by Nicole Helm
“Over the man who lied to me my whole entire life?” Hilly demanded.
“No time for that,” Dad said flatly. “Make your choice, girl. You’ve got three seconds.”
* * *
CAM COULDN’T SEE out the window, but he could hear the careful, patient and quiet attempts to pick the lock.
It wasn’t Zach. He’d known that almost right away, but he hadn’t wanted to worry Hilly. The most important thing was getting her out of sight, and warning James.
The more they knew, the better. At some point, things would have to make sense and add up. But right now he couldn’t figure out who this man was trying to pick the lock.
If it was the Protectors, surely they’d bust in guns blazing with more than one man. Zach had said there were at least thirty in the compound. There was no reason to send one man to pick a lock.
Whoever was out there was huddled close enough to the door Cam couldn’t get a glimpse of them through the window.
He debated his two options. Wait for the man to pick the lock and see what would come next, or catch him in the act. Both were a problem because he didn’t know if the man was armed, and with what.
So, it was probably better to take him off guard. Letting him open the door himself gave him too much time to plan an attack. Scaring him probably wasn’t the best idea, but Cam would be careful.
He listened and waited for the click of the man succeeding in turning the lock, then he acted. He flung the door open before the lock picker could and pointed his gun at the squatting man.
It bothered Cam that the man didn’t look all that perturbed, but Cam kept his weapon steady on him.
“Well. Hello.” The man slowly dropped the tools he’d used on the door to the ground, then lifted his hands. “Don’t shoot,” he said with a crooked smile.
Something in his brown eyes made Cam uneasy, but he held the gun trained on the stranger’s head. He couldn’t take any chances.
The man started to move his hands to the ground.
“Don’t move,” Cam instructed. He didn’t see a weapon, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be reaching for one.
“I’m just going to stand up. If that’s all right? Bit easier to explain things if I’m not losing the function of my knees being crouched this long.”
Since Cam was holding a gun and the man wasn’t, Cam inclined his head in assent. Because he was watching the man’s hands, making sure they made contact with the ground rather than a grab for a potential weapon, Cam was a second too late to dodge the sweeping kick that knocked him on his side inside the house.
A shooting pain as his hip hit the hard floor had him hissing out a breath. He managed to keep hold of the gun though, trying to get it pointed at the intruder, but a second kick from the man had it flying across the floor.
On a curse, Cam lunged for the weapon, but the man flung himself on top of Cam. Cam fought him off, flipping him easily onto his back and using his body to keep the man on the ground. The man got a cracking elbow blow to Cam’s jaw. Stars studded his vision, but Cam landed a blow to the man’s side that had the attacker huffing out a pained breath.
Jaw throbbing, Cam grappled with the man, trying to get him subdued. But they rolled, each landing significant blows on the other, and neither really gaining any ground.
Cam didn’t dare look at the bedroom door. He could hear Free barking, but he had to hope James and Hilly had the good sense to get out of here in whatever way they could.
Cam managed a decent hold, slowly working his limbs around the strange man and demobilizing both his legs and one arm. He only had to get the other arm locked and—
He saw the glint of a knife with just enough time to react. In a flash, Cam jumped off the man, the blade of the long, vicious knife luckily only catching the gaping fabric of his sweatshirt and nothing else. But the man was on his feet in no time at all, the knife held threateningly in one hand.
Cam didn’t let himself obsess over that fact. The most important thing was to stay loose and ready.
“I don’t know what you’re after, but it isn’t me.”
The man cocked his head. “You know, you’re right, but you have who I’m after, so you’ll do for now. Where is he?”
He. This man, who looked to be about the same age as Cam and had clearly had some similar combat training to Cam, wanted James. Not Hilly.
But Cam had made a vow to himself to protect Hilly in whatever way he could. Unfortunately, that meant the vow had to extend to her father.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, who you want or why you broke into my cabin.”
The man snorted. “Your cabin. What a liar you are. Maybe you’re one of them.”
“Them who?”
“You’re a Protector, or should I call you a murderer?” The man lunged with the knife and Cam managed to sidestep. He tried to land a blow, but the man’s arm quickly slashed backward, and this time the blade met the flesh of his arm with a sharp sting.
He didn’t have time to look at it and discern how deep it was, but it didn’t feel too bad.
“I’m not a Protector. I thought you would be.”
That seemed to confuse him a little bit and Cam edged farther away from the blade that was now tinged with his blood. If he could back away far enough to be out of lunging distance and look for his gun, he had a chance.
“You’re harboring a Protector. That means you’re one of them.” The stranger took two steps closer for every one Cam managed to edge away.
“I’m not,” Cam replied calmly, holding up his hands, trying to make his steps less conspicuous. “I just escaped from them.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“So that man and woman you came inside with were just figments of my imagination?”
Cam was careful to not let his expression give anything away. “Do you have a lot of figments of imagination?” he asked, his voice even.
