Someone undid the tie around her hood, and it was yanked off her head.
She blinked in the shadowy room, trying to see who was there. A door closed behind her.
The man sitting behind a desk got up and came around, stopping in front of her. He had brown hair and dark-brown eyes and a ruthless, hateful look on his face.
Johnny!
"Bree," he murmured. "As pretty as ever." He set the gun in his hand down on the desk, but close enough to reach if he needed it.
"Johnny," she said, a lump growing in her throat.
Eleven years had passed since she'd run for her life, but now it felt like yesterday.
Johnny had aged, but unlike Nathan, he hadn't gotten more attractive with time. She'd once thought of Johnny as darkly handsome. Now, his thick hair had thinned, receding off his square forehead. There were numerous lines around his eyes and mouth—hard, bitter, angry lines. There were scars on his cheek, his jaw, and a long one down his neck.
There was no hint of the boy who had been funny and charming. That kid had completely disappeared. Johnny had become a man—a man who had clearly lived a life of violence, and she was even more glad she'd taken Hayley out of his reach.
She looked over her shoulder. Whoever had brought her here was gone. She was fine with that. One less person to take down. Although, taking Johnny down with her hands tied behind her back was probably optimistic.
"It's just us," Johnny said, drawing her gaze back to his.
Despite the situation, she refused to be intimidated by him. Straightening her shoulders, lifting her chin, she said, "Were you following me?"
"I didn't have to. After my conversation with the FBI last night, I figured you'd go find Sierra."
"If you wanted to see me, you didn't need to kidnap me. You could have just called—like you've been doing all along—and told me where to go."
His gaze narrowed. "I haven't been calling you."
"Oh, come on. Isn't the game over now? You're here. I'm here. Tell me what you want."
"I want to know where our daughter is."
Her jaw slackened in shock at his words. "You know where she is. You have her."
What kind of sick game was he playing with her?
"I don't have her," he said harshly. "I didn't even know about her until yesterday when the feds showed up, telling me the daughter I had with you was missing. They accused me of kidnapping her. Are you setting me up, Bree?"
"Setting you up? No. You're the one who took Hayley and lured me to Chicago by pretending to be the White Rose Kidnapper. You sent Calvin Baker to shake down Hayley's adoptive father for ransom. And then you killed Cal."
The expression in Johnny's gaze grew more incredulous with each word.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said. "I didn't kidnap anyone. I've never heard of this White Rose Kidnapper. And I haven't seen Baker in years."
A tiny seed of doubt took root in her mind. Why was he lying? What did he have to gain by trying to maintain the pretense?
"Do you think I'm just going to go away if you deny it?" she asked. "Because I can assure you that won't happen. I'm a federal agent, Johnny. I'm not the shy, insecure girl I used to be."
"I can see that." He gave her a long, harsh stare. "You're FBI now, and you want to take me down, so you made up this story about a kid. But you wouldn't have left town, pregnant with my child. You wouldn't have stolen her from me. You loved me."
The anger in his eyes burned through her. "I did love you then. But I loved my daughter more."
"There really was a child?"
"You know there was. You took her," she said again. "Did Detective Benedict help you? Is he involved in this, too? Did he get you my phone number? Did he help you dig up my past? I know you had to have had help from someone in law enforcement."
"Benedict?" he echoed. "I haven't talked to him in years."
"He was your father's friend."
"Not mine. I have my own allies in the CPD."
"Someone helped you."
"No one helped me, because I didn't do anything." He paused. "Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant?"
"I was scared."
"I never hurt you. I treated you like gold. I gave you everything you could want. I was your knight in shining armor. That's what you used to tell me."
She had told him that. But those had been the words of a teenage girl, who'd thought Johnny was the answer to her sad, hard life. "You didn't hurt me, but you hurt other people."
"Not women—or children."
She couldn't help noticing he'd left men out of his answer. "I was a young, stupid girl when we were together. I was na?ve to think you could be better than your parents, your brothers. I thought you had more good in you than you did. But I gradually came to see the truth. You were going down a dangerous, terrifying path, and I couldn't go with you. I didn't want my baby to live your life, to be in your family, to have bodyguards, to be constantly questioned by the police just because of her last name."
"My life is great. I run a lucrative business. I take incredible vacations. I have more money than you could dream of."
"Blood money. You run a criminal enterprise."
He shrugged. "I'm a businessman and a capitalist. Let's get back to you. You stole my child from me. I was her father. I had a right to see her, to raise her. It wasn't your decision."
"I made it my decision," she said forcefully. "And, to be honest, I wasn't just protecting her from you but also from me. I didn't want her to live my life, either. I wanted her to have two parents who were in love with each other, who adored her, and who could give her a safe, happy life."
"We were in love with each other."
"Infatuated, maybe, but it wasn't love. Because we didn't know what love was."
"You can't deny what we had."
"I was desperate for someone to love me, to protect me, so I saw in you what I wanted to see."
"Nathan helped you leave. He knew where you went, didn't he?"
She didn't answer, not wanting to bring Nathan into it.
"I almost killed him, you know," Johnny said in a conversational tone.
She shook her head. "Nathan was your friend once."
"Was he?" Johnny asked scornfully. "He'd been trying to get me away from you since we first met. And he finally did it. My only satisfaction was that you left him, too. That's the only reason I let him live."
"See, right there, you just showed me who you really are. You almost killed Nathan, and you act like it's no big deal. Whatever good I saw in you was just in my imagination. And none of this even matters because all that's important right now is our daughter." It killed her to include him in the relationship with Hayley, but it was looking more and more like he hadn't taken Hayley. And if he hadn't, she was going to need his help.
"Our daughter," he echoed, as if he was still getting used to that thought. He folded his arms across his chest as he perched on the front edge of his desk. "Did you name her Hayley?"
"No. I didn't name her. I didn't hold her. I didn't even see her eyes. They took her away right after she was born. I thought it would be easier if I didn't bond with her, but it wasn't." A torrent of emotion rose within her. "Sending her away broke my heart. I gave away a piece of myself."
"And you gave away a piece of me," he said sharply. "How could you deprive me of my own child? What gave you the right?"
"I just wanted what was best for her. And it was a good decision. Hayley has a great life now. You should see her bedroom. It's like a princess lives there. She has books and games and stuffed animals. She has a brother and a sister, grandparents."
"She would have had all that with me."
"Maybe you would have given her those things. But she would have also grown up with guns, with thugs, with drug deals and gamblers and addicts. She would have never been free. She would have always been looking over her shoulder, wondering if someone her father had crossed would come after her. I didn't want that life for her. You told me once that you sometimes wished you'd been born into another family. Maybe you don’t remember that now. But I do."