Lie with Me (35 page)

Dylan shook his head warily. “No. Tracing the flight’s been next to impossible, but we’ll keep looking. Riley has some contacts overseas who are intimately acquainted with DMH—they might be able to tell us more.”

Zane knew Riley would have to tread carefully. In the eyes of DMH, according to what Dylan had told him, she had a price on her head. “What the hell would they want with Olivia if they didn’t have Skylar?” Zane asked.

Dylan looked reluctant to tell him, but Zane had left him no choice. “Right now, this is only speculation on my part. There’s a need for transplant surgeons on the black market. They kidnap them, have them perform the surgeries for a couple of years—or less, depending on how fast they burn out.”

“Why would any doctor go along with that?” Zane demanded.

“They get them addicted to drugs—the doctors will do anything after that,” Dylan explained.

“Jesus.” Zane ran a hand through his hair. “I want to look for her.”

“You’re taking this so personally. Like you know her or something.”

Zane felt like he knew her, wanted to tell his brother that every time he closed his eyes, in his mind he saw that picture of her laughing.

Zane got the feeling Dr. Olivia Strohm didn’t have the opportunity, or the desire, to laugh very often. “It’s just that no one deserves what could happen to her.”

Dylan watched him carefully. “I agree. But you’ve got to get back to the teams.”

Zane didn’t say anything. As much as he attempted not to think of his own past—his childhood—finding the newspaper clipping in Olivia’s apartment had been like a knife to the gut. Brutal and surprising all at once. “She was kidnapped before, when she was a kid.”

Dylan swore under his breath, and in that second, Zane knew his brother understood.

Neither of his brothers had ever really talked about why Zane was adopted into their family, about how his parents had found him for sale in Sierra Leone, and all the horrified couple could think to do was buy him.

“Riley and I will find her. Trust me, we’re not stopping until DMH is destroyed,” Dylan told him finally.

His brother’s voice was steel, and Zane could only pray they wouldn’t all be too late. Olivia Strohm was a survivor, but everyone had their breaking point.

C
am sat on an orange plastic chair, head in hands, numb. Waiting. When Dr. Holister tapped him lightly on the shoulder, he straightened and immediately realized how stiff he was. How drained.

The doctor sat next to Cam. “Skylar’s okay. She needs a lot of rest and monitoring, but she’s awake. Her fever’s abating—body temp is nearly normal.”

I should’ve just checked her in from the beginning
.

“She’s asking for you. Go see her.”

He pushed himself up, his body sore as shit, and walked to Sky’s room.

God, he hated seeing her lying in that bed, all the machines hooked to her. He knew she no doubt hated it too.

“Cam, I’m okay. My kidney’s okay. I was just cold—and I’m a little sick as a result. That’s all,” she reassured him as he walked over to her. But her voice was strained and sounded sleepy. “Are you okay?”

He stood next to the bed and took her hand in his. “I’m fine.”

“Dylan? Riley?”

“They’re fine too.”

“Zane blames himself … But he shouldn’t. He saved me.”

Cam nodded. She didn’t say anything else, was waiting for him to tell her about Gabriel. “Everything went according to plan.”

“The rest is up to him.” Sky had been let in on the plan from the beginning. “I’m sure we’ll hear something soon, one way or the other.”

“The important thing is that DMH thinks he’s dead. There’s no good reason for them to come after you now. That’s what counts.” Cam heard the fierceness in his own voice, as if he was trying to convince himself as much as he was her. And really, Sky was of no use to DMH. Hadn’t seen any of the men, and certainly didn’t know any of Gabriel’s intel. “You might not see him again, you know.”

She nodded. Had almost counted on that, since it appeared to be the only way to untangle her from the mess of DMH. “I’m so sorry, Cam. I should never have put you through all of this.”

“It’s over. That part … it’s all in the past.” He paused. “Sky, they took Olivia. Dylan and Riley are going to look for her, but there was no way to stop them. We didn’t have the manpower—”

She put a hand on his. “I know you did everything you could.”

She hadn’t been expecting any kind of warm, fuzzy reunion when and if Cam found her father. And still, she thought she could separate her father from the CIA agent. But after knowing what he’d done to Cam …

He’d told her one thing her father had done but she could see so many horrible stories lingering behind his eyes, things he could never—would never—tell her. Memories that could screw a man up for life … and still he’d somehow managed to fall in love with her.

She’d broken through. And she knew that’s what mattered most.

But now it was Cam’s turn to look worried. “I can’t believe I’m saying this now, but I’ve got to go. Work.”

She knew what that meant, knew that he couldn’t tell her where he was going, or when he’d be back.

Her insides tightened. Him leaving her now—the timing couldn’t be worse.

She was losing too much.

“I understand,” was all she told him.

He caught her chin with a finger, forcing her to look him in the eye. “I’ll be back for you, Sky.”

She wanted desperately to believe that was true, didn’t want to upset him with tears. All she could do was nod.

“Riley and Dylan, they’ll get you back to the city. Or … you can stay at my house. I’d really like it if you stayed there. For lots of reasons. Because coming home to you …” He trailed off, his voice raw.

“You’re leaving right now?”

“I’m due back at base in less than ten hours.” He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Can you do what I’m doing, Sky? Can we move forward and leave the past behind—really? Because if you’d asked me last week, I’d have said no. I’ve always wanted to be with someone, but it’s something I never thought I could have.”

“Me neither.” She bit her bottom lip. “Cam, I’m never going to be out of danger, with the transplant, and I—”

He stopped her words with a kiss. When he pulled back, he told her, “I can handle that danger. Starting now, we live for today, not the what-ifs, okay?”

“I can’t have children,” she blurted out, as if she needed to tell him all the things that could possibly push him away and see if he’d run.

