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He followed King into the library. No way were they getting all of Fionn’s 220-pound frame up the stairs, not without jarring him unnecessarily. “Try and keep him steady. I don’t want to aggravate the head wound.”
Sydney kept her head tucked beneath his chin, her breath too fast against his bare skin, her tiny nails digging into his arm and shoulder. He hadn’t realized how much he’d carried alone until someone—or more than one someone—had stepped into his life and lifted some of that load. Now the safety net of sharing his burdens had been ripped away, and his loyalties were torn: care for Fionn, keep Sydney safe. Deal with the traitor in their midst.
But no, he’d already done that. He’d thrown Elliot out. By the time his two charges were settled and safe, she’d be gone from his life. He’d never see her again.
He refused to think the hollow ache in his stomach was anything but a reaction to her betrayal.
Behind him he could hear Saint on the phone, presumably with the doctor. As Deacon murmured softly to Sydney, King knelt next to the couch, his lean muscles barely straining under his burden’s weight, and rolled Fionn onto it, then arranged the man’s head and limbs in a more comfortable position. Fionn didn’t stir.
The rumble of Saint’s voice faded. When Deacon turned, it was to see him exiting the library, phone still to his ear. Dain entered behind him.
“Why are you still here?”
The look Dain gave him was tired. “If you want me gone, call Jack. Until then, I’ll be doing my job. You need backup.”
“I need backup I can trust,” Deacon countered.
“And this afternoon, Jack can have a fresh team out here—if that’s still what you want. In the meantime...”
Dain’s shrug sent the need to attack vibrating through Deacon’s muscles. “This isn’t—”
Sydney raised her head at his angry tone. “Daddy?” She glanced around, her gaze coming to rest on Fionn’s prone form, and the color in her face paled. “Daddy, what’s wrong with Fionn?”
Forcing himself to breathe, to temper his tone for his child’s sake, Deacon turned his back on Dain. When he’d settled in the deep armchair near the foot of the couch, Sydney cuddled in his lap, he said, “Fionn got a bump on the head. He’s gonna be fine, I promise.”
“I’m scared.”
Instinctively his body began a gentle rocking, the same rhythm he’d used when she was a baby and he’d held her in the rocking chair that now sat in her room. Soothing her. Soothing them both. “I know, Little Bit. It’s scary when someone we love gets hurt, but it’s gonna be okay.”
“Is Fionn gonna die like Mommy?”
Deacon glanced up, his gaze connecting with Dain’s. The man ran a hand over his face, his eyes.
“Listen to me, baby.” Deacon wrapped his arms even tighter around his daughter, using the warmth of his big body to cocoon her. “Fionn is not going anywhere. He’s hurt, but not like that. People get hurt sometimes, but that doesn’t mean they have to die.”
Wide green eyes stared up at him, faith and doubt mixing with tears. “I don’t want Fionn to die.”
“Me neither. He won’t; I promise you, Syd.”
“Where’s Elliot?”
“She...” Shit. He couldn’t believe he’d let his daughter get so attached to a traitor.
Dain broke in before Deacon could choke down the emotions closing off his air. “She had to go do some things, Sydney.”
Saint reentered, a slightly built Indian man trailing him. From the stethoscope already around his neck, Deacon assumed this was the doctor. He rose to meet them.
“Deacon, this is Dr. Karak.”
The man zeroed in on Fionn even as he reached a hand out to Deacon. “Nice to meet you.” They’d barely shook before he turned away. “Move, King.”
King grinned as the doc shoved him aside. “Nice to see you too, Roger.”
The doctor humphed. Despite the razzing, the room went tense while he completed his exam.
“Blunt-force trauma to the head, needs stitches.” Dr. Karak probed around the stab wound. “This one’s a little more complicated.” He turned to his bag and began emptying it onto the coffee table. “May want to clear the room,” he murmured with a glance at Sydney.
But Deacon needed to know— “Anything else?”
Dr. Karak paused his unpacking to meet Deacon’s gaze squarely. “Nothing else. He’ll be fine... Well, except for one massive headache he didn’t earn having fun.” He gave Sydney a wink when she shifted to lay her cheek against Deacon’s chest, looking his way. “He’ll be giving you pony rides in no time, I promise.”
Deacon felt the push against his breastbone as Sydney’s cheeks plumped with a smile.
“Thanks, Doc.”
Dr. Karak waved away the gratitude, returning to his equipment without a word. Deacon stood to leave. Dain shadowed him out of the library.
He ignored the man and the anger still seething inside him as he carried Sydney up to her bedroom, retrieved a set of clothes from the closet, and took his daughter into her bathroom. Sydney quietly followed directions, seeming as unsettled as he was after the morning’s events. He brushed her hair and pulled it into a neat braid as he stared at her face in the mirror, seeing fatigue in the dark circles under her eyes. Sydney wasn’t an early riser; she’d always been a good sleeper, and her night had been cut short a couple of hours. “Want some breakfast?”
She yawned. “No.”
“Okay.” He dropped a kiss on her head. “Can you play for a bit while I talk to Dain?”
A nod. “When will Elliot be home?”
He opened the door to the bathroom, hoping if he ignored the question, Syd would drop it. She didn’t, just stood inside the bathroom, waiting. Even at four, she could be as stubborn as he was.
“I don’t know, baby.”
Her shoulders drooped, but she went obediently to her bed and grabbed Katie Kitty. Deacon walked over to join Dain at the window.
Beyond the drape of pink material Dain had pulled aside, a storm darkened the early morning sky. Appropriate considering how the day had started. And considering the SUV headed down the drive and into the storm. Red taillights brightened briefly as Elliot followed the curve. Deacon caught a quick flash of her stark white face in the driver’s side mirror, and then she was too far away to see.
