Covert Complication (Badlands Cops Book 2)

by Nicole Helm

  Nina didn’t believe that, even now. Even coming to him and his family and tasking them with keeping her daughter safe.

  Cody would be dead if not for her. Brianna would be dead if Nina hadn’t done what she’d done.

  Cody would never forgive her, and she would never be able to believe it could have been different.

  The door opened and both her and Gage looked over to the man who stepped into the room.

  Furious energy pumped off him. Tall and rangy and ready to attack. She should have been afraid.

  But she’d seen all of that in him all those years ago—loved his dark side and being the one to lighten it.

  There’d be no soothing anymore.

  “I need to talk to her,” Cody ground out as Gage slowly got to his feet.

  Gage moved in front of Cody, trying to block his route to her bed. “Not here,” Gage said, putting a hand on Cody’s chest. “Not now.”

  Cody’s hazel eyes blazed with furious, righteous anger. She would have expected nothing less.

  Still, she closed her eyes and let the encroaching black win rather than face it. And him.

  Chapter Two

  Grandma had told him not to come, but after hours of getting nowhere with the little girl, Cody hadn’t been able to stop himself. There had to be an explanation. It had to...

  It couldn’t be true.

  But Nina had looked at him when he’d walked into her hospital room, pain in her expression. And something that wasn’t apology but was close enough it was hard to deny Grandma’s interpretation of the situation.

  The little girl who wouldn’t let anyone wash the blood off her was his.

  His.

  And Nina had kept her from him. For seven years.

  Gage nudged him out of the room and Cody let himself be led because she’d closed her eyes anyway. Not in a pretend kind of way. In an unconscious kind of way.

  “Go home, Cody. I’ll take care of things here.”

  Cody wanted to laugh. Take care of things. What was there to take care of? What did any of this mean?

  “The more you stay, the more you give away. Which means the more danger she is in,” Gage said in a fierce whisper. “I know you don’t want that.”

  “I don’t know what I want.”

  “As soon as she’s able to be moved, she will be. Just leave. We have to be careful right now.”

  “Why are we acting like—”

  “What exactly do you think a woman—your ex-girlfriend—showing up at the ranch with a bullet hole in her body means, Cody?”

  “He’s in jail,” Cody returned in the same guttural whisper his brother was speaking in. “And we’re in a hospital so I don’t—”

  “He’s in jail. They all aren’t. Someone put a bullet in her. Someone who’s likely still looking for her. Whatever secrets—”

  “Yeah, she’s got some secrets all right.”

  “Look. I only know what Grandma told me. I can’t imagine... I’m not saying you don’t have a right to be angry. I’m not saying you shouldn’t want answers. I’m saying this isn’t just delicate, it’s dangerous.” Gage put his hand on Cody’s shoulder, as if he could steady him through this. “Not just for you. For all of us.”

  “What would you have me do?” Cody ground out.

  “Go home. Watch over everything there. I’ll handle this, and when she can be moved, we’ll figure it all out.”

  Cody hated that answer. He wanted to argue with Gage. He wanted to install himself in Nina’s hospital room and demand all the answers he needed.

  But Gage was right. Cody couldn’t find a way to outreason everything Gage had said.

  “Go home, Cody.”

  Cody turned and did just that. It didn’t seem to matter—all the rage and fury inside of him had frozen at the sight of Nina pale in that hospital bed looking at him like he was her absolute worst nightmare.

  And her total salvation.

  He drove back to the ranch in that frozen state. The name Brianna kept circling around his head, but he couldn’t seem to put together a discernible thought.

  When he walked back into the ranch kitchen, Grandma was at the sink, washing dishes.

  “You should be in bed,” Cody said, noting that it was nearly midnight. Hours upon hours of...

  “She keeps hiding under the bed any time the door opens or closes,” Grandma said on a sigh, ignoring his admonition. “I called all the girls—out of desperation.” She turned off the water and proceeded to dry her hands on a kitchen towel. “She hides. She’s good at hiding, but all the girls are up there now doing what they can.”

