Virtues (Base Branch Series Book 8)

by Megan Mitcham

  Her daughter’s wide eyes drank in every word.

  “I couldn’t help you without placing you in danger, but I could help him. As much as I saved him, taught him, he saved me more. I was in a dark place.”

  “You were alone too,” Rin whispered.

  “I don’t mind solitude. I’ve grown quite fond of it over the years.”

  “Then what?”

  “It was you. I couldn’t bear another minute away from you, no matter what. I’d decided to take you, to steal you away from everything and everyone you’d ever known, so I could be your mother again. I knew it was reckless and so damn selfish, but I couldn’t stop myself. I’d made plans, paid for new papers. The entire time I knew I shouldn’t, but I would have.”

  They’d stopped on the sidewalk close to the storefront. Rin stared at her as if she’d grown snakes for hair. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I met Luck.” Cara blinked away collecting moisture and pressed on. There was no way to know how many days, hours, minutes they’d have together. Her daughter had a right to know everything. “I saw the rage he had for his mother, and I was terrified.”

  “You were scared I’d reject you.” Rin swatted at a stray tear. “Okay.” Her head bobbed in a furious beat.

  Cara’s insides twisted.

  “Okay,” Rin said again with both palms up. “I think I’ve had enough for today.”

  “Okay.” The skeleton, muscles, and ligaments holding Cara together fractured. She stumbled back a step.

  “No, I don’t mean I want you to leave. I just. I can only take these stories in little doses. It’s so much to wrap my head around.” She cupped the sides of Cara’s face. “I want to hear it. I need to hear it. And I want you to stay. In fact, since I don’t know what to look at for Luck and me, I have a few apartments and condos in the area we could look at for you.” Her daughter swatted several windblown strands from her face and forced a smile.

  She’d missed that smile, watching it morph through the years. The weight that had lifted yesterday returned with a vengeance and extra pounds. She’d missed the thousands of times her daughter’s hand had reached for her…and she hadn’t been there.

  Sweat clung to Cara’s upper lip. The niggle leapfrogged to full-on gnawing of her cerebellum. She grabbed Rin’s hand and yanked them into a narrow alley at the end of the block between the row of shops and the first clump of townhomes. Cara herded her daughter past the beer cans and cigarette butts toward the outlet at the back of the shops. Inside her chest, her heart raced ahead as if she was in a marathon. The alley walls wavered. Her steps faltered.

  “Hold up.”

  Rin grabbed her elbow with her free hand and guided her to the brick wall. They were exposed. They had to run.

  “Head between your knees.” Rin shoved her head down.

  Cara tensed to protest, but suddenly, upside down, the world stopped vibrating.

  “If you’re not ready to look for a place, all you have to do is say. No panic attack necessary.”

  Panic attack? Cara placed her hands on the knees of her navy slacks, but the sweaty palms slipped off. She settled for her elbow and dragged one breath after another into her lungs. Jesus. She couldn’t pick an apartment or a townhouse. She couldn’t move forward because every time she looked into her daughter’s brilliant blue eyes, joy and sorrow crushed her soul.

  That stunning face popped into her field of vision tilted at an odd angle. “That better?” Cara’s back slid down the wall, bringing her to a crouch. Rin straightened. “There’s a park less than a block from here. Why don’t we go sit and people watch?”

  “Stop!” The demand flew from Cara’s shaky lips.

  “Stop what?” Her daughter gave as good as she got.

  “Being so nice to me. I abandoned you. I don’t…” Her voice cracked. “I don’t deserve your smiling face and concern. I know you’re angry. I’m angry.” A hiccupped sob stopped her tirade.

  Rin crouched in front of her and leveled their gazes. “I wasted my teenage years being mad. I would smash a rock through a car window just to watch it shatter. I’d set things on fire and relish in the destruction. I’d get into fights to forget, for one minute, how much I hurt.”

