AFTER I’D FINISHED TELLING the crew about my first conversation with my birth father, I couldn’t stop pacing the room. Which wasn’t for the best, because the hotel we were staying in was a converted factory that’d kept many industrial-style features for atmosphere. The ceiling of the large suite held bare heating ducts, two of the walls were old brick… and the lighting fixtures dangled on steel cables at random intervals, just low enough that I could bonk my head on them if I wasn’t careful.
I wasn’t so sure about that particular design choice.
“It sounds like the meeting went well,” Julius said as I dodged one of the dangling lamps.
I peeked at the leader of the Chaos Crew from the corner of my eye, not bothering to say anything. He should have looked intimidating with his substantial height and brawn and the spiky tattoo that showed around the collar and sleeves of his tight-fitting shirt, but I could tell he was hesitant to make a more definitive statement. Julius rarely showed uncertainty, but he cared about us more than he would have openly admitted. The last thing he would have wanted was to hurt me by saying the wrong thing, especially when the stakes were so high.
Garrison, on the other hand, rarely set aside his casually disaffected mask. He shrugged, his hazel eyes cool. “I don’t think you could have expected it to go much better, honestly.”
I shifted my gaze to the lightbulb that hung alone above my bed, squinting as the brightness seared into my eyes. They didn’t understand. With a sigh, I flopped onto the admittedly luxurious mattress. The Chaos Crew always picked high class, if sometimes unusual, accommodations.
“It doesn’t matter how well that first chat went,” I said. “He knows nothing about me. I could barely tell him anything. He’d never be able to accept who I really am—what I’ve been doing all this time… He’d probably want me shipped off to a maximum-security prison.”
Blaze, in his usual upbeat manner, shook his head with a swish of his pale red hair and moved to sit at the other end of my bed. “I don’t think you’re giving him enough credit. He is your dad. He’s finally got you back in his life after thinking you were dead for so long. How could he give that up?”
I turned my head and raised my eyebrows at the hacker. “You know more about his anti-crime policies than I do. He’d like to see small-time drug dealers serving 20 years in federal prison, so how do you think he’d react to an assassin who’s murdered her way around the globe?”
Garrison snorted. “Obviously you wouldn’t tell him about that part.”
“So I’ll be lying to him the whole time. And it might come out anyway. Even if I keep it hidden, how could he possibly relate to me?”
Talon, normally a solemnly quiet presence among the others, stepped forward with a flex of his square jaw. “We don’t kill innocent people. We take down the same criminals that he wants to put away for life. It’s not so different.”
I grimaced. “You don’t kill innocent people. I’ve been doing it my entire life without knowing it.”
“Which is exactly why it isn’t your fault,” Julius pointed out. “And you’ve taken up our approach since then. By killing criminals, you’re helping his agenda, exactly as Talon said. Maybe you can’t tell him that, but you can remember that in a way, you’re on the same page.”
They were trying to reassure me, but even from the short time I’d been studying Damien Malik, I felt sure he’d never see my situation that way. He’d think I was an even worse criminal than the ones I’d eliminated. If he ever realized what I was and what I’d done, any familial warmth would vanish in an instant.
I’d lose the only real family I’d ever had before I’d really gotten a chance to experience what it was like having one.
And that was if he called me back at all. What if the test he ran on my saliva got messed up and gave him a negative? What if he decided having me back in his life would be a complication his career couldn’t afford?
I groaned and flung my arm over my eyes in a way even I knew was overdramatic.
Garrison tsked his tongue at me and headed to the suite’s kitchenette with a swipe of his hand through his shaggy blond hair. “It’ll be fine. And any part of it that’s not fine, we’ll make fine. I brought a couple of tins of hot cocoa mix with me—including one of your favorites. I’ll make you a cup, and you can focus on that instead of this guy who should have jumped at the chance to have you as a daughter.”
My lips twitched with a hint of a smile at the understated compliment in his words. Garrison didn’t often give out anything resembling praise—and I didn’t think he liked sharing his treasured hot chocolate all that much either. Beneath his typical snark, I knew he cared about me too.
The thought of hot chocolate filling my mouth sent a spark of excitement through me despite the uncertainty and stress that had taken over my senses. I shook my head anyway. “I’m still a little jittery from the caffeine I drank earlier,” I admitted. “I’ll stick with water for now. Why don’t you tell me what you and Blaze found earlier? That’ll take my mind off things.”
I hadn’t been the only one at work when I’d confronted Malik. Blaze and Garrison had been continuing their own mission investigating the bombing at his office. If it’d been connected to the same people who’d run the household, we needed to know ASAP—and then we needed to deal with them before they attacked my father again.
Garrison leaned back against the counter, his mouth twisting. “I talked to a lot of people. No one saw much other than presumably those who were killed by the initial shots or the blast following it. Everyone seems to honestly believe that Malik was targeted by an extremist who disagrees with his politics, someone acting independently. But none of them had any real proof of that.”
