“You really don’t know what your brother does?”
“I haven’t seen him in eleven years.”
That surprised Kate. “Really?”
“Why are you surprised?”
“Because…I don’t know. You seem close.”
“We were, at one time.” And seeing Jack again conflicted Dillon. They were different people today, with no way to regain what they’d had growing up. They’d grown apart, leading different lives, going down dramatically different paths. Dillon hadn’t been faced with the choices Jack had, but deep down Dillon knew he couldn’t walk away from his family forever, to only show up at funerals. His parents, his brothers and sisters, they were as much part of Dillon’s life as his work.
“Jack joined the army right out of high school. He was going to put in the minimum years required to qualify for the free college education. Something happened his first tour. He’s never spoken of it, but he became career military and chose to keep his family at arm’s length.” Dillon rubbed his face. “Before that, we were close. If you’d asked me twenty years ago if Jack would stop speaking to his family without an explanation, I’d have laughed. But it happened and we’ve learned to live with it.”
“That doesn’t explain why he’s helping you now, when he doesn’t even know his sister.”
“Loyalty,” Dillon said. “A sense of duty.” He stared at Kate. “Very much the same reasons you’ve been hiding out and breaking the law-your loyalty and duty to your partner.”
Kate stopped pacing for a minute and looked at him. He was standing by the door, looking out the lone window into a hallway that was gray and empty. Though the room was underground and air-conditioned, it was still blazing hot. June in the Nevada desert.
She wanted to argue with him, explain that it was more than simply loyalty that had her dedicated to stopping Trask. But he wasn’t thinking about her. His eyes were far off. Thinking about the missing years with his brother? Or what future Lucy might-or might not-have?
“We’re going to get her in time,” Kate said quietly.
Dillon turned to face her. She was complex, and he couldn’t say that he knew her. He couldn’t even say that he would have made the choices she’d made in life. But something deep down in her core, which shone through in her vibrant blue eyes, told him she was all there. Not a renegade FBI agent, not a narrow-minded revenge nut, but a disciplined and trained federal cop.
It was the action that did it, he realized. She’d been pent up for two years at the observatory, on the run for three years before that. Yet six hours on the move and she had developed a calm-pacing notwithstanding.
“Lucy’s a smart kid,” he said, not knowing what to say about his sister. Dillon had been twenty when she was born. Already out of the house, in college. Planning on medical school. Even Patrick was thirteen years older than Lucy. She was practically an only child. She’d grown up fast-not only because of her older brothers and sisters, but because she’d seen death at an early age. She’d been seven when Justin-her seven-year-old nephew-was killed. They’d shielded her to some extent, but it had affected all of them.
“Smart and sassy and spoiled,” Dillon said, his voice cracking.
Kate reached up and touched his shoulders. “Lucy is lucky to have family who loves her so much,” she said quietly.
Dillon took Kate’s hand. “You didn’t.”
She shook her head. “Maybe that’s why I fight for the underdog. I’m okay, Dillon. I know you think I’m this fly-off-the-handle maverick, but I am okay. I accept that I could die. It’s not a death wish, it’s not being stupid. But if I go in with fear, I’ll never be able to do my job.”
“You don’t have a job. You’re doing this for revenge.” Or was she? Maybe not revenge so much as justice. He began to see and admire Kate in a whole different light.
“Maybe. But I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do. Trask will kill Lucy without a second thought if the feds swarm the island. She won’t have a chance. Either the house is rigged to explode or he’ll put a bullet in her head. He doesn’t want to be caught, but more than that he doesn’t want her to live.”
“You and Jack seem to agree on this.”
“Jack’s seen a hell of a lot more than I have.” She searched his eyes. “So have you. You’ve been inside the criminal minds of sadistic men and women like Trask. You try to make sense of it to stop it. To be honest, I’d rather take my chances face-to-face than look inside their heads to figure out what makes them tick. But without men like you, we’d never be able to learn why. And maybe stop it from happening in the future.”
Dillon touched Kate’s cheek. She leaned into his hand and closed her eyes. For a brief moment, he felt her strength and vulnerability. Saw her loneliness, how weary she was of this hunt. But it was her vocation; she would not give up.
Dillon’s phone vibrated and he pulled it from his pocket. A picture came in with a message from Quinn Peterson.
Show to Kate.
He turned the image to show Kate. “Know him?”
She stared, her face going white. “Trask.” She swallowed. “Where did you get that?”
“Peterson.” He was about to call.
“Don’t. Text him. It’ll take him longer to trace it, and we should be gone by then.”
“I thought we agreed that Peterson needs to be clued into the two sets of coordinates.” But he sent the text message. “He’s not coming after you.”
“Maybe not, but others will.”
“Who?”
“Jeff Merritt, for one.”
“Who’s he?”
“He used to be my direct supervisor, Paige’s as well. He and Paige were also…involved.”
“Isn’t that a conflict?”
She shrugged. “It happens. It wasn’t a problem until he started pulling us off the Trask Enterprises investigation. It caused a huge problem between him and Paige and we-Paige and I-got reckless.”
Kate sighed, ran a hand through her short blond hair. “Merritt was worried about her safety, and because of that pulled us instead of giving us backup. We were pissed. Paige went to him, and I thought she had gotten sanction, but…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me, Kate.”
She was obviously torn. “When we stormed the warehouse after getting the tip from Denise about the Russian girls being illegally brought in, I thought we had backup. Paige said-implied-that we were covered. But…” She shrugged.
“She lied.”
“No,” Kate said emphatically. “She didn’t. I just didn’t understand what she had planned.”
“She lied to you.”
“No, dammit!”
“She lied and died and you’ve been blaming yourself because you can’t blame your dead friend.”
“Paige was the closest thing I had to family! Mine was nonexistent. A mother who couldn’t look at me, elderly grandparents who didn’t talk to me, and when they died, I was shuffled from stranger to stranger. Paige…she was closer than blood. I’m not going to taint her name.”
Kate’s eyes were red, sweat glistened on her brow. “You don’t know how she died. How she was brutalized. You didn’t see her body, shredded. Blood everywhere. Her eyes-”
Dillon pulled Kate to him, held her while her body shook with soundless sobs.
The truth, at last.
His phone vibrated and Kate jumped back. She gave him an odd half-smile, embarrassed. He touched her cheek. “It’s okay, Kate. I don’t think you’re weak. It takes a strong person to be honest with others, but the strongest people are honest with themselves.”
He looked at the phone, showed Peterson’s message to Kate.
Adam Scott, 39. Expelled from Stonebridge, disappeared for six years. We’re tracking his finances now. There was a death at the school Scott and Morton attended-a kid named Trevor Conrad. We’re looking into him as well as another guy, Paul Ullman, who was Scott’s roommate. Tell Kate that Mick Mallory is undercover and will take down Trask/Scott first chance he gets. Be careful.