Make Them Pay

by Allison Brennan

And none of that even delved into the bonds in the first place—their origin, what Eden might say as to why she was stealing them, why they were in the RCK safe for six years. How they landed in Sean’s safe.

  Everyone had banded together to bring Lucy home safely. Everyone except Liam and Eden.

  She didn’t deserve a pass, and Sean would move heaven and earth to make sure she didn’t drag everyone through the mud.

  “I’m working with the AUSA to offer Eden ten years on the single charge of kidnapping a federal agent, with the chance of parole after five.”

  “No.”

  “Sean, I can’t cut out any more time. The AUSA wanted twenty to life.”

  “I’m with the AUSA on this one.”

  “I’m weighing my options here. Eden will never give up twenty years. Five? Yes. I think you can convince her.” He paused. “And I’ll do everything in my power to keep her in for the full ten.”

  Sean didn’t want to talk to Eden, but he didn’t see that he had a choice.

  “Do you want to discuss this with Lucy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll meet you downstairs in fifteen minutes.”

  Sean went back down the hall to Lucy’s room. Jack was sitting on the chair, eyes closed. Sean was certain he was asleep, but he opened his eyes when the door swung shut.

  “You look and smell much better, Rogan.”

  “Rick wants me to convince Eden to take a plea deal. Five to ten.”

  Jack didn’t say anything.

  “You can’t think this is a good idea.”

  “You know it’s the only option.”

  Sean sat on the edge of Lucy’s bed. “Eight years ago, the powers that be made a plea deal with one of Lucy’s rapists behind her back. I’m not going to do it, not without her knowledge.”

  “Do what you think is best, Sean.” Lucy opened her eyes.

  “I woke you up.”

  “I don’t think I’ll sleep well until we go home.”

  “I’d take you there right now if I could.”

  She smiled. “I know.” She looked so exhausted. “What is the deal?”

  “Five to ten. Sealed plea.”

  “It’s a good idea.”

  “You could have been killed.” Worse.

  “I wasn’t.” She took Sean’s hand. “I listened to them. Liam was driven solely to find this treasure, and resented Kane for … well, everything, it seems. For stealing the bonds, for kicking them out of RCK, for being himself. Liam hated Jack because he thought Jack replaced him at RCK. Liam felt inferior to Kane on one hand and superior on another. If I had more time, I could make a better assessment.”

  “You seem to understand already.”

  “Eden just wanted to make her brother happy, and she felt isolated from the family. She said something—I don’t remember the exact words, but she wanted to come home and help raise you after your parents died but didn’t want to live by Duke’s rules.”

  “That was her choice.” But Sean hadn’t known Eden even had considered coming home.

  “She has this sense that if she were there you wouldn’t be siding with Kane, you’d be with them. For her, it was like a … competition for your loyalty. And then Kane cheated and you picked his side.”

  “People died, Lucy. Because of her.”

  “Liam died, and she’s not going to get over that anytime soon. Sean—I’m not going to tell you to talk to her if you don’t want to. But I’m okay. I’m here no matter what you do.”

  “Okay.” He looked at Jack. “Can you—”

  Jack put up his hand. “This chair is a hell of a lot more comfortable than sleeping in that damn jeep under a dripping tree last night. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  * * *

  “You’re a hard man to find, Kane Rogan.”

  Kane turned from the window and faced Siobhan. What a sight for sore eyes.

  She walked over to him. “I told you that you needed stitches.”

  He looked at his bandaged arm. “This wasn’t because of the bullet in the mountains. This was a stray during the rescue. Stubborn slug needed to be surgically removed.”

  She leaned up and kissed him. He wanted to kiss her back, but his thoughts were a mess.

  “Hey,” she said. “What happened? Is this about Liam?” She took his hand and sat him down on the hospital bed. He was getting ready to leave—head over to Jack’s place—but he needed to make sure everything was square with him and Sean.

  “He shouldn’t be dead, but Armstrong didn’t have a choice. I get that. The whole situation was fucked from the beginning.”

