I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I spotted the bowl of chicken tortilla soup steaming from the center of the tray. Without invitation, I picked it up and tucked into it before I’d even settled on the low sofa. Carrington laughed softly as he watched me.
“Some things never change.”
Chapter 4
Aidan
This wasn’t Disneyland.
She promised me Disneyland, but this wasn’t Disneyland. It wasn’t even an amusement park like Disneyland. It was a dirty motel room that smelled of something yucky. The blankets on the bed smelled like old McDonald’s and the lady that stayed with me spent all day on her phone instead of playing the board games Shauna left for us.
“I want to go home.”
“Your parents are out of the country. We told you that.”
“I don’t care. I can stay with McKelty and Grammy.”
“They aren’t there, either.”
“Yes, they are!”
The woman looked up at me with mean eyes, meaner than how Mommy looked when she was maddest. “How would you know? Don’t be a little brat.”
She said that a lot. When I asked to go to the bathroom. When I asked for something to eat. When I complained about the smells and the fuzziness on the old TV. Don’t be a brat. But I wasn’t being a brat. My mommy said I was a very good little girl. And I missed my mommy.
I threw myself back on the bed even though the blankets were smelly and buried my face in the pillows.
I wanted my mommy. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t have my mommy.
Chapter 5
Carrington
“You think if we find this Tyson woman, we’ll find Aidan?”
“She was the one who walked away with her.” Joss popped a small piece of bread into her mouth, shoveling food in like it was her last meal. “David was able to pull her image from the Skype program.”
“I thought it was all wiped clean.”
“David’s a genius.”
I inclined my head, forced to concede to that fact. “So, Georgia.”
“Georgia. This itinerary says she’ll be in Atlanta tomorrow afternoon. We’ll be there waiting for her.”
“And if she doesn’t have Aidan?”
Joss looked up, the color dampening in her cheeks. “We take this one step at a time, Carrington. We can’t look too far ahead.”
I put aside the plate of fruit I’d only been nibbling at, leaning forward as I regarded my wife. “We have to look a little further than just meeting some woman in Atlanta. How are we going to get her to talk to us? What are we going to do if she doesn’t give us the answers we need? What if Aidan is somewhere else, with someone else?”
She sighed heavily, that sigh I knew too well. It meant that she had something she was hoping not to tell me.
“Mike Spencer. He has the badge and the clout we need to convince her to talk.”
“You’re going to invite him into this.”
“Yes.”
I couldn’t help the heat that rushed through me just at the mention of that man’s name. He was in love with Joss. It didn’t take much to see it on his face every time he looked at her, every time her name was simply mentioned in his presence. I knew it the moment I met the man and even Joss confirmed it. Yet, she was spending all this time with him, turning to him in this time of crisis when she was trying to keep me in the dark.
It pissed me off.
“I should have known your boyfriend was involved in all of this somehow.”
She grunted, her mouth full of bread. “He’s not my boyfriend,” she announced, the words muffled by the food. “He’s an FBI agent who happens to be…” She paused to swallow. “Who happens to be part of a task force assigned to work the Mahoney case.”
“Convenient.”
“It is convenient. He’s FBI. He can fly to Georgia and meet us. He can arrest her and put her in an interrogation room. He can get the answers we need legally.” She paused, setting her food aside just as I’d done. “You want this done legally, don’t you? You want these people punished for what they’ve done, right?”
“Of course I do!”
“Then we need Mike.”
I got up and snatched the dishes off the low table to take to the room service tray, slamming them down hard enough to make the whole thing rattle. “It would make me feel better if you didn’t call him Mike.”
“What do you want me to call him?”
“Agent Spencer? That FBI agent? That fool over there who’s never going to touch you or do anything that’ll cause you to break your marriage vows?”
“That’s a long name.”
I didn’t find it as amusing as she did. In fact, the whole thing was weighing on me like a three-ton elephant balancing on my shoulders. I didn’t want her to touch me and I did. When she came up behind me and ran her hand up between my shoulder blades, I wanted to push her away as much as I wanted to hold her until the sun went dark.
When was the last time she’d touched me spontaneously, just because she wanted to? It felt like there’d been this chasm between us for so long I couldn’t remember what it’d been like to be at ease with my own wife.
“I know you don’t like him. I know this whole thing is unpleasant, but it’s what has to happen, Carrington.”
And then she said things like that.
I pulled away. “You’re always telling me how things have to be, how things will play out. But you never ask my opinion on any of it.”
“Because I know what you’ll say.”
“Do you? Do you really know me that well anymore?”
I watched her, watched this shell come down over her. The expression on her face stiffened, the way she stood, the way she held her shoulders…it was like she’d gone from being someone I knew better than anyone to someone I’d never even met.
“I knew you once,” she said softly. “At least, I thought I did. But that man wouldn’t have done the things you’ve done.”
