She was scared of me. Why?
That question only made me push harder. My lungs were on fire. My legs were tired from the hike today, but I ran.
We raced through a residential neighborhood, the charming homes streaking by as we tore down the sidewalk.
She was fast. But not fast enough to outpace my longer stride. It took almost two blocks from Main for me to get within reach.
On the street ahead, a yellow school bus was stopped, its red lights flashing, as a line of children hopped out.
A mother came walking down the sidewalk from her house, probably to meet her kid. When she saw us running, her jaw dropped and she blinked, like she wasn’t sure what was happening.
Shit. I didn’t need a parent calling the cops. Not yet. Not until I had answers.
“Stop running,” I barked. “Goddamn it, Vera. Stop.”
Maybe it was me saying her name or maybe she was getting winded, but she slowed enough that I could wrap her up.
“No.” She struggled, throwing her elbows toward my ribs. The plastic bags she had clutched to her chest whipped against us but didn’t fall.
“Vera.” How was this possible? How was I saying her name? How was she in my arms?
“Let me go.”
“No.” I held her tighter, the world spinning beneath my feet.
Vera. This was Vera. She was alive. She was here in Montana.
A cry escaped her mouth but she kept throwing those elbows, something Cormac had taught her in their garage self-defense sessions. He’d always wanted his girls to be safe.
Before he’d killed them.
Except he hadn’t. Not Vera.
I clamped down harder, pinning her to me. “Stop. Please.”
“Vance,” Lyla panted, stopping at our side. Her eyes were wide and her chest heaved from chasing after us. Her gaze darted to Vera, who kept fighting me. Then she glanced around, no doubt taking in that mother who’d spotted us earlier.
Lyla held up her hand, signaling it was okay. The woman nodded, then steered her little boy toward their house.
The distraction gave Vera an opening. She picked up a foot and slammed her heel into my shin.
Pain spread through my leg, but I swallowed it down, my hold on her as strong as ever.
“Vera.” My voice was low. Steady. I pulled her even closer, my heart racing as I put my cheek on her hair. “Vera. It’s me.”
She stilled. Completely.
Then her entire body went limp. The grocery bags she’d been carrying fell to the ground. If not for my arms, she would have crumpled into a heap on the sidewalk beside them.
Her chest started to shake as she cried. “Y-you have to go! You can’t be here. You can’t see me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m dead.” She cried harder, whole-body sobs that wracked her shoulders and broke my heart. “Uncle Vance, I’m dead.”
Uncle Vance.
Words I hadn’t thought I’d hear Vera say ever again. Words that cracked me in two.
She spun in my arms and buried her face in my chest. “Uncle Vance.”
“Hey, kiddo,” I whispered, dropping my cheek to her hair as I held her tight, blinking away my own tears. “I’m here.”
“I’m so tired.”
“I got you.” This time, I wasn’t letting her go.
Vera collapsed against me, soaking the front of my coat with her tears. Like she’d held them back for four years.
And I just breathed her in, feeling her shoulders and ribs. She wasn’t a teenager anymore. Four years and she’d finished growing up. She was taller, lean, but strong.
“I missed you, Vera.”
She nodded, her hands fisting my coat as she kept crying.
Alive. She was alive.
This was why they hadn’t found her body in the lake. The divers had recovered the twins. I’d been the one to identify their bodies. But not Vera.
Her body had never been found. With the size and depth of Lake Coeur d’Alene, everyone had assumed she’d just been lost.
But there was no body to find. She was alive.
What did that mean? What was happening? I looked at Lyla. The shock written on her face probably matched my own.
“Vera,” she mouthed.
I nodded. Vera.
Cormac’s daughter.
The child he’d murdered.
Or not.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
LYLA
This girl needed a hot shower. She needed a warm meal. She needed a bottle of shampoo and a soft bed. Maybe if she slept for a few days, those dark circles beneath her eyes would fade.
But there’d be no shower or food or bed. Vera kept glancing to the door, looking more like a caged animal ready to escape than the vibrant, happy girl Vance had described. She was going to bolt and break his heart, wasn’t she?
