Trusting Zane

by Casey Hagen

  Hell and damnation, he would not lie to the boy, as much as instinct told him he shouldn’t admit the truth. “Yes.”

  “What happened to them?”

  Zane scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “They lost.”

  Tyler nodded. “Good.”

  The peel of the doorbell had them both jumping.

  “Hang tight,” Zane said, getting to his feet.

  “Don’t answer it,” Tyler whispered, his fearful eyes going to the door.

  Zane crouched down before Tyler again to look him right in the eye. “It’s okay, Tyler. No one is getting through that door that I don’t let in. I swear.”

  Zane headed for the door. Turning back, he glanced at the kids before checking to see who it was just to find Tyler easing Brielle to the floor and hiding along the edge of the couch in a way that said he’d done it so many times that the ounce of self-preservation had become automatic.

  Every last son of a bitch who’d ever laid their hands on those kids was going to feel his wrath before this was done.

  Flipping the monitor, he spotted Grace and opened the door. “Thanks for coming over.” He took the casserole dish from her arms and held the door for her.

  “You said the magic word. Kids.” She peered around the living room. “They must be sleeping still.”

  He closed the door behind her. “I’d love to tell you that’s the case.” He gestured toward the couch.

  “Oh. My. God,” she whispered, her shaking hand going to her chest. “The poor dears.” She headed right for them and got down on her hands and knees. “It’s all going to be okay now, loves. What’s your name?” she asked Tyler as she cupped Brielle’s cheek.

  “Tyler. This is my baby sister, Brielle,” he said quietly.

  “You’re quite the protector, aren’t you, Tyler? You can call me Miss Gracie. How does that sound?”

  “Are you a grandma, Miss Gracie?” Brielle whispered.

  “Not yet, loves, but someday. Until then, I could use some practice. Would you like to help me with that?”

  Brielle nodded, shot Zane a leery glance, and tucked deeper into Tyler’s arms.

  “Good. Let’s start with some breakfast. What do you think?” Grace asked, sitting back on her heels and smiling at them.

  Tyler’s lips tipped up in what Zane desperately wanted to call a smile. It wasn’t, but hell if it didn’t feel like a big win to rival even the most intense Super Bowl in history.

  Zane gave them space to get set up in his dining room. He needed the kids to bond with Grace and get a good meal in their bellies without having to worry about him hovering.

  And he needed to collect his guns and get them locked up.

  Twenty minutes later, his five guns tucked into various parts of his house were unloaded and locked in the gun safe in his bedroom. The sixth, well that remained loaded, but secured in a safe built into his ceiling that only opened with his fingerprint.

  He sure as hell was going to have something he could access quickly if the guys who snatched his sister showed up again.

  He picked up the frayed Jansport backpack Tyler had been wearing last night and unzipped it.

  Clothes sprung out, crumpled into wrinkled balls, but otherwise clean. Two outfits for each of them. Lying in the bottom, two toothbrushes, both so old the bristles had curled and snapped in places with black specks of what looked like mildew growing along the plastic.

  Jesus, Chloe. What the hell is wrong with you that you’d let your kids suffer this?

  “Is everything okay?” Grace asked from the doorway.

  He glanced over his shoulder and shook his head. “Not really, but it will be.”

  She jerked her chin in the direction of the backpack. “Is that all they came with?”

  “Yeah. Two outfits and toothbrushes so foul, I wouldn’t use them on my toilets,” he said, his throat tight with worry, anger, and shame.

  “Tyler said you’re their uncle. Where’s their mother?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “She just left them?” she asked in a whisper as she stepped up to him and turned the backpack over in her hands.

  Zane smoothed the clothes out as best he could and laid them over the back of the couch. After getting a look at the toothbrushes, he should probably run the clothes through the wash just in case. “She was forced into a car at gunpoint last night right on our street.”

  Grace gasped; the blood drained from her face, and her chin wobbled. “In front of them?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I didn’t see any police cars last night. No one questioned us,” she said, taking the stack of clothes and clutching them in her hands.

  “That’s because I didn’t call them,” he said.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because there wasn’t enough to go on. I turned the security footage over to a trusted military friend. If there’s anything to find, they’ll find it, and they’ll do it a whole lot faster than the police,” Zane said.

  “And then what? A little vigilante justice? What happens to them if something happens to you?” she asked, her gaze landing on their solemn faces huddled together whispering at the table in the dining room.

  He didn’t want to think about it, to admit she had a point, so he kept his mouth shut while she aimed that unrelenting stare at him and crossed her arms.

  “Let’s get through today first, and we’ll see,” Zane said. “Look, I have to make a call. I’m also going to need to get them some more clothes and toothbrushes.”

  “That’s just the beginning, young man. Tyler should be in school. Brielle probably in preschool. And in order to do that, you’re going to need their immunization records, any school records they have, but most importantly, you need to be appointed their guardian,” she said.

  “It’s too early for whiskey, isn’t it?” Zane asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  Grace patted his shoulder and snorted. “You’re a dad now. There’s no good time for whiskey.”

