Mimics of Rune 02- Surrender
Page 6
It shattered.
The door flew on its hinges backward.
At a scream from somewhere inside, he braced against the wall, his gun in hand. “Lily! Lil!” He didn’t care if his own announcement would get himself hurt. He wanted Lily to know he’d found her—if he had.
Shuffling came from the left.
Cael pivoted toward it, following the noise until he arrived at an opening with his gun aimed right at a man.
Tony, or so Cael assumed, stood in front of Lily, holding her back against the far wall.
“Move away from the girl,” Cael said. “And I won’t kill you.”
“You’re not taking her from me,” the man said.
Lily struggled against the man’s hold.
“I said move, or I’ll shoot your kneecaps.”
“You’ll have to kill me first to get to her again,” the man said.
Cael cocked the chamber.
“No!” Lily’s harried screech had Cael tilting his head. She wiggled free of the man’s grasp but stood in front of him. “Cael, don’t.”
The man’s face ashened more than it had when Cael barged in.
Lily maneuvered until she stood halfway between both men, the kitchen island at her back.
Why isn’t she running to me? Did she come here on her own terms? Did Charley not tell me something? Did Lily find Angela and leave without telling me?
“Anj, what’s—who’s—what’s—”
The man’s questions served Cael well—he had the same ones. With his weapon trained on the man, he caught Lily’s movement in his peripheral vision.
She held out her hands, one toward the man and one toward Cael.
“Come on—” Cael stopped at Lily’s glare.
“Tony … this is Cael.”
The muscles in Tony’s jaw tightened. “You remember him, but not me?”
Lily brushed her face with her hands as the pink of her cheeks brightened. “Just … his name. I—I remember his name, like I remembered yours. Cael, this is Tony. My husband.”
That Cael managed to hide the flinch on the outside didn’t help the dagger that pierced his heart. When in the hell did she get married to her sister’s husband? What the hell is going on?
Her brow furrowed, etching deep lines into her skin. “I think Cael can help with Leigh’s case.”
Who the hell is Lee?
Tony took a step toward Lily. “Anj—”
She continued to hold out her arms, stopping Tony from moving closer.
Thoughts ran through Cael’s mind. Is she lying? Is she making something up?
Tony’s fists balled as he glowered at Cael. “Who the hell are you, and why did you break into my house?”
Even as she forced Tony back, the pain in Lily’s face told Cael she needed his help, though he didn’t understand why or what to offer.
“Give me a second, Tony. Please.” Lily flapped a hand in his direction. “I—I remember something.” She peeked up at Cael from between her fingers. “He’s … been helping me find a woman … Lily is her name. I think.” Her eyes widened before she hid them again.
“Exactly, and I need to talk with her … alone.” Cael tried to play along.
“I’m not going to—” Tony started.
“I promise not to leave the house.” Lily positioned herself with her back to Cael. “We’ll talk … in my office. Okay? I promise. I’m not going anywhere.” Spinning back to Cael, she said, “Put the gun down, please. I’m sure we’re all on the same team here.”
Oh, no. We’re not. Despite an internal struggle, Cael lowered the weapon a fraction of an inch. Confusion dominated his mind, flitting back and forth between anger and uncertainty—at whom to trust and from whom to extract answers.
Lily’s eyes darkened as she grew closer.
Tony reached for her.
Cael whipped the weapon up.
Tony halted, his body shaking, though Cael didn’t sense anger, only torment.
Lily shoved against Cael’s chest, backing him out of the room. At the doorway, she spun toward Tony. “Actually, go back to work. Let … Cael bring up more memories. If possible. I’ll be here. I promise.”
Not if I have anything to do with it.
“Get Max in a couple hours and bring him home. Like you’d planned. Maybe by then all this stuff will have fallen back into place.” She slid past Cael through the kitchen doorway.
He trailed after the sound of her footsteps across the floor, keeping Tony in his line of sight.
“Unless you can pop those eyes of yours into the back of your head, you’re gonna fall or hit something if you don’t turn around.” Lily’s quip made him want to smile, but he held that tinge of emotion back.
That Tony didn’t even budge had Cael wondering just what impact Lily already had on Tony’s life.
The sound of feet rising upward forced him to twist around. He raced after her, catching up on the fourth step.
For a second, he contemplated winging her into his arms and running back down, out the door and to his truck. He could do it. She weighed next to nothing.
“Don’t even think about throwing me over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes,” she whispered. “I made a promise, Cael. So just forget it.”
The authority behind her demand made him blink. He stayed on the topmost step as they reached the second floor landing. Lily paused at each of the pictures on the walls—-dozens of them at a quick count. She drifted to the other side, from one to the other, up and down.
“Lil—”
She held out a hand, waving him off, perusing further until she opened a door on the left. “In here.”
On a deep intake of breath, Cael pressed forward. He grabbed the door by its edge and flung it closed but caught it before it could slam. With a soft click of the latch, he secured the lock.
She stared back at him from her perch at the side of a desk.
Cael stormed to her, stood at her toes and grabbed her biceps, though he didn’t squeeze. Just the contact, the touch between them relieved twenty-four hours of building tension.
