Memories ravaged her soul. Her baby from birth. Her first smile, the first time she said “ma.” Her laughter. How she formed words early, walked early, then as she watched her mother practicing with the knife she’d trained most of her life to use, Beth began to try to mimic it.
At three. Three years old and she would try to turn, to thrust and parry, then laugh as she landed on her rear, her pretty gray-blue eyes alight with laughter.
The teddy bear Binny . . .
Beth’s sobs when Chaya had been forced to leave her with Jo-Ellen.
The knowledge that Jo-Ellen’s daughter had died, and Chaya had never known Beth had a sister.
And she hadn’t known her baby was still alive. . . .
How could she have not known?
How could she have allowed her baby to suffer?
“Who held her?” she whispered brokenly, staring up at her husband, her fingers clawing at his shirt, grief ripping her apart. “Who held my baby?”
• • •
Sitting in the dimly lit hotel room Tracker had arranged for her, Angel peeled back the bandage on the knife wound she’d gotten the day before returning to Somerset. The long, deep gash in her leg was over a week old and still showing no signs of healing. It was actually all she could do to keep it from slipping into an infection.
Had Tracker or Chance known the condition of the wound, they would have sent her straight to home base rather than flying away and leaving her there in Somerset.
Applying an antibiotic salve to the inflamed skin barely held together by the stitches Tracker had sewn so carefully, she covered it again with a waterproof bandage, secured the edges, then took another dose of the antibiotics she kept in her pack.
She was almost out of the powerful pills, though. That, along with the inflamed edges of the wound, the growing sensitivity in her leg, and her tiredness, assured her she was going to have problems very soon. And the doctor Tracker had arranged to be on call for the team the year before would surely report back to him if she called.
Lying on the bed, simply too damned drained to dress after her shower, she threw her arm over her eyes and bit back the emotions threatening to swamp her.
She could call Duke. She’d even pulled up his number on her sat phone earlier. He and Ethan were close, she knew. Duke had sent her a message the day before asking her to contact him. But it wasn’t the first such message he’d sent her in the past eight months after Tracker learned who he was. It was the first one she considered replying to, though.
They fought like children sometimes, but if Duke knew she needed him or his medic brother, then he wouldn’t refuse to come to her.
Calling Duke would create a whole set of problems she wasn’t certain she wanted to deal with, though. Her response to him had been particularly strong the last time she’d seen him. Her body became hypersensitive whenever he was around and all she wanted to do was taste those totally kissable lips.
No matter how mad he was at her at the time. No matter how mad she was at him now.
She was insane. That knowledge had a sigh escaping her lips as she settled more comfortably on her bed. He was something else, someone else, she couldn’t allow herself to have.
The bastard.
Lying fucking Mackay.
Reece Duquaine was actually Reece Duquaine Mackay. A former Army Intelligence investigator rumored to be working for his cousins, Rowdy, Dawg, and Natches Mackay. Tracker had learned too late that she was the important investigation they’d had him working on—for, like, five fucking years.
And even though they hadn’t heard of him before he arrived in Uzbekistan with his brother, Ethan, the summer she turned eighteen, the fact that they’d been there, that they’d helped save her at the time, had overridden the normal hesitancy in trusting them.
Background checks on Reece and Ethan Duquaine had come back squeaky-clean, though. Army, a few years in military intelligence for Duke, training as a field surgeon for Ethan. It was a chance encounter, a drunk on a military base, and Tracker’s suspicions—or so her foster brother claimed—that finally led to the truth.
The black hair and green eyes should have given him away, but hell, she knew plenty of black-haired, green-eyed men. It wasn’t as though they were scarce.
The brilliance of Duke’s dark, mossy green eyes was different, though. That tall, broad body and the tight, lean muscles. She almost grinned at the memory of him. He was tough, hard, not exactly handsome, more rough-hewn. And though he didn’t so much look like the Mackays now, she knew he resembled Dawg Mackay when the older man had been the same age.
But he was still a Mackay, she reminded herself. Dangerous to her and her secrets at the time and even more dangerous now that Natches Mackay wanted her head on a platter.
Hell, she was actually surprised Duke hadn’t tracked her down yet. No doubt he was in town. Come to think of it, he was likely most definitely in town. He was probably trying to help Natches find her at that moment.
A wave of desolation threatened to overtake her at that thought.
Her mother hated her, the man she lusted after on a daily basis had been betraying her for five years, and the sister she only wanted to be friends with would be kept from her now.
The ties she was starving for were moving further and further out of her reach.
Not that she wasn’t aware that what she wanted so desperately was unrealistic. Her mother hadn’t wanted her twenty years ago, why would she change her mind now? When Angel’s birth father, Craig Dane, had called, demanding Chaya come for Beth and Jenny when he learned he couldn’t use them to secure his trip to wherever he was going, Chaya had refused. She was too busy with her new lover to bother with the child she’d had with another man. The child who had idolized her, had been so certain her mother would come for her and her newly discovered sister, Jenny.