  “Liam worked himself up into a frenzy, Kane. You can’t be responsible for the insane conclusions he came to.”

  “I don’t feel responsible—except that I didn’t tell Sean everything to begin with.”

  “Sean forgives you.”

  “Rick’s taking Sean over to the local FBI office to talk to Eden, convince her to plea.”

  “Sean is a smart guy. He’s going to see past any lies.”

  “But Liam and Eden believed it all. I saw that when Liam was talking up on the mountain—I saw that he believed every word he said. And I thought of all my failures.”

  “Of course you did.”

  He glanced at her, surprised. He’d heard Siobhan angry and frustrated, but this tone was pure venom. She saw his failures, too.

  “Kane,” she said sharply, “you always take the world on your shoulders. Always. You have to recognize that Liam and Eden made their own decisions. They were based on truths that only Liam and Eden believed. They worked up this fantasy in their minds, based on some truths, some fictions, some partial truths, and twisted it all up. To make you into the bad guy. Dammit, Kane, you are not the bad guy!”

  “I can be.”

  “You are never the bad guy, Kane. Yeah—sometimes you do things that could be considered bad when taken out of context, but you are a hero. To everyone who matters, including me.”

  He wasn’t. But damn, he loved hearing Siobhan say it. A ray of hope that she actually believed it had him begin to forgive himself.

  “Rick told me earlier that the information you got out of Zapelli, about Marisol’s son, led to his identification. The New York FBI office has put the boy into protective custody, and as soon as the DNA tests come back and prove he’s Marisol’s son they’ll be reunited.”

  Kane hadn’t known. He still wished he hadn’t let Zapelli walk away from the barn and wasn’t sorry he was dead now. But at least that bastard had given him one solid piece of information that led to Marisol’s son.

  “You did that, Kane. Without you, Marisol may never have found her son.”

  “I am glad about that.”

  “Look at me.”

  He did. He touched her face. She didn’t flinch. Instead, she moved closer.

  “I don’t think you’ve truly processed all of this—I saw that when we were talking to Carlo in New Orleans. You looked … lost. I’ve never seen you look that way before.”

  “Why do you love me, Siobhan?” he whispered.

  “Because I would be a fool not to—and you would never love a fool.” She smiled and kissed him.

  He pushed her down to the hospital bed and returned the kiss. Hard. He was a possessive man and he wanted to possess Siobhan. Having her in his life, every day, would be worth giving up his solitude. Only her.

  She moaned into his lips. “Kane … we can’t—”

  He touched her breast, through her blouse, and she gasped.

  “Come home with me.” His voice was low.

  “Home? What home?”

  “Jack’s place. I’m moving to Hidalgo.”

  “You are?”

  “I need to put down roots.” He pushed himself off of her—reluctantly, but the last thing he wanted was for someone to walk in and see them in bed together. Even if they were clothed now, that wouldn’t last. Not for long.

  He wanted to make love to Siobhan in private.

  “You’
re really doing it? A house?”

  “With a private airstrip and easy access to jobs in Mexico when needed. Away from people—remote. The house belongs to RCK, but it’s mine. I would be more inclined to make the arrangement permanent if I had a gorgeous, stubborn, smart, impossible, sexy redhead in my bed every night.”

  “Every night? You want me to move in with you?”

  He liked that she looked a little scared and a lot excited at the same time.

  “You don’t have a house. I know this because you own the house with Andie in Virginia, but you only visit twice a year.”

  “You and Andie talk too much.”

  “I want you, Siobhan.”

  “You just want me?”

  “Just?”

  She kissed him. It was a long, slow, deep kiss. “I. Love. You.”

  He was a smart guy, but it took him a long minute to realize he’d never told her the truth. “I fell in love with you when I saved your gorgeous ass in Tamaulipas ten years ago. When you told me you weren’t leaving without Hestia and I could go to hell if I didn’t help rescue her.”