“So we won’t have kids. Or we’ll adopt. Doesn’t fucking matter to me, Sky. The only thing that does is that you think I’m a good man, that you know it.”

“I know it, Cam. I always have.” She held back the tears until he left the room, and then she wasn’t sure she would ever stop crying.

CHAPTER

22

F
or the first two weeks Cam was gone, Sky didn’t get so much as a text from him. Not that she’d expected one, but she’d hoped.

Oh, she’d really hoped.

But it was back to business for her—she had no choice.

Two days after Cam left, the local papers near Crookston, Minnesota, reported a fiery crash off one of the steep roads. From the wreckage, they’d pulled three bodies. Two of the names Skylar hadn’t recognized. The third body had been identified as her father’s … or at least that’s what was reported. She knew through Cam that the article had been part of the plan, that her father would call in help from his former CIA handler to make it happen.

Whether or not Gabriel Creighton was truly dead was something she probably would never know for sure. She never expected to hear from him again. His bank accounts were strangely emptied and she’d discovered that his apartment in Washington had been long sold.

She truly had no family now, and in order to keep surviving, she needed to keep writing, if for nothing else than to keep paying for her medical insurance.

The one thing that held her sanity together was that she’d decided to stay in Cam’s house, not because she felt she needed the protection of his well-built fortress, but because it made her feel close to him.

She worked in his office, wore his far-too-big-for-her T-shirts and sweats most of the time. And she wrote—morning until night. Sometimes all through the night too.

She made the drive into her new doctor’s office for her tests every other week. Kept a month’s supply of meds with her and talked to Riley and Dylan daily to ease the loneliness. They visited weekly.

Today was a hospital-visit day. The air was crisp—spring was still a pipe dream, but the constant snowstorms had ceased. The snow still on the ground was nearly blinding, and she slid on her sunglasses as she walked out of the hospital, another good report under her belt.

Three more months and she’d be at a year since the transplant. That would nearly triple her chances of not rejecting the kidney, her doctors told her, and for once, she believed them.

When she got into her car and pulled out of the lot, she found herself thinking about Olivia, the way she always did after these trips. Still no word on her, even though she knew that Dylan and Riley were working hard to find her.

Sky knew she had to try to reconcile the fact that they might never find her, and as she took her hand off the gearshift to wipe the tears from her eyes, a hand closed on hers.

She gasped, then prepared to exit the car any way she had to. She would fight.

“Skylar, relax. It’s only me.”

Her father—his voice, his hand on her shoulder. “Keep driving to the end of the road. There’s a turnoff for a campground. Pull over there.”

Her breath still coming fast, heart hammering in her chest, she followed his directions, trying hard to recover from the initial shock.

She turned and saw him sitting up in the backseat of Cam’s car, looking no different than he had last time she’d seen him. Whatever injuries he’d sustained, he’d healed. “You’re okay.”

“So are you,” he said. “That’s what counts.”

She wanted to climb into the backseat with him. To hug him. To hear him tell her that everything would be all right. But, for the first time in her life, she knew he wouldn’t be telling the truth.

“I know how torn you are, how angry,” her father began. “Cameron told me about the two of you. He said he loves you.”

“He does.”

“And you feel the same.”

“I do.” She twined her fingers together nervously. “Tell me what happened with Mom. Did it happen the way you always said it did?”

The look in her father’s eyes was one she’d seen the afternoon her mother had been killed. Haunted. “DMH killed her. They found out she was an agent who’d infiltrated their organization and they killed her. She never saw it coming.”

She pushed back the tears, managed to choke out, “I hate your job, this life you and Mom chose. I hate it and I love you at the same time.”

“When you love someone, you’re vulnerable. Always. And that’s the scary part,” he agreed quietly. “But everything’s a risk, Skylar. You know that—you always have.”

She didn’t know what to say, and then he continued, “I want you to come with me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have a safe place for us both.”

“Cam and Riley—people you hurt for years—they were willing to help you because of me,” Sky said fiercely. “I’m not walking away, especially from Cam.”

“He put your life in danger.”

“And he was also there to save it. You yourself say that life is all about balance. A good deed balances a bad one, right?”

“Not in this case.” Gabriel’s teeth were gritted so tightly, it looked as though his jaw was made of stone. Maybe parts of him were, because Sky couldn’t understand how someone could go through so much and still function at such a high level without cracking.

In all these years, her father had never cracked. Not in front of her, at least, and somehow she couldn’t picture him doing it at all. “Did you kill Cam’s father?”

Gabriel looked his daughter square in the eye. “Yes.”

She flinched as if she hadn’t expected that answer. “Did he try to hurt you first?”

“He’d outlived his usefulness. Gone over the edge. Became addicted to the biker lifestyle, and the drugs. He wasn’t the first man to get turned around on an undercover assignment. But Howie wasn’t the one who set Cameron up. I simply took advantage of a bad situation.”

“You’ve ruined a lot of lives.”

“Cameron has his life,” he countered. “And anything I asked him to do was for the greater good.”

“You can keep telling yourself that, but I don’t think even you’ll ever believe it.” She fell silent, because what else was there to say about that? “What are you doing now? Are you still after DMH?”

“As badly as I want to be, I’m giving up that fight. There are other people who will fight them now. My continuing would put you back in danger.”

“What will you do?”

“Don’t worry about me, Sky—there’s plenty of work for someone like me. And eventually, I’ll come back.” Gabriel motioned behind him. “I don’t need witness protection—I already know how to disappear. But you shouldn’t have to. And I never should have asked you to join me.” With that, he opened the door and slid out. “One day, Skylar, I’ll make you proud of me again.”

“One day,” she whispered, and realized she was speaking only to herself.