From his vantage point in Grier's pantry, Isaac could hear what was being said out in the kitchen--but he couldn't see a damn thing.

Not that he needed a visual.

"Tell me where Isaac Rothe is," Grier's father repeated in a voice that had all the warmth of a January night.

Grier's response was just as chilly. "I was hoping you'd come here to apologize."

"Where is he, Grier."

There was the sound of running water and then the flapping of a dish towel. "Why do you want to know."

"This isn't a game."

"I didn't think it was. And I don't know where he is."

"You're lying."

There was a heartbeat of a pause, during which Isaac squeezed his eyes shut and counted the ways in which he was an asshole. For shit's sake, he'd brought a wrecking ball into the woman's life, crashing through her relationships both personal and professional, creating chaos everywhere--

Footsteps. Hard and sharp. A man's. "You tell me where he is!"

"Let go of me--"

Before he knew he was blowing his cover, Isaac burst out of hiding, throwing the door wide. It took him three leaping steps to get to the pair of them and then he was all over Grier's pops, swinging the man around and shoving him face-first up against the refrigerator. Palming the back of the guy's head, he pushed that patrician piehole into the stainless steel so hard, good ol' Mr. Childe's panting breath left little clouds of condensation on the panel.

"I'm right here," Isaac growled. "And I'm a little twitchy at the moment. So how about you don't handle your daughter like that again, and I'll consider not opening the freezer section with your face."

He expected Grier to pull a let-him-go, but she did no such thing. She just took a box of Band-Aids out from under the sink and fiddled around choosing the right size.

Her father heaved a deep breath. "Get away . . . from my daughter."

"He's just fine where he is," she answered, as she wrapped a strip around her index finger. Then she put the box away and crossed her arms over her chest. "You, however, can leave."

Isaac briefly frisked her father's fancy-ass sweater and superpressed pants, and when he didn't find a weapon, he stepped away, but stayed close. He had a feeling the guy had gotten physical because he was scared to death and about to crack--but no one handled Isaac's woman like that. Period--

Not that Grier was his woman. Of course not.

Damn it.

"You know you're giving her a death sentence," Childe said, his eyes boring into Isaac's. "You know what he's capable of. He owns you and he'll mow down whoever he has to in order to get to you."

"Nobody owns anybody," Grier cut in. "And--"

Mr. Childe didn't spare his daughter a glance as he cut her off. "Give yourself up, Rothe--it's the only way to be sure he doesn't hurt her."

"That man's not going to do anything to me--"

Childe wheeled around on Grier. "He already killed your brother!"

In the aftermath of that drama bomb, it was as if someone had slapped her--except there was no one to hold back from her, no guy to yank free and disarm and immobilize. And as Grier went white, Isaac felt a paralyzing impotence. You couldn't protect people from events that had already happened; there was no rewriting history.

Or . . . people, either. Which was the root of so many problems, wasn't it.

"What . . . did you say?" she whispered.

"That was no accidental overdose." Childe's voice cracked. "He was killed by the same man who's going to come after you unless he gets this soldier back. There is no negotiating, no bargaining, no terms to trade. And I can't--" The man started to break down, proving that money and class were no protection against tragedy. "I can't lose you as well. Oh, God, Grier . . . I can't lose you, too. And he will do it. That man will take your life in the blink of an eye."

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

As Grier braced herself against the counter, she was having trouble processing what her father had said. The words had been short and simple. The meaning, however . . .

She was half-aware that he was still talking, but she'd gone deaf after, "That was no accidental overdose." Stone deaf.

"Daniel . . ." She had to clear her throat as she cut in. "No, Daniel did it himself. He'd OD'd at least twice before. He . . . It was the addiction. He--"

"The needle in his arm was put there by someone else."

"No." She shook her head. "No. I was the one who found him. I called nine-one-one and--"

"You found the body . . . but I saw it happen." Her father let out a sob. "He made me . . . watch."

As her father buried his face in his hands and lost it completely, her vision flickered in and out like someone was playing disco with the lights in the kitchen. And then her knees went loose and--

Something caught her. Kept her from hitting the floor. Saved her.

