Isaiah waited on the ten-year-old’s answer. Kids tended to be truthful.
“I know he was bigger than me and he smelled like he’d been drinking, but the puppies were so cute.”
“Right. Puppies are cute, but did this guy have brown hair, brown eyes, and did he walk with a limp?”
Roxy nodded at Isaiah’s quick thinking. Years before the armored car heist, Randall had sustained a broken leg that hadn’t healed properly during another run-in with the law. A kid might remember something like that.
Darrin scraped a hand over his head. “I don’t remember, but he let me have my pick of the litter. Why? Is something wrong with Nugget?” At the mention of his name, Nugget’s tail set to thumping.
“No, Darrin. Nugget’s fine now that he’s with you.” Isaiah ran a hand over the dog’s head, ending at his smiling snout. “How’d you earn the money to buy his new collar? I’ll bet you had to work extra hard for that one, huh”?
Roxy cocked her head. She hadn’t noticed the dog’s collar until now. Good call, Zaroyin.
Darrin tipped up on one elbow. “I didn’t buy him a new collar. Mom? Did you?”
Candy was already nodding. “What’s the big deal? I bought him a collar last time I went to the grocery store. The last one was dirty. So what?”
“Might be nothing, but…” Isaiah fingered the smooth brown leather circling Nugget’s neck. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to borrow it,” he told Darrin with a wink. “Don’t let this bad boy out of your sight, okay?”
“Sure, Agent Zaroyin.” Hero worship gleamed in Darrin’s sleepy eyes as he hugged Nugget again. “He always sleeps with me anyway. He’ll be fine until he’s got to go outside tomorrow morning and do his business. You’ll have it back by then, right? I don’t want to let him run anymore.”
“You bet, buddy,” Isaiah replied, then to Candy he said, “If I find anything, I’ll let you know, but please stay inside with your children. Don’t go outside and don’t let them out of your sight.”
She gathered Darrin against her hip. “Of course. I’ll be right here.”
Outside the bedroom door, Roxy asked, “I knew it. It’s bugged, isn’t it?”
Isaiah shook his head. “No, but it’s got a tracking device implanted along the side. Feel this?”
He shouldn’t have made contact with her satiny skin when he handed Roxy the collar. But he did…
Chapter Twelve
“We can’t keep doing this,” Isaiah muttered as he dragged his mouth away from Roxy’s, his blood on fire at the mere touch of her skin on his. The woman was his heroin, and he’d become a hopeless addict with no sense and less restraint. Worse, this addiction was growing. Just knowing she was in the same house with him had him on edge.
Pressed against the wall just outside Bratton’s room, she answered a breathy, “I know,” into Isaiah’s open mouth. Totally smitten and about to lose his mind, Isaiah allowed her to stand, but he didn’t release her forearms. For a woman, Roxy was built. Lean muscle mass met his fingers everywhere they wandered. And they liked to wander. Even now, when he had hard evidence in his hand that someone had tracked them to the safe house, Isaiah wanted nothing more than to bend Roxy over the nearest table and make her scream for more.
Fighting his shaky control, he drew in a breath and took that all-important step back from temptation. It was hard to swallow. Harder to breathe. His entire body was… Just. Damned. Hard.
“Check out the third rivet from the buckle,” he said gruffly. “It’s removable.” And so is your shirt.
Roxy looked at the collar in her hand, dazed as if she couldn’t think straight, either. Thumbing the rivet, it popped off and fell to the carpet. Isaiah knelt at the same time she did, and damn. The carpet would do just fine.
Roxy trembled. “I think one of us should ask to be reassigned.”
“I already refused this assignment once,” Isaiah told her even as he tilted forward on his knees, intent on her lips.
She never even tried to stop him, just melted under his mouth with a delightful whimper. They both would’ve ended in each other’s arms if Candy hadn’t jerked her bedroom door open and nearly stumbled over them. “Help!” she cried. “It’s Kitty! Asthma. Quick! She can’t breathe!”
Mortified at what he’d done outside a client’s door—for Christ sake!—Isaiah pushed off the floor. “Since when?” he barked—as if he’d never lost control. “She was fine a minute ago.”
“It just started,” Candy yelled over her shoulder as she flew back to her gasping daughter on the bed. “I left home so fast, I never thought to bring her inhaler, and the one in her backpack’s empty. Quick! We have to go to the ER right now!”
