“Did you kill a man this morning?” she asked warily.
I could tell she really wanted to know the answer, so I didn’t bother evading the truth.
“Yes,” I answered. “He was a sex offender, and raped his daughter.”
Her eyes closed.
“I worked that yesterday,” she answered. “And I can’t say that I’m upset that you did what should’ve been done.”
Relief flooded through me.
“I love you, Minnie,” I told her. “I’ve missed this.”
“Missed what?” Her eyes started to fill with tears. “Because there are things that I missed, but I had no clue how much until I saw you. It’s almost debilitating.”
I closed my eyes and pulled her into my chest.
“I missed finding your hair on my shirts,” I told her, twisting one of the brown locks between my fingers. “I missed you sleeping next to me and stealing my covers. I missed you bugging me about dinner and what you were and were not willing to cook. I missed you staring at me until I paid attention to you.” I dropped a kiss to her nose. “I missed the way you smelled, and the way you brushed your hair. I missed the way you took long showers and left me all the lukewarm water that our poor water heater could muster. I missed the way you scattered your makeup all over the counter, and the way you left your toothpaste in the sink.” I halted. “But what I missed most of all was the way your shampoo used to scent my pillow. The way you looked holding our daughter. And the way you felt in my arms.”
She was crying, but I couldn’t find it in me to brush away her tears.
“I missed the way you left your trash everywhere,” she lied. “I missed the way I’d find bullets in the washing machine, and the way you always seemed to lose your wallet no matter what extravagant means I went to in order to get you to put it in the same spot. There is so much more that I missed, but you’re right. Being in your arms makes me feel like I can breathe again.”
I moaned into her hair, then rested my forehead against hers.
“You need to tell me everything,” she said finally. “I need to know. I need to understand…” she paused. “Did you have Lynn looking after me all these years? Is he your brother?”
“My brother?” I shook my head. “No. Lynn’s just Lynn. The Joker. The guy that knows shit before it even happens. Not to mention that he works for the FBI. Plus, Silas vouched for him. Though, Lynn has his own agenda. He volunteered to watch over you, but there’s more about him than even I know.”
“Where did the name Joker come from?” Mina asked abruptly, trailing her fingers lightly down my chest in an absent way that I absolutely loved…and missed. “He seems so normal.”
We were avoiding the tough topic, the one where she demanded to know why the hell I left her and our child, and I couldn’t say that I wasn’t happy for the reprieve. The moment she knew why, she would flip her lid.
“Joker is Lynn’s street name,” I answered. “He got that name during an undercover assignment. He’s somewhat of a criminal mastermind, but on the right side of the law, because of the way he gets down to a criminal’s level. He’s done several undercover operations, and many of them required that he commit some difficult tasks, tasks that no one in their right mind would ever want to do. He gets into an organization, he lives and breathes it, he busts his perp, then returns back to normal life for a while before he goes back undercover again. He’s like a chameleon, he changes his appearance, his demeanor, everything about himself, and he becomes exactly who he needs to be to get the job done. He’s a scary mother fucker.”
“Wow,” Mina breathed, sounding stunned. “I never would have guessed. He comes off as so unassuming. I never saw that from him.”
I hummed in agreement. “That’s his job, that’s why it’s so easy for him to get where he needs to be. He’s watched you for a very long time, but I feel like that is for an entirely different reason than he’s told me, but each time I asked him why he stayed to help for so long, and let the case continue for so long, he evades the answer. It’s quite annoying, honestly. But it worked out for me in the end because he kept you safe while I dug into my parents’ lives, looking for anything possible I could pin on them.”
She took a deep breath.
“What changed?” she asked hesitantly. “What made you leave us?”
I looked at the ceiling and swallowed thickly.
I’d known this question was coming as soon as I mentioned the case that I was trying to build against my parents.
“When Sienna was almost two, she was taken.”
I felt Mina’s body lock.
“What?”
The question was asked so quietly that I closed my eyes and tried to scrounge up the courage to tell her something I’d never been able to tell her before.
This woman of mine, she was a hot Latina who had an even hotter temper when it came to something she was passionate about. Her daughter, for example, was one of those things.
Where I’d been irate, this tiny woman in my arms would be incensed.
“They took her,” I repeated.
“What?” she repeated. “How do you know this? And why did I never know that she was?”
“Because my parents threatened me with killing her—something they proved they could do when they stole her from us one night—if I didn’t help them.”
She paused.
“Okay…”
I reached over and grabbed my pants, tugging them out from under Mina’s feet.
She watched me warily as I got to my feet and donned them, then started to gnaw at her lip. It’d been a nervous habit of hers when she was younger, and she’d obviously kept that habit, though I hadn’t seen it firsthand in such a long time.
Under any other circumstance, that would’ve turned me on. Now, no. I was too distracted with everything that was happening here, with Mina. And, I was about to tell her the worst thing that any parent could tell the other parent.
“I didn’t know that they took her,” I swallowed, looking at the white curtains above the window. They were old and lace-like. They’d likely need to be thrown away if we were to fix this place up. “Not until I went into her room the next morning to find her there, as well as a stack of pictures to show that they’d had her.”
“How…” Mina sounded so confused.
“They’d bypassed the alarm,” I said. “While you and I had slept. She’d been gone until six forty-five that morning. They’d taken her around twelve AM. You’d gone to work, had even checked on her before you left, and didn’t ever realize that she’d just gotten there. She smelled like my father’s cigars.”
Mina started shaking and I closed my eyes.
“The pictures, though…those were what forced me to follow their orders.”
“What were they?” She turned to face me, crossing her legs to allow her to get as close as she could without actually being on top of me.
“Pictures of her…” I closed my eyes. “Exposed. They took shots of her genitals. Her nipples, and her face.” I swallowed thickly. “They were clinical, to me. But they wouldn’t be to someone else. Not to some sick fuck child porn addict.”