She had Genet’s license plate number? “You got him pulled over? Hah!” Philip smirked.
“I wish.” She sighed. “My cousin said he’d try but some idiot in a truck fishtailed and caused a damn mess on the highway and he had to work that instead of patrol.”
She gave him Genet’s plate number off the top of her head as she rambled about other rude customers. Philip pulled off another hundred as a reward. “Now we can track which way he went. This is really gonna save my cousin’s ass. And save me from a whole shitload of trouble.” He seized her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Lady, you’re a freakin’ genius.”
“I know it,” she said, nodding and setting her hoop earrings bouncing. “I know it.” She looked at Gabe. “Hey, you ever want to play for the other team, I like ’em skinny.”
“She probably wouldn’t steal your car.” Philip nudged Gabe’s shoulder.
“Damn straight,” she said.
“Shut up, Phil,” Gabe said.
“Hey, I’m helping you, ain’t I?”
The woman glanced over at the counter and saw a customer waiting. “Good luck with finding the asshole. Give him one for me.” She shoved the money into the front pocket of her sweatshirt and went back to work.
Philip took one of the Marlboros out of his pocket and lit it as they walked to the car. He’d quit smoking because it was addictive and sometimes he was in a place where he couldn’t get any. It felt good to light up again after so long. It wasn’t like smoking would kill him. His lungs would self-repair.
Gabe stuffed his hands into his pockets as they walked back to the van. “I almost bought that act and I knew it was phony. Nice, Drake.”
“It’s Jersey. Two rules. Money talks and assholes are remembered.”
“A license plate number.” Gabe shook his head. “I’d never have figured we’d get that.”
“Boots on the ground.” Philip blew out smoke. “You never know until you get some boots on the ground.”
Chapter Fourteen
Philip planned to head out again once he had an address connected with Genet’s car registration. This time, he intended to take F-Team with him, just in case.
But Alec greeted him in the parking lot.
Philip lit up another cigarette as he got out of the car. “What?”
“Del is looking for you.”
Philip blew out smoke. “So? We’ve got a lead. She’ll have to wait.”
“No. She wants to see you, and you’re going to talk to her.”
No doubt noticing the tension, Gabe walked past them. “I’ll run the plate number, Drake. I should have something fast.”
Philip nodded and looked back at Alec. “Why is it so damned important to you that I talk to Delilah Sefton?”
“Because you’re the father of her kid, she’s scared and she said she needed to talk to you.” Alec crossed his arms over his chest. “So that’s what you’re going to do.”
Philip took a long drag on the cigarette, tossed the stump to the blacktop and crushed it under his work boot. Alec had appointed himself Del’s protector. Interesting. More interesting was that Del was demanding to speak to him. Their tenuous bond from yesterday was too weak, he thought, for her to want his company. She might have been attracted to him but that was in the moment.
No, she either needed to talk to him as the child’s father, or Del had realized he was really Hawk.
He’d hoped to never see her again. That was for the best. Alec’s stance told him that wasn’t possible.
“All right. But before the day gets any busier, I need a promise from you.”
Alec hooked his thumbs on the pockets of his jeans, wary. “What?”
“Many things could happen in the next few days. I want you to promise that if anything happens to me, anything at all, that you’ll make sure Del Sefton and her son are safe.”
“Of course, I’ll do that. I’d do that anyway.”
“Alec, I want you to swear that if anything happens to me, no matter what it is, that you’ll protect Del and her son. Anything.”
Alec frowned. “What’s going on, Drake?”
“Promise me, Farley.”
“You’re keeping secrets again.”
“Yes. Now, promise. And you make sure Beth keeps it too.”
“This makes no sense.”
“I know.”
Alec glared for a few seconds and finally nodded. “I promise. But you’re not planning to get yourself killed, are you, Drake?”
The firestarter was worried on behalf of Beth. “My daughter has you. She doesn’t need me.” Philip brushed past Alec. “So where’s Del Sefton?”
“I gave her one of the meeting rooms, like the one Cheshire was in when you talked to him.”
“The cameras in there have to be turned off. This needs to be a private conversation.”
“They are. I figured with the baby and all, you two would have a lot to talk about and you’d want to do it in private.”
You have no idea, Alec.
Del sat on the couch in the room, her hands curled over the handgun that Drake had given her. Alec had promised to bring him here. Her stomach roiled. She shivered. For many years, she’d blocked out the memory of that day when she was nine years old but now it kept replaying over and over in her head, as if it had happened yesterday. Or even five minutes ago.
Yelling, yelling, so much yelling. She’d pressed her ear to the door of the bathroom. She couldn’t make out words, just the voices and the anger behind them. Her mother. Hawk’s mother. Hawk, sounding like he was crying. More yelling from far outside, male voices identifying themselves as FBI.
Hawk’s mother screamed. A shotgun went off. Del flinched and climbed into the bathtub, trembling. Her mother had stopped yelling. Hawk was still yelling. Her father was screaming and she could hear him say, “You killed my wife, you son of a bitch.” Another shotgun blast. Her father didn’t speak again. She heard a wail, then the sheer fury of Hawk’s stepfather. A third shotgun blast and more crying. She heard Hawk scream.