“A comedian. Good. Just what my day was miss—”
The front door, which had been partially open from their previous tussle, sprung all the way open. Cam was distracted by the movement, and Zach stepping inside, so it gave the stranger ample opportunity to jump on him and, in a maneuver Cam cursed himself for falling trap to, press the knife’s blade to his throat.
Cam looked at Zach, who still stood in the doorway, rifle drawn.
“Shoot him,” Cam instructed through gritted teeth, feeling the sharp blade of the knife press harder into his neck. He didn’t think this guy was going to wait very much longer to slice him open.
“I can’t,” Zach returned, slowly lowering his weapon as if he’d somehow been defeated. “He’s my brother.”
Chapter Seventeen
Hilly had made her choice, but it wasn’t one of the ones Dad had laid out for her. Not that he knew it yet.
There was a kind of giddy freedom in that, no matter the danger they were in. She’d been changed in the past few days, not because she’d found out her father wasn’t her own, but because she’d broken out of that stifling prison she hadn’t understood and seen the world around her.
It was big and dangerous and scary, but she’d survived. She’d been attacked over and over again and yet she was still running, still fighting. She didn’t need her father or even Cam next to her to stand on her own two feet.
From that moment Cam had shown up at her cabin, her life had changed. Opened up. No. That wasn’t true. It was the moment she’d decided to leave their clearing, to face the police, to get help.
Even though she’d chickened out, that had gotten the ball rolling. Her choice had changed her life. And for the rest of it, she was going to make the decisions, take the chances and help the people she trusted and loved.
She’d followed Dad away from the cabin in a dead run, and it appeared they hadn’t been detected by anyone. It pained
her to leave Cam, but she needed Dad away from the danger. Cam had been right that the only person who could be after them at this point was really after her father. She needed to get him to safety.
Cam could hold his own for a while. She had to believe that. But that didn’t mean she’d desert him completely.
“Let’s take a rest,” Hilly said, feigning as much out-of-breath panting as her father was doing.
Even though she now knew the truth about their lack of genetic connections, in her thoughts and feelings he was still her father. She’d have to deal with the complications of that later.
“Shouldn’t stop,” Dad gasped. “Could be after us.”
“I don’t think they are. Cam’s keeping them busy. Sit. They’ll definitely catch you if you keel over and have a heart attack.”
Dad glared, but he didn’t argue any further. He found a rock to perch himself on. “I may not be your father by blood, but I’ve been your father for twenty years and I’ve always called the shots.”
“Well, that all changed when you abandoned me and I realized how helpless you’d left me.”
“Helpless! You knew how to hunt and cook and protect yourself. What more would you need?” Dad blustered. The defensiveness he always relied upon when they disagreed was different now—whether because of the position they were in or because she’d simply opened her eyes in this manner, too.
His defensiveness didn’t come from a place of rightness. It came from a place of fear. Fear she was right.
Which she was, and she was done stuffing down her own truth for his comfort. “I could have used the knowledge of where I could go to get supplies,” she shot back. “Any clue as to what the outside world was like so I could navigate it. You left me helpless and scared. I was worried sick about you.”
“You should have trusted me,” he grumbled.
She threw her hands up in the air. It wasn’t the time for this argument, but he made her so angry the words just poured out. “I thought you were dead or hurt. I knew I had to find you and save you, but you left me helpless. I had to find someone to help me because I had none of the skills necessary to save you if it was even possible.”
“You shouldn’t have ever gone to the outside. And you shouldn’t even think about contacting that stranger again. You can’t trust—”
“I trust Cam with my life. And yours,” she said vehemently, and it was the reminder of Cam that made her rein in her temper and focus on getting back to him. He probably didn’t need her help, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t offer it.
“I taught you better—”
“We don’t have time for this. I need to know everything you know.” Then she’d run back to Cam armed with the information she needed.
“That isn’t necessary.”
She looked into her father’s eyes—the man she’d believed to be her father for twenty years. He had protected her, and she realized he must have sacrificed for that protection. “Dad, you have to tell me. If you can’t tell me, then these past twenty years were for nothing.”
He looked away, stubbornly clenching his jaw together.
A tear escaped her eye, but she brushed it away. She’d run back to Cam now. Help him in whatever way she could, even if it wasn’t with information.
“They’d found out about you,” Dad said, his voice low and pained, causing her to pause her escape plans. “I don’t know how. I thought I was just going to our annual meeting, but they tied me up and knocked me around and demanded to know where you were. I wouldn’t tell them, but I wasn’t the only one looking for you.”
“What?”
“Your biological family. Your body was never found back then, and some of them were sure that meant you were still alive.”
“Why were you supposed to kill me?” she managed to whisper.
“Revenge.” He sighed, rubbing a hand over his chest and making her worry about her heart-attack crack. “Your biological father led the ATF raid that ended with twenty of our men killed. We couldn’t let that stand.”
Her body went cold. “You were going to kill an innocent baby for revenge?”
