He’d taken the words out of Roxy’s mouth, but the way he was always so damned steady and gentle... Roxy would’ve cried if she hadn’t been breathing for Bratton’s daughter.
Poor Darrin huddled into Isaiah’s side and Roxy didn’t blame him for choosing Isaiah over her. She’d come on too strong and she wasn’t the motherly type anyway, but Kitty’s unresponsiveness rattled her to the core.
Damn that woman! Bratton had no business having children. As quickly as she cursed their mother, she sent a prayer to the universe. Cut these kids a goddamned break!
Between Isaiah’s steady chest compressions and the mouth-to-mouth Roxy studiously supplied, they kept Kitty breathing until the EMTs arrived and took over. By then Roxy was exhausted and fit to be tied. For a safe house, this mansion had seen more traffic in the last twenty-four hours than a freakin’ hotel.
“We’re coming with you,” Isaiah told the EMTs as they prepared Kitty for transport. “I’ll follow in my car.” He got that far off look in his eye, and Roxy knew he was either mind-speaking to his boss or Tate Higgins. These three were the oddest FBI agents she’d ever worked with. Downright spooky at times and she was tired of being out of the loop.
Isaiah turned his gaze on Roxy then, his eyes bright and sharp. “Tate’ll take care of Nugget until we get back. Tucker’s watching over Mrs. Bratton.”
It should’ve meant something that he’d switched from calling her Candy to Mrs. Bratton, but the shattered look on Darrin’s face did Roxy in. He’d been so brave during Kitty’s first attack and Nugget’s injury. Good mothers just don’t do this! Kitty and Darrin deserved more, damn it. “What do you mean he’s watching her, Isaiah? What’s she doing?” And where the fuck is she going?
He pursed his lips and nodded in Darrin’s direction. Okay. Message received. Tone it down. Roxy nodded back. The poor kid didn’t need more stress, but she wasn’t so sure Isaiah hadn’t heard that last expletive, the one she’d only thought.
‘Can you read my mind?’ she projected mentally at him.
“For now, he’s tailing her, watching to see who she links up with and where she’s going,” he replied evenly, no hint that he’d heard the question in his eyes or his reaction. “Due east at the moment.”
Okay, that was stupid. Of course, he can’t read my mind. He’s not Superman, remember?
Roxy let out a measured sigh. She got the message loud and clear. Isaiah still wanted her to control her mouth. For Darrin’s sake, she could, but she also wanted some of that mind-speak ability, and she wanted it right now.
For the first time in a long time Roxy hadn’t been as tough as she needed to be. Bratton had deliberately hurt these kids. Not only were they good kids and vulnerable, they’d gotten to Roxy in a way she hadn’t expected. Something inside of her recognized the unconditional love they had for their mother, not that Bratton deserved it, but that was the way kids were. They never stopped loving their moms.
“She know he’s onto her?” Roxy asked evenly.
Very deliberately, Isaiah shook his head as if there were more he wanted to say, but couldn’t. Placing a hand on Darrin’s shoulder, he said, “You’re with me. Let’s follow the EMTs to the hospital.” On the way out the door with the boy, he asked Roxy, “Would you please gather some of Kitty and Darrin’s things while we go talk to Nugget before we leave?”
She heard what he hadn’t said. He planned to move Darrin and Kitty, if she lived, out of their mother’s reach. It was about time. Thank you, Jesus. “Sure thing,” she answered. “Tell the big guy hi for me.”
Roxy hurried, fighting her own overdose of adrenaline as she stuffed little boy clothes and teenage girl things into one bag. Funny. They didn’t have much, and most of it was ratty and threadbare.
Mrs. Bratton on the other hand, had much nicer things, every item folded with care in her suitcase. Expensive perfumes. Plenty of satin underwear. Bras. Nightgowns. Sling-back sandals. An open-toed pair of stiletto heels. You’d have thought she’d packed for a party instead of federal protection.
Oh, my hell, no. An eight-inch purple vibrator slipped out from under that jumbled stack of panties. Seriously? She’d brought something like this? Here? What’d she plan to do, take the edge off while her children slept next to her? Argh! What a bitch!