Her lids closed as if she held the same feelings running through her body.
Comfort. Happiness. Trust.
Not truth, though.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
• • •
He’d evidently come to whisk her away, though Lily wished he’d leave—-his territorial nature had rippled from him in waves. “Did you get married?” Not a hint of sarcasm came through Cael’s question.
Lily shook her head. “No. He thinks I’m his wife—”
“What the fuck? You let him believe that? Don’t you know who he is?” Cael dropped his hands from Lily’s arms as though he’d burned himself.
Lily tilted her head when he stomped away, fearing she’d say something that would make him angrier than he’d already become. She needed his help not his rage. “I don’t know what you mean, Cael.”
He stormed back to her, his eyes set and full of fury. “That man is your sister’s husband.”
Lily stumbled backward. If her eyes could have opened wider, they would have popped right out of her head. She bumped into the edge of the desk, toppling the pen holder. Her breath caught in her throat at both the idea that she had a sister and Cael’s assertion she’d connected with her husband. With a hand on the flat of the desk, she forced out the only word that came to mind. “Wha—What?”
Cael ran a hand over his head as a breath gushed from him. “You didn’t know.”
Lily blinked, her heart hammering in her chest. “Kno—know … what exactly?”
He stepped to her and took her arms just as her knees buckled. While keeping her upright, Cael tilted down to her. “I found her twenty years ago when you asked me to search.”
“But—but you didn’t tell me.”
He shook his head. “You were interested until the word ‘institution’ came into the conversation, and that threw you off balance for a week. I couldn’t bear to make you hear m
ore, so I tucked the data away. It wasn’t much anyway, just a connection.”
Lily jerked free of Cael’s hold, pushed off from the desk and marched to the window. Waves crashed against rock on the other side of the road. “Why didn’t you tell me at any time in the last twenty, then?”
Tony’s Mercedes backed down the drive but stopped at the end, the trunk and bumper sticking into the road. Contemplating not going? Trust me, I understand. A car came up behind, its horn blaring, and Tony completed his exit.
Lily pirouetted back to Cael.
The seriousness of his glare had her wavering between curiosity and indignation. At the hurt in his eyes, though, she took a step toward him. Cael, just like Charley and James, knew some of her history but not all of it. The realization Cael knew more than Lily herself frenzied her pulse.
She backed up and lowered to the window bench, needing time to think through Cael’s announcement. She’d desired freedom from her memories, to hide from them until the moment her life ended. She’d made Charley promise never to bring her to California so they wouldn’t surface on their own. Over the years, she’d managed to stop thinking about them and to live a fulfilled and happy life.
Mostly.
“Talk to me, Lil.” Cael’s softness had tears welling.
She met his gaze. “I have a family, and you didn’t tell me?” Her breath hitched. “All this time and I have a sister? Nephews? A real connection—” She faltered as she stood and sat back down. “No, no. No! This isn’t possible.”
Cael marched up to Lily, knelt at her toes and took her chin in his hand. “Lily.”
She closed her eyes. “No, Cael. Angela’s Mom … is she my Mom? Is she—”
“Maybe. Yes. I’ve kept up.”
“You’ve followed them? I’ve wished for my own family for so long and you didn’t—You didn’t tell me!”
“You didn’t want your family, Lily. You wanted the ideal. You didn’t want to know about this. You wanted the fantasy. When in reality, you have me.”
She stepped around him. “I have you?” Even as she said it, the harshness of her tone sent her back a foot. “I didn’t mean that, Cael.” Lily buried her face into her hands.
Charley, James and Cael had become her family—had saved her from herself. The woman, the mother, the inhumane person who’d sold her to the government for experimentation—Lily hoped never to see her, but to have held from her that he’d found them broke the trust she’d had in Cael.
“Oh, my goodness.” Her head popped up. “She started changing, I’ll guess, about a year ago. She’s my real niece. That means Max is my real nephew. They’re real, Cael, not fantasy. I feel it.”
“Feel what?”
Lily crossed her arms over her chest and returned to the window. “A line. A tug. A something when I’m around Max. Maybe that’s why. Because he’s actually a relation.” She spoke to the ocean, leaving Cael behind her.
The sensation that he stood within touching distance hit her before his arms wrapped around her, and his chin rested on the top of her head. “I didn’t tell you because you weren’t ready. You never asked again, but if you had, I’d have come clean. I just never expected them to steal you from me.”
“Steal me?” A small giggle bubbled up. Standing in Cael’s arms, she went on to recap the events as she knew them. “I need to find her. And Leigh.” Waves crashed as she took comfort in Cael’s arms, warming her throughout. “I—I have to deal with this. Right?”
“No, you don’t. Ever. I can get you away from here.”
She shook her head. “I think I need to … you know … at least know of them. Not … the woman, though. Not her.” Cael would know she meant her mother.
“Blood relatives aren’t always the best family.”
She spun in Cael’s arms, laying her head against his chest. Friends. They’d been friends for so long, yet the sound of his heart beating beneath her ear sent tingles to her center. “If Angela ended up in Rune, do you think she knows about me? Do you think she was looking for … me?”
