Eye of the Falcon (Psychic Visions #12)(91)

She cast him a sideways look and then forced herself to take several steps forward. Three chairs were on her side of the table. She appreciated having both Hawk and Eagle with her. She sat down, her gaze never leaving the man in front of her. The first words out of her mouth were not what she expected to ask. “Are you my father?”

A shadow crossed Angus’s face. He settled back and said, “I have no way of knowing for sure.”

She let her breath out slowly in a long exhale. Her shoulders slumped. She had so hoped for answers.

“My DNA is on file,” he said quietly. “I would very much like to get yours tested to see if it’s possible.”

“My mother told you that I might be yours?”

“Yes. But she was never far away from your father. Rory was a hard man. He told her often the only way she would leave him was in wooden box.”

Issa’s gaze widened at that news. But then her father ran a smuggling ring. He’d had to be tough about what was his. “But it’s possible?”

Angus nodded. “Yes, it’s possible. We were lovers for many years—until Rory caught us. For the longest time after that we stopped again, but I couldn’t stay away from her. I knew, if he caught us a second time, he’d likely kill me. I loved her more than anything else in the world.”

“My mother, did she love you too?”

His smile turned gentle, loving, as he said, “I want to believe she did. In my heart I think she did. But maybe I was just a light in an otherwise hard life.”

“Why was her life hard?” She couldn’t stop the questions about her family from flowing. She needed to ask about so much, but, at the same time, the little girl inside her looked for answers on a whole different level.

He explained about her parents’ marriage way back when, how her father and he had been competing for her mother. Her father had won, and, for a time, she’d seemed happy. But then they grew apart. Her sons grew up, and life was hard.

“The law charged him with attempted murder?”

Angus nodded. “Aye. But I wouldn’t press charges. He was right to do what he did. I was with his wife. Any other man would have done the same. I had no right being there. She was his. I was the one in the wrong.”

“And yet that night, when it all went to hell, you were in bed with her.”

His gaze widened as he stared at her. “Did you see us?”

She gave a solemn nod. “Which is why I’ve always felt guilty. I was so shocked by the sight that I didn’t see what was happening in time to warn anyone below.”

Sorrow crossed Angus’s face. He reached a hand toward her.

She pulled back instantly.

Seeing the look on her face, he asked in astonishment, “Are you scared of me? I would never hurt you.”

“And yet in a way you did. If I’m yours, you left me with an unhappy mother for decades, my first six years of life with a father and brothers who I barely knew and didn’t really accept me.” She shook her head. “If you’re not my father, you were with my mother, inciting an already volatile situation, making my life much less than it could have been.”

“I gave you Hadrid. He was my most prized falcon,” he said. “Your father paid for him, but it wasn’t nearly what he was worth. I had hoped to have him sire many more like him. But, after he bonded with you, I could do nothing with him.”

“So then he was already of much less value,” she said in a cool voice. It was hard to keep to an even tone. Both tears and laughter warred in her head. She wanted to get up and hug him, but, at the same time, she wanted to hit him.

He stared at her for a long moment. “It’s hard to believe you’re a grown woman. Have you done something with your life?”

“I’m a biologist,” she replied. “And I’m still fascinated by birds.”

He smiled. “Then giving you Hadrid was the right thing to do. For both you and the bird. When you have a lifelong love of animals, particularly one species, it’s almost like dying to be without them.” He raised his hands to the concrete walls around her. “My life here is nothing. I barely see the sun. No birds are in my life, and I have lost your mother.” He turned to look at her. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes, just over a month ago. That’s when everything started. Let me explain what has happened after her death.”

He fell silent as Issa went over the story, explaining how she had been kidnapped from her cabin after clearing out her mother’s place, that she’d been held and tortured for weeks on end, and then she had managed to escape. And how Eagle came to find her. When she finally ran out of words, she raised her gaze to look upon Angus and saw tears in his eyes. She liked him that much more.

“I had nothing to do with it,” he whispered, shaking his head. “No way any of us would do such a thing. It was against the code.”

“One of the kidnappers talked about the code. He also talked about stressors. He asked a lot of questions about my childhood and where I hid it? But I have no idea what it was. I had no answers.”

Angus’s gaze narrowed, as if casting his mind back a lot of years. “Stressors. Now that’s interesting. It’s a term I used with the birds. Sometimes you have to force an animal into stress by adding stressors, so he comes to the point where he sees you as a good thing and the rest of the world as bad. In your case, being stuck in the crevice was your stressor. When you reached out, for whatever reason, in such a way, Hadrid found you. He responded to your cries. The stressor applied to you, unknowingly or not, brought the two of you together somehow. But it’s not a term I would expect to hear very many people use.”