“You don’t know what your father took from us,” Dad snapped, eyes blazing with fury time had certainly not calmed. “Twenty men and women. All ours. All just trying to make the world a better place.”
“Yes, I felt firsthand how your group of associates is trying to make the world a better place.”
Dad shook his head. “You can’t understand. You won’t.”
“Why...” She swallowed. “Why didn’t you kill me then?”
Dad looked down at his hands. “You were just a tiny thing,” he said, all that fury draining out of him. “We’d caused a car accident. It was supposed to be one of the boys, but only you and your father were in the car. I took you out of the car seat and you smiled at me.”
“My...father?”
“It wasn’t supposed to be a bad accident. We didn’t want him dead. The point had been to kill one of his children so he’d understand what he’d done. So he’d pay for what he’d done. But part of the guardrail he hit broke off and killed him instantly.”
“Killed him,” Hilly echoed.
“It seemed silly to kill you, too. The man we wanted revenge on was dead. But my superiors still wanted you dead and I just... I couldn’t. I made up a story about being made by the cops so I had to go hide out in Idaho for a while, but after a year they wanted me back in the fold. When we lived in Idaho, I left you with a neighbor who just thought I was a hapless single father. When you were old enough to be on your own, we moved to the cabin. I knew I could keep you safe and out of sight there and no one would come snooping for you—your family or the Protectors. And it worked. All these years it worked.”
All these years. Her life had been a lie all these years. She wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, but Cam was out there protecting her and her... No, she wasn’t sure she could think of this man as her father anymore. He’d killed a man, accidentally or not, out of revenge. Yes, he’d saved her, but...not really.
“So, who burned down the cabin?” she asked through her tight throat. “You said it wasn’t the Protectors.”
“Your brother. Before you cast stones on our revenge, you might consider your brother has been trying to enact some for years.”
“Brother.” She had a brother. Looking for her. Wanting to avenge their father’s wrongful death. Hilly had to force herself to breathe. So much anger and violence she was in the middle of and she couldn’t even wrap her mind around it.
“He’s after me. Has been for a few years now. He wasn’t close until the past few months, though.”
“Is that who’s there? My brother is back at the cabin with Cam?”
“Yes, but—”
Two people—both without the full story—facing off in an isolated cabin. It was a recipe for disaster, and she couldn’t let it happen.
* * *
CAM HAD SURVIVED a lot of tight spots in his day, but a knife to the throat was a new one. Especially while a brotherly yelling match went on around him, with Free’s incessant barking and clawing from behind the bedroom door seemingly unnoticed by the bickering siblings.
Cam could feel the slow roll of blood down his neck before it soaked into the collar of his shirt. Nothing fatal, but not particularly comfortable when the blade was still settled there against his skin.
“Ethan,” Zach said, sounding tired. “I can’t get you out of this if you don’t stop. Here and now.” He was calm, even if they were arguing, but there was a kind of resigned finality to the way he spoke with his brother that had Cam reconsidering risking a deeper cut with a well-timed elbow or punch.
“Get me out of it,” the brother yelled, right in Cam’s ear. “Get me out of it? When will you understand there is no out? There’s only revenge.”
“Then what?” Zach demanded, tempe
r straining. “What happens after revenge? You rot in jail.”
“Perhaps you two could have this conversation without a knife pressed to my throat?” Cam offered, not thinking the brother would actually release him. Still, it was worth a shot to remind the two he was still here and in the middle of whatever thing they were arguing about.
“He doesn’t know anything, Ethan. Let the man go.”
Cam winced as the knife only settled deeper into the cut.
“He liberated James before I could,” Ethan shot back, tightening his hold. “He knows something.”
“Who the hell do you think is with James? Can’t you see who he’s really protecting?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ethan said stubbornly.
Cam considered his angles. Drop to the floor and risk the knife cutting vital organs. A jerk to the right and he risked being stabbed just about anywhere. If he thought the man was dead set on killing him, those two moves would be preferable, but Cam still had hope this ended with Ethan letting him go of his own accord. Whatever they were arguing about, whatever Ethan thought, Cam figured it was clear Ethan needed some psychiatric help.
“If this is revenge, how does she not matter?” Zach asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“It’s revenge for Dad. She...” Ethan trailed off, his grip on Cam loosening. “Revenge for Dad is the important thing.”
Cam tried to piece that together. Hilly was the she, but Cam couldn’t figure out how on earth she fit into plans of revenge or these two disparate brothers.
“Mom won’t think so,” Zach said quietly.
“She should!” Ethan shot back, the volume of Ethan’s voice in Cam’s ear making him flinch and then hiss out a breath as the knife cut more skin.
He was done. Risking further damage, Cam feigned a cough and then used Ethan’s slight pull away as the opportunity to strike an elbow to Ethan’s neck. It didn’t dislodge the knife from his hand, but it did give Cam the space of seconds to escape the hold without making his cut too much worse.