And Angel had promised . . . she had promised Jenny. As the younger child cried for the mother whose arms she’d been torn from, Angel had been certain her mother would rescue them. Everything would be okay, she had sworn to her sister; her momma would find them.
But her momma hadn’t found them. She hadn’t cared.
Her mother had a new lover, a new life to live, and that life hadn’t included the baby whose heart was broken that day.
And now, it didn’t include the woman that child had become. But it wasn’t the mother that concerned her as much as her baby sister, Bliss. Another sister in danger, another sister that could be taken from her.
The vibration of the sat phone on the table next to her bed had her reaching over to retrieve it, her arm lowering from her eyes as she brought it up to read the message.
Duke requests a call. Do I need to return? Tracker’s message had her lips snarling.
Coward. Duke couldn’t just message her, he’d gone through Tracker instead. And Tracker had liked Duke just enough that he hadn’t killed him for being a Mackay. But this demand was a surprise.
Only if you want my head served up to his cousin, she messaged back.
Call Duke. Now. Regardless. She frowned at the message.
The wording was more a warning.
Do as he said or he was returning. Questions would likely piss him off and have him turning the plane around no matter the importance of the job he was flying to.
Fine. I want roses on my grave. Put lilies on it and I haunt you. Because calling Duke was going to ensure Natches found her.
Don’t piss me off or I’ll have you cremated when the time comes.
His response had her cursing. The words so vile she was certain they would cause him to give her one of those disgusted male looks of disappointment.
Stop cursing me. The next call I get from him, I’m turning around. Then I’ll call the parents.
Call J.T. and Mara?
They were more soldiers than parents and therein lay the pr
oblem. They claimed Angel as theirs, so they’d damned sure head to Kentucky if they thought she needed them. Them as well as the extended family.
“Bastard. Fucking whoreson,” she muttered, then pulled up her contact list and hit Duke’s number.
“Where are you?” The demand was made instantly.
“Evidently where you couldn’t find me before this call,” she snapped. “You bastard-Natches-Mackay wannabe.” It was the worst insult she could come up with. “Calling my brother and pushing his buttons. I’m going to shoot your ass.”
What information had he found on her? Had he already given it to Natches and Chaya? Or was he calling her first?
“Someone hit the safe house an hour ago,” he stated without responding to the threat. “Bliss wasn’t there, but they were looking for her.” A second attempt in less than twenty-four hours meant someone was damned serious.
Angel checked the clock. It was nearly two in the morning. The perfect time to hit a safe house and catch the inhabitants off guard.
“Is she safe?” she asked, pushing back anger, pain, everything but protecting her sister.
“For now,” he assured her. “But I’m not a stupid man, Angel. And I didn’t spend five years proving who you were to discount who you’ve become and how damned good you are at it. Now, are you going to help me protect your sister, or are you going to keep hiding?”
Proving who she was . . . He knew. He’d proven it.
She had to blink back the moisture that filled her eyes, force back the hurt that threatened to break free.
He was a Mackay and he knew who she had been, as he stated; that meant every other Mackay living would know as well. Or did they already know?
“You told her?” she asked, referring to her mother, her heart aching, breaking further because she knew it wouldn’t matter to Chaya Mackay.
“I gave Natches proof, something you should have tried,” he informed her, the snap in his tone assuring her he had an issue with her where her delivery was concerned. “But I waited. Remember that, Angel. I gave you a chance before I gave him the proof.”
He could kiss her ass with his chances as far as she was concerned.
“I gave her the benefit of the doubt by not jerking Bliss out of the game to begin with,” she shot back instead. “I’ve been on this call long enough that I’m sure you’ve traced it. I’ll be waiting.”
She disconnected the call and messaged Tracker again.
Taken care of. I won’t forget. She wouldn’t forget that his demand was putting her in Natches’s and Chaya’s sights and the damage that resulted would lay on his head.
She stared at the phone far longer than it should have taken him to message back. Just as she placed the phone on the table to get up and get dressed, his final message came through.
It’s time to stop running. I love you, little sister.
She stared at the message for long, intense moments. Not even his parents had ever told her they loved her. From the beginning it had been Tracker who comforted her, called her “little sister,” and fought to protect her rather than simply training her.
Godspeed, she typed in reply.
She wouldn’t stay angry with him, and both of them knew it. No matter the outcome, no matter the cost, she wouldn’t blame him. Because she was the only person Tracker had given those words to, and she knew it.
She was, in his eyes, his baby sister, just as Bliss was her sister in truth. And those ties were ones she’d never allow to be broken, because God knew, no one else allowed them.
FOUR
The safe house that the assailants believed Bliss was being protected in was located just within the Somerset city limits on a quiet residential street. Or, it had been quiet until gunfire had filled the night, awakening neighbors and terrifying the children that had never experienced such shocking violence.
Thankfully, Bliss wasn’t actually there. Chaya had taken her to the neighboring county, where several lesser known, but no less hardened, cousins had gathered to ensure her protection.