  Chapter 4

  Kinsley spent the morning scouring all of Chloe’s addresses in Southwest Los Angeles and nothing. No one had heard from her. No one really cared. At the last address, new tenants had moved in, and apparently Chloe had forwarded her mail to her brother.

  He had returned it.

  It had been her most recent address, the one where Kinsley last spoke to her. The new tenants had moved in a month earlier, so Chloe had been gone for well over a month.

  And Kinsley hadn’t a clue because Chloe had called in until the last couple weeks, but she never mentioned moving.

  Armed with Zane Crew’s address, despite Chloe’s vehemence that he not be involved, Kinsley had no choice but to head to his place in Lake Forest and hope she could find him and that he would give her their parents’ address.

  The last place she had any hope of finding Chloe.

  If this didn’t pan out, she would have no choice but to admit to her supervisor what she had done.

  She’d lose her career.

  Not just her job. Nope, she would never work in social work again. And rightfully so.

  Because two scared children were who knows where experiencing who knows what, and it was all her fault.

  Her sole purpose in her profession had been to protect kids in a way she hadn’t been. Then she grew up and found out that universities didn’t give bachelor’s degrees in superhero, and that nothing was as simple as she thought it would be.

  No matter her instincts to protect, the system didn’t allow them to just swoop in. There were guidelines for taking children away, and it happened a whole lot less than people thought it did.

  It required concrete proof of danger, which sometimes presented itself, and sometimes, not so much.

  Sometimes it ended up nothing more than he said, she said. It was those cases that twisted like a knife in her gut and made her question her ability to be unbiased. Forensic interviewers did a great job overall, but still, children fell through the cracks.
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br />   And lost hope.

  The real goal of social work was to keep families together. To give parents the support, training, and resources to turn their situation around so kids could thrive at home with their families. A noteworthy goal when they could accomplish it.

  There was nothing glamorous about whisking in and removing kids. She’d had to do it and watched the children break.

  Not out of relief, but fear.

  Because the unknown terrified them far more than living in the hell they were used to.

  What came next wasn’t the happily ever after people thought it was. Next was a never-ending run of foster homes, some good, some not so great, but none of them quite what social workers wished they were.

  And that was for those lucky enough to get a family and not end up in a group home that could easily damage the child in ways they weren’t already.

  When the day came that she made the fateful decision with Chloe, she had just come off a case that made her question if she had the backbone to continue to do this job.

  If she had enough pieces of her heart to lose without ending up an empty shell of a person who once believed she had the power to single-handedly change the world.

  Turning onto Cardinal Drive, she tucked her dejected thoughts away for another time and kept her eyes focused as she searched for house 142.

  The street held a mix of houses a few decades old and newer builds. Despite the recent construction, the mature trees and shrubs lining the streets blended it all together in an interesting mix.

  The people here had money. Those with newer construction would have had to pay to have their vegetation brought in at the approximate age of the more established greenery of the older homes. To add that to houses that already went for millions, oh yeah, these people made a good living.

  Which only made her more curious about Chloe’s brother.

  She found his place three-quarters of the way down, a contemporary two-story made of gray and black concrete, steel, and glass, and absolutely not what she pictured in her mind for a guy that Chloe had so adamantly opposed to being around her kids.

  Not that she really knew what to expect.

  But something that gave some sort of indicator of his being unfit. Something that said danger.

  Modest in size, but formidable in its unyielding hardness, this house left her with no doubt about his ability to provide financial stability.

  Which reaffirmed what Chloe had alluded to, that something was wrong with him mentally, emotionally.

  She pulled up next to the sidewalk and climbed out of her car. Her breakfast long gone and fueled only by the tepid bottle of water she found rolling around on the passenger floor, her stomach grinded on itself until bile rose up in the back of her throat.

  Her heel had just made contact with the sidewalk when Zane’s front door opened and—well, wow!

  His dark, close-cropped hair was that of a man that had spent a fair amount of time in the military and despite civilian life, hadn’t entirely let it go. A neat, short beard she didn’t remember from the last time she’d seen him almost disguised the downturn of his hard, yet intriguing mouth.

  There were men, few and far between, that had the capability with a look, with the way they moved, or a turbulent look in their eyes to bring a woman to her knees with want when she hadn’t even realized she was looking.

  A modern day, USA made and issued cross between GI Joe and brooding pirate.

  And she, a romantic idiot.

  “Mr. Crew?” she said before her mind strayed too far down nefarious paths that would only get her in more trouble and complicate this whole mess more than she already had.

  He stopped, his gaze narrowed on her as he squinted against the sun beating down from a cloudless sky.

  His shoulders bunched, his gray dress shirt pulled tight along thick biceps. “Who’s asking?” he asked without looking at her. His voice rumbled from his chest so deep she half expected the ground quake with the vibration of it.

  She plucked a business card from her blazer pocket as she took the final steps to stand before him. “We met briefly when I was doing a home visit with your sister, Chloe,” she said.

  Looming over her in their close proximity, she resisted the urge to gulp and waited as his eyes roamed over the card.

