by Nicole Helm
“We can’t stay here,” Nina finally said, her expression pained. “They’ll already be looking for me here. Gage was in my hospital room. They’re not going to view that as coincidence.”
Cody looked down at his hands, clenched into fists. Carefully, mindfully, he unclenched his fingers and placed his palm against the scarred wood. “True,” he replied evenly. “But they’d have to track you to that hospital. I’m not convinced they did.”
“Fine. But they’ll check here. You know they will.”
He had no doubt, but he had protections for that. Protections he’d made before he’d known Nina had his child.
Your child. Your child.
Daddy.
One by one, he pressed his fingers into the wood, focused on the feel of it. Focused on the smell of Grandma Pauline’s chili soup simmering on the stove.
“Why don’t you start from the beginning,” Duke said gently, and there was a warning in the look he shot Cody.
Cody could look down pure evil, could even hold his grandmother’s censoring gaze most of the time, but he did not know what to do with the blame in Duke’s dark eyes.
“Which beginning is that?” Nina returned, and her voice was sharp enough he knew without looking her way she was throwing that question at him as a kind of challenge.
“Someone shot you. Start there,” Cody replied, facing her with the blankest expression he could muster under the circumstances.
Your daughter. Your daughter.
“I was living in Dyner.”
There was a collective noise around the table, almost a sound of pain. Duke and Grandma were horrified she’d been so close. So close and they hadn’t known.
“We’d been there about six months,” Nina continued. “Brianna needed to start school, and I didn’t know where to do it where she’d be safe. Being close seemed the best option. The Sons wouldn’t think I’d come back toward home.”
It was smart, if a gamble still. But everything about outwitting the Sons was a gamble.
“It had been about two years since I’d had a... run-in, shall we call it. I’d been living in Oklahoma then. Someone broke into my apartment while we were gone. Luckily I...” She trailed off and rubbed her hand against her chest.
Grandma was immediately on her feet, gathering bowls and serving up chili and crackers and glasses of milk. In Grandma’s world, the first thing you fixed about a person was the state of their stomach—then they could deal with their emotional affairs.
“The reason I ran in the first place was I knew they could never know Brianna existed. So, I’ve been very careful. I don’t leave evidence of a child around. Brianna learned to put her things in hiding places—not that we ever had many things to begin with. But I just knew... I knew I had to keep her a secret.”
Cody wanted to get up out of his seat. He wanted to prowl the kitchen. He wanted to break things.
Instead he leaned back casually in his chair. “So what you’re telling me is that no one knew Brianna existed—not just me.” He shouldn’t have said that last part. Not now. But...
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” she returned, and her weak attempt at coldness failed miserably. “I hadn’t had any run-ins for two years. We were living under a fake name. I worked at a gas station while Brianna was in school. It was a ramshackle little place, family run. They paid me under the table. They were nice. Even let me rent this small house they owned for less than...”
Nina seemed to lose herself in her memories and Cody had to fight against his own impatience.
“I’m sure glad to hear you had some nice people looking after you,” Duke said, reaching out and patting Nina’s hand. Complete with another glare in Cody’s direction.
She smiled. “We’ve been lucky. Really. Until...” She took a deep breath and looked down at the chili soup Grandma had put in front of her. “Until that night. Morning I guess, but really early. I heard something—I thought it was Brianna. She sleepwalks sometimes.”
His daughter sleepwalked sometimes. His daughter. And all she’d had for six years was Nina and danger.
“It wasn’t Brianna. It was a man busting in my front door. He lifted a gun.” Nina shuddered. “I did the first thing I could think of and threw my phone at him. It must have surprised him enough because the shot missed me and hit a lamp. It shattered into a million pieces and I dived to grab a piece of it and hide behind the couch.”
Cody did stand then, his chair scraping violently against the floor. He couldn’t...
“Sit down and eat, boy,” Grandma ordered sharply.
He only looked at her with one furious sneer. “I will not. I cannot.” He strode for the door. He’d come back and do his duty, but he needed to pound on something first.
“I fought him off, and that’s when he shot me. But I used the shard and jabbed it in his neck. I’m pretty sure I killed him,” Nina said all in a rush, as if hoping to get it all out before he stepped outside. “Then I grabbed Brianna and set a fire and—”
“You set a fire?” Dev asked incredulously.
“I had to hide any sign of Brianna being alive,” Nina replied. “We were careful, but she still existed. If they came after me, knew it was me, and found the remnants of a child... I didn’t have time to get her things. I’d been shot. So, yes, I started a fire.”
When Cody turned to look at her, some combination of shock and horror dulling some of his fury to just plain confusion, she was looking up at him with what seemed pleading eyes.
But she wasn’t begging. She was reciting everything she’d done to keep their daughter alive and unknown to his father’s gang.
“Then they still don’t know she exists,” Dev said.