  He kissed Siobhan. “That was ten years ago and I have loved you ever since. I didn’t want to. My life—it’s not a life I wanted for you. But now … I don’t want to say good-bye. I don’t want you to leave me. If I have roots here, you’re part of that.”

  She touched his face. He kissed her fingers. “I’m never leaving you, Kane. Let’s go to your new house.”

  “Our house, Siobhan. Home is only where you are.”

  * * *

  Eden was being detained in the local FBI office. Two armed guards were on the door, and Eden was handcuffed to the table. There was a cot in the room, and she’d evidently be sleeping there tonight.

  She looked like hell. But when she saw Sean, she smiled. “You came.”

  “I heard you wanted to talk to me.”

  An odd mix of emotions flooded Sean and he had to sit down. He tried to make it casual, pulling the chair out, sitting down, adjusting the seat. But he was conflicted. About everything.

  When they were young, Eden and Liam had taken Sean everywhere. Eden had to—she was tasked with babysitting him until he was eleven. Sometimes she treated him like the annoying younger brother, other times she was fun. They played games. They rode bikes. He helped her with her math homework, even though she was five years older than him. He’d always understood numbers.

  Eden and Liam both loved movies—in fact, they’d instilled in Sean a deep love of movie theaters. Sean had always been partial to action adventure, but Eden loved the classics—and Sean would watch them with her. She would talk about history and the art of the time period and gossip about the actors and why she loved Eva Marie Saint or Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart. She loved everything Bogart was in.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Sean didn’t say anything, and Eden took his silence as permission to keep talking.

  “We made a mistake. A big mistake, but you’ve got to understand, Sean. Mom and Dad searched for years for the treasure. Four months before Dad died, he gave Liam everything. All the notes, the journal, the clues, the codes. You’re the one who cracked the code! If it wasn’t for you, we’d never have found anything.”

  Kane had said something about that, and Sean remembered a project his dad had him work on. All his dad said was that it was an old book dug up and preserved from a dig in Mexico, but he couldn’t figure out the code, it seemed sophisticated for the era. It wasn’t sophisticated, but because of its age it seemed foreign to anyone living in the modern era. Once Sean realized that, it was easy.

  “We wanted to include you in the search. It’s a family journey. It started with Mom and Dad and Uncle Carlo, and you should have been just as involved as any of us.”

  “Why didn’t you wait until I came home?”

  Her eyes shifted, just a fraction, and Sean knew she had an excuse. Or thought she did. “We didn’t have time.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Kane took the bonds out from under us and put us in a serious situation with some bad people. We were under their thumb for six years—we had to get them the bonds. They knew we’d found them; if we didn’t bring them, they would have gone after them.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not! The only reason we had to take Lucy with us was because she overheard me talking on the phone to Dante and if she told Kane what she’d heard we’d be screwed.”

  Eden leaned forward. “You’re my brother, Sean. I hate that Duke and Kane got between us.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “They did! They were the main reason Liam and I preferred to live in Europe.”

  “You lived in Europe because you went to college there, and you worked for Rogan-Caruso overseas.”

  “You should have been with us, Sean. On our side.”

  “There are no sides, or there shouldn’t be, in family.”

  “You’re right! But they made you take sides.”

  She was borderline delusional. “I’m thirty-one, Eden. I’ve been a legal adult for thirteen years. You could have contacted me. Called. Emailed. Visited. The last time I saw you was what … four years ago? I was in France with an old girlfriend and we all had dinner. And before that … seven years ago. Before that?” He shook his head. “When I was expelled from Stanford, I was at the lowest point in my life. You knew what Duke had done, but you didn’t reach out, didn’t call, didn’t say, ‘Hey, move to Europe and live with Liam and me.’ You know what? I would have. That’s how angry I was at Duke for micromanaging my life, and at Kane for staying out of my life.

  “But you didn’t. Because I wasn’t of use to you and whatever con you had going on at the time.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Let me explain something to you, Eden. I don’t know or care what Kane did six years ago. I—”

  “How can you say that? He replaced us with the Kincaids!”

