by Karen Rose
No, not just something. He’d taken information from her when he shouldn’t have. He really shouldn’t have. He couldn’t just give her something. He needed to answer her damn question.
Which meant he needed to give her the thing. The thing he’d kept hidden for so long. The thing that had fueled his resolve, keeping him going for the past three years.
He closed his eyes, summoning the name he hadn’t spoken aloud for twenty years. He hadn’t even told Griff or Mama D. Because they’d asked. Are there others like you at home? We’ll take them too. They’ll be safe with us. We promise. But Decker had shaken his head, because there hadn’t been anyone. Not anymore.
He opened his eyes and found Kate checking email on her phone, thinking him asleep. ‘Her name was Shelby Lynne,’ he heard himself say in a voice he hadn’t heard in nearly as long. He’d buried that accent the day he’d buried her. Ruthlessly he buried it again.
Kate lowered her phone to her lap slowly, lifting her gaze to lock with his. ‘Who was she?’
‘My sister,’ he said, not in the voice he’d worked so hard to cultivate, but still infinitely more cultured than the one he’d had back then.
Her mouth opened, then closed on a quiet sigh. ‘Is she dead?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah. Twenty years ago. She was eleven.’
Her eyes closed. ‘I’m so sorry.’
I’m sorry, Jack. I’m so sorry. Kate’s life hadn’t been all roses either. Maybe that gave Decker the courage to keep going. Or maybe he just wanted someone to know. If he’d died the week before – or any of the other times he’d gotten too close to a bullet or a knife – then no one would have known the truth about Shelby Lynne McGee. Someone needed to know about her.
Someone needs to remember her. Someone besides me. ‘She deserves that,’ he murmured.
Kate’s eyes flew open. ‘Who deserves what?’
‘Shelby Lynne deserves to be remembered.’
Kate’s smile was both sweet and sad. ‘So tell me about her, and she will be.’
Seven
Cincinnati, Ohio,
Thursday 13 August, 2.30 P.M.
Kate held herself very still, afraid to even breathe, afraid the slightest movement would break the moment and give Decker an excuse not to say what he was so clearly struggling to get out. She hadn’t lied. The emotion, the devastating loss, had been all over his face – the face of a man who’d maintained a successful cover for three long years.
He’d shocked her when he’d said his sister’s name the first time. Not the name itself, but the accent. The tone. It was like he’d been dubbed by a very young man from the Deep South. Shalby Lee-yun.
The second time he’d said it, he’d sounded like himself. Like the voice she’d heard the first time she’d laid eyes on him in the traffickers’ compound. A little rough, with just a hint of the South.
She had found no record of a sister, living or dead. So she sat there, statue still, waiting.
‘My name isn’t Griffin Davenport,’ he said, and she merely blinked. That seemed to amuse him. ‘No gasp of surprise, Agent Coppola?’
‘Not really. I wanted to find someone who’d come to sit with you if I got called away. Someone who was family.’
‘Someone who wasn’t dead, like Agent Symmes.’
She nodded. ‘I dug a little, called in a favor or two. Got a friend to check your file for any past emergency contacts.’ She shrugged when his brows lifted. ‘My friend didn’t just give me the list. I had to be specific, like “Is a person named Davenport listed as next of kin?” She told me that at one time your contact information had included Griffin Davenport IV, of Biloxi, Mississippi, and his wife, Ramona. Both died during your first tour, only a few months apart.’
His throat worked as he struggled to swallow. ‘I’d been in for two years. Only earned one pass home. Mama D didn’t tell me she was sick during that trip home, that the doctor had told her to stay off her feet. She had a weak heart, but she stood in that kitchen over a hot stove, making all my favorite foods, while I sat at the table telling her about the desert and all the things I’d seen. She always wanted to travel, but never did. Turned out that her heart was why. She’d needed to stay close to the doctors her whole life. It was also the reason there’d never been a Griffin Davenport V. I didn’t know that until I was standing at her grave with Griff. That was my second pass home.’
