do you have . . . ?”

  “We don’t have—” But Caradine stopped herself. “I have a family,” she said to her sister, and she felt a kind of riot inside. She couldn’t tell if she wanted to rip her tongue out of her mouth, or give in to that sob, or maybe it was all joy, all along. Maybe she was still too unfamiliar with it to recognize it. She had to cough before it got too intense. “I have a kind of family, and yes, he’s part of it.”

  And then, unsurprisingly, she wanted to die.

/>   Lindsay’s eyes got too bright, and Caradine was terribly afraid that hers did, too.

  “So you know how it is,” Lindsay said, though her voice was now a whisper. “Some days you just forget. And then something happens and you’re forced to remember, and that’s worse. Because we’re not safe. We’ll never be safe. And I can run forever. If I had to, I could pick up and leave right now. But I don’t want that for Luana. And if they find her—”

  “They won’t.” Caradine knew that coughing wouldn’t help the lump in her throat then. “They won’t. No matter who’s doing this, I can’t think of anyone better to stop them than these men. I promise.”

  And she was surprised when her sister reached over and put a hand on her leg, because that wasn’t like them. But then, Who were they now? Who knew what was like them after all this time?

  Lindsay wasn’t a princess anymore. Caradine wasn’t a problem. Maybe they blamed each other, but they’d also always trusted each other more than anyone else, growing up. And their own family had always been treacherous and violent and sad, but they’d gone ahead and built new ones, anyway.

  It felt simultaneously like some kind of betrayal and some kind of surrender to accept that she’d gone ahead and done exactly that in Alaska.

  Built a life. Built a family. Built a place to live, and then lived there.

  Despite her best efforts, she’d really lived there.

  Deep inside, something shifted inside her. Something she was terribly afraid might be hope, or its untrustworthy companion, what if.

  What if they really could stop this? What if she was finally free?

  “Julia,” Lindsay said then, fiercely, if quietly. “If they’re good men, that might mean that when it comes to it, they’ll make good choices. Proper choices. The way good people who believe in things do. Because good people don’t know what to fear. Not like we do.”

  Caradine looked down at her sister’s hand on her leg. And had an almost overwhelming urge to cover it with her own. She didn’t. She was still herself, after all.