But wouldn’t you know? She had taken her coat. Must’ve stashed that in the bathroom before she’d deserted her children. Damn her! Astounded and angry all over again, Roxy left Bratton’s things behind. The detectives from MPD could bag it and tag it for evidence when they showed. Harmon would have a field day.
Hurrying, she cleared the suite in time to see Darrin wiping his eyes while Isaiah escorted him out of the formal dining room to the rear exit. “Don’t worry. This isn’t goodbye,” he reassured the boy. “As soon as we know Kitty’s okay, we’ll come back and get him. And if we can’t, Special Agent Higgins will bring him to us, okay?”
“Oh… k-kay,” Darrin sputtered, his lower lip quivering as another tear rolled down his nose and hit the front of his already dampened t-shirt. He peered behind him even though Nugget was no longer in his line of sight. “Don’t forget to tell Agent Higgins to bring his food, too.”
“You bet,” Isaiah answered. “Officer Thurston, how about we let this tough guy ride shotgun with me. He’s had a hard morning.”
“You got it,” she replied, her mind made up. Conniving Mrs. Bratton was in league with the treacherous Garrett Randall. They were both going down.
“How are you feeling, honey?” Isaiah asked a sleepy-eyed Kitty Bratton. He hadn’t left her side since she’d suffered an intensely severe asthma attack, which Isaiah now knew her mother had induced before she’d disappeared over the security fence. Damned conniving, that woman. Pre-meditated murder, if Kitty had died.
Praise the Lord for first responders. Those EMTs had had her breathing on her own before they’d hit the University Hospital for the second time in less than eight hours.
“Tired,” Kitty murmured around the nasal cannula tucked under her nose. Pale and weak, her frail body seemed plastered to the bed instead of lying on it.
“Do you remember what happened?” Isaiah probed gently. These kids needed a safe place to land. It certainly wasn’t with their mother, and the safe house just plain sucked.
Kitty yawned and shook her head. Her lashes drooped. “Later,” she sighed.
He stood over her, watching her sleep and noticing things he hadn’t before. She had rich brown hair and a perky nose that turned up at the end. A light sprinkling of brown freckles dotted her cheeks, not the cinnamon freckles her brother had. Where his fine bone structure took after his mother’s, Kitty was larger boned, her musculature, dense and tomboyish. Like Roxy’s.
Kitty was athletic material, yet she didn’t play sports. Isaiah knew that for certain. He’d delved into her mind when he’d thought he’d lost her, when he’d mentally encouraged her to ‘Live, Kitty. Help me out here. Roxy’s breathing for you, but you’ve got to want to live or nothing we do matters. Don’t give up. Darrin needs you.’
Thank God, she seemed to have listened. Isaiah’s greatest worry was that he’d have to tell Darrin he’d lost his mother and his sister. After what went down with Nugget, the poor kid couldn’t take much more.
Roxy sat in one of the many waiting rooms down the hall with him at the moment, but Isaiah had one thing to do before he left Kitty’s side. Pulling a device out of his inner suit jacket pocket, he scanned the kids’ suitcase, something he wished he’d thought to do earlier.
Sure as shit, he hissed when he found another transmitter tucked deep inside an inner zippered compartment. It was no wonder Randall had found them so quickly. Between the device installed in Nugget’s collar and this clever little transmitter, Randall knew right where to look.
Using one of the evidence bags he always carried in his back pocket as a glove, Isaiah removed the transmitter, turned the bag inside right, and secured it until he could pa
ss it to another agent for transfer to the FBI lab for analysis. Maybe they’d get lucky and find a print.
So why’d that other guy hurt the kids’ dog? Just to prove he could? It made sense on a sadistic level. Hurt the kids to get at their mother. Panic Candace. Make her think she had to do something—anything—to stop the madness. Force her hand.
Yet that wasn’t what happened, was it? Candace had not only drawn expert FBI resources away from the safe house at the same time she’d tried to kill her daughter, but she’d done it with cold-blooded intent. No child should have to suffer what Kitty and Darrin had gone through tonight.