  Cara looked away. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “I was so angry I missed my youth and nearly destroyed my future.” Rin wrapped her hand around Cara’s wrist. “Anger won’t make me better. It won’t make you better either.” She met her daughter’s gaze. “I can’t imagine what you went through, what leaving a child would do to someone.” She couldn’t take it. Her gaze dropped to the dirt, but Rin pulled her chin up. “Even if it was for my own good. We’ve both suffered. Now, it’s time to heal.”

  But how? Killing Popov hadn’t helped much. Reconciling with Rin was a start, but the weight still compressed her insides.

  10

  Tyler’s knuckles hovered over the flimsy door, ready to knock again when a loud metal click and thunk jarred the thing to life. It groaned open. Cara stood in the gap with a sheet pinned haphazardly over the soft mounds of her breasts and a spit-shined pistol aimed at his chest. Gone was the prim hardass, and in her place was a disheveled, vulnerable woman.

  “Shit.” She moaned louder than the door. The barrel of her gun lowered to the ground. One hand held the gun and front of the crumpled sheet, while the other hiked an end and wound it around herself.

  “Morning.” He tipped his imaginary hat.

  Red camouflaged the whites of Cara’s eyes, rimming the striking blue with despair. Still, she glared, showing a bit of that hot, cynical, tear-him-a-new-one-as-soon-as-I-kiss-him demeanor he’d come to expect. Her gaze lowered to the coffee in his left hand and the paper sack in his right.

  “Coffee and breakfast? What do you want now, a kidney?”

  “Nah, I’d settle for a peek under your sheet.”

  “I have a weapon.” She waggled the tip of the pistol.

  “Darlin’, from where I’m standing, you are a weapon.”

  A snorted groan accompanied her eye roll. She turned into the room, leaving him in the open doorway. Tyler took the indifferent invitation and stepped inside. Stale air—the prepackaged, overused kind—assaulted his nostrils. He left the door open for several beats, hoping it would help circulate some oxygen. Also, it was the only source of light in the room.

  The comforter lay in a heap on the floor at the end of the king-size bed next to a pile of navy slacks and white shirt. Lace panties and a sheer bra topped the heap like whipped cream. A duffle bag lay on the counter at the far end of the room with its contents spilling out on either side. Near the sink, a tube of toothpaste had lost its cap among the toothbrush, assorted compacts, and mascara.

  Cara sat in an armchair beside the nightstand, traded the pistol for a small signature white and red box, and drew her feet into the seat. Haunted eyes stared ahead at a blank television screen and flipped up the lid. She tipped the pack and extricated a cheap red lighter. After closing the pack and wedging the plastic height between the index and middle finger on her right hand, she opened and closed the package again and again.

  Tyler closed the door, plunging the room into darkness for twenty stilted seconds, while his eyes adjusted to the faint shafts of light seeping in through the heavy curtain. In a sad melody, Cara continued to open and close the box. Two short steps brought him to a small round table. When he dropped the bag, it crashed like a cymbal in her pitiful tune. The cup thumped. He grabbed one of the two chairs from under the table. It smacked down in front of the armchair, sparking her ire. She stopped the incessant beat and kicked her bare legs onto the floor.

  “I didn’t peg you for a smoker or a slob.” He straddled her legs and sat.

  Cara donated a hollow laugh. “They belonged to my husband.”

  “Rosik Idlen?” Surprise and something else translated into a clipped tone.

  “The very one.”

  “He was Russian.”

  She offered a flat-line stare in retur
n.

  “Marlboros?”

  Her gaze raked from his boot to belt buckle and back. The chant, ‘Don’t pop wood,’ played round and round in his brain. It didn’t help. The thought of Cara married to the miserable excuse for a human did.

  “He had a secret obsession with cowboys, always smoked these in the privacy of his home study and watched old Westerns whenever the help had gone home for the day.”

  She hadn’t said their home.

  “I didn’t know you married him.” He also didn’t know why it mattered one way or the other.

  “How else do you think I got him to support Gorbachev and let me sneak into his files? A mistress holds a man’s cock, but a wife holds his ear and those of his friends. Even if he thinks her inferior.” She smiled with vacant eyes. “It actually helps.”