She’d burst out into the hallway and ran, ran, ran to the living room. Her mother lay crumpled over the coffee table, half her head missing. Her father lay just a few feet away on the floor, facedown, so still. Hawk’s stepfather was next to him, lying on his back, looking up at death with a surprised, frozen expression on his face. His chest was covered in blood.
Hawk stood a few steps from the table, his face pale, his cheeks full of tears, his body curled around a shotgun. His mother was on her knees, weeping. Beside her, another shotgun.
Lily stared at Hawk. Her best friend. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” he said.
“You killed her! You killed my mom. You killed my dad. I heard you yell at them! You were my friend and you killed them! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”
Tear gas had flooded the room. The front door burst open. She was grabbed by a man wearing a flak jacket and helmet, but she didn’t notice him. She squirmed in his arms, her eyes streaming with tears from the gas, shouting over and over, “You killed them, you killed them, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”
Hawk had never said a word to her after that. She saw him handcuffed outside the isolated home where they’d made their stand against the Feds. He had made eye contact with her as he stood beside a patrol car. His face had been streaked with tears. There had been a new bruise on his cheek.
“I hate you,” she’d said one more time. He’d turned away. She was taken in one car, he was taken in another. That was it.
Once she had grown up, she’d tried to understand a little of why he’d betrayed her so badly. He knew she loved her parents. She could only think that he’d been in a rage against his stepfather and her parents had gotten in the way. But why hadn’t he shot his stepfather first?
Oh, she’d looked up the court records of his mother’s trial. His mother had claimed to have shot her husband and Del’s parents, but Del knew that was a lie. Hawk’s mother never would have offered violence to anyon
e. She was too cowed and fearful, too terrified of her husband to even protect Hawk.
No, it had been Hawk arguing with them, it had been Hawk who’d fired, it was Hawk who was responsible. She knew he was capable of it. And she knew once he looked at her that day that he’d done it.
She’d never seen him again. Until yesterday.
The door opened and he walked in. His hair was mussed, he hadn’t shaved. She took a deep breath and wrinkled her nose. He’d been smoking.
He closed the door behind him carefully. She stood and stared at him. He stared back. His face had no expression. But she could tell.
He knew.
She drew out the gun and pointed it at him. “Over here. Kneel next to the chair.” Her hand was shaking but her voice was steady.
He did as she asked. She stood behind him, gun at his temple. “You know why I’m doing this.”
“I know, Lily,” he said.
She walked around to face him. “Don’t you dare call me that.”
“Lily.” He stared at her. “You grew up to be so beautiful.”
Philip saw the blow coming. He made no move to avoid it. He’d goaded her into it. He wanted her to hit him. He deserved it.
The gun barrel smashed into his cheek. He fell forward to his knees and felt the blood trickle down his face. Pain exploded across that whole side of his head. She hadn’t held back. It was possible she’d even cracked his cheekbone.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” he whispered. “You should.”
She grabbed his collar to make certain they were face to face. Tears were running down her cheeks. She’d bitten through her lower lip. Blood dripped from her chin.
“You should kill me, Lily. I murdered them.”
She hit him again, lower this time. He felt his jawbone crack. He toppled sideways and his shoulder hit the floor with a thud.
“Why? That’s what I’ve wanted to know all these years. Why did you kill them? Why, Hawk?”
Philip blinked, trying to clear his vision, trying to focus past the pain to call on the healing power. Oh, God, this was good, the best pain yet. Agony and ecstasy flowed together, became one, became perfect. He curled into himself, every nerve singing, hiding his erection from her.
Half of him wanted her to hit him again, to keep the glorious agony coming. The other half wished she would finish it, end his existence once and for all.
His vision cleared. He felt the tingling of inner warmth as his power kicked in. She stood over him, the gun pointed directly at his forehead. She wanted to lance her anger, lance the pain of the loss of her parents and put it behind her once and for all. He’d give that to her. It was all he had left to give.
“Lily—”
He couldn’t speak further. His jaw seemed locked shut. She put the gun under his chin. He offered no resistance.
“Don’t call me that. You have no right to call me that,” she said again.
“I know.”
He closed his eyes, concentrating. He knew a few moves that might disarm her. He had the gun in an ankle holster. A head butt would work and hurt her more than him. He could do a body slam that would knock them both into the wall and loosen her hold on her gun. But she might get hurt with either of those moves. He might hurt the child growing inside her. Her son. His son.
He couldn’t risk hurting her, not when he’d hurt her so much already.
“Delilah,” he whispered. “End it.”
She backed up a step, staring at the blood on the floor. She blinked away the tears in her eyes. In the last few months, she’d been medically raped, been the victim of an attempted kidnapping, been involved in a car chase and torn away from her home. And now a nightmare from her past had re-entered her life. People had killed under less stress and for far less reason. At least all this would be over now. He closed his eyes, ready for the bullet.
“Talk. Open your damned eyes. I need to know why you killed them,” she said.
”It doesn’t matter. You should kill me.”