Julius rubbed his jaw. “What are they making of Malik’s reaction to the attack?”
“If anything, it’s bolstered people’s good opinions of him,” Garrison said. “He’s been the perfect boss, accommodating and kind in all the ways that matter. He’s visited the families of those who were killed, and he’s given a substantial number of extra paid days off for the close friends of those who were lost.”
“That seems like a good sign in general,” Blaze said. “He cares about the people he works with.”
The people he worked with weren’t mass murderers, but I didn’t say that out loud. “So, you weren’t able to figure out much about the bomber from the people you talked to.”
Garrison sighed and made an apologetic expression at me. “They didn’t have much to cough up. If they’d tried to dodge my questions, I’d have gotten it out of them.”
Blaze shot him a self-deprecating smile. “I’d question your supreme confidence, but the truth is, I couldn’t find much on my end either. I’d rather believe there simply isn’t much there to find than that we’re both incompetent.”
As Garrison glowered at him, Blaze scooped my socked foot into his hands and started massaging the arch absently. I welcomed the gesture, but it wasn’t enough to take my mind off the issue at hand. “You couldn’t track down any leads at all?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” the hacker admitted. “Nothing substantial enough that I’d want to put ourselves at risk pursuing it. I’m still looking at everything I uploaded from his computer. There was a lot to scan through, but so far no indications that he had any idea an attack was coming or records of previous hostility. I tapped into the security cameras in the building where the bombing happened, but with the angle the guy was standing at, the hood of his jacket hides his face. All I could tell you for sure is that it was a man, he was pretty average in height and weight, and no one in the office appeared to recognize him. He was a total stranger.”
“That’s the same impression I got from the footage,” Garrison said in grudging agreement.
I let out a huff of frustration. “Why does this have to be so hard?”
“Well, either it was a random lunatic, in which case there’s nothing else to find,” Julius said with his usual strategic precision. “Or if it was connected to your ‘household,’ we’re dealing with people who have a lot of power and resources. They couldn’t have pulled off all this without a hell of an advantage.”
“Great,” Garrison muttered. “Someone with power and influence right outside of Washington D.C. That sure lowers the suspect pool.”
The pressure of Blaze’s massaging fingers started to make me tense up more than relax me. I eased my foot away and sat up, my hands curling into the blanket on the bed. There was too much I didn’t know, even more questions hanging over me than ever before, and who knew how many lives hung in the balance while we searched for answers?
Talon walked over and rested a hand on my shoulder. “We’re not going to get any farther into this right now. Do you want to spar and let out some of that tension?”
I looked up into his steady ice-blue gaze. He was trying to help me the best way he knew how. We’d blown off plenty of tension in the past with our fists, sometimes leading into… other activities that could provide an excellent release. Not that I was feeling at all turned on while I had this ball of stress in my gut.
But it was a good suggestion. Maybe a workout was exactly what I needed—to burn away all of my energy and emotions before revisiting the situation. I needed to think about it with a clear mind, and right now my thoughts were muddled with uncertainty and self-doubt.
I was just standing up when my phone rang. My pulse hiccupped. The number on the display wasn’t one I recognized.
My hand shook as I raised the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Is this Rachel?”
My immediate reaction was to say no, but I caught myself just in time, recognizing the voice and understanding why he’d used it. “Y—yes. That’s me.”
The sound of Malik’s joy carried through the connection. “It didn’t take long for my people to run the DNA test, and the results couldn’t be clearer. I’m sorry for keeping you waiting while I verified it. You really are my daughter.”
There was so much awe in his words that my chest constricted. I struggled to find the right way to answer. This was exactly what I’d wanted to hear, but now I had no idea what happened next.
“I’m so glad to hear from you,” I managed after a moment. “Where do we go from here?”
“We have so much to discuss, and I’d prefer not to do it over the phone. Now that you’ve come back to us, I want to really be there with you as much as possible. If it wouldn’t be too much all at once, I’d love for you to meet the rest of the family. I’ll be home for the day tomorrow. Maybe we can spend some time getting to know you and the young lady you’ve become.”
If I’d had any doubts about that plan, the eagerness in his tone—eagerness to get to know me—would have dissolved it.
“Yes,” I said, a smile crossing my face. “I think I’d like that a lot.”
He gave me the address and the time I should arrive. I could barely keep up with his enthusiastic voice when my entire world and everything I knew seemed to be heading in a direction I’d never have expected it to go.
I had a family—one who couldn’t wait to meet me. I wanted to believe it would go well, but there were so many factors that could make everything fall apart.
What if I was too awkward after all my time shut away from the regular world? What if they realized that I was nothing like them and hated me?
I dragged in a deep breath as I said my goodbyes and hung up. I had to go and face this new challenge no matter how nervous I was.
But I couldn’t shake the looming sense that if I screwed things up tomorrow, I’d lose my family all over again, and that would be all my fault.