  Sean stared at her. What the hell? He had no idea what she was talking about.

  Eden continued, “He got rid of Liam and me, brought on Jack and Patrick Kincaid.”

  “There was no connection.”

  “If you believe that, you’re an idiot.”

  “No, Eden.” Sean stood up and leaned over the table. “I’ve reached out a dozen times over the years. I sent you an invitation to my wedding. You used it against me. You took the woman I love more than life itself to a country where there was a fucking bounty on her head.” He pounded his fist on the table to avoid punching his sister. Eden was sitting here trying to justify her actions? And yet she claimed she was sorry? “Lucy was kidnapped and blinded by you, then taken by brutes and bound, and almost sold to a drug cartel as bait for Jack. This damn treasure is a pathetic excuse to justify your indifference to Lucy’s pain and suffering.”

  Sean took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “You do not know me. You do not know Jack Kincaid. But I know you. You’re selfish and conniving. Liam is dead, and you’re trying to cast blame on everyone but yourself and your twin.”

  Her bottom lip quivered.

  “I’m truly sorry Liam died. If he hadn’t, he would have paid for his crimes just like you will pay. And I wish I could make him pay, locked up in prison, sitting and realizing that he was solely responsible for what happened to him.”

  “No—”

  “You will take whatever plea agreement Rick Stockton offers you, because if you don’t, I will fight tooth and nail to have you locked up for the rest of your life.”

  Tears dripped onto the table. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do mean it. And if you think I can’t make it happen, you don’t know me.” He leaned closer to her and spoke quietly. In case the FBI was recording this conversation, there were some things better left off the tape. “I gave up hacking years ago, but I am still the best in the business. You prolong this, you will face my wrath, and I guarantee you will beg for the plea deal when I’m through with you.”

&nbs
p; Sean walked out, ignoring Eden crying behind him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Nine Days Later

  St. Catherine’s was an old, traditional Catholic church, and with tradition came reverence—including organ music. Sean supposed the music was nice, but it wasn’t his style. All he wanted was to kiss the bride and disappear. He and Lucy hadn’t been alone—just the two of them—in nearly two weeks. Sean was a people person, but he had had it up to his eyeballs with people.

  Federal agents. Cops. Doctors. Friends. Family.

  Family.

  It was enough to have him run from the chapel, grab Lucy as she was walking down the aisle, and whisk her away to Las Vegas for a quickie wedding and a long, long honeymoon.

  Of course he wouldn’t do it. In one hour Lucy would be his wife, they would be joined forever in front of the God Lucy believed in and Sean was beginning to believe in. In front of their friends and family. But mostly, most important, it was him and Lucy. What they had done, what they had endured, to get to this point.

  The organ music stopped, then an acoustic guitar picked up. Sean didn’t recognize the tune, but it was a million times better than the mournful organ. He smiled—then froze when the door opened. He’d wanted just one minute alone and sought out Father Mateo’s office to have that minute, and now he was reaching for a gun that was no longer in his holster. It was his wedding day, and he’d be damned if he was going to stand at the altar armed.

  He was pretty sure his brother and soon-to-be brother-in-law would both be packing.

  He relaxed when he saw Kane enter. He was in his dress blues. The last time Sean had seen Kane decked out like this—with a chest full of medals—was for their parents’ funeral.

  “I asked Siobhan to do something about the music, I hope you don’t mind. Father Mateo said you hadn’t gotten back to him about what to play, so he picked something.”

  “Thank you, it was on my to-do list, and then, well…” He listened. “Is Siobhan playing?”

  Kane nodded. “She agreed to stay with me at your house while you’re gone, then we’re moving to Jack’s place.”

  “You mean your place.”

  “Right. My place. Siobhan and me.” Kane smiled. He rarely smiled, and when he did Sean was relieved. His brother deserved to find the same love and happiness that Sean had found.