“She won’t have any protection out there, no one to watch her back,” Dain said.
“She’s Mansa’s daughter. Why would she need protection?”
“Mansa doesn’t have family; he owns commodities.” Dain turned to stare at him, shaking his head. “You should’ve let her explain.”
Though his voice was quiet, Deacon couldn’t miss the edge to the words. His own were equally hard. “She deceived me. So did you. Why should I listen to anything either one of you have to say?”
“Because she was going to tell you.”
“Really?” Deacon snorted. “She got caught in a lie. Saying she would’ve told me anyway is irrelevant, if you could even prove it. Which you can’t.”
“No, I can’t.” Dain leaned a shoulder against the wall, his gaze going back out the window, back to the bit of driveway they could see. “Did you never wonder why we were late coming that first day?”
He’d wondered.
“I gave her an ultimatum before we left the office: five days. Either she told you or I did.”
“If she could tell me after five days, she could’ve told me on the first, Dain.”
“No, she couldn’t have, but you won’t believe that right now. The truth is, I believed it, and I made a tactical decision. We needed her more than we didn’t, so I gave her a deadline. I told you I’d force her to reveal anything relevant, and that’s exactly what I was doing.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make! My daughter’s life is at stake. I keep her safe, and I invited you here to do the same. You knew she was dangerous, and you brought her here anyway.”
“I brought her here because she is the absolute best chance you will ever have of finding that bastard and killing him,” Dain argued, a red flush beginning under his dark skin.
“She’s his daughter, damn it. You brought her into my house.”
“Elliot has no loyalty to Mansa.”
“Right. And exactly how do you know that?”
“Because Mansa enslaved her mother, raped her for years, and then blew her to goddamn bits!”
The words were low, too quiet for Sydney to hear, but venom dripped from each one.
“That personnel file you read?” Dain smirked, the expression holding zero amusement. “It’s fake, all of it. No one knows that but me. No one would know because I’m good at what I do, and I made sure her background was airtight. Want to know why?”
No, he didn’t, but he arched a brow anyway.
“Because if Mansa ever found out she was still alive, then there was every chance he would take steps to reacquire her. The only way we’ve kept her secret is by limiting the knowledge to two people: her and me. No leaks, no risks. Coming here, revealing who she was could blow all of that to hell in an instant. But she still came. She knows what Mansa can do, what it’s like to be his slave. She was born on Dhambi Isle, a product of rape. That tattoo between her shoulders?”
“Her what?” But he knew. The number fifty-seven flashed in his mind’s eye, the feel of the inked skin beneath his fingers this morning. He’d wondered, but he hadn’t asked. His mind had been on other things.
His stomach knotted.
Dain nodded, confirming Deacon’s sick intuition. “That’s her product number. Mansa breeds children—boys and girls—for sale, and when he kidnapped her mother from a Peace Corps convoy, he knew he’d gotten something special. Small, delicate. Blue eyes and white-blonde hair.” Dain’s voice choked off. He swallowed hard. “He knew her children would be worth a fortune, and he did everything he could to make sure she bred quickly. Elliot was born eleven months later.”
And somehow her mother had escaped. Something clicked in Deacon’s brain. “The ‘case’ from early in Elliot’s career.”
“Very early. She was thirteen when Mansa caught up with them.”
“What happened to her then?”
Refusal tightened Dain’s expression. “Anything else is for her to tell.”
“That doesn’t seem to be her strong suit.”
“Not her strong suit?” A choked laugh escaped him. “You have no idea what you’ve done to her, do you?”
“What I did?”
“That’s right.” Dain pushed away from the wall. “You. You slept with her, but you didn’t trust her.”
Deacon felt his eyes go wide.
“What, you think I couldn’t tell?” He dared to lean forward, a finger jabbing close to Deacon’s chest. “I know her better than you ever will, lover or not.”
Red sheeted Deacon’s vision. He moved closer until that finger hit his sternum. “I’ll just bet you do, Daddy.”
The anger building in Dain’s eyes satisfied something dark in Deacon’s soul.
“That’s beneath you. Elliot sure as hell doesn’t deserve it, but I’ll spare your teeth since I think that’s how she would want it.”
Probably. If he knew Elliot—and that was a big if—she’d rather punch them in herself.
“I know what her childhood was like,” Dain was saying. “I know everything she hides—because she trusts me. Because I’ve earned it. I know exactly why she is the way she is, why she couldn’t bring herself to claim that bastard aloud and see the look on everyone’s faces when they found out. On your face.”
“If you know so much, then maybe you should explain it to me, because right now all I know is I’d like to do a little punching of my own.”
“You don’t get that piece of Elliot from anyone but her. I’ll tell you one thing, though. You want Mansa to come to you?” He jabbed at the window now. “Your biggest piece of bait just drove out that gate. You want the bastard? You better get her back.”
“We can outwait Mansa.”
“You can? Think Fionn agrees with you?”
Fionn. His best friend, lying on a couch downstairs getting holes in his body sewn closed. Mansa’s message rang in his ears: I won’t kill this one. He’s my gift to you.
Fionn hadn’t ended up like Trapper because of Elliot.
Dain smirked. “You might want to think that one over. And if you decide I’m right, meet me downstairs at”—a glance at the thick black watch on his wrist—“1900 hours.”
“Why?”
Dain turned to leave. “Because I’m the only one who knows where she’s going.”
“No way. I’m not leaving my daughter here with just your team.”
The team lead stopped at the bedroom door. “Like I said, Jack will send a backup team. I wouldn’t risk that child any more than I’d risk my own. And Deacon...”
He crossed his arms over his chest, squaring off with Dain across the room.
“When I say think it over, I mean it. You’ll only have one chance to rebuild that bridge. Don’t blow it.”