“I don’t think they do. I hope to God they don’t.” She kept her eyes on Cody the whole time. “Which is why we can’t stay here. They will look for me here and they will find her.”
Chapter Five
Cody didn’t walk out the door as Nina half expected him to. She’d clearly knocked some of the fury out of him by detailing the lengths she’d gone to in keeping Brianna a secret.
But she wasn’t so sure this was better. She couldn’t work out what stormed in his eyes. It wasn’t just anger, and it wasn’t just blame. It was oceans of hurt, and Nina didn’t know how to fix any of it.
“I need to speak with Nina alone,” he finally said, his voice a scrape against the quiet room.
“Hell n—”
Nina reached across to Duke, squeezing his hand. “He’s right. We have some things to discuss privately.”
“Well, it’s not happening now,” Duke said, withdrawing his hand and standing. He pointed at Cody, and it was only then Nina realized Duke was holding on to his temper. Barely. “You did this.”
Nina tried to protest, but no one was listening to her, least of all Duke and Cody.
“You don’t get a second alone with her. You fix my daughter being in trouble for seven years first. Then you can talk about what you need.”
“Duke.”
He whirled on her, anger and hurt vibrating in his big, tough frame. “Oh no, little girl. I held my tongue back then, but I have learned from my mistakes. One of those was ever letting a Wyatt boy near any of my girls.”
“You wait just a second,” Grandma Pauline said, getting to her feet.
“I have held my tongue, Pauline, but this is a step too far.”
“That girl has been shot—brought her child no one knew about here by the skin of her teeth—and you have no right to stand here and place blame.”
“I’ll stand here and place blame where it belongs.”
Nina seemed to be the only one who noticed Cody slip out the door. Which felt all too much like they were back in high school. Duke had never expressed his displeasure about her dating Cody, but there’d often been fights. Jamison, the oldest Wyatt brother trying to play
father to the rest—the rest taking exception—Grandma Pauline wading in and laying down the law.
Cody had never been built for it. He was an introvert, she’d always thought. He had to work his way through his problems on his own. He couldn’t shout them out. It just didn’t work for him.
She supposed it had been part of the attraction. All she remembered of her parents was dramatic yelling and arguments and blame. A wild, out-of-control abandon to everything.
The Knight house had involved shouting too, though she’d learned to live with it—because the arguments always ended in forgiveness and love. The Wyatt home was always chaos, noise and shouts, but with that same undercurrent of love and caring.
But even when they’d been teenagers Cody had been controlled and separate from that most of the time. She knew he felt deeply, wanted to act, but he contained it all very carefully.
Her heart squeezed as Grandma Pauline and Duke’s argument turned into downright hollering. She glanced helplessly at Dev.
Dev nodded to the door, a signal for her to take the escape. He’d stay and clean up the aftermath.
It wasn’t the first time Duke and Grandma Pauline had had a heated argument. It wasn’t even the most vicious fight she’d watched them have, but it still made Nina’s stomach cramp to think it was over her.
She got out of her seat and walked to the door, slipping out of it just as Cody had done. Now they could have their private conversation while the older generation fought over if they should.
Cody was standing over by the barn. He had one booted foot on the lowest rung of one of the pasture fences. He didn’t have his hat on, and his dark hair moved with the slight breeze.
Though he didn’t move or react to her approach, she knew without a shadow of a doubt he was aware of exactly where she was. She’d seen enough of the “cop” versions of his older brothers to know what that kind of feigned distractedness really meant.
Full and utter attention.
So she decided to speak first even though she didn’t know how to broach the subject they really needed to discuss. “I guess we’ll always be teenagers to them.”
He didn’t say anything. If they were teenagers, she would have reached out. Brushed her hand down his rigid back. She would have said something soft and sweet to break him out of his solitary brooding.
But they weren’t teenagers anymore and she was the cause of his pain. She knew she’d never be able to explain it to him in a way he’d accept, but the words bubbled up anyway.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
He gave her a look so scathing she practically stepped back. She swallowed and recentered. She couldn’t make him feel the way she wanted him to. So she’d have to be as honest as she could be and let him figure out how he wanted to feel about it without wishing for a certain reaction.
“I know you’ll never believe me. You’ll think there was something you could have done to save us, but there wasn’t. It was so much better for you not to know—for everyone I love not to know.”
“She’s my daughter.”
“And she knew you. She knew everyone. Kind of.”
“But I didn’t know her.” He turned to her, and everything about him was contained and controlled, except the red-hot fury in his eyes. “I never would have let Ace touch her.”
“I couldn’t let Ace know she existed, regardless,” she responded. She might not have self-righteous rage behind her words, but she had something more important. A desperate love and all-encompassing need to protect her child. Their child. “I know that hurts you. I’m sorry it had to, but I absolutely did what had to be done to keep her safe.” She could tell him about the threats she’d received, but it wouldn’t matter to him right now. She didn’t even blame him for that. How could she?