  The girls. Duke Knight’s army of daughters. Up there with—

  With...

  “Cody. Whatever this is. Whatever has happened. You need to put it away. Your feelings don’t matter until that little girl is safe.”

  “That little girl...” Cody closed his eyes. He couldn’t believe she was his. Couldn’t believe Nina would hurt him that way. She’d broken up with him all those years ago, but he hadn’t been surprised by that. Nina had always been sweet, good. He was not that. No good for her—Duke Knight had always been sure to tell them both.

  He’d been at his CIA internship and she’d left him a message that it was over. It had hurt. It had been out of the blue, but in the end, it had only seemed right.

  So, no, losing Nina hadn’t been any big surprise. But this?

  This was bigger than anything. Than everything.

  A daughter. His.

  Couldn’t be true.

  “Go up there. Talk to her. See if you can figure out what’s going on without scaring her.”

  Cody could have argued. He almost wanted to. But they needed to know what was going on, and Brianna seemed to be the best option.

  “Be quiet though,” Grandma ordered. “Gigi is asleep in my room.”

  Cody nodded and headed upstairs. When he reached Liza and Gigi’s usual room, all the lights were blazing. Every Knight girl past and present was assembled in the room, Brianna in the center.

  The blood was gone. Her hair was damp so they must have given her a bath. She was wearing some too-big clothes, but she looked... Tired, but also calm.

  “You got her to take a bath.”

  All heads turned to him, even Brianna’s. Her eyes were blue, like her mother’s. But instead of Nina’s light blond hair, her flyaway strands were a dark brown. Like his.

  She didn’t look like either of them fully and yet somehow he knew...

  “Once we all showed up, she decided to give it a go,” Liza offered, a small, sad smile on her face.

  “Because they’re the princesses,” Brianna said. “I knew I was safe with the princesses, and they said Mommy will be okay.”

  Cody gave Sarah a questioning look, but she didn’t say anything while Rachel held the girl in her lap and Liza braided her hair.

  “The princesses?” Cody questioned, still standing in the doorway to the room.

  “Mommy used to tell me about the princesses. Princess Rachel can’t see very well,” she said, reaching up to the scar across Rachel’s eye that had been put there by a cougar when Rachel had been little. Brianna touched the lighter skin and the darker skin gently, reverently before turning to the other women around her.

  “Princess Sarah doesn’t want to be a princess. She wants to be a knight. She’s a warrior.” Brianna smiled at Sarah, who wasn’t dressed so much as a warrior or a knight as she was a rancher, but it didn’t seem to make much difference to the six-year-old.

  “Princess Cecilia always wanted a badge.” Brianna pointed to Cecilia’s tribal police badge, since Cecilia was still in uniform. She must have come straight from her shift at the reservation.

  “Princess Felicity protects the animals and the forests.” Felicity didn’t have her park ranger uniform on, but she
had clearly had some kind of conversation about it with Brianna.

  “What about Liza?” Cody heard himself ask, feeling unbalanced and yet firmly rooted to the spot. To her blue eyes.

  “She’s not a princess.” Brianna smiled big and wide. “She’s the queen who keeps everyone safe, even when she was far away.”

  Liza finished the braid as she gave Cody a heartbreaking look filled with tears that didn’t fall.

  “And who am I?” Cody asked, his voice cracking somewhere in the middle of that question, though he barely even noticed it. He felt fuzzy and distant.

  Brianna cocked her head and studied him. “You’re my daddy. But you don’t know I’m your daughter, because the bad men made us run away. Even brave knights need help sometimes.”

  “What bad men?”

  Brianna kept her gaze on his, but there was no more smiling. “All of them.”

  * * *

  “I NEED YOU to get me out of here.”

  Gage, who had barely left her hospital room as far as Nina knew these past few days, gave her a doleful look.