Yet Isaiah read other motives into the strategy Candace had adeptly executed. She’d certainly played the damsel in distress card before. Who’s to say this wasn’t another ploy to make her look desperate enough to do something as crazy as induce an asthma attack that would surely draw those same FBI resources into play to save Kitty? She’d played it damned close to the wire, but she’d also known she had highly-trained support close at hand who’d jump to the rescue. She’d already tested those waters, hadn’t she?
The real question was, who was the spider and who was the fly? Isaiah felt certain she knew where the money was, maybe Randall, too. But did she know the man who’d nearly killed Nugget? Had she made so many enemies she no longer knew who was who?
No matter how Isaiah spun it, it all seemed to come back to that damned stolen money. The only thing he knew for certain was that Candace Bratton was a threat to her children. He’d already filed a protective order. Family Services was on their way. But how to tell Kitty and Darrin...
Reaching for his cell, he tagged his partner. “How’s it going out there?”
“He’s asleep,” Roxy replied, her tone soft as if she’d been dozing, too. “How about you? Kitty’s okay?”
Pleased at the tense note of hope in her voice, he nodded though Roxy couldn’t see him. “She’s breathing easier. The doctor gave her something to help her sleep. You need to know that I’m taking these kids home to my place. They can’t go into the system. They need protection. It’s the only way.”
An audible sigh of relief breathed over the line. “I was hoping you’d come up with something.”
For the first time since Kitty’s attack, Isaiah smiled. Whether she knew it or not, Roxy had the maternal instincts of a mama bear. “I still have to get a judge’s approval, but I’m not worried.” Getting Family Services to agree could be the sticky wicket, but Isaiah intended to use every last one of his persuasive powers to get it done. Kitty and Darrin didn’t need the stress of foster care on top of everything else they were going through.
“You’ll come with me?” he asked.
That earned him an indelicate snort. “What’d you think, moron? That I’d leave you with two kids by yourself? I’ve got news for you, Zaroyin, I’m no quitter.”
“Good answer,” he murmured, loving the fire in her quick retort and the sound of his surname on her lips. She made Zaroyin sound good and honorable again. He didn’t even mind that she’d called him moron in the same breath. Working with Tucker, he was used to the name-calling, and Isaiah understood where it came from. Roxy wasn’t talking down to him. It was her tough-girl way of handing out endearments. God bless the day she called him sweetheart. He’d be in real trouble then.
Chapter Twenty-One
Later that night, Roxy helped Isaiah transfer the Bratton children from the safety of the hospital to Isaiah’s FBI SUV in the lower terrace of the parking garage. He’d passed the evidence he’d found in the kids’ suitcase to an FBI agent at the scene. Both signed the required chain of evidence forms, but didn’t it figure? Bratton and Randall were in on this together.
Roxy found it hard to believe Bratton would’ve agreed to get herself blown to hell just to get on Randall’s good side, though. That didn’t make sense. No. Something had to have happened between then and now. Maybe she’d opted to hook up with Randall now that she knew he had a hard-on for her. Maybe she was using him like she seemed capable of doing with every other male who came too close to her web. She’d certainly played Isaiah.
That notion pissed Roxy off. And to think she’d fallen for that whole damsel in distress act back at the bank. If she knew then what she knew now, Roxy would plant a fist in that woman’s lying face.
MPD stood on guard, blocking the entrances and exits until the kids were once more out of sight. With blacked-out, bullet proof windows, and reinforced plating that turned the vehicle into a fortress, Isaiah rolled out of the underground parking lot, dropped south to Interstate sixty-six, crossed the Potomac, and headed west with an escort of four MPD cruisers. In an hour, he pulled off the freeway, angled southward through a forested area, sparse with houses, before coming to a stop. Tall evergreens guarded the ten-foot wrought iron fence enclosing the gated community.
“Hey, Sweeny,” Isaiah said to the silver-haired gentleman who’d ambled out of the guard shack. “Quiet night?”
Roxy peered past Isaiah to take stock of the guard who’d tipped the brim of what looked to be an Irish cap to Isaiah. Tufts of bristly white hair stuck out around the brim. “Aye, ’tis quiet for sure. I’ve been missing you, young man. Are you home to stay this time?”
“For a while,” Isaiah answered.
