“You’re too quiet.” Once again Duke interrupted her thoughts, pulling her back from that place where she could hide from the implications of what was coming just a little while longer.
“I’m working,” she stated, concentrating on the road rather than the scenery, refusing to track the remaining distance to their destination.
“You’re lying.” The accusation wasn’t unexpected.
“Leave me alone, Duke.”
“I was fifteen when I met Chaya the first time. Did you know that?” There was a heaviness to his voice, an edge that she didn’t understand.
“What does that have to do with anything?” She needed to hide just a little while longer, and he wouldn’t let her.
“The first time I ever saw her was the day she arrived with a dozen DHS agents and dragged my parents from our home in handcuffs. It was the same time I learned they were part of Freedom League, and working closely with Natches’s father, Dayle.” The statement wasn’t filled with anger, fury, or betrayal. It was a statement of fact.
Chaya had been the agent involved in uncovering Dayle Mackay and the remaining Freedom League members as the traitors they were, Angel remembered.
“My parents were Trent and Marie Mackay. Trent Mackay was responsible for the command that sent that missile slamming into the hotel in Iraq. He’s the reason she believed her daughter was dead.”
Angel turned to him slowly, seeing the two-fisted grip he had on the steering wheel, the savage expression on his face.
She watched his jaw work as his teeth clenched and she knew the toll this confession was likely taking on his pride.
“I already knew who sent that missile to the hotel,” she told him, ignoring the surprise in his look. “J.T. and Mara realized who I really was because the news of the arrests in Kentucky had been a hell of a sensation at the time. Then they pulled in everything they could on Chaya. But I was only nine at the time, so they didn’t tell me what they learned. I didn’t remember anything about Iraq until I was fifteen, and then I started asking questions. Once Tracker told me you were a Mackay, it didn’t take long to piece together your real identity.”
The look he shot her was so shocked and filled with offended male pride it almost caused her to be amused. Unfortunately, even offended Mackay pride didn’t have the power to affect the sheer terror building inside her.
“I’ve known since about two seconds after Tracker told me you’re a Mackay,” she stated. “But you’re not to blame for his crimes any more than Natches is to blame for his father’s crimes. Or I’m to blame for Craig’s.”
Duke let that sink in for a moment. “Did your brother tell you that Ethan and I stayed with her and Natches for a while after the arrests?” he asked her when he turned his gaze back to the road.
She could only shrug. “Is it important?” She couldn’t imagine why it would be. “If I don’t blame you for your father’s crimes, then I won’t blame you for being forced to spend time with Chaya.”
He grunted at the comment.
Not that she was completely fair-minded, Angel admitted. There had been a week or two that the knowledge that Duke’s father, Trent, had been the cause of Jenny’s death had sliced at her like a particularly sharp dagger.
The knowledge had dug inside her, infuriated her, until she remembered the man that helped rescue her in Uzbekistan. The same man that nearly lost his mind a year later when a knife had been pushed in her back, piercing her lung; and a year after that, she’d been hit by a pickup driven by one of the men that had kidnapped a pret
een in France. Last year, she swore she remembered hearing him pray when she’d taken a bullet in her side—that one had nearly killed her.
Ethan had to work hard to fix her that time. He operated on her right there in the same shack where they’d busted two terrorists holding a young couple they’d kidnapped while on honeymoon. Tracker and Duke both had yelled at her later. They always yelled at her later for not being careful, for being reckless, for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
She’d spent a week in that shack with only short periods of lucidity that included listening to not just Duke and Tracker yelling at her, but Chance and Ethan as well.
“Ethan and I weren’t forced to stay with Chaya and Natches,” Duke objected, shooting her a cryptic look. “They took us in. The rest of the family was still under investigation. Chaya wouldn’t let social services take us, though. She looked at us and told the agent in charge that she wouldn’t allow another child to suffer, just because hers had been taken from her. When my uncle arrived from Montana and convinced my father’s parents to let him take custody of us, Chaya and Natches actually suggested letting us stay with them. Ethan and I needed to leave, though. Needed distance, despite Chaya’s objections.”
Angel wanted to roll her eyes at the point he was obviously trying to make, but that would take at least a measure of levity. And that was something she just didn’t have and couldn’t fake right now.
“I really don’t want to hear about her,” Angel told him, her tone carefully bland. “Not now. Not later. I’ll protect her daughter with my own life if need be, but I want nothing beyond that, and I won’t give anything beyond that.”
She couldn’t. She simply didn’t have the emotional fortitude to bear the pain it would bring.
The way it was, her heart clenched as ridiculous hope threatened to awaken inside her when Duke turned onto the one-lane, gravel road. She breathed in deep, reminded herself of the many difficult jobs she’d been on. She’d survived those, she could survive this.
“Will Bliss be there?” she asked, more to keep herself from exploding inside.
“She’s with family outside the county at the moment. I think two Navy SEALs, two rangers, and two DHS agents can keep up with her until Natches and Chaya get back to her.”
She nodded. What he wasn’t saying was the fact that Seth and Saul August, distant cousins from Texas and hardened Navy SEALs, had arrived in the county just hours after the attempted abduction then disappeared. They were no doubt watching over her along with the others.