“Can’t we have just one argument without you bringing up the past?”
“Can you trust me? Or do you constantly have to see your infidelity as my fault?”
I tilted my head to one side, regarding her with incredulity. “What makes you think I see that as your fault?”
“Because you can’t even look at me! You—” She stopped, turning on her heel. “This is not the time for this.”
“If this isn’t the time, when will it be?”
That stopped her. She slowly turned and regarded me through a slight crack in that shell she’d wrapped around herself.
“I thought we had a good marriage. I thought after everything we went through when we first met, we could survive anything.” She rubbed her hands over her face, this momentary revelation of the absolute exhaustion she was laboring under breaking my heart. “When you cheated on me, it threw me for a loop. Not so much the act itself, but the fact that all it took for you to stray was a little disappointment.”
“It wasn’t just disappointment, Joss.” I gestured toward her, the movement taking in every inch of her slight frame. “Look at you! You’re this perfect saint who came into my life like some sort of storm and saved my daughter—saved me—from a threat I didn’t really even understand. You did something I never could have done and then you kept doing it over and over, changing my life and McKelty’s life in ways that I can’t even begin to express. And all this while going out to save the goddamn world every day! And I couldn’t even give you the baby you wanted so desperately.”
“I’m not a saint. You of all people should know that!”
“But I don’t. To me…” I pounded my fist against my chest to emphasize what I was saying. “To me you’re this miracle that I didn’t even know I needed. And I let you down. The last time I let someone down, she didn’t survive it.”
“I’m not her, Carrington.”
“I know that. Believe me, I know. But you matter more to me than anything. I guess I just…I’ve always been afraid I wasn�
�t good enough for you and I guess I thought that if I made you leave before you saw that, it would be easier somehow.”
Tears started to choke me, balled in my throat like the proverbial frog. I had to turn away because I didn’t want to see the hurt and the disappointment that burned in her eyes. I hated myself for what I’d done and hated even more the fact that it had led to the insanity that had us in a hotel room in the middle of Mexico searching for our kidnapped daughter.
“I fucked up and I know it,” I said over that lump in my throat. “I gave them exactly what they needed to force me to Wyoming. They knew exactly how to play me. And the things they made me do…” I groaned. “There’s so much that we’ve never even talked about.”
“Because I don’t want to know.”
“I don’t know why you didn’t leave me the second they pulled me off that stupid ranch. I don’t know why you didn’t let them turn me over to the FBI, why I’m not rotting away in some cell somewhere.”
She didn’t say anything and I couldn’t will myself to turn around to see if she was still there. I half expected to hear the slamming of the door, expected her to walk out on me. Again. She’d already packed her things and moved out of our home. What was to stop her from leaving me here and filing for divorce the moment her feet hit American soil again?
“You’re not in jail because of Ash,” she finally said in a voice that was so low I almost didn’t catch it all. “Clint Butler told him about your father. Told him why you did what you did.”
I could actually feel the blood draining from my face as she spoke.
“It wasn’t about your infidelity at all. None of it was. It was about you trying to protect your father’s legacy, about you trying to keep the girls and your mother from knowing the truth about him. That it was your father that brought the Bazarovs down on you and McKelty in the first place because he had a deal in place with Mahoney long before anyone had even heard the name.”
“How’d he know that?”
“Clint spent his entire adult life hunting Mahoney. He knows things we haven’t even thought to ask about.” She waited a beat. “Ash realized you did what you did to protect me and the kids. He talked to his FBI pals and convinced them you were as much a victim in all of this as he was.”
“Just like that? I kidnapped him and they just let me walk on his word?”
“When did you know what your father had done? When did you know about that company Bazarov warned you about?”
She was talking about the story I’d concocted for Sutherland and Kirkland and everyone in Wyoming who interrogated me after they rescued Ash. I couldn’t tell them the truth because Joss was right there. I didn’t want her to know the truth.
But the truth always comes out.
I sank into a chair and buried my face in my hands for a long moment. “He told me himself, told me when I joined the company. Told me to be careful of these people and to not go out of my way to inspect their cargo. He said they paid for the house we lived in, the cars we drove, the nursery I was putting together for my child. And I listened, agreed to it all because I had no idea what it all meant, and in some way I didn’t want to know. And when I figured it out…I was in too deep. But they promised to leave us alone if I followed their instructions on the Bazarovs. Refuse their demands, record their threats. And hire Gray Wolf. I did all of that and they disappeared, stopped sending business our way and never contacted me again. I thought it was over.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because the truth would reveal the lie our relationship began with. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want you to look at me differently.”
“Instead, your lie via omission of facts put our entire family in danger.”
Her words hung like a sword over my head. If I gave the wrong response, it would all be over for me. Memories flooded into my mind as I frowned, thinking.
“Doesn’t it seem like Mahoney had it out for us from the very beginning?”
She grunted. “What do you mean?”
