“You should have known better than to try to fool your brothers, Kenni. They knew you far too well,” he told her with weary resignation. “I think that’s something we both forgot somehow.”
She had forgotten.
She’d forgotten it wasn’t possible for her to lie to her brothers in any way. Even by avoidance.
Her stomach began cramping with panic, a useless feeling she told herself. Panic wasn’t going to aid her in any way.
Shooting Jazz a look that promised retaliation, Kenni turned slowly to meet the gazes of the three men she’d known not to reveal herself to.
“They’ll just ground you for a few years. Well, a few decades maybe,” Jazz murmured behind her. “They’ll actually kill me.”
He was kidding, right?
Her heart was ready to jump out of her chest, her stomach roiling and threatening to push its way past her throat, and he wanted to make jokes?
“Kenni…” Sawyer whispered her name, desperate, disbelieving, as she stared at the floor and tried to tell herself there had to be a way to salvage the situation. To continue to hide.
“It doesn’t surprise me that you can’t look at us,” Deacon said contemptuously. “Hell, there’s no way you’re Kenni. She knew how to face her own stupidity. And even she would have known how fucking stupid it was to try to hide from us, right here in Loudoun.” He turned to Jazz then. “And you have the nerve to help her attempt it? Are you fucking crazy?”
She almost winced at the contempt in her brother’s voice.
“Anything’s possible, though I did advise her against it,” Jazz stated, his tone bland as Kenni felt him lean against the kitchen door frame. “You know how damned stubborn she can be.”
“She’s right here!” The insult had her gaze lifting for one second, just long enough for the eldest, Cord to catch it, and hold it.
She was right there, and now there was no hiding from the brothers she’d adored as a teenager, and missed dreadfully in the past ten years.
Deep, heavy grooves of grief were dug into Cord’s face, the emerald hue of his eyes dark, stark with pain.
“Why?” Quiet, vibrating with such agonizing disbelief, the single question stripped her bare. “Why, Kenni?”
He looked broken. He sounded broken and it was killing her.
To her soul, that one word laid her open, exposing emotions she hadn’t dared face, hadn’t dared to allow free.
“Why?” Lifting her chin, she faced him squarely now. The time to hide from these men was at an end now. If they were her enemies, if even one of them was an enemy, then it would be the end of her. Because she’d spent ten years determined to keep them out of the path of whatever madman haunted her life and destroyed her mother.
“Why?” She met him now as a woman, not the child she had been or the teenager he needed her to be once again. “Because I couldn’t allow even one of you to be taken from me as well. I wouldn’t have survived it.”
“You call that an excuse? A fucking reason?” Cord snarled, the veins in his neck standing out in stark relief.
“I don’t need an excuse or a reason—you taught me that, Cord,” she retorted calmly, keeping a tight grip on her emotions, on the memories fighting to pour free, the rage, the agony of being separated from her family.
“Like hell…”
“Family,” she told him softly. “They were hunting me, not you, or Deacon, or Sawyer. Me. Had I called you, who would have fought with you that you could trust besides Deacon and Sawyer, Slade, Jazz, and Zack? Six of you against an unknown number of Kin? Against a faceless, nameless enemy?” She shook her head slowly. “I didn’t need a reason or an excuse,” she repeated. “I wouldn’t be the reason any of you died.”
Silence filled the kitchen for long moments before a bark of laughter, filled with sarcastic disbelief, broke the tension.
Sawyer stepped forward, shaking his head, the shaggy dark blond of his hair brushing against his neck as he stared back at her as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Fucking superhero now, are you?” Deacon bit out furiously. “Son of a bitch, I wish I’d listened to Dad when you were younger and agreed to send you to a fucking convent.”
Kenni blinked back at him before narrowing her eyes, cocking her hip and placing her hand negligently on the curve. “I never imagined I was a superhero, Deacon, but I never let myself believe that the three of you were, either. But I might start wondering why I’ve missed you so damned much if you keep up with the insults.”
That was a horrible lie. There was nothing he could do to change how desperately she’d missed him or the others.
“My charming personality and the fact that I won’t lie to you like that asshole behind you obviously has. Trust me, Kenni, not contacting us was really bad for his health.” His chin jutted out pugnaciously, his lips thinning as the muscle at the side of his jaw ticked warningly.
“Lied to me about what, Deacon?” she questioned him in amazement. “Sorry, but I won’t give you an excuse to hit him. Jazz hasn’t lied to me about anything.”
“He convinced you not to tell us you were alive,” Deacon rasped. “Someone fucking convinced you not to let us know you were alive, or in Loudoun.” Taking a step closer, his fingers curling into fists, his gaze locked with Jazz’s. “Who else would have done so?”
“Kin.”
Three pairs of differing shades of emerald turned on her with such intensity, it felt cutting. The sensation was distinctly uncomfortable.
She turned her gaze to Cord. She hated seeing the pain in his eyes increase, the grief and rage that hollowed his already savagely hewn expression.
“Kin,” Cord repeated softly before breathing out heavily, rubbing at the back of his neck, and running his hand along the side of his face. “Fuck!”
The expletive didn’t come close to expressing everything she knew that answer represented to him.
“Kin break into the house in town then?” Sawyer questioned, dragging her gaze back to him.
“I’m not sure yet.” Turning, she stared at the mess she’d made during her confrontation with Jazz. She’d made a hell of a mess. “I’m waiting for Slade and Zack to realize they might need me to break the encryption on the DVR. The programs on my computer. Once I view the video I’ll know more.”
Cord moved slowly, heavily, to where the pictures littered the hard floor and stooped to pick a few up, studying them intently.
Many of the pictures were six to eight years old. She’d begun taking them with disposable cameras until Gunny had managed to procure a real one with a zoom lens.
“Kin.” Holding one particular picture, he lifted his gaze to her. “David Mobley and Aaron Blake.”
“Gunny killed Aaron, but David managed to get away. I have another picture of him in there somewhere. One I took last year at the school. I believe his youngest enters third grade this fall.”
He nodded. “I’m her godfather.”
She hadn’t known that, but it didn’t surprise her. David had been close to the family since they were children. A distant cousin, his father best friends from childhood with their father.
Slowly, Cord gathered the pictures together from the floor, straightened them, seemingly paying little attention to the individuals in them, but she knew him better than that. His memory was exceptional. He’d be able to name every person he saw in them years later.
“You can’t strike at them, Cord,” she told him softly when he straightened and set the stack of pictures on the table.
He stared at the stack of photos, his fingertips stroking over the table next to them for long moments.
“Dad threw this table out of the house just after the funeral,” he said softly, still stroking the wood before he lifted his gaze to her once again. “Did you know it was the same kitchen set?”
She hadn’t.
Swinging around she stared at Jazz where he leaned against the door frame, his arms crossed over his chest.