by Kaylea Cross
Exhaustion hit him, dragging him down while he ran his fingers through her long hair. “You feel so damn good,” he whispered.
“Mmm, and I love all your muscles,” she whispered back sleepily. Her fingers stroked the spot over his heart gently. But she definitely wasn’t sliding off to sleep as he was about to. He could practically hear her mind humming.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Different things.” A slight pause. Then, “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“What happened to your sister?”
The question threw him so much that he tensed, yanked out of his contented glow.
“You don’t have to answer,” she said quickly.
She must be thinking about Amber. Of course she was. “No, it’s fine. I just haven’t talked about her in a long time.”
“What was her name?”
“Gloria. She was two years older than me.”
“Were you close?”
“We didn’t get along that great when we were little, but we got much closer when we both hit our teens.” He closed his eyes, focused on the feel of Megan curled into him as he continued. “None of us could wait until she got her driver’s license. My parents did shift work and in between they were constantly running us around to various sporting events and other activities. When Gloria got her license right after she turned sixteen, she started driving me to and from games and practices to give my parents a break.”
“That was nice of her.”
“She loved any excuse to drive my mom’s car around, so it wasn’t exactly a hardship for her. And she always let me pick the music.” He smiled as he said it, the memory not quite so painful anymore. “In the summer my mom would sometimes give us money to get an ice cream. We’d go through the drive through so we didn’t have to get out of the car.”
Megan made a soft sound, encouraging him to continue.
“That’s my last clear memory of her. She was singing along to a song I’d found on the radio. We were at the drive through window. She handed me my ice cream, a big smile on her face as we sang along to the chorus.”
Megan tipped her head back to look into his face. “What happened?”
He took a deep breath. “She dropped me off at my teammate’s house. I had just shut the front door behind me when I heard the screech of tires and the impact.”
He paused, the memory so vivid he could still see the ice cream tumbling from his hand on the front step when he threw the door open and saw what had happened. “An uninsured driver sped down the street without his lights on as she backed out of the driveway. He T-boned her right at the driver’s door. Broke her neck on impact. I was the first one there.”
He’d torn down the front steps screaming her name, his teammate and the parents right behind him. “Her eyes were open but she was struggling to breathe. She was terrified. She looked right at me, knew I was there. But there was nothing I could do. She died before anyone could even call an ambulance.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks.” He tucked her back into his chest, buried his nose in her clean hair. “I had a hard time with it. Mainly because she’d died after dropping me off. I felt like it was my fault. But watching her die without being able to do anything was the hardest part.”
And that’s why I hate not being able to protect you from everything.
He hugged her tight. “Were you thinking about Amber?”
“Yes. I can’t remember being separated from her, but they must have done it to make us forget each other.”
“They probably did.” No telling what the people behind the program were capable of after the things he’d learned.
“She also said some Valkyries betrayed her and left her to die to get a bigger cut of the money they’d earned on a joint op.” She shook her head. “I can’t stop thinking about it. It could all be lies, but what if it’s not?”
“We’ll dig until we know the truth.”
She looked up into his face, a smile curving her mouth. “We?”
“Yeah, we.” He tucked her back into his hold and wrapped his top arm around her back, willing her to relax and sleep. She needed it. “You won’t be facing this alone.”
This or anything else if he had any say in it.
Chapter Sixteen
Megan woke to utter darkness, surrounded by warmth.
Tyler was holding her. They were in Marcus’s townhouse. He’d stayed with her all night, helping to chase away the demons lurking in her subconscious.
But he couldn’t shield her from the horrible reality that her sister was being held for questioning by the U.S. government.
It weighed heavy on her mind. Even when she’d finally dozed off, she’d dreamed about Amber. Now awake, the fragmented memories she’d carried around all these years had come to life, full of new meaning.
Yesterday had changed everything. First the bombshell about having a sister, and Amber being implicated in the exposure and deaths of an unknown number of Valkyries.
Then there was Tyler.
Sleeping with him had been the most intimate experience of her life. These past twelve hours with him had blown her emotional shields off. Now she didn’t know what the hell to do.
People like her didn’t have relationships. Not real ones. They couldn’t. Not when she had no clue what a real relationship even looked like, and not with the danger she would bring to Tyler.
It was stupid to even hope that they could be a couple. Her reality was far different from the romance novels she read so voraciously. She was meant to be alone, and Tyler deserved more than she could give.
And yet… The thought of walking away from him was unbearable.
Anxiety roiled inside her, quickly edging toward panic. There was too much going on. She needed space. Needed to clear her head and rebuild her emotional shields before she faced Tyler again.
But first, she needed to see her sister.
Making sure she didn’t wake him, she eased out of Tyler’s hold by degrees, pausing when he rolled over in his sleep. She made sure he was deep under before leaving the bed to get dressed.