Sweeny smiled past him to Roxy. “Ah, I see you’ve brought a lady friend. Hello there.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said. He seemed harmless enough.
Sweeny flipped a lever inside his four-by-eight shack and the barred gate lifted. “A good evening to you both.”
“Same to you,” Isaiah replied.
Roxy kept one eye on Sweeny in her side mirror as Isaiah drove through the gate. The gate lowered, and the older gentleman ambled back inside his shack. “What a boring life. Can you imagine sitting all day and night in a shack, waiting for someone to show up?”
Isaiah chuckled. “He’s not as bored as you might think. Before he built these townhouses, Sweeny owned this land. Since his wife passed, I imagine this little job gives him a reason to get out of bed every morning. He gets to chat with people as they come and go. It keeps him from being lonely.”
That made sense. “What’s his first name or does everyone just call him Sweeny?”
“Leonard, but yeah, he goes by Sweeny.”
“So where are we?”
“Over the river and through the woods,” he teased. “I still own my parent’s place in Bethesda, but I live in Riverwood now. It’s far enough from work, but not too far from everything else.”
That explained the rural setting. “You heard from Tucker again?”
Isaiah grimaced as he shook his head. “I’m blocking him at the moment. He’s still cursing a storm for losing Bratton. I can only take so much profanity.”
“You turned him off?” she asked, incredulous that his psychic skills were that powerful.
“More like I turned the volume down. I know where he is. That’s enough for now.”
Speaking of turning the volume down… “My dad used to spend all day watching television after Mom died,” Roxy said quietly. “He kept it on and loud, twenty-four-seven. I think he was trying to drown out the world. Noise can do that, you know. It gives you less to think about. Then one Sunday he went to early Mass at Saint Pat’s. Father Diego talked with him and he hasn’t been the same since. He made peace with what happened. Now he helps at the church almost every day.”
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Hayden. Hayden Thurston.” Roxy kept her gaze out the window as the tall evergreens yielded to manicured lawns, private cobbled drives, and whitewashed horse corrals. How would it be to own so much property that you couldn’t see your neighbors’ homes?
Darrin and Kitty had both fallen asleep in the back seat. With every mile the District fell behind, and Roxy relaxed. Neither Bratton nor Randall could get at these children now.
Isaiah’s hand found hers in the dark. “I’m sorry fo
r your loss,” he said kindly as his fingers interlocked with hers over the console between them.
And suddenly she wanted to talk.
“She thought she could save the world.” Roxy squeezed back, just enough to let him know she appreciated the connection. The silence stretched, but when Isaiah didn’t prod for more, she filled in the blanks. “Mama used to bring friends home.” A grunt came out of nowhere, but in respect for her mother, Roxy didn’t go there. Her mother had a good heart. Even after what happened, that counted most.
“But sometimes,” she cleared her throat, “her friends were people she’d just met. Some were down on their luck. Runaway kids, streetwalkers, vagrants, you know the types. She’d talk to anyone who looked like they needed a hand up, and she had an instinct for them, too. Daddy always said if she looked for trouble long enough, she’d find it.”
And she had. Roxy drew in a deep breath, not sure she could tell this story again. It dredged up feelings she’d fought hard to bury, at least to control. Right on cue, Isaiah squeezed her fingers, letting her know he was still listening. That helped.
“Anyway…” She huffed, blowing the pesky strands of loose hair out of her eyes. “One Saturday night after Mass, a punk named Ritchie Gardner ran into her in the church parking lot. She’d stayed late to clean the kitchen after cider and donuts. Saint Pat’s always holds a little get together after Saturday night Mass, you know, for newcomers and old-timers. People like to linger and chat, especially if Father Tom’s there.”
Roxy stole a sideways glance at Isaiah. His eyes were on the winding road as the SUV maneuvered around rolling ranches, long lines of fences and stables. Sitting there with one hand on the wheel, the other snug over hers, and with the streetlights flickering over his face, the man was debonair to a delicious fault. Not at all what she’d expected in a G-man. He reeked of class and privilege, and why he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off of her warmed her to her soul.
One-Eyed Jack (The Deuces Wild Series Book 3) Page 18