  Nina sat up in the bed, ignoring the pain in her body. “I’m okay. I know I’m not good but I’m good enough to get out. I have to. I have to.”

  “You were shot in the stomach.”

  “And they’ve stitched me up. Gage. I can’t just lie here much longer. I need...” She didn’t want to say it. They avoided the topic of Brianna. Nina knew her daughter was safe with the Wyatts, but that was all she knew. That was all she knew.

  For seven years—since she’d found out she was pregnant—she had existed solely to take care of Brianna. To keep her safe and healthy and completely off the Sons’ radar.

  I need Brianna.

  Brianna needs me.

  Even though she knew her strong, amazing girl was being taken care of by Grandma Pauline and the Wyatt brothers. Probably Duke and the girls too.

  Her heart ached—there was something painful about Brianna meeting them all without Nina there to be with her.

  Still, Brianna knew about them. About Nina’s foster parents who’d given her a real home. Love and safety and three square meals. School and chores and a real life. Brianna knew about Nina’s sisters—sort of.

  Nina had always made it sound like a fairy tale so if Brianna ever talked about them to strangers, people would think they were fictional. But Nina had given her daughter stories of the people who’d given Nina the kind of life she’d never even dreamed of when she’d been growing up poor and hungry in her biological parents’ drug-infested trailer.

  Her sisters, the princesses. And the brave Wyatt brothers, knights in shining armor.

  “I need to get out,” she repeated to Gage.

  “I’ll see what I can do, but I need you to know everything is fine.”

  She wanted to tell him it wasn’t, but he couldn’t understand. He wasn’t a parent. He didn’t know what it was like to...

  She remembered more and more every day. Killing the man who’d shot her. Driving as far as she could with a towel wrapped around her bleeding midsection. Then walking when she’d been afraid she’d crash the car. Brianna in her arms, trudging toward the one place she knew she could find help.

  She didn’t remember Grandma Pauline or the ambulance ride and wondered if she ever would.

  It didn’t matter.

  She’d gotten her baby to safety, and Gage seemed to understand how important it was for no one to know Brianna was alive. For no one to know who Nina really was.

  The longer she stayed, the easier it would be for someone to figure it out. Surely the people who’d tried to kill her knew she was hurt, and if they were who she thought they were...

  They’d start looking into the Wyatts. Probably already had.

  “We’re not safe. The longer it goes on. I have to get—”

  Gage gave her a sharp look. “We’ve got it covered. Trust me.”

  “Please.” She knew crying wouldn’t sway him one way or another. Not because he was cruel or unaffected by tears, but because—unless things had changed in the past seven years—the Wyatt brothers were actually quite uncomfortable with a woman’s tears, something they couldn’t fix or control.

  But Gage took the seat next to her bed and leaned forward. “Do you think I don’t understand? That I don’t know exactly what they’re capable of? I may not know why they decided to target you after so long, but I know what all of this is. Everyone is being kept as safe as possible.”

  She wished she could explain to him it wasn’t a lack of trust or belief. It was just she needed to see her daughter. She needed to hold Brianna and tell her things would be all right. She needed the time she hadn’t had after she’d been shot to explain to Brianna that everything was going to be okay.

  But Nina didn’t have the words and when the door opened she could only sag in her bed as one of the nurses peeked her head in. “Mrs. Jones? Your husband and daughter are here.”

  Nina sat back up, wincing at the pain in her side. “My...”

  Cody stepped inside. He had a hat pulled low and was different than he’d been the other day, but she could hardly notice it because he was carrying a little girl with red hair.

  “Do you need another dose of pain—”

  “No,” Nina snapped, because it was taking everything in her power to keep from sobbing and jumping from the bed. Even with a wig and ill-fitting clothes, she knew that bundle. “I’m all right.”

  The nurse nodded and stepped back out. Before Nina could say anything, before she could hold her arms out for Brianna to come to her, Cody shook his head sharply. He nodded to Gage. “Watch the door.”