  “What do you want with me?” he asked, handing the card back to her.

  She shaded her eyes and tipped her face up to meet his cool stare. “I’ve been looking for her all morning. She didn’t check in when she was supposed to. I was hoping you would give me your parents’ address so I could see if maybe—”

  “Monitoring? Is that what you call it?” he snapped at her in a scathing tone.

  “Um, I’m not sure I know what you mean?”

  His hand went to his lean hips, and the muscle in his jaw ticked. “Have you any time in the past six months laid eyes on those kids?”

  She forced herself to stand her ground despite his menacing tone and the dangerous charcoal eyes that had narrowed to laser pinpoints, their sights set right on her. “Well, of course. I—”

  “And you left them with her anyway?”

  His voice caught. She’d swear it did. Just a tiny hitch that told her his fierceness wasn’t just straight anger at her, but fear and maybe a bit of hurt for them.

  Emotion from him gave her some relief and concern. Maybe he wasn’t quite the bastard Chloe led her to believe, but the sense of danger that rolled off him warned her that he might just be a snake in the grass ready to coil and strike.

  “The alternative wasn’t ideal—”

  “Wasn’t ideal?” He leaned in, and she took a step back. “Wasn’t ideal?! Tyler has three cigarette burns on his arms, and those are just the ones I can see. What part of leaving them there was better than whatever you believe wasn’t ideal?”

  “You—wait, you’ve seen th—em?” she stammered. God, she hadn’t seen the burns. How did she miss that?

  Because they didn’t make the kids strip down to inspect bodies. And despite Zane’s anger, that wasn’t her fault.

  But if you had removed them when you had the chance…

  “Yeah, they’re safe now, no thanks to you,” he said, sliding sunglasses over his fiery eyes and heading for his driveway and the bullet-silver Lexus SUV parked there.

  “Look, Mr. Crew,” she said, eating up the ground right behind him, regretting her heels. Chasing Zane with his long legs supporting a well over six-foot frame required running sneakers. “We have a protocol, and I can’t just go snatching away children on a whim.”

  “Fuck your protocol.” He tossed the words over his shoulder with no regard for professionalism or manners and wrenched open the door. “Your protocol, as you call it, has consequences. While you climbed into a soft, warm bed each night, they suffered.”

  “I know,” she said, reaching for the edge of his door even as she questioned the wisdom of it because he looked like he’d be willing to tear her arm clean off if she really tried to stop him. This had to have been the temper that made Chloe fear for the children’s safety. “Please, I want to rectify that. If you could just give me your parents’ address, I could check on them, and if they aren’t in any position to care for them, I’ll find a safe place.”

  “There’s no safe place. Every last hurt lives inside them, and they carry it everywhere they go. They always will.” He climbed into the black leather driver’s seat and turned the key.

  She swallowed hard. He said the words like he knew, like he’d lived it. “Please, if you just give me the address, I’ll be happy to leave you alone.”

  “They aren’t with my parents, and they’re being cared for just fine, no thanks to you.”

  “If not with your parents, then who?” she asked, putting her body between the door and car frame.

  There was no way he was taking off without giving her that address. She’d make sure to lay eyes on them before the day was done. No more taking anyone’s word for how they were.

  And she owed them an apology.

  He aimed a look at her hand where it held his door and raised his brow. “Me, not that it’s any of your business.”

  Her lungs squeezed at his expression. Fueled by heat and anger, yes, but in another situation, that smoldering look would hold a whole different meaning. The woman in her didn’t miss it for a second.

  That woman might have even sighed in the depths.

  God, she was shit at picking men. Not that she had picked him for anything, but her body sure as hell had thrown away ethics and become a traitor. “I’m their case worker, and as long as that case is open, it is my business. And Chloe was adamant that you’re not suitable to care for them.”

  He scoffed. “Lady, do you really want to get into a debate with me about suitable? Because you’ll lose.”

  “I don’t want to argue,” she said, hoping to defuse the situation that had spun wildly out of control.

  He grabbed the handle of the door. “Good. Chloe is the one who brought them to me. They’re fine. Your case is closed.”

  She braced her arm on the doorframe. “It doesn’t work that way.”

  He tilted his head and pursed his lips. “Is this even your jurisdiction?”

  “Well—”

  “It’s okay, you can say it. We both know the answer.”

  “It’s not technically, but open cases don’t necessarily open and close depending on county lines. Besides, I have a responsibility.” The admission turned to ash in her mouth.

  “No, you had a responsibility, and you blew it. Tyler and Brielle live with me now. This is Orange County. If there’s anything else, call my attorney. I dare you,” he said, handing her a business card for Higgins, Greer, and Lancaster, well known for being the best and most aggressive law office in southern California.

  The air whooshed out of Kinsley’s lungs, and without thinking, she took a step back, giving him the opportunity to slam his car door in her face and shut her out.

  With a rev of the gas, he backed out of his driveway with the confidence of a stunt driver and pulled away.

  So, where were the kids?

  She studied the house, and sure enough, she spotted movement in the window closest to the front door.

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