‘For her funeral?’
‘Yes. Griff died soon after. I didn’t get home to put flowers on his grave for another year after that.’
‘You changed your name to his. To Griffin Davenport’s.’
He nodded. ‘A name is important. Griffin Davenport’s name was respected everywhere he went. If Griff said it, that was like currency. You could depend on his word. I didn’t want to be known by the name I was born with, so I copied his.’
‘He knew?’
A nod. ‘He went with me to the courthouse to fill out the paperwork on my eighteenth birthday. Never asked me why I wanted to change it. I always figured that he knew. But the fact that I took his name meant something to him, I could tell that. I never knew they’d wanted kids so desperately, not until after Mama D had died.’
‘What was the name you were born with?’ she asked, and his expression became rigid. Reluctant. And embarrassed.
‘Barron. Barron Robert McGee.’
Kate hesitated, not sure how to answer. ‘Barron’s not a terrible name. It’s different.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘It wasn’t the first name. It was the last one. And the fact that everybody knew my daddy had been Duke McGee – and yes, Duke was his given name. His brother was Earl. My mother told me once that she wanted to name me Prince, but my father didn’t want his son outranking him.’
Kate opened her mouth, then closed it again. ‘I don’t know what to say to that.’
He laughed, shaking his head. ‘You and me both.’ Then he sobered. ‘I don’t know what your house was like growing up, but living with Duke and Lizzie McGee was no bed of roses. Duke was always in trouble, always in debt to the wrong people, was always getting into fights and drinking away what little paycheck he got. Finally he fought with the wrong guy and got his head smashed in with a whiskey bottle. They don’t break in real life like they do in the movies.’
He was trying to lighten his tone, but she could see the tightness around his mouth. ‘No, they don’t,’ she murmured. ‘How old were you when he died?’
‘Ten. Shelby Lynne was seven. Things were pretty rough, though, even before Duke died. Children’s Services took me away from them because of his violence – once before Shelby was born and twice after. One of the times we were placed together and one of the times we were in separate fosters. Both times my mother managed to get us back. Then he died and she went wild. They’d dabbled in coke and weed together, but when he died, she went over the edge.’
‘Grief will do that to a person,’ she said quietly, thinking of Jack.
He gave her an odd look. ‘No, she didn’t grieve. She was loving being single again. She was free of him. The drug use got worse and worse until she started having to turn tricks for her next hit. She’d bring men home and . . . well, some of them liked kids. I was old enough to run by then, but I stayed because of Shelby Lynne.’
‘You had to take care of her.’
Another nod. ‘I’d take her with me and we’d hide all night in a pup tent, then when the coast was clear, I’d take her home and get her ready for school. I did this for . . . for a long time. Months. Lizzie would get so angry – she could get better money if we cooperated.’
Kate drew in a breath, clenching her teeth against the need to say something foul.
‘To make a long story short, one night she was prepared. She put something in my food, and next thing I knew I was waking up, tied to the kitchen chair.’ He clo
sed his eyes. ‘Shelby Lynne was small for her age. Brittle bones. Bad nutrition, you know.’
Kate shuddered out the breath she’d been holding, her eyes filling with hot, angry tears. God, Decker. ‘You don’t have to tell me any more.’ Please don’t tell me any more.
He licked his lips. Swallowed hard. ‘Yeah, I do,’ he whispered. ‘Because I need to work this case with you, to find this partner of McCord’s, as soon as my legs will hold me up. HR is going to want to put me on medical leave, but I’m not going to cooperate. And I want you to understand why. And find a way to get me in.’
Shit. She understood. She really did. She also understood that under all that muscle and bone, he was frail. He needed to rest. But deep in her heart, she knew that in his place she’d need to see it through. Dammit, Decker. Why do you need to be a goddamn hero?
Same reason I do. She sighed. Shit.
‘I’m listening,’ she said quietly. Not making any promises, but listening.
