Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(121)

He studied her face before answering, as though trying to judge what she needed to hear. Such a subtle, heartbreaking response to a simple question.

“It’s going to be okay, Mom,” he finally said, his calm, quiet voice filling the darkness.

And yeah, he’d found it. He’d pinpointed exactly what she needed to hear, even if she didn’t believe him.

His hand rose, caught hers, and held tight.

Something else she’d needed, without realizing it.

A wave of intense sorrow broke over her—raw and suffocating—it threatened to swallow her whole. Sorrow for John, for the life that had been taken that could never be returned, for all the things she wouldn’t be able to share with him through the coming years. For Benji, whose losses were still to come, when he slowed down enough to realize how much had been stolen from him. But most of all, for this child lying so still and silent beside her. This boy holding her hand.

This adult in a child’s body.

Brendan had lost everything. He’d lost his father and the close, exceptional relationship they’d shared. He’d lost his school and his friends and his sports teams—which he’d excelled at.

But most of all he’d lost his innocence.

Through their kidnapping and her rape, he’d learned that sex could be used as a weapon—leaving bruises and blood and invisible wounds that cut to the soul. Through his father’s death, he’d learned that you could do everything right, everything possible, and still pay the ultimate price. Through this awful, high-tech biological shit those bastards had shot into his veins, he’d learned that there were people out there capable of the most invasive, horrific acts to achieve their own goals.

While Brendan’s quiet, deliberate nature had always been the core of his personality, these past four and a half months had tempered his natural demeanor into something harder, darker—heartbreaking in a child.

Unlike Benji, nothing had gone over Brendan’s head. Although he hadn’t said anything, he’d understood what those bastards had done to her four and a half months ago while they’d been helpless and trapped beneath their care.

She shied away from the memories, entombing them deep within her, where they smoldered and swelled and pressed outward like a pus-filled abscess ready to burst forth, spewing its rot.

But there wasn’t time to deal with what had happened to her, or work through the aftermath. She couldn’t afford to wallow in her own personal tragedy.

“There was something in that shot, wasn’t there?”

Brendan’s voice dragged her from the crumbling abyss of her own thoughts.

“Something that let them track us.” While he’d framed it as a question, the certainty already sat flat and hard in his voice and the dark eyes watching her.

She swallowed and tightened her hand around his, before forcing the admission through her tight, aching throat. “It appears so.”

“They can’t get it out of us?” His knowing gaze didn’t budge from her face, and acceptance resonated in his voice.

The dark brown of his eyes didn’t match hers, or John’s, neither did the color of his hair. Both were throwbacks to her father. Her biological father, not the man she’d called Dad for the past thirty-odd years. She didn’t remember much of the man who’d fathered her, besides a quiet voice and strong arms. But she’d seen enough pictures to know where her sons’ dark hair and eyes came from. Sometimes she wondered whether Brendan’s temperament had skipped a generation too . . . but then there was Benji’s hypercuriosity—neither she nor John had ever been so full of life and innocence, so where had that trait come from?

“Dr. Kerry is working on it, but they aren’t sure what we’re dealing with yet. In the meantime, we’re safe here. The signal is blocked by Shadow Mountain.” She paused to instill confidence in her voice. “They can’t find us here.”

He didn’t look surprised. She hoped he hadn’t figured out the rest of it. If Dr. Kerry couldn’t figure out a way to neutralize the compound that those bastards had injected into her children, Brendan and Benji would never be able to step foot outside of Shadow Mountain again. Not without the risk of being scooped up and used in this deadly conspiracy Eric Manheim and his cronies had embroiled them in.

A beat of silence followed. A moment throbbing with unasked questions.

“Commander Mackenzie thinks Clay did this to us,” Brendan suddenly said, a cold front in his voice.

She flinched, denial instinctively rising—her dad and Clay, they couldn’t have had anything to do with what had happened. They couldn’t . . .

“Commander Mackenzie is suspicious of everyone.” Which was nothing less than the truth and had nothing to do with what her son was trying to tell her. “Mackenzie doesn’t even know your uncle Clay.”

Mackenzie’s suspicious face rose in her mind.

Brendan was right. Mac did think Clay had been behind the injection given to her sons. But if he was right, that meant Clay was behind the rest of it too. John’s murder and her, Benji’s, and Brendan’s kidnapping—culminating in what those bastards had done to her. If Mac was right . . . Clay was responsible for every single horrific, devastating blow since March.

It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. She’d known Clay practically her entire life. They’d shared a home and an idyllic childhood. He’d been John’s best friend, best man at their wedding. He was Brendan and Benji’s godfather. For him to be capable of such evil, without either her or John recognizing it? No . . . it couldn’t be true.