He couldn’t help but smile. “You’re wearing spandex and your smile is so bright you reminded me of the sun. I think something about that picture brushed against those memories you say are trapped inside me because after I saw it, I could remember what it felt like to be in the waves with the sun on my face. I think that picture opened up a place inside me I didn’t know I had.”
“You didn’t tell me you were getting flashes,” Robert said.
“Not the point, dear,” Ari said and they went quiet for a moment.
“Captain Neuro. It’s stupid but I have fun with it,” Becca said after a long moment. “Had fun with it. I liked being around the kids. I liked showing the girls they could be doctors and talking about science with the classes.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid. I think you found a way to get them to think about science,” he replied, hating the inches between them. It felt like miles.
“Yeah, well, it’s gone now, and I won’t be allowed to do it again. The funny thing was I didn’t start it until I came here to Canada. I set up the charity years ago, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it. After I left Kronberg, I came back to the States and that was when my marriage fell apart. I was having terrible dreams about…about what happened in Germany. I had them for a long time afterward. I thought I was a coward for running out the way I did. I guess you could say I was compensating and didn’t even realize it.”
“Or you were trying to help a bunch of children,” Ari said, her tone gentle. “Sometimes a thing simply is. You tried to do good. Maybe subconsciously you chose the form of it as a way to empower yourself after a traumatic event, but you were still doing good.”
“My mom was a professor and my father a doctor. It was a meshing of my role models, I suppose,” Becca mused. “I thought I could help kids who don’t have role models who could talk to them about working in the medical field. Paul always told me it was embarrassing. Asshole. I changed at the office once and he told me not to do it again because it wouldn’t look good if any patrons saw me like that. I knew then and there that we weren’t going to be…he did it, didn’t he? Son of a bitch. I bet it was Paul. He’s wanted to get rid of me from the moment they hired me. He knew about the charity and he would obviously have ways to get into my accounts since his family runs the place.”
“If he’s at the heart of this, Phoebe will figure it out,” he promised. “I’ll take care of this and you’ll have your reputation back if it’s the last thing I do. When we can call base again, I’ll let Phoebe know where to look.”
“What an ass,” she said under her breath. “I can’t believe he did this to me. He’ll take over my research, too. I bet he was planning to force me to leave quietly. His father will be angry when my name gets plastered all over the news since if my name is out there, so is Huisman’s.”
It made sense. He’d worked a couple of cases while he’d been in London concerning corporate spying, and they always handled the spy with great care so word didn’t get out and cause concern among stockholders.
There was a reason Paul was willing to take that particular bullet. Levi Green must have had a field day with him. “They’re going to take down his father.”
Robert nodded as he pulled off the highway and onto a country road. They were going to use as many backroads as possible. “They’ll use the fact that he’s got ties to Chinese intelligence to do it. I bet Green himself brought in the operative. I wonder what he’s giving her for her cooperation.”
“I wonder if we can find a way to prove he’s working with her,” Ari said. “I bet the Agency would be interested in that.”
Robert said something about Levi being made of Teflon, but Owen was staring at Becca.
“I will do everything I can to get you out of this.”
She wouldn’t look at him, simply stared at the back of Ari’s seat. “It’s not your problem. I’m going to London and I’ll be safe there. You can do what you want to.”
“He doesn’t have to be with us,” Robert explained. “He’s here because he chose to. Owen could have stayed in London and worked and rebuilt his life, but he chose to come with us.”
His old partner, Nick, had tried to talk him into staying in London. They’d worked a couple of jobs together and he’d been perfectly competent, but it had felt wrong to stay. It felt like he owed these men.
Owed them? God, it hit him like a slap in the face. He’d walked away from The Garden out of guilt. Loyalty was in there, yes, but at the heart of everything was the deep desire to eradicate himself. Deep in his heart, he’d come out here because he’d thought he wouldn’t come back. Suicide by martyrdom.
“I didn’t do it for the right reasons,” he said slowly, forcing the words out of his mouth. He didn’t want to say them, but he had to. Becca deserved his honesty. So did the rest of them. “I did it because I don’t think I deserve to live. I did it because I thought if I went out in a blaze of glory saving my brother, then maybe I could make things right.”
Becca gasped and Robert’s hands tightened on the wheel, but Ari turned and looked at him, sympathy plain on her face. “I know, Owen. I’m glad you realize that. Maybe we can work through it now.”
Becca turned to him. “Why? Why would you do that? Why would you think that way?”
He should have known Ariel saw right through him. Now Becca could, too. “Because it’s true.”
“Owen, if you care for her, tell her. Talk to her about it.” Robert didn’t sound cheery now. He sounded grim and sure of himself. “Don’t hold on to this because it’s eating you up inside. If you won’t tell her, you won’t tell anyone.”
But he didn’t want to tell her. She already hated him. She already thought he was a liar and a user.
“Owen, I want to know.” She was staring at him across the seat between them. “Why would you think you would be better off…sacrificing yourself?”
“You don’t have to talk about it,” Ari offered. “But if it helps, I don’t think she’ll blame you. I think Rebecca is a sympathetic person who will understand why you did what you did. They were your family.”
“Owen, were your mother and sister really killed in a break-in?” Becca asked the question as though she already knew the answer.
He could say yes and leave it there. She would believe him. No one on the team would talk about it. The lads could be terrible gossips, but not about anything important. And then he would never give her anything of himself that was real. He’d loved every moment he’d spent with her, and every moment had been a lie because he’d been playing a part, one where he was whole and clean. “No. They were murdered by Dr. McDonald. She used them as leverage to get me to turn over Theo and Erin and their son.”
A gasp escaped from her throat and she turned to face him. Her eyes shone in the moonlight that streamed in from the window. “She killed them because you wouldn’t turn them over?”
“She killed them even though I did.” He let the words sit between them, the silence lengthening like a chasm. She stared at him as though she couldn’t quite understand what he was telling her. “I lied to my whole team. I don’t know the hows and whys. I can’t remember that, but I know I did it. They tell me I refused to turn over the baby, but how can they really know? Maybe I screwed that part up.”
It was his fear, that they were all being kind or they’d misunderstood his intentions and he’d been willing to turn that child over.
“We didn’t lie to you,” Robert insisted. “You wouldn’t turn the baby over. You made sure the baby stayed with Kayla.”
Sure he had. They couldn’t know what was in his heart that day.
“She took your family? Hope McDonald took your family?” Becca asked, though he’d already told her. It was like she was attempting to make sense of the words.