37

Ava couldn’t stop shaking. She rode the creepy freight elevator up with the creepy neo-Nazi and the father she’d hoped to never see again, and all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry.

The only thing that stopped her was knowing how much glee her dad would get from seeing her break. Like when he’d finally broken her mom.

In that moment, Ava understood her mom’s final, desperate act, and for the first time knew she could forgive her mother.

She’d only had glimpses of her father’s awful side before her mother’s death. It wasn’t until Lori was gone that Ari had turned his full borderline personality disorder—or whatever the hell was wrong with him—on her.

Mom must have taken the brunt to protect me.

She ached to tell her mom how much she loved her. How much she needed her.

She hadn’t gone to the cemetery since the funeral, not even when Uncle Josh went at the beginning of the summer. Tomorrow, if she was able, she’d go and lie on the grass and cry her heart out. Give her mom all the love and grief she’d denied her for two years.

The elevator doors opened on the top floor, and Ari grabbed her arm and yanked her forward, dragging her out of the steel box. She’d decided on the ride up not to call him Dad anymore, not even in her mind. He didn’t deserve it.

Her real dad was the man who’d taken care of her when she was a baby so her mom could go to school. Who’d sent money to her mom when he was deployed. Who’d moved to Portland and opened a whole new Raptor office just so he wouldn’t have to move her to a new school district.

That was a father’s love.

Troy Kocher led the way down the corridor, while Ari kept a firm grip on her arm, walking at a brisk pace.

She still had her purse, and the file was in her jeans pocket. She’d find a way to fight. Troy Kocher was huge, but she was willing to fight dirty. She’d attended several of the evening training sessions last week, and Desmond had taught her some moves that would work if she didn’t get squeamish.

After two long corridors, they finally reached the vestibule where the main bank of elevators let out and faced a glass wall that looked into a modern glass-and-steel reception room. Top floor, so this must be C-IV’s office.

Troy Kocher waved a key fob in front of the sensor, and the door opened automatically.

Had C-IV’s old security team—the one that included the White Patriots who’d abducted Maddie—taken over the building, or was Nielsen part of whatever was going on?

She followed Kocher into the reception area and down the hall to the corner office. Through the windows, she could see the Willamette River, and beyond that, the Columbia. She broke away from her father’s grip and ran to the window so she could look down and see the waterfront park.

It was much farther away and down than it had been in the hotel, and she couldn’t make out the details beyond emergency vehicles, collapsed end of the bridge, and clusters of people as small dots on the grass.

She pressed her fingers to the cool glass.

Uncle Josh is alive. Uncle Josh is alive. Uncle Josh is alive.

She would believe it until she was presented with proof otherwise.

“What the hell is she doing here?” a male voice behind her said. “You were supposed to bring my sister.”

Josh’s hearing was improving. The shouts of excitement as another person was found alive in the pile were dulled, as if he were underwater or had earplugs, but he could hear them.

He’d experienced similar hearing loss in the Navy, when an op went sideways and ear protection wasn’t in place, but this might be the worst case of temporary deafness he’d had. But then, he’d been way too close to the explosive.

He sat on a gurney in the triage area that had been set up while he was still tunneling out. A medic washed his head wound, and Josh managed to open his eye. Vision was blurry, but he could focus.

“Pupils normal,” the medic said. “Looks like you might have skipped the concussion.”

That was a damn miracle considering a bridge had fallen on him and he wasn’t wearing the Kevlar helmet that had protected him on ops.

One gurney over, the guy he’d dragged from the rubble was being worked on by a team of paramedics. The guy had turned out to be a White Patriot—swastika tattoos and all. Josh had no illusions the man would see the light when he discovered a Jewish man had saved his life, but then, Josh had always hated stories in that genre.

He shouldn’t have to save a person’s life for them to see him as human. As equal.

If Desmond and the guy with the swastika tattoos were both pulled over by a cop, Desmond had a higher likelihood of getting arrested on a bullshit charge or outright shot and killed than the guy with the actual Nazi symbols on his body, when the hate-monger almost certainly had a violent record. Hate and violence went hand in hand.

Josh didn’t regret saving the guy’s life—everyone deserved rescue and aid—but he didn’t want kudos either.

“Josh!” His name reached his muted ears, and he looked up to see Chase running toward him. It was a relief to see the Raptor operative. Josh hadn’t had a chance to debrief with Arthur before he was hauled off on the gurney. And he hadn’t really been able to hear what Arthur had to say anyway.

Officers tried to stop Chase from entering the triage area. “Let him through,” Josh said in a commanding tone. He had no authority here, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.

Miraculously, it worked.

Chase wove his way between the gurneys, which held people with varying degrees of injuries from slight scrapes to the unconscious but breathing man one gurney over.

Once Chase was close enough that Josh would be able to hear his answer, he asked his most burning question. “What’s the status of Ava and Maddie?” If they’d seen the collapse from their hotel room, they had to be worried.

“Ava’s been taken. By your brother. Maddie’s gone after her.”