Forsaken Duty (Red Team #9)(11)

“That’ll do, Troy,” the woman said. “We don’t gossip. Let’s cleanup in here so we can go out to play.” He jumped off the window seat and gave Owen a short wave.

Owen returned to the hallway. He paused, looking out into the conservatory that filled the space between the two wings, then pressed his forehead against the glass. Addy had two sons. He wondered what his own boy looked like. Had he been blond and blue-eyed like the both of them? He glanced back at the classroom, considering going back to ask Troy questions about his brother. The boy was the only one here freely offering up information. Surely he would remember his brother, though he would only have been a toddler when Augie was taken. But Owen doubted the dragon with him would welcome a second interruption.

Instead, he went down the hall, opening doors, looking for Addy. He needed answers. Time wasn’t on their side. Three years had already passed since Augie was taken. Owen needed Addy to start talking if he had a hope of retrieving his boy…before the inevitable happened.

He guessed her room would be the last in the hall, the one with the round tower at the end of the wing. He tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. The suite he stepped into was darkened. The drapes had been drawn. It took his eyes a minute to acclimate. When they did, he saw a huge bed that looked big enough for two couples. Two very tall couples.

Addy was lying in the middle of it, so still and quiet that his heart clenched until he heard a slight sound from her. He pulled up a side chair and sat next to her bed. She was a little too far away for him to easily take her hand. He wished they weren’t strangers now. In the ten years they’d been apart, she’d never been out of his mind.

Clearly, it hadn’t been that way for her.

He remembered the time they’d been quarantined together at Jax’s house. She was four and he was eleven. They both had chickenpox. His father had never had it, so Owen had had to convalesce at the Jacobs’. She had a high fever. She cried for her dad to come, but when he didn’t, she cried for her mom. Everyone knew it wasn’t Roberta, her stepmom, she was crying for.

Addy had lost her real mom two years earlier, the same year Owen’s mom had died. It gutted him that no one went in to comfort her, not even Jax. So Owen did. And that was how he got the chickenpox himself.

Addy had a worse fever with the pox than he did, but he had more spots. Her nanny visited every few hours, but never stayed long. Addy would whimper and cry and scratch at the pox. He told her to come over and get in bed with him, that she could connect his dots and make pictures. He found a marker and gave it to her. She drew all over him. And laughed. And forgot about her sores.

She healed before he did, but she still sneaked away from her nanny to keep him company while he recovered. She couldn’t read yet, so she sat there with him, making up stories. Silly things, like the adventures of various rabbits and mice.

To this day, whenever Owen was sick, which wasn’t often, he thought about those days they spent together, helping each other get well.

Maybe he could do that again.

His eyes watered. How unfair it was that she was dying.

Addy’s hair was short like it had been when they had chickenpox. She’d cried when they cut her hair off so they could tend the sores on her head. He’d told her how cute she was and that every princess had her hair cut when she was sick like they were.

He watched her sleep for a while. How much time did they have left? Troy said she fainted a lot. Owen had seen the shadows under her eyes deepen when she’d confronted him earlier. And now she was lost to this exhausted sleep. Stress seemed something to avoid.

Thinking of a way to cheer her up, he went back to the little schoolroom. It was empty now, thankfully. He dug around until he found a piece of paper and a black marker. He drew the shape of a person, then frowned at how much it resembled a crime scene murder victim’s outline. He made little dots on it, then connected a few of them, like the haphazard lines she’d drawn on him. Below the figure, he wrote, Do you remember?

He left that drawing on Addy’s nightstand, then let himself out of her room.





5





Thirteen Years Ago

Fairfax, Virginia



Owen should have been tired after the red-eye cargo transport he and Jax had taken. It was already midmorning by the time they reached the Jacobs’ home in Fairfax, Virginia. The humid air was thick. Crickets and cicadas were making a loud buzz. The day promised to be a hot one.

They hadn’t been certain what time their transport flight would leave—they’d been on standby for several hours, so they hadn’t made it home in time for the actual graduation ceremony, which was where everyone was. The house was anything but quiet. The staff were hurrying about, doing the bidding of the party planner who’d been hired to oversee Addy’s graduation celebration. It was going to be a big shindig, with the wealthy parents of her friends, their families, and the Jacobs’ neighbors. Doubtless a fine time to do some fundraising for the senator’s upcoming run.

Owen stopped on the stairs before going up to the rooms he and Jax had been assigned. From his vantage point, he could see the house seemed ready for something much bigger than a high school graduation celebration. Big vases of hand-blown glass and cut crystal were overflowing with bouquets of white roses and pink peonies. Every surface, from the tops of bookshelves to the wide plank pecan floors, had been dusted and spit-shined. New slouchy white covers had been pulled over the sofas and love seats in the family’s informal living room. A feast was being set out on the long dining room table. Hors d’oeuvres were artfully arranged on various side tables.