He drew a breath of his own, opening his eyes to hold her gaze once again. She thought she’d see sorrow and devastation and mind-numbing rage, but she saw absolutely nothing at all. Not a flicker of emotion in his blue eyes. His face might have been a stone.
‘When I woke up, I could hear everything. Shelby was screaming. I think that’s what woke me. I broke the chair to get free. Lizzie was passed out on her bedroom floor, a needle still in her arm. Shelby was hysterical. Bleeding. Everywhere. The guy grabbed his clothes and ran. I called 911. Cops took one look at the place and knew what had happened.’
Kate shuddered another breath that hurt her chest. ‘Please say they didn’t blame you.’
‘No,’ he said, still in frightening control. ‘They knew I’d kept her away from the house. And why. They’d seen my tent. It was a small, small town, barely a dot on a map. The cops knew. Everybody knew. But everybody said it wasn’t their business.’
She wanted to lay waste to that town and to every other town where people knew and did nothing. She wanted to vent her rage somehow. But he was holding on to his control, so she would too. ‘What happened to Shelby Lynne?’
‘I sat with her in that hospital room for three days. She was catatonic when she was conscious. Most of the time she wasn’t, which was . . . merciful.’ His chest rose. Fell. ‘She died.’
She died. How did a person contain that much pain in two little words? ‘And Lizzie?’
‘Died later the night it happened. OD’d.’
‘And the guy? Did the police catch him?’
‘No.’ It was unyieldingly stated.
‘Was he a stranger?’ she asked softly, suspecting that there was a great deal behind that no.
‘No. He was quite well known in town.’
‘Is he still alive?’ she asked, keeping her tone oh-so-casual.
Decker met her gaze head-on. ‘No.’
She nodded, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes so that he could not mistake her meaning. ‘Good. I hope, however he died, that it really hurt.’
One side of his mouth lifted in a grim smile. ‘The cops said that it most definitely did. That’s what I read in the newspaper, anyway. He disappeared the night Shelby Lynne died. Must have gotten drunk and fallen in the river. Lots of underwater debris in that river. His body was pretty banged up when it washed up on shore outside of Natchez.’
‘And Barron Robert McGee? Where did he disappear to?’
Another twitch in his taut cheek. ‘He got placed in foster care because he was only fourteen and not capable of taking care of himself, according to the suits at Children’s Services.’
‘Except that he’d been taking care of himself and his sister for years.’
A careless shrug. ‘The first two foster homes were run by nice people, but Barron was itchin’ for a fight. Which worked out just fine because the assholes in the school he attended were itchin’ to give him one. The third home . . . well, that one wasn’t so great. Foster dad liked blond boys. So I ran away. Hitchhiked my way to New Orleans on a semi, luckily with a nice guy. The next ride liked blonds, too, so I bailed and walked until I was so tired and hungry that I thought I’d pass out. And I was cold. I’d never been so cold. It was January and it can get down into the forties even that far south. I didn’t have a coat, so I found a barn and went to sleep. Woke up with a shotgun in my face.’ Both corners of his mouth lifted that time, surprising her.
‘That was good?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. Really good. Mama D didn’t like “tramps, hobos, or ne’er-do-wells”, but she had a soft spot for hungry boys with dirty faces. She marched me into the kitchen, her gun in my back, me with my hands up and everything. I thought about Mama D the night you dropped out of that tree and put your rifle in my back. I almost smiled at you, but you were armed, so I figured I wouldn’t antagonize you unnecessarily. Just like I didn’t antagonize Mama D.’
‘She was good to you?’
‘Oh, yes. They both were. Best day of my life, waking up in that pile of hay.’ He looked away. ‘I’ve never told anyone about Shelby Lynne and that night. When I got the opportunity to go undercover, I figured I’d put some drug traffickers out of business, and maybe reduce the number of Lizzies out there that might sell their children for a hit. When I found out about the human trafficking . . . it was a chance to make things right by Shelby.’
‘You didn’t do anything wrong that you have to make right, Decker.’
He shook his head. Hesitated, then drew another breath. ‘You didn’t ask me if I gave the police a description of the man who raped my sister.’
