“This girl has witnessed unimaginable violence in her life, with no one to help her through it. Her mother left when she was just a toddler, and her dad… Well, we both know she saw more of what happened than she tells us.” Shock only had a split second to sink in before Helen Russell raised her knowing gaze to his. “Don’t get me wrong. She’s learned to cope and compartmentalize because she has to. It’s part of her job. She steps into the lives of people who have suffered like she has, in hopes of turning out a different outcome. She faces danger with no thought of herself, but when Lauren disappeared and you ended the engagement, Maeve was broken.”
His attention cut to Maeve, but he couldn’t reconcile the woman who’d stood up to him on the trail over the skeletal remains of his sister with the woman his mother was describing. Maeve was a federal agent. She came home every night after chasing serial offenders—working her way up through the FBI—with a smile on her face the moment she stepped over the threshold and jokes she’d heard at the office. This was the woman who’d cried in front of him only once, at her father’s funeral, and went out of her way to ensure he wasn’t stretching himself too thin. The same woman who’d directed Cieron through Narcotics Anonymous and acted as a victim advocate on her days off. Not once had she given him the impression she was capable of anything close to the wordbroken. That wasn’t the agent who’d stood up to him these past few days, and it sure as hell wasn’t the woman he’d planned on spending the rest of his life beside. But his mom had never been a liar, and she had no reason to start now.
Callen leaned forward in his chair, stiff and exhausted and angry and exhausted some more. “What are you saying, Mom? That Maeve asked you and Dad to come with her to therapy?”
“No, dear. We were the ones to force her to go.” Defeat weighed heavily on his mother’s shoulders, and her purse shifteddown her arm. “After she goaded a suspect she had in custody into stabbing her.”
Chapter Eighteen
“You look like crap.”
That grumble didn’t belong in the too-white room with the burning fluorescent lighting. Actually, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard it and really couldn’t figure out what it was doing here. Maeve’s stomach felt as though it was eating itself. Or maybe it was the “You’re not the brother I was expecting.”
“You wound me.” Cieron Russell looked nothing like Callen, with his pitch-black hair and high widow’s peak. It stuck up in all kinds of directions like he’d run his hands through it. And that, she could relate to Callen. Maybe some habits were genetic. The tight white polo-shirt he wore accentuated a thinness only achievable through copious amounts of drugs. The sickly color of his skin, too, but he looked…better than the last time she’d seen him. Healthier. Thick eyebrows matching the color of his hair hiked higher up a broad forehead and accentuated the five-o’clock shadow her near-brother-in-law had let grow in. Cieron placed both hands over his heart and leaned back in his chair as though he’d been shot. “Here I was doing my brotherly duty in watching over you, and all I get is lip.”
Ugh. Now that she’d thought it, she couldn’t ignore the pinch of pain in her gut. Bad choice of…thoughts. Maeve tried to sit up but didn’t make it far, closing her eyes against the rush of nausea surging up her throat. “You started it.”
Was she slurring her words, or was that her imagination? She wiggled her toes and fingers. She couldn’t feel them, but theywere there under the sheets, and they were responding. That was a good sign, right? No paralysis. The bullet must’ve missed her spinal column.
Callen’s voice echoed through her head. He’d said that right after…after she’d taken that bullet the shooter meant for him. The machine monitoring her heart rate ticked up in tempo. The pressure in her chest expanded. While the bullet might’ve missed her spinal column, it felt like her insides had been shredded. Probably not inaccurate. “How long have I been out?”
“Almost four days.” Crossing one ankle over the opposite knee, Cieron watched her with that unnatural stillness he sometimes took on. An intensity she’d never been able to achieve, even in the middle of an interrogation. She’d always envied him for that.
Then she registered what he’d said. “Four days—”
“You woke up a couple times, but from what I hear from Mom and Dad, this is the most lucid you’ve been.” He interlaced his fingers across his stomach, and another wave of discomfort fired through her.
“Your parents are here?” She quit trying to sit straight up and simply tried to keep herself from throwing up all over the bed.