Already out of his pajamas and dressed in jeans and t-shirt, Darrin’s eyes flooded. “Hurry, hurry,” he cried. “She can’t breathe! We gotta go!”
Taking command, Isaiah shook his head. “No, buddy. You stay here with Officer Thurston and Nugget, while I take your mom and Kitty to the hospital. I need a man in the house, okay?” He’d already scooped Kitty into his arms, keeping the blanket wrapped tightly around her.
“But I wanna go,” Darrin cried, fighting tears. “She’s my sister. You gotta let me go with you.” A hiccup wrenched out of him, melting Isaiah’s heart. Pesky little brother or not, this little guy loved Kitty fiercely.
Roxy intervened, laying a firm hand on his shoulder. “Isaiah’s a good guy. Everything will be okay. He won’t let anything happen to Kitty. You’ll see.”
Darrin turned into her and wrapped his arms around her waist. “’Kay,” he said. “I trust you guys, but hurry. Isaiah has to hurry!”
Isaiah gave Roxy what he hoped was a look of appreciation while he angled Kitty out the door, her mother fast on his six. “I’ll be in touch,” he called over his shoulder on his way to the garage.
“Copy that,” Roxy replied evenly, her hands on that little guy’s shoulders like any good mom. Where that thought came from, Isaiah didn’t know, but he liked it. Roxy would make a good mother.
In seconds, he and Candy were at the security gate. Driving behind bullet proof, tinted windows lent a feeling of safety to the surreal moment, but knowing that Tucker Chase and Tate Higgins were on the premises cinched the deal. Those two were men of war. Both had seen their fair share and both had come out stronger and meaner for it. If Randall wanted a fight, he had one helluva beat-down coming.
Driving like a bat out of hell with two MPD cruisers on his butt, Isaiah made it to the Georgetown University Hospital in less than seven minutes. Once inside an ER exam cubicle, the attending physician had Kitty on her back and attached to a nebulizer in seconds. Only then, did Isaiah allow a deep breath. This was his fault. He should’ve noticed the girl’s pallor when he’d been interrogating her brother and her mother. What was he thinking? Of Roxy and how to get her out of her pants, no doubt. It had to stop. At least, it had to slow down.
Fighting for composure, he stepped out of the cubicle to collect his thoughts. Kitty could’ve died and that was on him. ‘Shit!’ as Tucker would say if he’d been any good at getting into Isaiah’s mind. ‘Pull your head out of your ass, Zaroyin.’ Of course, he would’ve added a few more earthy descriptors, and he would’ve been right. This joint assignment was a mistake, had been from the beginning.
For the first time since that night long ago when he’d found his mother murdered in his room, Isaiah doubted his gift and his sanity. He was no hero, not if he couldn’t ensure the safety of a twelve-year-old girl, and certainly not if he couldn’t keep his hands off Roxy. What the fuck was I thinking! Another Tucker Chase euphemism.
Shit, now he wasn’t even making sense, and that had to stop. Isaiah stiffened his moral fiber, gave his addled brain a good shake like he’d give a dirty rug, and settled his butt to one of the molded plastic chairs outside Kitty’s examination room. He could hear her struggling to breathe from where he sat.
Gradually she calmed down. The medicine must have worked. It
took a few minutes, but gradually, his breathing evened out as well. Isaiah swallowed. He drew in a deep, cleansing breath and swore he’d forget Roxy until this thing was over. Kitty deserved the best he had to give, and so far, she hadn’t had that. Well, no more.
Hands on his knees, he pushed up and bucked up. Only when he re-entered the cubicle, Candy was gone. “Where’s Mrs. Bratton?” he asked the emergency room doctor.
Dr. Duggan shrugged. “She left right after you did. Didn’t you see her?”
“No, I didn’t.” And I should have. Isaiah took one step outside the exam room, looked both directions, then ducked back in. “Promise you’ll stay with this girl,” he ordered Dr. Duggan, flashing his FBI badge to prove he meant business.
The wide-eyed man nodded. “Sure. I can’t leave until I’m sure the medication’s working anyway. Go. Find her mom.”
“Trust me,” Isaiah hissed, mad at himself for ever trusting Candace Bratton. “I will.”