She told herself it didn’t make her a coward to leave without a word. She needed to sort out her feelings and figure out what she wanted to have happen going forward, and it wasn’t like she was ghosting on him and planning to never see him again.
There was a message on her phone from Trinity. Time stamped two hours earlier.
Need to talk to you. Call me when you wake up.
Megan wasn’t calling her at this hour. Besides, she had something to take care of first.
The sun hadn’t even touched the eastern horizon yet when she silently set the alarm, slipped out the front door and made her way to the nearest tube station a few blocks over. She felt naked without her pistol but carrying here in the UK was illegal, though she kept her blade strapped to the inside of her right calf.
Not technically legal, but given the situation there was no way in hell she was walking around without some sort of a weapon to defend herself with.
On the journey to the facility she stood with her back to the corner of the train car, watchful of the few people who got on with her, but her mind kept spinning. In spite of everything, she had a sister. In spite of everything, she wanted to believe Amber had told her the truth.
Faint shades of rose and gold touched the eastern sky as she walked the final block to the detention center. The guards checked her ID and took her blade as she entered. No one but the guards were armed inside the building. “Who are you here to see?” one of them asked her.
“Amber Brown.”
He frowned and checked his computer. “She’s listed as restricted access.”
“Alex Rycroft has given me personal access to her. Check her file.”
He typed something into his computer, studied first her ID and then her. “So he has.” He rose and radioed someone, alerting them that she was coming. “They’ve moved her to the third floor.
If you go up there, someone will escort you to her,” he told her, and buzzed her through the first set of secure doors.
Though it was early and no one else was around, the building was fully lit. Another guard let her into the elevator and rode up with her to the third floor, where another waited.
The new guard escorted her down the hall of cells and stopped in front of one. “We’ve removed her restraints but I can put them back on her. Did you want me to come inside with you?”
“No to both.” She wanted to talk to her sister alone, and not while Amber was in chains.
He swiped a keycard into a scanner and entered a code. “The cell’s under video surveillance. When you want to come out, signal us.” A small light above the door turned from red to green and he opened it for her.
Amber sat up on her bunk fixed to the far wall, blinking at the glare of lights as Megan stepped inside. The door shut soundlessly behind her.
They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Amber pushed her long, chocolate-brown hair over one shoulder and swung her legs over the side of the bunk. “What time is it?” Dark circles lay under her eyes.
“Just after four in the morning.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. Seeing her and the resemblance between them was still surreal. “You get any sleep?”
“A little. They were here until two.”
Megan frowned. “Who was?”
“Trinity and Rycroft.”
Trinity must have texted Megan just after finishing up here. They’d left the lights on, making it hard for Amber to sleep. Why? Trinity had to know that sleep deprivation wasn’t going to work. “What did they talk to you about?”
That wary, green stare measured her. “You know what.”
The list. The names of the Valkyries Amber had targeted and any other names contained in the encrypted files she had, so they could determine who was at greatest risk and take action.
“We made a deal, so to speak. To show good faith.”
Good faith? Megan drew a calming breath. She’d come here to see for herself if what Amber had said was true. Time to see if her sister was willing to share anything. “Did your trainer have any information about us when we were kids?”
“There was a partial file. Most of it was redacted. So I hacked the rest from the main system before they were able to erase it all.”
“And that’s when you found out about the foster care?”
She nodded. “I remember being taken away from you.”
Megan’s skin prickled. Screaming. A little girl screaming, the sound so full of anguish and fear that it made her heart race and clap her hands over her ears.
“No, I won’t go! That’s my sister, you leave her alone!”
A little girl struggling as a man picked her up and started to carry her out of the house. Her face was streaked with tears as she twisted around and cast a desperate look behind her. “Carly, no!” She shoved at him, trying to get free, her voice hysterical. “I need to stay with Carly!”
Megan swallowed, shaken as realization slammed into her. She was Carly. She’d watched the man carry her sister out of the house. “My name was Carly?”
“Yes. Mine was Ashley.”
Her pulse kicked up another notch as that name triggered another piece of her past.
“Ash, wait! I can’t keep up.” She’d pedaled her bike as fast as her legs would go, trying to catch up with her sister as they rode down the sidewalk. It was summer, the sun beating down on her. She was sweating. Ashley was way up the street now, almost at the next block.
She tried to keep up but her sweaty hands slipped on the handlebar grips. The front wheel wrenched sideways and she fell off the bike, skinning her knee.
She was trying not to cry as she got up and tried to get her bike back up on its wheels. It was brand new, with pink training wheels and matching streamers in the handlebars and now she’d scraped the paint off it.
Ashley rode up and stopped close by, her eyes wide as she jumped off her two-wheeler. “Are you okay?”
Her knee stung as much as her eyes as she wiped at the embarrassing tears. “I ruined my bike.”
Ashley reached out a hand to help her up. “Come on, it’s okay. Mom will fix your knee and Dad will fix the bike.”