“Callen called them.” That all-too-familiar hint of resentment brothers carried for one another—especially two only eleven months apart in age—tainted Cieron’s voice. “As you can imagine, he calls, they jump. Like the prodigal son returns, or some shit. They were on the road within a few minutes of getting the news you’d been shot and were admitted to surgery.”
Callen. The memories were there, right at the cusp of her mind. Him holding her as she bled out. His refusal to chase down the suspect. The concern in his voice, his demands to keep her eyes open. It all played out in a sickening display. Though now that she thought about it, she’d been wrong to tell him to pursue the shooter. The man had told Callen he was responsiblefor Lauren’s death. The suspect could’ve easily turned that gun on Callen, and there would’ve been nothing she could’ve done about it.
Maeve settled back against the pillows, overwhelmed just by this conversation. Exhaustion increased the heaviness in her eyes as she set her head back. “Where are they?”
Did Cieron realize she wasn’t really asking about Helen and Tommy?
“Cafeteria.” Cieron motioned toward the door with a jut of his chin. “You know how Dad gets when it comes to hospital food.”
She did know, but she didn’t want to think about that or why Tommy Russell had been in that hospital at all. The thought of her father-in-law shoving endless hospital cafeteria hamburgers in his mouth nearly made her sick to think about. Maeve opened her eyes. Except Tommy wasn’t her father-in-law. He wouldn’t ever be.
And that hadn’t been the point of her taking on Lauren’s case alone—to convince Callen to give them a second chance—but it hurt all the same. Almost more than the gunshot wound to her abdomen. “And Callen called you?”
A flash of too-white teeth—all veneers, considering the last time they’d come face-to-face was when he’d overdosed in an empty warehouse from the crap he’d injected into his arm—gave the slightest impression of his relation to Callen. “Mom threatened to take away my allowance money if I didn’t join their merry band of concerned citizens.”
She’d underestimated how much energy it took to work around Cieron’s sarcastic personality and dig out the truth, and she just didn’t have the patience for it now. A weight that had nothing to do with the hole in her stomach pressed into her chest, making it that much harder to inhale.
If the shooter had been telling Callen the truth, Lauren was dead. Her sole purpose for putting one foot in front of the otherfor the past year was gone. And she didn’t know what to do with that right now. But Iliana Meyer was still out there, still missing under the same circumstances as Lauren had been, and while Maeve had already taken a look at the forensic analyst’s financials, phone records and GPS, she got the sudden urge to do so again. To do something while forced to remain in this bed. “Well, if it’s permission you’re looking for, you can leave.”
“Unfortunately, I was also threatened with losing my favorite body part if I didn’t hold down the fort by my oh-so-loving brother.” That smile was back again, the one that told her Cieron had no intention of following through his brother’s demands. He never had before. Why start now?
“Callen has always had a way with words.” Turning her head to face Callen’s brother, she fought back the burn of emotion battling to take over. Not just from what’d happened at the river or the past few days since coming face-to-face with her ex-fiancé again, but for all the times the bad guys had won. Her mother leaving, her father’s murder, the suspect responsible for the scar around her navel, that damn notebook of Lauren’s. Her eyes burned. Crap. The pain medication was doing too good of a job of breaking down her defenses. “I’m sorry about your sister.”
The humor drained from Cieron’s face. She’d never seen him take on such a serious edge. Like he’d become a different person altogether. “That wasn’t your fault.”
She nodded. At least, she thought she did. “But I promised you I’d bring her home.”
It’d been an agreement between them after finding him high out of his mind in that warehouse. She’d never told Callen what’d happened, how his mother had come to her, afraid Cieron was using again. That he might be dead. He hadn’t been seen in almost a week, his apartment empty, missed calls from his employer on the cell phone she’d recovered. Four days. It’d taken her four days of pestering his friends and ex-girlfriend for information, contacts, buyers and favorite spots to crash. He’d barely been breathing when she found him shivering underneath a threadbare blanket with mice and raccoons closing in to claim him as soon as his heart stopped. The NARCAN she carried had done its job countering his opioid overdose, and she’d gotten him straight to the emergency room. He’d come around a few days later, promising to go into rehab. If she found his sister.