  Gage was clearly not in on this, or in approval. He stood slowly. “Cody?”

  “I’ve got it covered. Watch the door.”

  Gage scowled at his brother’s order, but something passed between them and he eventually nodded and stepped outside.

  Cody didn’t say anything. He began to prowl the room, inspecting things, putting little devices on the walls, all while carrying Brianna. Who didn’t say a word. Who held on to Cody like he’d always been her very-present father.

  But the whole time, Brianna’s eyes stayed on Nina. So she smiled. Big and wide with so much pride and love for her girl.

  Nina watched as Cody kept moving around. “What are you—”

  He held his finger to his lips and kept doing things she couldn’t see or understand. Once he was satisfied with whatever, he crossed to the bed and sat Brianna down on the side of it.

  Nina grabbed Brianna so fiercely the wig tumbled off, but it didn’t matter. Brianna wrapped her arms around Nina’s neck, and no matter that Nina’s whole body hurt, she didn’t adjust Brianna’s grip.

  “Oh, my baby. Baby girl.” She couldn’t say all the things she wanted to say. Apologies. Questions. Too many sobs clogged her throat. She couldn’t let those out, so she just held on.

  “Are you going to die?” Brianna whispered. “Daddy said no, but I want you to tell me.”

  Daddy. Twin feelings paralyzed Nina. A joyous relief that finally Brianna knew her father. A cold fear that... That they’d always be in danger from here on out.

  Too late now.

  Nina tugged Brianna’s arms off her neck so she could look in her child’s familiar blue eyes. “I am not going to die. The doctors fixed me up. I have to heal, but I’m not going to die.” Not here. Not now. She looked up at Cody. “Daddy is right about that.”

  Chapter Three

  It was hard enough to handle how easily Brianna had started calling him Daddy. She had no qualms, no questions. Because Nina had told Brianna about him, and so Brianna recognized him as the man from her mother’s stories. She trusted her mother’s stories.

  Cody hadn’t been told anything. Somehow he already loved that little girl after a few short days, but that didn’t make it easy or
simple to wrap his head around the facts.

  It was just the way it was. What was he going to do? Tell a six-year-old to not call him that? She called him Daddy and he answered and his own feelings on the matter would be dealt with internally and in his own time.

  But Nina looking at him while she called Cody Brianna’s daddy broke something inside of him. He didn’t know what, or how to fix it. He could only stare at her and wonder... How...

  How?

  He’d wanted to come alone, but Brianna needed some reassurances. While the “princesses,” as she called the Knight girls, had opened her up some, enough to let them all take care of her—anxiety crept in with every passing hour she didn’t see Nina.

  So he’d brought her. Now he didn’t know what to do. Not a sensation he was used to.

  But he’d searched for listening devices, installed a few frequency busters in case someone was trying to listen in. No one could hear them in this room while they discussed this, so discuss it they would.

  Before he could figure out what question to ask first, Nina pinned him with a desperate look.

  “Cody, you have to get me out of here. It’s too dangerous. They’re looking for me.”

  “Who’s looking for you?” he asked, trying to access his old self. The self that had investigated mysteries and ordered missions. An old self that didn’t get emotionally involved in cases even when they involved his father or the Sons.

  “Who do you think?” Nina replied, still holding on to Brianna with a death grip.

  “Why would the Sons be after you after so long?”

  “Cody...” Her eyebrows drew together, as if he was the one missing information. “They’ve always been after me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She let out a shaky breath. “I...” She glanced nervously at Brianna. “Back then...”

  “We can talk about it later.” As much because he didn’t want Brianna overhearing things that would hurt her or scare her as the fact he didn’t want...

  He didn’t want to have to go back over that breakup seven years ago and see all the signs he must have missed. All the things he’d ignored because he’d been hurt. Because it was becoming increasingly clear to him that the breakup seven years ago hadn’t been as inevitable as he’d assumed.