Roxy dragged Darrin out of bed and into the kitchen. She knew how to fix a mean cup of hot chocolate, and while she guarded him, that was what she intended to do. Cheer him up as best she knew how. All boys liked hot cocoa, didn’t they?
Nugget dropped to the floor under the table in the kitchen with a growly groan that mimicked Darrin’s when he dropped his forehead to his arm on the table. “I know I tell her I hate her guts sometimes, but I really don’t, you know?” he asked tearfully.
“Stop beating yourself up, kid. That’s just something brothers and sisters tell each other. You didn’t mean it.” Roxy poured three cups of milk into a copper saucepan, added a cup of heavy cream, and doused that with a teaspoon of vanilla and a cup of the cocoa mix she’d found earlier when she’d done dishes. Stirring while the concoction heated, she resolved to be a better mentor to the Bratton children. And their dog.
“It’s just that she used to be my best friend, but now she’s like someone I don’t know.” He dragged a finger under his nose. “She acts like I bug her all the time, and she’s mean to me, and she’s meaner to Nugget. She calls him a pig, and she screams at him cuz she hates his hair cuz it gets on her clothes. But a dog’s got hair and he can’t help it if it gets all over the place, can he?”
Roxy winced that what she and Kitty had in common might be a mean streak. “Sure, I understand. You’re her kid brother. Of course you bug her. And I’ll bet you like bugging her, don’t you?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted sorrowfully. “All I have to do is wake up in the morning and breathe to bug her.” Darrin sighed as dramatically as only a ten-year-old boy could. By then his arm stretched across the table and his chin rested on his bicep. His eyes drooped. The boy was tired and way too serious for a kid his age.
Roxy snorted. “Trust me. She’s just being a typical teen girl. If you think she’s bad now, wait until she starts dating.”
“But why?” he asked, his tears on the rise again. “She used to be nice. She’d take me to the park, and we’d ride the merry-go-round together, and we’d laugh and play, and we’d feed the baby goats in the petting zoo. Now all she wants to do is paint her fingernails and play games on her cell. She never laughs and we don’t go to the zoo anymore.”
Darrin yawned and just in time, the hot cocoa was warm enough. Roxy poured two mugs and set one under his nose. “You want marshmallows or whipped cream with that?”
That woke him up. “Whipped cream!”
“The fluffy stuff it is,” she said with a chuckle. Isaiah had promised her a night full of dinner, wine, and the creamy concoction in the spray can she found on the top shelf in the refrigerator. Filling Darrin’s cup to the brim with a spiraling mountain of fluff, she topped hers off with just a dab, smiling at the thought of her and Isaiah getting it on with a can—or two—of whipped cream.
Darrin came up from his mug with a creamy white moustache, his eyes bright again. “This is good.”
How well Roxy knew. “It’s my mom’s recipe. She used to make it for me when I was your age.” It was one of her best memories, sitting at another kitchen table in the dark of an early morning, sharing cups of hot cocoa made the old fashioned way, in a saucepan, before Mama went off to clean houses for rich folks. There’d been no fancy spray whipped cream back then. Roxy’s parents couldn’t afford many extras, but Roxy had never known that.
Until she went to school and learned how cruel children could be—mostly because they’d repeated on the playground what they’d heard at home—Roxy had honestly thought all children lived in a small but clean house with two sets of aged grandparents. She’d thought all mothers and fathers worked two jobs to make ends meet, and she’d thought all parents adored their children. It seemed life had a mean streak, too.
“You got any sisters?” Darrin asked, his chin still on the table and his cup tilted so he could slurp without much effort.
Roxy reached over to scrub her hand over his head. What a cute kid. “Nope. I’m an only child.”
That earned her a grunt. “Then you’re lucky. I wish I was an only kid. Maybe Mom would like me better.”
Excuse me? Roxy cocked her head. “Your mother loves you, Darrin. I know she does. You should’ve seen how worried she was when she sent Agent Zaroyin to go get you.”
Another grunt. “I like Agent Zaroyin. He’s my friend.”
He seemed to be everyone’s friend. “Where’s your dad?” Roxy asked, glad for the change of subject. Bob Bratton hadn’t been in his kids’ lives since Darrin was born, but she didn’t know much more than that.