She’d kept Brianna from him for almost seven years, and their daughter was a joy.
“She has your cowlick,” Nina found herself saying, pointing to the crown of his head. “It’s a lot more annoying when you’re a girl.”
“Do you think this helps?” he demanded, his voice so low and pained it almost sounded like a growl.
She wanted to reach out and touch him and knew she would absolutely in no way, shape, or form be welcome to. “Do you think it hurts?” she asked gently.
He turned away from her. “This all hurts.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to come here.”
He whirled on her, that control slipping a small measure. “You think that makes it better? That you didn’t want our help? That you were shot, and our daughter could have been—”
“She wasn’t, was she?” Nina demanded before he could finish all the horrible thoughts she’d entertained herself with in that hospital bed. “Because for seven years my entire being has been about protecting her, including this,” she said pointing to her aching stomach. “I took a bullet for that child and I’d take a hell of a lot more.”
His eyes flashed with a true violent anger. He lifted his chin and looked at her with a detached disdain that made her shiver. He said nothing.
“You have to understand what this all means. You have to understand that Brianna and I can’t stay here.”
“For now, it’s all you can do.” Then he simply walked away, as if that was that.
Nina was left with nothing but an ache so deep that she couldn’t even blame it on a gunshot wound.
* * *
CODY DIDN’T HAVE a plan yet, but there were some things he had to do. Far away from where anyone could hear him.
He walked into the barn, but then walked right out the other side and kept going. Dev could return any moment to do chores or head out to the pastures. Cody walked toward the far fence that marked off the north side of the property. It was a pretty spring day, but he hardly noticed.
He knew every inch of this land, thought he’d understood every inch of himself. But he felt lost today. In emotion. In fear. He couldn’t seem to harness either fully no matter how hard he tried.
You’ll think there was something you could have done to save us, but there wasn’t.
He would have done anything. Everything. The fact Nina didn’t believe that... It shouldn’t matter. They’d broken up a long time ago.
But he found himself wondering how much of that had been her decision.
He shook that thought away. Clearly she’d found out she was pregnant and wanted to make sure Ace Wyatt never got near her child. She’d succeeded for six years until somehow, someway, his father had found a way to...
It didn’t make sense. Why the Sons would be after her if they didn’t know about Brianna? But he had to believe they wouldn’t have bothered shooting Nina if they knew Brianna existed.
So what was this?
Once he was far enough away from the house and the ranch areas to be sure he wouldn’t be overheard, Cody pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed.
“I’m going to change my number,” was the woman’s greeting.
“Nothing wrong with checking in.”
Shay laughed, and he missed that. Not her laugh specifically, but the teamwork that could prompt that reaction out of someone even when nothing was funny. He’d spent the past four years immersed in the world of the North Star group—not the youngest Wyatt brother, not left in the dark.
And for all those years Nina had been running away with his daughter.
“Cody, if you check in every five seconds I can’t get anything done.”
“So, there’s been nothing new?”
Shay sighed. “Ace hasn’t had any visitors at the jail. No contact as far as we can see, outside of his lawyers. We’re watching them too, but so far nothing out of the ordinary. We’ve been looking into the attack on this Oaks woman, but the fire pretty much took out any evidence.”
“No chatter?”
“Nothing. Especially nothing that points to th
e Sons or Ace.”
“It had to be him.” Cody knew his father was behind this. There were no other options. But without evidence...
“Maybe it was, Cody, but I don’t have any evidence. We work with facts. You know that.”
“You’ll keeping looking?”
There was a pause on the other end, and this was what he was afraid of. Not being part of the group anymore meant he couldn’t push for information. North Star might be after taking the Sons down, and they had targeted Cody for a reason—he was a Wyatt.
But that didn’t mean they would go after this thread. With Ace in jail, they had bigger leads to follow.
But Cody knew that if someone was after Nina in particular, no matter who it was, it linked to him.
“I can keep you up-to-date, Cody, but that’s all I can do.”
He wanted to press her, but it wouldn’t do any good. He understood the North Star group too well. It wasn’t personal for them. It couldn’t be.
It would just be a hell of a lot easier if he had their help. “Thanks, Shay.”
“Stay safe, Cody.”
He ended the phone call and blew out a breath. He shared Nina’s concerns about them staying here, but until he knew where the threat was coming from—and with Nina recovering from her injuries—it was safer than running.
Besides, there were some protections here. Ones no one knew about—since his grandmother would throw a fit, and his brothers would want to know details he couldn’t give them. But his time with North Star hadn’t been a waste—and not just because Ace was in jail.
Cody turned toward the sound of an engine. A police cruiser stopped on the gravel. His eldest brother stepped out, hat shielding his face from the sun and Cody as he walked toward him.
“Jamison.” It was strange. He’d spent most of the past few years staying away from the family and focusing on North Star and bringing down the Sons. When he’d crossed paths with Jamison last month, it had been as an agent.