Forsaken Duty (Red Team #9)(35)

When his T-shirt was soaked and she was cried out, she was limp in his arms, still racked by broken gasps for air. He wiped her face then pulled the blanket up over them. “Talk to me.”

She shook her head.

“Laidy. You are my heart, and right now it’s fucking breaking. Please. Talk to me.”

“He took Augie.”

“Who?”

“Cecil. He tried to make me choose which boy to lose.”

“God damn.”

“I wouldn’t. He decided for me. He took our son.”

Our son.

“When I tried to fight back, he broke my jaw. I spent a month in the hospital recovering.”

Owen wrapped his arms around her and leaned over her. Her arms hooked around his back. He cried, too. For his son. For her pain. For the years they lost. For everything that had been done to him and his family.

After a while, she caught his face in her hands. Her eyes searched his. “Do you think Augie’s still alive?”

Owen drew back and looked down at her. Tomorrow, he had to make a plan to get them to safety. “I do. If for no other reason than for leverage.”

Despite what he’d said, he wasn’t so certain. He’d tipped Edwards off that the boy was actually Owen’s.

“It isn’t because I snore that I didn’t want you in here. It’s the dreams…they come every night.”

Owen nodded. “Okay.” He didn’t know what else to say. Her pain was so brutally intense. Dreams were probably a relief of sorts. A pressure valve. “I got you. I’m never going to let him hurt you again.”

Her eyes showed she didn’t believe him. And truth be told, he wasn’t certain it was a promise he could keep, but he’d die trying.





12





The first thing Owen became aware of the next morning was the odd sensation of being both fully rested and emotionally depleted.

The second was that he was alone in bed.

The third was that someone was staring at him.

Owen sat straight up. Troy was leaning on Addy’s bed, his head propped in his hands. Owen looked around. “Where’s your mom?”

“Talking to the cook.”

“What time is it?”

“I don’t know. We had lunch a while ago. Mom said not to bother you, so I was being real quiet.”

Owen ran a hand through his hair. How the fuck had he slept so late? He’d wanted to wake up with her. Some protection he was. The room was still dark—all the drapes were drawn. The house had been so quiet. And truthfully, he’d needed to crash.

“Why are you sleeping in my mom’s room?”

“She didn’t want me to sleep in the hallway.”

“Oh. I thought it was because of the monsters.”

“There are no monsters, Troy. Only my own devils.” It was a lie, but it was best to hide the truth from kids, no?

Troy’s eyes got big and he straightened. “You have devils?”

Owen reached over and ruffled his hair. “I’m working on taming them. Don’t you think your tutor’s going to miss you by now?” he asked, trying to preemptively redirect the boy’s attention.

“She was in the bathroom, but I bet she’s out now.” Troy climbed on the bed and crawled over to hug Owen’s neck. “Bye, Mr. Tremaine.”

Owen caught himself before he could say, “Bye, son.” The kid didn’t need that kind of confusion.

Owen collected his pistol, which he’d moved to Addy’s nightstand, then went to his room for a shower and a shave. He let the water run over his face, washing away the salt and tears of the night.

He needed to make a plan. He couldn’t use any of the phones to reach out, because every one of them had to be tapped. Jax or the Omnis could get there long before his team could. Certainly, if the staff were Omni, it could be a bloodbath. He couldn’t use any computers in the house, because he was sure they were being watched. He could take one of the staff cars, but cops would pull them over once they got to the town below. They couldn’t walk out. It was winter in the Rockies. And he didn’t know what kind of endurance Addy was capable of. Besides, out in the woods, they’d be exposed to multiple threats—human, animal, weather. At least at the house, they could take cover in Jax’s armory. Or Addy’s panic room, if she had one.

Owen went in search of Addy. It was already midafternoon. The staff said she was in her study. It was the third door on the right in her hallway. It was open, so he walked right in. She was sitting at a double-sided barrister’s desk, working on a laptop. He walked over to one of the tall windows that overlooked the gorgeous grounds around the home. There wasn’t a lot of landscaping. The area was left wild, with huge rock outcroppings that jutted up from the ground. Gravel paths wove their way around the rocks. Here and there were beds of xeriscape plants. Nothing was in bloom at the moment. Pockets of snow still lingered in north-facing crevices of the jagged boulders.

He turned around and faced her, leaning on the window frame. Addy didn’t tell him to leave. She didn’t give him any attention at all. He’d told her last night that he was a patient man—maybe that had been a lie.

“Thank you,” he said, breaking into her wall of silence.

A frown tightened her brow. “For what?”