She’d promised her mother that she would be happy, but happiness sometimes wasn’t a choice. Happiness could be taken away, made into an impossibility due to circumstance. Maybe what her mother should have asked her was to always be true to who she was because then, even if her world got ripped away, she could be content.
She could hate this man for what he’d done to her in another life. Or she could see him as a man who needed help, and she’d dedicated her life to giving help when and where it was needed.
Becca stood and crossed the space between them. “I promise you, Tucker. I’ll do what I can to help your friends, to help any of them who want to get back what they lost, and I’ll make sure we don’t need your memories. I can do it. I can make this work.”
He broke then and his hands came out, as though he couldn’t not ask for comfort.
When his legs went out and he slumped to the floor, she went with him. She let her arms go around him and finally let go of that day. She’d been a victim, and nothing she could have done would have likely fixed the situation.
“Get your hands…” Owen stopped when she looked up at him, his words halting and face transforming from anger to confusion as he looked down at them. “Are you all right?”
She nodded as she felt a shudder go through Tucker. “I am.”
“I wasn’t going to hurt her,” Tucker said, his voice tortured. “But you should know that I did. I hurt her, Owen.”
“You didn’t,” a feminine voice said. When Becca glanced up she saw they weren’t alone. Ariel stood in the doorway next to Ezra, with Robert behind her. “You didn’t hurt her, but someone who wore your skin did. I think we should talk about this. I’ll make us some tea. Why don’t the rest of you go back to bed?”
Go back to bed with Owen. That seemed like a bad idea. Even being in the same room with the man was dangerous, and after her talk with Tucker, she was on the edge again.
Ezra stepped away, pulling a phone from his pocket.
“Thank you, Dr. Walsh,” Tucker whispered. “I’m still sorry. I’ll try to stay away from you. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
But he was the only one who knew anything about medicine, and she wasn’t certain he would have forgotten what he’d learned from Dr. McDonald. That kind of knowledge could remain even when personal memories did not. She might be able to coax some of that information out of him and might lead them one step closer to a cure.
Sometimes bad things happened, and it was up to her to make the most of them, to try to see the positive that could come from it.
“I’m okay. You’re Tucker. You’re not Steven. And we’re okay, you and I.” She let Owen help her up. “Good night, Tucker. I’ll see you in the morning. We can fight it out over the last raspberry yogurt.”
“It’s all yours.” Tucker managed to make it back to his seat.
Owen didn’t let go of her hand. “Good night. We’ll see you all in the morning.”
She followed him out, a piece of herself settling. But the larger piece was still in turmoil and it was all about Owen. Maybe it was time to have it out with him, too.
Ezra stepped back in. “We need to move out now. There’s a team on the way. I don’t know how the fucker found us, but he did. Big Tag says we’ve got maybe five minutes. Owen, take Dr. Walsh in my SUV. Ari and Robert, go with them.”
Owen’s hand found hers and he started into the living room.
“I’ll go wake my sleeping prince,” Erin said. “We’ll stay behind and deal with the fallout. I can’t wait to answer all those questions.”
“Tucker, take Nina and hop in the van with River and Jax. I’ll take Dante and Sasha,” Ezra said, reaching for his backpack. “You know the protocols. Let’s move.”
Owen frowned at his boss. “You know what this means?”
Ezra nodded tightly. “I do. We have to deal with it later. Scatter now and implement a twenty-four-hour blackout on communications. See you on the other side, brothers.”
It looked like her night was taking a turn for the worse.
Chapter Nineteen
Owen looked out the window from his place in the back seat, his eyes on the blue and red lights in the distance. Though they’d gotten miles away, he could still see how close it had been.
“Will Tom…Theo and his wife be okay? Shouldn’t they have run, too?” Becca was looking at those ghostly lights, too.
“I assure you Erin will take care of the situation. Leaving two safe people behind will actually slow the police down. They don’t know the whole story, and Erin will use that to her advantage. And to ours,” Ariel said, sitting back. “There’s no reason for the police to pick them up, and if they did, they have connections who would move swiftly to get them out. The Lost Boys don’t have those. Big Tag can hide them, but he can’t make global warrants disappear. If they’d caught Jax or Dante or Sasha, or even Robert, there would be trouble. Some of them have Interpol red notices out on them.”
“Red notice?” Becca asked.
Owen took that one. “It’s an international warrant for their arrests. Ezra explained how McDonald funded her research after she left Kronberg. She was involved in several criminal operations, including robbing banks. She didn’t do it herself.”
Even in the moonlight he could see the way she paled. “She used her strike team. She could get the money she needed and see them in action.”
“I don’t actually have an Interpol notice on me,” Robert corrected, “but I am wanted for questioning about a couple of things, including my association with the others. Big Tag made sure Theo’s records are perfectly clean. He’s good.”
“Though I assume this isn’t about the lads,” Ariel said.
“It’s about me.” Becca was holding herself apart. While they’d been rushing to the car, she’d let him hold her hand. The minute he’d closed the door, he’d felt a wall come up between them.
There was no forgiveness for him.
Robert pulled out onto the highway. They needed to drive at least a hundred miles, find a motel, and settle in for the night. Though he was certain he wouldn’t feel settled. He wouldn’t be comfortable until she was safely ensconced in The Garden and protected by people he trusted.
“How did he find us?” Becca asked. “They got rid of my cell phone. I thought everyone did.”
“We were working off burners, anyway,” Robert said. “No one except the team, Damon Knight, and Big Tag know the numbers.”
“Then how did they find us? Do you think it was CCTV?” Becca’s hands were balled in her lap, a sure sign of her tension.
He wanted to reach over and hold her hand, promise her everything would be all right, but she wouldn’t take comfort from him. “Maybe.”
What he wasn’t saying, what Robert and Ari had to know, was that there was only one way Green could have caught up with them.
Someone had betrayed the team.
What did they really know about Nina Blunt? She’d hired on to McKay-Taggart and Knight only a few months before.
But then hadn’t something gone wrong with the Colorado mission? Nina hadn’t been around for that one. Pieces were falling into place, and he didn’t like the way this puzzle was filling out.
“So you think he wants me for the same reason Ezra does?” Becca watched the road out of the window. “I would think I was useless without the actual drug. Do you think he has it and he wants someone to reverse engineer it?”
“He could have any number of people do that for him,” Ari replied. “He needs you to figure out the protocols. Her techniques were about more than drugs.”
“He wants me to be the new Hope McDonald. Why would I ever do that? I’m certainly not going to sell my soul to get my career back. I love my work, but I would be dishonoring every vow I took when I became a doctor. He would have to kill me first. How does he think he’s going to get me to help him?” Her eyes widened and she turned in her seat. “Owen, my family. What if he uses my family to get to me?”