“She could have been, but why, then, are you back here without her—your—daughter-niece?”
Lily shook her head. “I don’t know. Leigh could have been at a hotel or something when a case of mistaken identity brought me here instead of Angela. I don’t know what the PI Tony hired told him except that she was spotted in Rune, and Tony wasn’t able to get in touch with her, so he offered a reward for her return.”
“Like a missing ring or dog? That’s cold—”
“No, Cael.” When her hand snaked up his chest, the muscles under his hunter green shirt jumped. “He loves her with more than his heart and soul. I can feel it when he talks to her and about their separation. They’ve been apart for two months now, and on this last attempt to find a solution for their daughter, she went poof. She quit communicating with him about three weeks ago. Maybe a month.”
“Right after Charley and Wyatt—”
“Could this be related to them getting together?” Lily asked.
Cael’s hands rubbed up and down her back. “No idea.”
“I want to find her and the girl. I need to help them.”
He lowered until he met her gaze straight on. “Do you really look like her?”
Lily nodded. “It’s uncanny. We could be twins, though I’m twenty-seven years older than her. Do you think Angela is a Mimic?”
“No. Otherwise, she’d have recognized the signs from going through it herself. She’d have known how to deal with it.”
“Right. True.” Lily kept her hand against Cael. “Who then? How?”
Cael pursed his lips. “There is one other player in California who knows what you are.”
Searing pain erupted within Lily’s heart like a knife slicing through. “My mother.”
Cael’s lips touched Lily’s brow. “I’ll deal with that part. You just take care … of the kid.”
“If she told Angela about Romania, do you think Angela took Leigh there and left her? Why would she do that again? It’s not—” Her breath caught as tears slipped over the rim of her eyes.
Cael pulled Lily in tight. “We don’t know anything, yet. Lily, I’m really, really sorry. This isn’t how I wanted you to find out about any of this.”
Air gushed from her. He understood. He always did. “I know.” She relaxed, breathing in the scent of Cael, thankful she had him. As a friend. “Will you help me find Leigh?”
His fingertip ran down her spine. “Of course.”
“I can’t leave Tony and Max.”
Cael held Lily at arm’s length. “You want to keep mimicking Angela until we can return her? But … Lil … next week is your birthday, and you can’t—”
She tugged herself back into his fold. “If we can figure out where Leigh and Angela are before next week, all will be okay. I know I’m not very good …”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” His arms squeezed around her. “You can definitely do it, but … what if we don’t find her? Are you going to hide for a day when your hair pales and thins, when your eyes turn that little bit of yellowy-green, and when the freckle you hate so much on your cheek comes back?” His finger slid down the side of her face, right over the spot she removed after every forced birthday change back to her true self.
“You found me in a few hours. Won’t you be able to find her in, maybe, a day?”
He brought her hands up to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “Princess, you gave me the easiest tracking mechanism of all. You texted me from a phone that is probably still sitting inside this house. If she’s been avoiding Tony, there’s a reason. If she loves him the way you say, she’s probably protecting someone … maybe even Tony himself … or Max. If she’s not dead, she wants to be hidden for a reason. Charley—”
Lily gave a quick head shake. “She’s focused on the wedding.” And so should I be.
“Charley can do some searching with Wyatt and James back home. We’ll ask Maggie to mimic Angela, and you and I—”
“She’s been with Chase for three weeks. I think she’ll have learned a thing or two about being a mom. And from the best kid on earth. You say so yourself, you know.”
“But she’s not … nice.”
Cael smirked. “This’ll be a good gig—a good test of her patience.”
“I’m not leaving Tony. Get Maggie here, Cael, but I’m not putting him through more. Or Max. They need … some normalcy.”
He lowered to her eye level again. “You have to prepare yourself for the other possibility. The what if something has happened to her answer. You either put them through hell now or in a little while.”
Tears threatened as Lily considered Cael’s logic. What if something did happen to my sister, and I’ve just given her husband more hope than I should have. She gasped. “What if I stay?”
Cael cocked his head. “You’d … you’d stay? Is he a match for you?” His tone vibrated with deadly seriousness.
A screech had Lily spinning as Tony’s Mercedes bumped its way up the drive.
“You have to go. I’ll tell him you were just giving me an update.”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”
“He’s not going to be happy about housing a guy who pointed a gun at him.”
The muscles in Cael’s jaw bunched. “I’m not leaving.”
7
“Angela?” Tony’s voice carried from downstairs.
“Mommy?” Tiny footsteps raced up the first floor stairs and down the hall to the second stairs. On the second floor, they scrambled across the room above, echoing from the area to the upper right of where Cael stood.
“Mommy?”
At the second call out, heavier feet started from downstairs, too, stampeding up as the tiny ones raced back across above.
“Angela!”
Cael nodded to Lily. If ever she needed to play a role, he understood it to be then. She’d never live with herself if she couldn’t give the little boy something back. Her own history, her own sorrows told Cael that—despite the pain it inflicted on his heart. He could imagine her as a mother, but he never pictured her as the wife of another man.