Born of Fire

Glancing back at Digger, she asked, “And the two of you came here?”


He shook his head. “No, I came alone. Sheridan was afraid to stay with me. He kept saying that the Rits would come to kill him and anyone around him would be dead, too. He said he had to go back and find something he’d left behind before he could be safe again. That was the last time I saw him until today. But we keep up. He’s always made sure that I was taken care of and had what I needed. And he calls whenever he gets to a secured line.”

“No e-mails?”

He shook his head. “A very few here and there. He’s always paranoid a filch like him can trace it to me and hurt me to get to him or trace it back to him. So mostly it’s through links we talk.”

“Then you don’t know what happened after that? What he went back to find?”

“I try to keep my ears open about what he’s up to, but he keeps a low profile, so I don’t hear too much.”

That was too bad, because she still needed answers, especially if she was to help him. “Then you don’t know why he raped and killed Kiara Zamir?”

He slammed his hand down on the arm of the sofa so hard it made her jump. “Now that’s stupid. I said it that day I first heard about that contract. Sheridan wouldn’t hurt no defenseless woman. He had too much love and respect for his sister for that. He’d never shame her memory.”

His old gaze burned into her with his indignant sincerity. “I done told you and you need to listen and understand. I’ve never seen him go after someone who didn’t go after him first. He’s not his father and he never has been. He ain’t got that cold streak. Like Indie, it woulda come out by now and the first one he’d have killed would have been that bitch who turned on him.”

“His wife?”

“Ex-wife. She was cold to the marrow of her bones, like Indie. I never heard of anything so malicious. Like his mother, she told The League and Rits where to find him because she wanted the reward for turning him in. She even set a trap for him, using their son as bait, and he barely escaped that time, too.”

Shahara started at what he described. “No, she didn’t.”

“Yes, she did. She told him that he could come to Paden’s birthday party and when he showed, she took the present, then led him, not to his son, but to a room full of enforcers.”

“How did he get away?”

“Same way he always does. He fought his way out and has the scars from six blaster burns to show for it. All he wanted to do was see his kid . . . Stupid bitch.”

He cursed even more foully. “What kind of woman does that after he’d already left her a fortune that would have made even a king giddy? Every cent he’d ever made after scraping himself off the streets he gave to her without hesitation. He didn’t contest nothing she wanted and she took everything he had. Everything. All he asked for was to see his son once a year on the boy’s birthday, and she wouldn’t even allow him that much. She turned that boy against him and he won’t even speak to Sheridan now because Sheridan’s trash. Even though Sheridan still sends the boy money and has put that kid through the best schools in the galaxy—anything he wants, Sheridan makes sure he has it, and he can’t even see him. If the bitch don’t call the pinches on Sheridan, his own son does. And he still loves that kid more than anything. Would give him a kidney if he asked. And you know the hardest kicker of that?”

“What?”

“That boy ain’t even his and he knows it.”

Shahara sat stunned. Had she heard that right? “Excuse me?”

Digger nodded. “That whore fucked around on him the whole time they were married. Sheridan was a doctor . . . a surgeon no less, until the bitch took that from him, too. He worked at one of those high-end, well-respected hospitals where Paden was born. When Paden was two, the kid had an injury on the playground and Sheridan was running a routine test when he found a genetic birth defect that neither he nor his wife had. So he ran more tests and learned someone else had fathered the boy with her. And he never even confronted her about it.”

Tears welled up in Digger’s eyes. “You know what he said when I asked him why he didn’t throw the lying whore out?”

She shook her head.

“ ‘You don’t understand, Digger. She doesn’t look at me like I’m shit and for the first time in my life she makes me feel wanted even if it’s only because she’s using me. It’s not Paden’s fault I wasn’t the one who fathered him and it’s probably for the best he doesn’t have my genes anyway. Biological or not, Paden’s my son and that’s all that matters. I love him and I won’t do to him what Idirian did to me. A boy needs someone to watch out for him. The world is too harsh to be alone in it.’ ”