“He was very specific about Gray Wolf. I had to hire Gray Wolf. There was even a delay in you guys actually coming to work for me because Ash missed our initial meeting due to David’s surgery. Do you remember that?”
“I do.”
“The threats from Bazarov conveniently stopped for a while then, too. It was like Mahoney told them to back off until Gray Wolf was ready to resume regular business.”
I looked up at her. Her head was tilted slightly to one side. “He couldn’t have known Ash would put me on the case. I didn’t take cases that involved children back then.”
“Why did he put you on it?”
“Because everyone else was occupied…” Her eyes widened slightly. “Do you think he had some inside knowledge of what was going on at Gray Wolf?” She shook her head. “I don’t see how that’s possible, but if he was manipulating you, what was to prevent him from manipulating us, too?”
“It was four years after Isaac and Esteban. And didn’t Carl Runion kill himself about then?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know exactly when he died, but it might have been.” She sank onto the couch. “You think Mahoney was behind us working together? Us getting together?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. That’s what he does. He manipulates people.”
“For what purpose? To allow us just enough happiness before he took it all away?”
“Maybe. Maybe to him this was just killing two birds with one stone.”
“What does that mean?”
I sat up a little straighter, dragging my hand over the top of my head. “He blames you for his nephew’s death. And me? Right before the Bazarovs came into the picture, I arranged for a port inspector to take a look at some of his company’s cargo. It cost me in some fines, but it cost him more because they confiscated the items. Guns and antiques…I don’t know for sure what else was in there, but all of it was illegal. I did it anonymously in a stupid attempt to get out from under their thumb. By then, I knew who they were and what they were up to. I wanted nothing to do with it and I naively thought that would fix things. The next day, the Bazarovs showed up.”
“And you think Mahoney targeting you, targeting our family, and stealing Aidan has as much to do with that as it does the deaths of his niece and nephew?”
“Niece?”
She nodded. “It’s long story.”
“I think it’s possible. He’s not a guy who forgives easily.”
“Everything’s connected,” she said softly. “It was my family Runion murdered, Ash had him beat up in prison when he didn’t get a long enough sentence, and you were trying to cut off an important exporting solution for his business.” She stood and paced the room for a second, her billowy blouse moving around her hips like a short dress. “And then Wyoming and all this…I still don’t understand why he waited so long to come after us. But, I guess, in his mind, it makes sense.”
“Maybe he waited because he didn’t intend to do anything to us until we played a part in his downfall.”
“But why use me and Ash to get rid of the Bazarovs? Wasn’t there someone else who could have done it?”
“Maybe he was hoping for retaliation. Maybe he didn’t think Avdonin would fall to Ash as easily as he did.”
“But to wait seven years!”
I shook my head. I didn’t know what to say. He had to be clinically insane to concoct a plan that spanned that many years.
She suddenly turned and focused on me. “The real estate deal you were working on up there in Wyoming. What was that all about?”
I shrugged. “He was buying up a bunch of land in and around MidKnight to build a couple of resorts. At least, that’s what Bodhi told me.”
“Bodhi. You never spoke to anyone else?”
“Not really. Conway told me to speak with Bodhi, that he’d give me all the information I needed. And he did. He always knew where everyone was and what they were doing. Those cameras, I guess.”
“We
never really wondered why that was so important to him that he went to Wyoming himself. We should have wondered…”
“Do you think it’s relevant?”
“Everything’s connected, right?”
I got up and went to her, lightly brushing the back of my fingers against her face. “You’re exhausted. I’m exhausted. Maybe this is all conjecture for another day.”
She nodded. “I should go call Mike.”
I bit back the ire that that statement demanded. “We’ve got to find our girl. That’s all that matters.”
Tears filled her eyes. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Are we ever going to find our way back to each other? I mean…obviously things can’t go back to the way they were. Too much has happened. But do you think we’ll find a way to survive this?”
“I certainly hope so.”
That seemed enough. She rose up on her tiptoes and kissed the tip of my nose. “Meet me at the town square at dawn.” She turned to leave, pausing with her hand on the doorknob. “Do you remember that evening a few months ago when I was getting dressed to go to a club where one of my operatives was working undercover?”
The memory wasn’t hard to recover. She’d worn a dress that she bought to drive me crazy during a client dinner. It pissed me off to see her don it for something as dangerous as an undercover assignment.
“I remember.”
She studied my face for a long moment as though she wasn’t sure I remembered it the way she did. Or maybe she was debating over her next words. Finally, she sighed.
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
She was gone before I could stop her. I should have stopped her.
I fell into bed a short time later, naked in a futile attempt to fight the humidity that caused sweat to drip from every pore. When I closed my eyes, I found myself transported back to the night she had mentioned earlier.
“Where are you going dressed like that?”
“Out.”
“With who?”
“It’s business, Carrington, I told you that. I’ll have a couple of operatives with me.”
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