Darrin shrugged. “Don’t know. Guess he never wanted kids screwing up his life, so he only stayed until I was born.”
“She told you that?” What a lot of adult garbage to dump on a little kid.
Darrin tilted his mug and took a long slurp. “It’s no big deal. Kitty’s just like me. A bastard.”
That ugly word raised Roxy’s ire. “Who told you that? The kids at school?”
He shook his head. “No. My Mom. It’s true. I looked it up. I got no dad, and that’s what bastards are, kids with no dads.”
Darrin said it so matter-of-factly that Roxy cringed. For once she wished she had ESP, so she could forward that disturbing bit of intel on to Isaiah. What would he think about his precious Candy now if he knew she referred to her kids as bastards, and that they accepted the moniker like it was nothing? Explaining playground bullying was one thing, but to tell them up front that their dad hadn’t wanted them seemed unusually blunt and cruel.
Something about Mrs. Bratton gnawed at Roxy’s gentle nature, and yes, she had one. Folks might not believe it, but she could be downright nice when—if—she wanted to.
“You’re not a bastard, Darrin,” Roxy said quietly, her eyes on what was left of her now cooled cocoa, “and neither is Kitty. But you are children who’ve been deserted by their father. So what if your dad wasn’t man enough to stay? That doesn’t change the fact that you’re still a good boy. Did you leave him? Uh-uh. You can’t drive, can you? He’s the adult. He’s the idiot who did the driving away. Bob Bratton’s the loser, not you.” She’d gotten more riled as she’d talked, but damn it. Roxy would never understand absentee fathers if she lived to be an old maid. Darrin was one in a million and a real charmer. How stupid was his father that he couldn’t see that, huh?
Another shrug. “It don’t matter.” Darrin took one last slurp and righted his cup with a satisfied gleam in his eyes. “Agent Zaroyin likes me. I can tell. Maybe he’ll play catch with me in the morning.”
Roxy had no doubt Isaiah would do just that. “Hit the road, Jack,” she said as she lifted to her feet and took the mugs to the sink.
“M-m-my name’s not Jack.”
Roxy glanced over her shoulder to find big tears shimmering in Darrin’s eyes. She flew to his side. “Hey, what’s this about?” she asked, smoothing a hand over his trembling shoulder.
The poor kid sobbed. “I’m Darrin,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t you remember? We j
ust had cocoa, and you gave me whipped cream, and we talked like we’re friends. I’m Darrin, not Jack.”
Why he needed to be called by his right name struck Roxy’s heart like a hammer. She’d done this to him, scared him into thinking she’d forgotten him when there was no way she could. “I know who you are, baby,” she soothed as she tugged him off his chair and into her arms. “Trust me. I’ll never call you Jack again, Darrin. From now on, you’re Darrin the giant killer.”
He tipped his head into her shoulder, trembling. Like her mother did when Roxy came home crying after her first bully enlightened her with the lie that she was a lazy Mexican, Roxy sat there on the kitchen floor and rocked the little boy who’d stolen her heart. Being called Jack was nothing compared to the ugly slurs she’d endured, but what had happened in this little guy’s ten years that he’d reacted so strongly to being called Jack?
Roxy intended to find out.
Chapter Thirteen
Isaiah combed the hallways leading from the emergency room, desperate to locate Candace. Only when he passed the chapel, did he get that feeling again. Someone was in mental anguish, but that person wasn’t her. Palming the door open, he peered inside the reverent space.
Muted spotlights bathed the large wooden crucifix at the front of the room. Six rows of padded wooden pews lined the way forward. Candace was on the second row near the front, sitting at the end with her head bowed. A hefty man in a dark hoody sat behind her. He lifted to his feet when Isaiah approached, but kept his head down, the hood concealing his features.
Isaiah stopped him with a hand to his wrist. “Sir?” he asked, sensing the man’s utter despair. “Is there anything you need? Can I ... help?”
Red-rimmed eyes stared back at him from beneath a shock of shadowed auburn hair. “Can you turn back time and give me my boy back?” the man asked, his voice ragged and filled with pain.
Ah. A dying child. That was the one thing Isaiah wished he could do, bring the special person he’d loved back to life. “I’m sorry,” he offered, ashamed he’d suspected this grieving father of being mixed up with the likes of Garrett Randall.
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