“I can’t kill you until I have answers.”
Hell. He didn’t want to look at her. The way she stared at him, with those dark eyes, she seemed the same little girl who’d trusted him. Better, he thought, for her to be angry with him than to believe the people she had loved most in the world had planned to murder her.
“I went crazy. They were in between me and my stepfather.”
“No.” She knelt next to him, the gun carelessly held in her limp hand. “If you had gone crazy, you’d have killed him first.”
Him. His stepfather. The leader of their little clan. He’d terrorized them all, but Del’s parents had at least protected their little girl from his physical wrath.
“Why, Hawk? I have to know. I have to know.”
“No, you don’t.”
She rubbed tears out of her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Why? You always hated the guns, you were so gentle, you wouldn’t even eat meat, and…”
“I use guns now.”
“Yeah.” Her voice was short and clipped. “Hawk, if you don’t tell me, no one ever will.” She said the last in the little girl’s voice. “I have to know. You owe me that.”
“Lily,” he whispered. “I wanted…I wanted…” The pain enveloped him. His body felt as if it were a raw bundle of nerves and emotions.
“Wanted what?” She set the gun down on the floor.
Of all the things she could have done, that scared him the most. But she’d made her choice. Hell.
“Please tell me. Hawk, please.”
A plea he’d never been able to resist. “You remember that the Feds had closed in on the six of us? Your parents, you, my mother, my stepfather and me.”
She nodded. “All trapped in that little one-story house.”
“Do you know what our parents were wanted for?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I know. Not then, no, but I checked.” She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “They blew up a federal building. So the Feds said. Now tell me something that I don’t know.”
“Do you believe they did it? That they were terrorists?” he asked.
She stared past him. “I didn’t, not for a long while. But I re…I remembered stuff. The one time that my dad hit me, he caught me looking into that chest of his.”
He nodded. “The one with the weapons?”
She met his eyes again. “Yeah.”
For a second, it felt like the old trust between them clicked into place. “Okay. Well…” Somehow, it didn’t seem right, to tell this while lying sideways on the floor. He needed to look her in the eye.
He struggled to a sitting position and leaned against the couch.
“Go on,” she said through clenched teeth.
“The Feds had us surrounded.” He made sure to keep eye contact. He had to see whether she believed him, he had to know the moment he broke her heart. If all he could do was witness for her, so be it. “Your parents and my parents had never wanted to be taken alive.”
She sniffled and nodded.
“Your mother sent you to the bathroom, for safety. They didn’t want you hurt when they started shooting at the Feds.” He licked his lips, trying to moisten them. “They loaded all the weapons, all the machine guns, all the Uzis. They were going out in a blaze of glory and wanted to take as many of the Feds with them as they could.”
“Suicide by cop,” Del muttered. She closed her eyes momentarily then opened them again, accusatory. “But that’s not what happened.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Are you saying they killed themselves?” She looked over at the gun on the floor between them. “I don’t believe you. It doesn’t fit. All that yelling and screaming wasn’t suicide. You killed them.”
“No, they didn’t kill themselves. You’re right. I killed them.”
“Keep going,” she whispered. “Why?”
“My mom, for the first time in her life, disagreed with my stepfather and with your father. She worried about
what would happen to me and to you. She wanted to send us out to the Feds. There were no warrants on us—she figured they’d let us go. She wanted me to keep going, to have a life. She said that I could take you with me, that at least we’d both be safe and could take care of each other, like we always did.”
Lily’s face went ghost-white, as if she was on the verge of fainting. Somewhere in her cloudy memory, maybe she did know the truth. Maybe that was why she’d only screamed at him for answers, not killed him. Maybe her subconscious wanted this confirmed.
Maybe she didn’t really hate him?
“Your father wouldn’t let us go. He said he would never allow the enemy to take us into their hands. Better we all died together, he said. He gave me a shotgun, he said I could die like a good soldier for the revolution. My stepfather agreed. My mom objected, but my stepfather hit her with a rifle butt and knocked her down. That shut her up, like always.”
Yet it had been the first time his mother had actually tried to protect him. He’d never known what made her throw off all the years of abuse, of buying in to the bullshit spouted by his stepfather and Lily’s parents. But she had. Maybe he did owe her thanks for that one thing. And maybe she owed him a damn apology for exposing him to that in the first place.
“She…your mother…she had a bloody cheek. I remember that,” Del said.
“Yeah.” God help Lily, she actually did want the truth. He hoped that she could live with it. He sure hadn’t done a good job living with it, had he?
“And then your father sent your mother to get you. They wanted…” He closed his eyes. “They thought it would be best for you that way. Quick. Painless.”
“They…” A tiny voice. A child’s voice. “They were going to kill me?”
“They thought it best. I argued with your mom. That’s what you heard, I think. And then your mother turned to go down the hallway, to fetch you as ordered, and I had the gun in my hand and I…I shot her.”
“Oh.” Del wrapped her knees up to her chin. “Oh.”
“Your father turned on me, screaming, and I shot him too.” Philip’s throat was thick. He felt tears running down his face. Why, he had no idea.
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