  An insidious vision of Cara under the heel of the potbellied asshole chilled his blood. “Why keep them?”

  Her gaze livened at his growl. She shoved the lighter inside the pack and set them on the nightstand. Long fingers cocooned the small box as though they protected a baby bird from a raccoon. Her hand stayed outstretched, but she leaned forward aligning their eyes.

  “Actions and reactions,” she breathed.

  “Care to explain?” Her musky scent overtook the staleness, spiking his brain with pheromones. The chill vanished, replaced with a warmth similar to a three finger shot of whiskey.

  “You first. Why are you here?”

  “Nate headed west. He has family in Chicago.”

  He studied her thick brows and the proud ridge of her petite nose. Dark circles shadowed her eyes. The steep rise of her forehead curved gracefully around her hairline to the sharp edge of her jaw.

  “That’s it?” Her fingers slid from the pack and gripped the front of the sheet. Haughtiness returned, drawing her mouth into a calm pout.

  “Not even close.” Tyler leaned forward, narrowing the gap between their mouths. The pulse bumped in her long column neck, but otherwise, she remained perfectly still. Blond hairs kinked from sleep lounged along her shoulders. A damp curl nestled in the hollow of her collarbone.

  “Tyler?” Her breath warmed his lips.

  “Mmm?”

  “You know I’m old enough to be your mother.”

  His gaze continued down the slope of her shoulders, down the taut muscles of her arms. He swallowed the excess saliva pooling in his mouth and met her gaze.

  “Not even close.”

  Her jaw twitched. “My daughter is more your demographic.”

  “Is she now?” His head tilted, and he eased ever slightly closer.

  Cara closed the gap between them. Her nose coasted up the edge of his cheek. His eyes closed, committing the caress to memory.

  “She is.” Her words danced between his stubble and coasted into his ear.

  “Good to know.” He opened his eyes and turned them on her in challenge. Their gazes held heartbeat upon heartbeat.

  Her lips parted. She flicked her tongue across her back teeth and then stood. The white sheet grazed his nose from her breasts, across her abdomen, and to her belly. Blood rushed to the farthest reaches of his body, draining away his intelligence. He’d plunge headfirst and ask questions later. She drew him in. Her sorrow. Her body. Her branded soul.

  “It’s too bad she’s taken.” Cara stepped around his legs and was gone.

  Tyler forced his head to stay upright when all he wanted to do was let it hang. His skin tingled. His hands shook. He forced the reaction down.

  “Rin and Luck are moving in together, just as soon as they agree on a place.” He turned to find her hand on the door. She twisted the knob and jerked it open. “So you’ll have to look elsewhere for entertainment.”

  “I’m not looking for entertainment, Cara.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Not a damn thing.” It was just too fucking bad he’d found it anyway.

  He’d looked for years, needing something to fill the patchwork of holes every kill left in his heart. Most of his comrades could lay waste to the enemy without a second thought. Good versus evil. End of story. Growing up the way he had—hand raising animals not strong enough to hack it, and then marching them to their death—he’d learned that every life mattered. He’d seen nature in her raw and unabashed fury, and he knew that only some of the times were clean-cut lines of good and evil. Most often, they were the difference in culture and upbringing. Tyler hadn’t chosen this life. It had chosen him. He was good at it, but it took a toll.

  When he’d grabbed Khani Slaughter’s hand in an unspoken proposition all those months ago, and she’d rebuffed, as she damn well should have, he’d recognized the sick pattern for what it was. He respected the hell out of his lieutenant, but most days, he didn’t understand her dry sense of humor or why the hell she wore so much makeup. No way had he wanted her as his own; he only wanted her company as he’d wanted the company of so many before her…to dull the pain of guilt. Guilt, by all accounts, he shouldn’t feel.

  He stood, replaced the chair, and pulled a sheet of paper from his back pocket.

  “What’s that?”

  “A list of townhouses and condos in decent neighborhoods.” He strode to the door.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because surveillance is boring.”

  “I knew you were watching.”

  “Sure, you did.” He grinned.