The world spun . . . and she realized she'd been picked up and was being carried over to the couch across the way.

"I can't breathe," she said to no one in particular. Wrenching at the neckline of her shirt, she gasped. "I can't . . . breathe. . . ."

Next thing she knew, Isaac was putting a paper bag up to her mouth. She tried to bat it away, but her arms just flopped uselessly and she was forced to breathe into the thing.

"You need to shut the fuck up," Isaac said to somebody. "Right now. Pull it together, my man, and zip it up good."

Was he talking to her father? Maybe.

Probably.

Oh, God . . . Daniel? And her father had been forced to see it happen?

Questions that needed answers did more for her than the carbon dioxide influx. Shoving the bag away, she pushed herself up.

"How? Why?" She shot both of them hard stares. "And listen, I'm already pretty damn deep in this situation, right? So some explanations are not going to hurt--they will, however, keep me from going insane."

Isaac's jaw got to grinding, like his foot was being chewed raw by a Doberman but he didn't want to let a scream out.

Not her problem. "I will go insane," she said before turning to her father. "Do you hear me? I can't live like this for one minute, one second . . . one moment longer. Not after that bombshell. You'd better start talking. Now." Her father all but fell into the armchair beside her, as if he were ninety years old and making the descent to his deathbed. But just as he had not cared about the cut on her hand, she didn't grant him any mercies--and that was a shame. They had always been alike, in tune, of one mind. Tragedies, secrets, and lies, however, frayed even the closest of ties.

"Talk," she demanded. "Now."

Her father looked at Isaac, not her. But at least when Isaac shrugged and cursed, she knew she was going to get a story. Although probably not the story.

And how sad not to be able to trust her own father.

His voice was not strong when he finally began to speak. "I was first recruited to join XOps back in 1964. I was graduating from West Point and I was approached by a man who identified himself as Jeremiah. No last name. The thing I remember most about the meeting was how anonymous he was--he looked more like an accountant than a spy. He said there was an elite military arm that I qualified for and asked if I would be interested in learning more. When I wanted to know why me--after all, I was third in the class, not first--he said grades were not everything."

Her father paused for quite a while, as if he were remembering the exchange nearly fifty years later word for word. "I was interested, but ultimately I said no. I'd already joined the army as an officer and it seemed dishonorable to pull out of the commitment. I didn't see him again . . . until seven years later, when I had transitioned back into civilian life and was getting out of law school. I don't know why I said yes exactly . . . but I was getting married to your mother, and I was joining the family firm . . . and it felt like my life was over. I craved excitement, and there didn't seem . . ." He frowned and abruptly glanced over at her. "This is not to suggest that I didn't love your mother. I just needed . . . something more."

Ah, but she knew how he felt. She lived with that same itch for an edge that ordinary life didn't seem to offer.

The consequences of feeding it, however? Not worth it, she was coming to believe.

Her father took out a monogrammed handkerchief and dried his eyes. "I told Jeremiah--the man who had come to see me--that I couldn't disappear from life altogether, but that I was interested in something, anything else. That's how it started. Eventually, I was regularly going on intelligence missions overseas and our law firm gave me leeway because I was the founder's grandson. I never knew the full scope of the assignments I was given as an operative . . . but from newspapers and television, I was aware that there were consequences. That actions were taken against certain inpiduals--"

"You mean murders," she cut in bitterly.

"Assassinations."

"Like there's a difference?"

"There is." Her father nodded. "Murders are purposeless."

"The result is the same."

When he didn't say anything else, she was so not willing to have the story end there. "What about Daniel."

Her father exhaled long and slow. "About seven or eight years into it, it dawned on me that I was a part of something I couldn't live with. The phone calls, the people coming to the house, the trips that would last for days, weeks . . . to say nothing of the consequences of my actions. I stopped being able to sleep or concentrate. And God, the toll on your mother had been tremendous and it impacted the two of you as well--you were both young then, but you recognized the tensions and the absences. I started trying to get out." Her father's eyes flipped to Isaac. "That's when I discovered . . . that you don't get out. Looking back on it, I was naive . . . so damned naive. I should have known better, given what I'd been asked to do, but I'd gotten caught up in it all. Still, I had no choice. It was killing your mother . . . she was drinking heavily. And then Daniel started . . ."