Well, she’d have to get through me first. Until she explained, I’d be a human blockade at that door.
“I have to go,” she told Vance from her seat beside him on my couch. “I can’t be late.”
“Not until you tell me what’s going on.” His hand was on her knee. It was likely a gentle touch, but I had no doubt that if she tried to get up, he’d clamp tight and sit her ass right back down.
Vera clutched the bags from the grocery store against her chest.
The label on her blue box of tampons showed through the thin, white plastic. She’d also bought batteries, Tylenol, first-aid ointment and a few different sizes of bandages. I’d been the one to pick everything up off the sidewalk and return it to the bags while Vance had lifted a bawling Vera into his arms, cradled her to his chest and carried her to his truck.
She’d pulled herself together on the drive to my house. The crying had stopped, though her cheeks were still splotchy and her eyes red-rimmed.
She hadn’t wanted to come inside, but Vance had pointed to the house, his face so stern. So fatherly. It was a look I hadn’t seen on him before. One from his life before Quincy, when he’d been Uncle Vance.
It was a look Vera must have known because she’d followed me inside, and after he’d done quick introductions, he’d told her to take a seat on the couch. She’d done just that.
While I’d been in the kitchen, getting her a glass of ice water, she’d collected those bags to hold close. Was she afraid we’d take them from her? Was someone hurt? Cormac, maybe?
“Here.” I handed her the water.
“Thank you.” She took it, staring at it for a long moment. “I haven’t seen an ice cube in a while.”
Vance tensed. Not enough for Vera to notice, but those broad shoulders inched ever so slightly toward his ears. There was a storm of questions raging inside that man, but he’d keep it in. Keep it hidden.
He’d stay strong for the young woman at his side who couldn’t stop shaking.
She looked up at him, her big brown eyes swimming with tears. The same brown eyes I’d stared into weeks ago when I’d thought Cormac Gallagher was going to kill me.
“Dad is waiting for me,” she said. “I have to go or else he’ll come looking for me. He can’t come to town, but he will if he’s worried. I’ve got to get to our meeting point so we can go home.”
“Home?” Vance asked.
“To our shelter.”
Vance’s eyebrows came together. “You have a shelter? Where?”
“In the mountains.”
“You’re living in the mountains.” He kept repeating everything like he still couldn’t believe it.
“Yeah.”
Where in the mountains? How long had they been there? How was she alive? There were so many questions, but I kept quiet, standing aside and watching as Vance sat with her.
“Vera, what happened? You’ve been gone for four years. Everyone thinks you’re dead.”
Her hand trembled as she lifted the glass of water to her lips for a sip. Then she sniffled, sitting a little straighter. Squaring those shoulders. “I’m okay with that.”
“You’re okay with the world thinking you’re dead?”
“If that’s what it takes to keep Dad safe.”
Vance shook his head, blinking too many times. He’d spent four years hating Cormac for killing his family. But had Cormac murdered them? What about the twins? What about Cormac’s wife? If Vera was alive, what the hell had actually happened four years ago?
“I’m all he has left,” Vera whispered, her voice cracking. “We’re all either of us has left.”
So her mother, her sisters, were gone. My hand flattened over my heart, pressing at the ache.
“You have me.” Vance hooked his finger under her chin, his gaze softening as he took in her sweet face. “Talk to me, kiddo.”
“I can’t.” Her chin started to quiver. “I really have to go.”
He stared at her for a long moment, then in a flash, he was on his feet. “Then let’s go.”
“You can’t come.” She shot to her feet too.
“Oh, I’m coming.” Vance stood, looking down at her as he crossed his arms over his chest. The dad glare. I’d been on the receiving end of that one plenty of times from my own father and uncle. “Your dad and I have a lot to talk about.”
“He won’t talk to you.”
“He will.” Vance’s voice gentled.
“I won’t let you come, not if it means he’ll go to jail.”
“He’s not going to jail.”
But Cormac belonged in jail, didn’t he? My head was spinning, my emotions swirling. I hated that asshole for what he’d done to me. For the pain he’d caused. But Vera’s beating heart changed everything.