Leaning forward to get a better look Angel tried to ignore the man sitting next to her and concentrated on what was going on instead. Police cruisers, both city as well as state, lined the street as officers moved around the small two-story house. Windows were shattered, the front door riddled with bullet holes, and the fact that violence had touched this previously quiet street was readily apparent.
Alex Jansen, the chief of police, stood on the once well-manicured front lawn nodding at the female detective who stood next to him, pointing something out. Next to the detective, the sheriff listened, his expression brooding and angry.
Detective Samantha Bryce was dressed in her customary jeans and T-shirt, a low-profile white ball cap on her head, a mass of dark brown curls hanging from the back of it to the middle of her back. Sneakers covered her feet; a holstered handgun was secured on her belt.
The sheriff was no more a typically dressed sheriff than the detective. Shane Mayes, son of a former sheriff, wore jeans as well, boots, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled back along his strong forearms, rather than the typical uniform.
Alex Jansen was Bliss’s uncle through his marriage to Natches’s sister, Janey, and Erin’s father. Shane Mayes and Samantha Bryce were close friends of the family.
Moving to them were three undercover DHS operatives and one very pissed-off assistant director of DHS, Chatham Bromleah Doogan. The assistant director was engaged to Dawg’s youngest sister while two of the others had married his older sisters, Eve and Piper.
The family ties were starting to get a little tangled amid the Mackays, Angel thought with a spurt of humor, and with that group involved she had no idea what Duke thought they could do there.
“Why are we here?” she asked him quietly as he parked the Jeep behind a black pickup in a neighbor’s yard. “Looks like Mackay family members have this pretty well covered.”
Duke glanced at her before turning his attention back to the scene. “There’s a lot of people here.” He nodded to the crowd. “And there are two dead bodies inside. I figure whoever came in gunning for her might be curious.”
Oh, she had no doubt they’d be curious, but she wasn’t so certain they’d hang around and risk being seen just hours after hitting the house.
“Why go in shooting? They tried to abduct her earlier, not kill her,” she pointed out.
“And that didn’t work,” he reminded her, his gaze still narrowed on the crowd. “Maybe they weren’t taking chances this time, or maybe they thought to get anyone protecting her out of the way before snatching her. Whatever they were here for, they figured out the hard way that this house was a setup. I want to ID the bodies and I want to see who’s here, who’s watching, and see if I can’t get a lead on who’s so determined to get one little fifteen-year-old kid.”
As he spoke, he was quickly snapping pictures with the small camera he’d pulled from the glove box. And if his movements were any indication, he wasn’t missing much where the milling crowd was concerned.
“You’re just here for pictures?” She slid him a doubtful look. “Wouldn’t you learn more if one of us was actually in the crowd? And what’s on the security cameras?”
“The cameras showed four black-clad, black-masked figures, and a van parked across the street but no plates. So they weren’t of much help. We have the crowd covered, though,” he assured her. “There’s no less than four friendlies making their way among those gathered out there and hearing what there is to be heard. And I’d rather just sit back for the moment and see what Jansen and the others find first.”
A waste of time, in other words.
“I could be sleeping.” She sat back in her seat, ignoring him as he scowled at her. “I didn’t come out with you to sightsee.”
And she was damned tired. It had been a hell of a day and all she wanted to do was escape it.
“You’re the one that always demands recon,” he pointed out, staring at the people milling around in the street.
It was three o’clock in the morning, for Christ’s sake. Hadn’t they figured out that the excitement was over for the night?
“I don’t demand recon when I haven’t slept for twenty-four hours and I’m running on caffeine rather than a good night’s rest.” She was running on aspirin, caffeine, and ragged emotions was more like it. “Even I have my limits.”
She sipped at the coffee she held in her hand, aware that she was defeating the purpose by drinking it.
“You’re admitting to limits,” he murmured. “You surprise me.”
She just bet she did.
“This is pointless.” She brushed at the fringe of bangs that escaped the clip she’d hastily anchored her hair in. “What’s going on in that house isn’t going to help us until they identify the dead. Unless something useful was actually recorded by the security cams.” She took another sip of coffee.
Her eyes narrowed on the crowd, assessing the bodies, the expressions, the small groups that huddled together and those standing alone. Not that many were standing alone.
Two of the four standing back and watching were definite Mackay associates; she’d seen them with one or another of the cousins several times in the past year or so. The other two she remembered seeing recently fishing at the lake.
“Those two.” She nodded to where they stood some distance apart. “Did you snap their picture?”
“I did, but they’re turned this way more now.” He snapped several more shots. “You recognize them?”
“I’ve seen them at the lake, just as I’ve seen the majority of everyone else that’s milling around here rather than going back to bed,” she snorted. “I saw them hanging around at the fishing hole near an old cabin a few miles from the marina. But since they’re not known to me as Mackay associates, let’s check them out. I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
She continued to stare around, watching the crowd silently, the way groups shifted, grew then dissipated. Even the four loners drifted into the smaller groups a few times, but there was nothing that really snagged her attention.