Doing drugs, Grier finished in her mind. It had begun in middle school for him. First booze, then pot . . . then LSD and 'shrooms. And then the hard-core contact sport of cocaine, followed by the mellow morgue feeder that was heroin.

Her father refolded his handkerchief with precision. "When my initial overtures about leaving were met with a resounding `no,' I became paranoid that on one of my assignments they were going to kill me and make it look like an accident. I stayed silent for years. But then I learned something I shouldn't have, something that was a game changer for an important man of power. I tried . . . I tried to use it as a key to unlock the door."

"And . . ." she interjected, her heart was pounding so loudly she wondered if the neighbors could hear it.

Silence.

"Go on," she prompted.

He just shook his head.

"Tell me," she choked out, hating her father as she remembered walking in and seeing Daniel that last time. He'd had a needle sticking out of a vein in the back of his arm and his head had been back, his mouth slack, his skin the color of winter snow clouds.

"If you don't answer me . . ." She couldn't finish. The idea that she might lose all of her family right here, right now closed her throat up tight.

That handkerchief was unbound once more with shaky hands. "The men approached me in the firm's parking garage downtown. I'd been working late and they . . . they put me in a car and I figured this was it. They were going to kill me. Instead, they drove me south to Quincy. To Daniel's place. He was already high when we all walked in--I think . . . I think he believed it was a practical joke. When he saw the syringe they'd brought, he offered them his arm --even though I was screaming for him not to let them--" Her father's voice broke. "He didn't care. . . . he didn't know. . . . I knew what they were doing --but he didn't. I should have . . . They should have killed me, not him. They should have . . ."

Rage made Grier's vision white out briefly. When it came back, the center of her chest was ice cold and she didn't care that he had suffered. Or had regrets or . . .

"Get out of this house. Now."

"Grier--"

"I don't want to ever see you again. Don't contact me. Don't come near me--"

"Please--"

"Get out!" She shifted to Isaac. "Take him out of here--just get him away from me."

She'd do it herself, but she barely had enough strength to stand up.

Isaac didn't hesitate. He walked over to her father, hitched a hand under the guy's arm, and lifted him out of the armchair.

Her father was talking again, but she was deaf as he was escorted from the kitchen: The image of her brother's body on that ratty couch consumed her.

The small details were the killer: His eyes had been partially open, his pupils staring off sightlessly into the middle distance, and his faded blue T-shirt had been stained with dark patches under the armpits and vomit on the front. Three rusty spoons and a grubby yellow Bic lighter had littered the coffee table, and there had been a half-eaten pizza that looked a week old on the floor by his feet. The stuffy air had smelled of stale urine and cigarette smoke as well as something chemically sweet.

The thing that had stuck out the most, though, was that she'd noticed his watch had stopped: When she'd called 911, they'd told her to see if there was a pulse and she'd gone for his nearest wrist. As she'd pulled it up and dug her fingers in, she'd seen that the timepiece was not the one their father had given him upon his graduation from U Penn--that Rolex had long ago been pawned off. What he'd had on was just a battery-operated Timex and the hands had frozen at eight twenty-four.

It was the same way that Daniel's body had just stopped. After all the beatings it had taken, it had finally run out of life.

So ugly. The scene had been so ugly. And yet his lovely hair had been the same. He'd always had a blond angel mop, as their mother had called it, and even on the slide into dead-and-gone, the curls on his head had retained their perfect circular nature: though the color was dingy from lack of washing, Grier had been able to see past that to the beauty that was.

Or had been, as it were.

Snapping out of the past, she rubbed her face and stood up from the sofa. Then with all the grace of a zombie, she put the back stairs to use and went to her room--where she got a suitcase and started packing.

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