Megan shook herself. The recovered memory was so vivid. How many more were locked up inside her? “Did you by chance find our old address?”
“Why?”
“I want to see something.”
Amber gave it to her.
“What city?”
At that Amber gave her a look full of empathy. But she answered. “Pasadena.”
They were from California? Yes, that made sense. In the bike memory it had been hot and dry. And she could see palm trees as she replayed the clip in her mind.
Willing her hands not to tremble, Megan pulled out her phone and typed in the address to check a satellite view of the house. Her heart stuttered when it appeared on screen.
A little white-shingled bungalow with a terra cotta tile roof. She recognized it instantly, and that window at the front that looked out onto the street.
Amber had told her the truth. At least about this.
Megan swallowed and turned the phone around for Amber to see. “The Christmas tree used to be in front of the front window. Do you remember that?”
Amber nodded, a sad smile on her lips. “Do you want to know our parents’ names?”
“Yes.”
“Beth and Randy Amesworth.”
To Megan’s horror, her throat closed up. She looked away, tried to compose herself but the tears burned the backs of her eyes regardless. Hearing her parents’ names, her and Amber’s real names, made this all too horribly real.
“There were forms in there about our foster care time, too,” Amber continued in a quiet voice. “But when I checked it, the paper trail went nowhere. Because it was all fake.”
Megan nodded, took a breath. “How did our parents die? Was there anything about that?”
“Not in the file my trainer had. But I found information in the files I hacked. It said they died in a car accident in Pasadena.”
She had a vague recollection of Amber—Ashley—and her huddling on a bed together one night, crying, and her struggling to understand what it meant that Mommy and Daddy had gone to heaven together. “So, our aunt ditched us, and the foster care system was a front for the program. Then they split us up and put us into different training facilities.”
“Yes. I stayed in California and you were taken to Virginia.”
Unreal. All that was missing from her memory too. “I thought I’d been born and raised there.”
The look in Amber’s eyes chilled. “That’s what they wanted you to believe. They were experts at manipulating us, and we were way too young to question them. They told me you died soon after they separated us. That you got hit by a car when you were out riding your bike one day.”
God, it was so awful. Megan stared at her sister, her mind whirling. What else about her life was a lie? “What about the others? You said they set you up and left you to die.”
Amber’s expression closed up, but anger burned in her gaze.
“What?”
Her sister stared at her for a long moment, the hard look on Amber’s face sending a chill of foreboding through Megan.
“Come on, what?” Megan demanded.
“It wasn’t just the others who set me up.”
Megan shook her head, frustration building like a pressure cooker inside her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
A bitter smile curled the edges of her sister’s lips. “Trinity and Rycroft didn’t tell you.”
Before? Or was this what Trinity had wanted to talk to her about? “Tell me what? I haven’t seen or heard from them since yesterday. They don’t know I’m here right now. What did they say?”
“The government. Someone from inside the program, probably. They orchestrated the op I was on that went bad. After the program was shut down.”
“How were you even operating at that point?”
“Officially it was shut down, yes, because of the media exposure with the Balducci trial. But a few of us were still operating, this time on a group op to settle an old score one of us supposedly had. But someone else had insider intel on that op. They knew I’d been up and left behind to fend for myself during the extraction. I think they planted some of the files I hacked on the others afterward, and some of the intel in them might have been fabricated.”
“Why?”
“Because this person knew I would want revenge. They were betting on me taking action on my own.” Amber looked away, her throat moving as she swallowed. “And they were right, because I sure as hell did.”
A lead weight settled in the center of Megan’s chest. She shook her head. “No.” Who would do that? Why?
“Yes, Megan,” she insisted, her posture tight. “Don’t you see? We’re liabilities to them now. All of us. A threat because we know things that would shake the intelligence world if any of this went public.” Her gaze drilled into Megan’s. “Especially me, after what I hacked from their systems.”
Suddenly it all became horribly clear. The pieces pulling together. “The hitter in Vienna. He was a former CIA contract agent.”
Amber lifted an eyebrow. “But he wasn’t just after me, was he? He wanted you too. And there are others. They’re out there hunting us right now. Any of us who are still alive.”
Blood rushed in Megan’s ears. This whole scenario was a nightmare. “But they knew we’d all go to ground. That we would all fall off the grid and lie low until the media attention blew over, and then disappear for good. They have no reason to eliminate us if we do that.”
Amber scoffed and gave her a get-real look. “They’re not going to leave loose ends.”
The ribbon of alarm she’d been trying to suppress wound around her stomach and pulled tight. Back when the Balducci case hit the media, she’d dropped everything and disappeared off the grid, just as she’d been trained to.
Eventually, when things had settled down a little, she’d taken the risk of contacting Marcus. Since then she’d stayed at his house, waiting for the pressure to ease so she could disappear and start over in a new place with a new identity.
