A slow grin split his serious expression. “Kate.”
He moved away from the door then, approaching me with the file folder he’d had in his hand all this time.
“I have a few papers for you to sign.”
A few papers? I’d signed fewer papers when giving a couple a mortgage! But I signed them patiently, not really minding having such a big, powerful man standing so close to me. And he smelled pretty good. Something spicy, which seemed to fit his personality quite well. Quiet, but potentially deadly.
When the papers were all signed—contracts giving them permission to break into my house and set up surveillance, permission for them to watch me day and night, permission for their operative to live in my house, and of course, the all-important form that freed them of liability if I ended up dead on their watch—he stepped back and studied my face for a moment, as if he wanted to tell me something but didn’t quite know how.
“Is there more, Ash? I can’t imagine how much more of my privacy and freedom I could possibly sign away.”
“No. That’s all the paperwork.”
“Then what?” I asked with what I hoped was a flirty smile.
That smile didn’t come back as I’d hoped. Instead, he studied my face a second longer, then—clearly a decision made—he stepped back and gestured toward the door.
“I should let them in now.”
“Them, who?”
I needn’t have asked. He opened the door and my father stepped inside, curiosity and concern dancing in his eyes. He came to my side, taking my hand between both of his.
“Katie, if any pleasure can come out of such a terrible thing, this is it.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. I found myself wondering if he’d been drinking while he was out in the hall. And then I heard his voice as he spoke to Ash—something about whether the papers had been signed—and my headache became an almost unbearable, piercing pain.
“Oh, hell no!”
Chapter 4
Donovan
“Hello to you, too, Kate.”
She jumped off the bed, nearly sending her father flying on the slick floor as he tried to control her—a mistake I could have warned him not to make—and charged me. Ash moved to head her off, but I stepped around him and grabbed her wrists before she could hurt herself, or anyone else.
“You bastard!” she cried.
“Kate…”
“You killed him. You killed my brother!”
“Katie, you know that’s not true,” Daniel said, confusion radiating from his tone.
She didn’t seem to hear him. She was looking directly at me.
“You should have been there. You knew those boys were looking for you. You knew they had a beef with you. You! Not Joshua.”
I pushed her backward, trying to get her back on the bed before she pulled her IV loose.
“You should have been there to protect him.”
“No one could have predicted what was going to happen that night, Katie,” Daniel said. “You went to the district attorney and the police with me. You heard what he said.”
“I know what the police thought. But I also know what they didn’t.”
Her eyes were so full of anger, the same eyes I’d seen in nightmares much longer than I cared to admit. Beautiful hazel eyes when she wasn’t trying to rip my balls off. But now I just wanted to close my eyes and make them disappear.
I gave her one more good shove and she fell onto the bed, nearly toppling over—except for my grip on her wrists.
“You should have been there.”
“You know why I wasn’t.”
That cooled the anger a little. She turned her face away, and the power went out of her arms.
I squeezed her wrists. “Are you going to settle down now?”
She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t scratch my eyes out when I let her go either.
But she wasn’t done.
“Is this really what you call an operative, Ash?” she asked, her voice low and dangerous as she looked past me—or through me—at Ash. “Do you know what he did? Do you know how he left my brother at the mercy of a group of thugs he knew were looking for trouble? Do you know how those thugs left my brother bloody, his skull smashed in with a rock, on the beach? How they left him—?”
“Enough!”
The room fell deadly silent. And I felt like the weight of it was square on my shoulders.
I’ve seen a lot in my life, in my service. Bodies torn apart by IEDs. Friends lying on the ground, bleeding from so many wounds I couldn’t figure out which one was the worst, which one I should be applying pressure to. Enemies torn apart through the eye of my scope. Whole families destroyed by explosives I set. I’ve seen a lot. But that night, the night we found Joshua there on the beach…that was the worst.
She had no idea how heavy the guilt of that night rested on me.
Ash was silent as Daniel, his face reddened with emotion, approached his daughter.
“Enough, Katie,” he said a little softer.