No, she hadn’t. Her gut had told her not to. ‘I figured if you hadn’t, there was a reason.’
Emotion flickered in his eyes. ‘You honor me. Maybe too much.’
‘I don’t think so. Was he a cop?’
He looked surprised that she’d ask. ‘No. But he was respected in the town and I was just Duke and Lizzie McGee’s white-trash kid.’ He started to say something, then closed his mouth.
Oh God. There’s more. Kate braced herself. ‘Go ahead.’
Decker met her eyes and Kate physically flinched. His expression was now as far from stone as anyone could get. This was the pain she’d expected to see.
‘He took pictures,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Of my sister. Uploaded them. The Internet was new then, but kiddie porn lovers had already made it their own. Once it’s there, it’s there forever. You might get it taken down, but you can’t erase it. It sits there, saved on hard drives like McCord’s, for perverts to view whenever they want. Some of the kids in the foster homes . . . they’d seen the pictures and recognized her. They made fun of her.’
Kate found herself reining in her rage once more. ‘You stopped them?’
‘Beat the shit out of them,’ he admitted.
Reining in her rage made her stomach hurt and her head ache. ‘Good. But it’s still there, on the Internet. You know it’s there and . . . that hurts. It’s gotta hurt, Decker.’
‘Only when I think about it.’
‘So, like all the time,’ she said gently.
‘Pretty much. These pictures . . . they spread out, get shared, and everyone says it’s a victimless crime. Tell that to the kids in the pictures,’ he said bitterly. ‘Trying to contain it’s like trying to contain a gas with your hands. It spreads like cancer, available to every pervert in every dark corner on the face of the earth. And there isn’t anything you can do about it except go after the bastards that make the shit, one at a fucking time.’
His cheeks were wet with tears and Kate wasn’t sure he even knew he was crying. She got a towel from the bathroom, wet it with warm water, then carefully washed his face.
He turned into her touch, his shoulders sagging. ‘So now you understand.’
‘Yeah. I understand.’ She brushed his hair off his forehead. ‘Yo
u’re really tired, Decker,’ she said soothingly. ‘You need to sleep.’
One side of his mouth lifted. ‘These aren’t the droids you’re looking for?’
She chuckled thinly. ‘I guess the force isn’t so strong in me. But I’m wiped from hearing this, so you’ve got to be wiped from telling it. Go to sleep. When you wake up, Dani Novak will be here. If I’m not here too, it’s because I’m working. But I will come back, I promise.’
‘Then we can do the ledgers,’ he whispered, giving in to the exhaustion.
‘You bet.’
She hung the wet towel on the bed rail and took his hand. With her other hand, she stroked his face until his breathing evened out and a light snore rumbled out of his mouth.
She heard the door open behind her, followed by a whisper. ‘Kate.’
She stepped away from the bed and turned to find Dani Novak watching her with a soft expression. ‘He’s asleep now,’ Kate whispered.
‘I see that.’
‘You on board for this private room gig?’
‘I am. Deacon and Adam have a place lined up. I’ve already consulted with Agent Davenport’s doctor. We’re planning to move him in an hour or so.’
Kate was surprised. ‘So soon? I thought the hospital hierarchy would give us at least a little hell about moving him.’
‘They did. They tried, anyway, but your boss let them have it. One of his agents was nearly killed here. Zimmerman was not kind to the hospital powers-that-be. One of the department heads suggested the FBI should have had security at his door. That’s actually when Zimmerman kind of exploded at them. His security would never have known to stop the nurse this morning, and the hospital can’t promise it won’t happen again. That’s when the powers-that-be beat a dignified retreat.’ She looked at Decker. ‘I’ll stay with him until he’s ready to be moved.’
Kate checked her phone when it buzzed with a text from Deacon telling her to meet him at the morgue. Appeared the ME had news. ‘An hour should be just enough time to find out what the ME wants to tell us about Alice.’ She gathered her things. ‘Thank you, Dani. All of us appreciate it.’
