Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(6)

It was hard. The dream images weren’t fading tonight. They’d sunk in deep. She’d be hearing that gunfire, those screams, all night long. But she would endure. She was all right. Just…breathe.

Part of her missed the cold numbness she’d felt before Rachel. It was a pain in the ass, being continually tossed and flung around by her emotions like a twig in a flash flood. She hadn’t expected that when she took the child. The impulse had taken her by surprise. She hadn’t had the presence of mind in the turbulent aftermath of the organ pirate adventure to consider what Rachel would do to her equilibrium.

Hell, she’d thought she could handle anything. She’d been keeping it together fairly well, after all. Flying under the radar, turning a nice profit with her business, paying her taxes, not getting in anybody’s face. Her current identity was holding up nicely, even under the pressure of drawn-out adoption proceedings, which was a testament to her unusual skill set. She’d been a bit bored, yes, after her supremely eventful former career, but the raid on the organ pirates had helped with the ennui. That thrill ride had been calculated to keep her going for a while.

Enter Rachel. Talk about adventure. Hah. Bye-bye, ennui. She had no time for boredom now. She was fried, trying to stay on top of it all. Blitzed by the hugeness of the responsibility. The massive snarl of bureaucratic red tape that comprised an international adoption. The appointments, the special foods, the allergies, the naps, the illnesses, the medications, the baths, the fits. The fears.

And even so, life without Rachel was now impossible to contemplate.

The miracle happened so quickly. Sneakily, too. That skinny monkey of a baby girl wrapped her arms around her neck and hung on for dear life, and the place where her heart was theoretically supposed had gone all hot and soft out of f*cking nowhere. Something twisted, swelled, went pop inside her and—

The kid just got to her. Those huge, liquid brown eyes, so much like little Irina’s—ah, no. No. Don’t.

Tears were slipping down her face, hot and fast. Her chest vibrated with sobs so fast, they were a seamless, silent shudder.

God, she hated crying. She gently detached Rachel’s clinging arm, and slid out of the bed and down onto the blond bamboo floorboards.

Fuck this. She did not want Rachel to wake up and see her this way. Pull yourself together, Tamar. The kid had enough to feel insecure about already without watching her mamma come apart at the seams.

Tamar. She’d slipped into calling herself by her childhood name. And that stern inner voice had sounded so much like her mother. Odd. She’d been insane, to use something so close to her real given name for her alias. A suicidal impulse? Or just pique? Or simply a need to claim something real for herself. To make herself feel more coherent.

A tall order. But she was stalling. Up, Tamar. On your feet. Be the f*cking grown-up here. There’s no one else to do it.

She dragged herself to her feet, stumbled into the bathroom and leaned over the big marble sink. She splashed her face, glanced into the mirror. That proved to be a mistake. Her sight of her own thin, hollowed face, her red, staring eyes, her blurred, shaking mouth—it did not help. Eeeuw. Bad. But once one of her crying fits started, there was no way out but through. She leaned over the sink again, ran water into her hands, gulped it. Splashed water over her face. Rinsed away tears, snot.

That mission accomplished, her legs decided that no more was currently required of them. She pressed her back against the wall and slid bonelessly down. Her ass bumped onto the chilly floor tiles.

She curled into a shaking knot. She hadn’t cried in years, before Rachel. Over a decade, maybe. Hadn’t missed it, either.

She pressed her palms against her eyes until they hurt. Poor Rachel. Tam should never have touched the kid in the first place, considering who and what she was. But she had, and the damage was done, to both of them.

Rachel needed a mother so desperately. A real one, someone committed, smart, sane. Only an idiot would take on a hard luck case like Rachel, considering the child’s background, but an idiot would never survive the experience. The idiot would give up as soon as her pretty fantasies about how sweet and compassionate she was got dashed. And a kid like Rachel would be sure to dash them.

Rachel needed so much. She was a vortex of need, physical, emotional, financial. She’d been deprived since birth. Sveti, the older girl who had been penned up with Rachel in the organ pirates’ shithole, had been the first one to be tender to her, and Rachel had glommed onto the girl and sucked it up like a thirsty sponge. Just like she did from Tam.

Tenderness. Of all things to be required of her. Of all feelings to be entertaining, voluntarily.

Sometimes she missed the hours of quiet. The splendid, barren solitude. Absorbed in her jewelry making, bothered by no one. Needed by no one. And then, out of nowhere, the bleakness, the silence, the blankness of her life before Rachel hit her. And staggered her.

Rachel was over a year behind in development. She was three, but she looked, talked, and had the motor skills of a shrimpy twenty-month-old. And that was the good news. It could’ve been worse. She could have been a drooling vegetable. Or turned her face to the wall and died.

It was a miracle that she hadn’t. And Tam took that miracle to mean that she wasn’t meant to die. She was meant to survive, and to thrive, too, damn it. She was meant to shine, to bloom. Against all odds.

Rachel had made big progress in the months that she’d been with Tam. She no longer looked like a shriveled little monkey. She was walking better, talking better, babbling in three languages; the Portuguese of her babysitter, her own native Ukrainian that Tam was determined that she maintain, and English, of course.