  Her cheeks flushed, and she ushered him outside with a wave of her hand. He obliged with a nod. “Good day, ma’am.”

  “Why are you smiling like a fool?”

  His boots stalled on the lip of the threshold. “Because you didn’t help your argument.”

  Cara’s brow knitted, but she clamped her mouth shut. He waited for a beat and then turned away.

  “There are ten years between Rin and me,” he tossed back. He walked to the asphalt and then turned. “There are only nine between you and me.”

  Disheveled hair shook with her denial.

  He nodded and smiled.

  “That’s a lifetime.”

  “Not from where I’m standing.”

  “You wanted to know about the cigarettes?”

  His head bobbed in confirmation.

  “They remind me that nothing we do is without effect. The decisions we make bear out over time. I refuse to make another decision that will hurt the ones I love.”

  “What if those same decisions hurt you?”

  “I don’t feel much anymore.”

  “Your eyes tell a different story.” He winked. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Before she could protest, he turned and walked away.

  11

  A chemical burn worked its way from Cara’s nostrils down the back of her throat. At the corners of her eyes, coalescing tears and sweat added to the violent sting, and her lids battled with furious blinks. Black chunks and brown suds covered both her hands. A smudge of dust, dirt, and the ever-present grease lashed the back of her wrist. Specks of tainted water ruined the blouse she’d haphazardly worn to the occasion.

  “I thought I knew all of them, but this is a particularly cruel new form of torture.” Cara brushed rogue strands of her high ponytail off her cheek with the top of her forearm. She hunched at the waist to bear more weight on the front burner of the food truck’s stove and its stubborn halo of baked on fat.

  “At least you’re upright. The shit keeps dripping in my face.” Luck’s voice echoed from the oven to her right below the sludge topped griddle.

  “Don’t let it get in your eyes. You’d go blind. I think I might from the fumes alone.” A tear rolled down Cara’s nose and dripped onto the stove, creating a tiny clean spot among the swill.

  “I thought opening the garage doors would help.”

  “It didn’t.” The back double doors hung open, letting in light that streamed from the street but did little in the way of ventilation.

  Luck extricated himself from the oven and the narrow alley that ran the length of the truck. He reach
ed around her. Metal screeched against metal, forcing an ache into her molars. He trundled out the back, and seconds later, the food sale window bloomed wide, bringing with it a current of air not exactly fresh but certainly less toxic. The front door to the food truck opened, and Luck stepped inside.

  “I thought you’d opened that door already.” Cara straightened. After hunched over for so long, the muscles in her lower back protested.

  “Never occurred to me.” Splatters of brown soiled his face, but it couldn’t hide the wide grin that contorted his features, jaw to brows and everything between.

  “Are the fumes getting to you? How long were you in here scrubbing before I showed up?”

  “Don’t get all mom-ish on me. I’m fine, just distracted.”

  “About?”

  “The possibilities.” He actually hopped. Not a big leap, but a small fit of excitement his body couldn’t contain. His gaze immediately flew to hers. A manly throat clearing followed. “It’s open now. Is it better?” Without waiting for an answer, he riffled through a box full of old rags, scrub pads, and various cleaners.

  “Yes and no.” Dust sticky with layers of oil stuck to the vents above the cook space. Mold grew like grass around the sink’s drain.

  He looked at her from under his arm.

  “For the price, you’d think the truck would’ve been clean enough to eat off the floor.” She pointed at the thicket of dirt covering the stainless steel under Luck’s feet. “I’m not eating off that, and I’ve eaten in some shitholes.”

  “Oh. No, this isn’t that truck.” He stood and tossed a rag past her onto the yawning oven door. “I got this puppy for a steal and was able to put back a lot of the money from the sale of the Bentley for inventory and a down payment on a place.” His gaze slid over the sink, and his nose crinkled.

  Rin and Luck had fought for everything they had. Adversity created character, strengthened dignity. They were proof. Cara didn’t want them to fight anymore.

  “If you need money, you know—”

  “I don’t want to touch that money.” Luck’s staunch tone bounded off the rigid surfaces.