The Second Betrayal (5 page)

Troy beat the rest of us, too. "On your tail, kid," he said as the pair headed to the kitchen with Mama.

I glanced at Ryan, who was decimating a perfectly good piece of cauliflower. It almost looked like mashed potatoes.

His jaw was tight as he pressed the tines of his fork into the cauliflower. Whatever it was had to be serious for him to act this way. It was going to drive me nuts if I didn't find out what it was. Soon.

Mama, Sean, and Troy emerged from the kitchen each carrying a plate with our desserts. "Porter cake," she said with a cheery smile. "Made with Guinness, of course."

"Porter cake's the best." Sean thought every dessert Mama made was the best. He plopped himself down in his seat and set the cake he'd been carrying directly in front of him on the table.

Evan reached across the table and snatched the cake plate that had been in front of Sean. "You're not hogging the whole thing, brat," Evan said.

"Hey." Sean scowled. "Give it back."

Evan cut himself an enormous piece. "When 1 get mine, kid."

I shook my head. Over the summer my twelve-year-old brother, Sean, had suddenly gone from a kid to a gangly

almost-teenager on the cusp of "the dark side" as Daddy liked to say.

It wasn't long at all before the three cakes had been devoured. Mostly by my five brothers, even though Willow and I had healthy appetites, too. Rori just picked at hers as usual.

When we were finished, Daddy insisted on a round of single-malt Irish whiskey. That was different. He usually only

brought out the whiskey on Christmas and on New Year's Day.

Daddy finished pouring us each a glass two fingers high with whiskey. Even for Rori who tried to protest that she

didn't want any.

When he'd made his way around the table, Daddy set the bottle down. It clunked on the plaid tablecloth that covered the aged maple wood table. He raised his own glass. "Here's to the Steele family, together in body, soul, and heart."

Everyone looked as puzzled as I felt but murmured back, "To the Steele family," before we followed Daddy and slammed back the contents of our glasses.

I drank mine in one swallow and felt the harsh burn of whiskey hit my throat. Having been a sniper in the Army's

Special Forces, surrounded by males, I'd learned how to drink my whiskey without choking. The alcohol rushed to my

stomach harsh and hot.

Rori and Sean both coughed. Daddy had even given my twelve-year-old brother a small shot? Definitely something

was up.

My heart started to drop as Daddy set his empty glass on the table as hard as a judge hitting his mallet to bring the court to order. Everyone at the table went quiet as Daddy moved to Mama's chair and he gripped the high spindles that rose to either side of her.

Ice crawled over my skin and in the silence I glanced at each member of my family, all with an expression of

confusion, concern, maybe even fear. Ryan didn't look up. He just stared into his empty whiskey glass.

Daddy cleared his throat, and I looked at him. I took in his face, rough with whiskers, and the skin around his eyes lined with age. His skin was tan and weathered from a life of hard labor as a mason, and his hair gray, streaked with white, but his eyes were still as glass green as my own.

I clenched my hand around my whiskey glass and brought my gaze to Mama's. Her throat worked, and my body grew

colder still as I realized she was trying to put up a brave display so that we would all be okay with whatever news they had. Her cheeks that normally had a rose hue seemed pale. Was she thinner? She was. Mama had always been robust,

slightly plump from her cheeks to her ankles. Why hadn't I noticed earlier?

Daddy cleared his throat again. His Boston Irish brogue was strong as he spoke. "I guess there's no beatin' around the bush. I can tell from your faces you have your suspicions that we've not-so-good news to tell."

Everyone else remained silent. I was so cold my teeth started to chatter.

"Molly..." He paused and patted Mama's arm with one hand while gripping her opposite shoulder tight with his other hand. "Your mama has breast cancer.”

Pressure squeezed my head as if all the air in the room pressed against it while stealing my breath at the same time.

Muffled silence. My blood throbbing in my ears. Heart in my throat.

Mama, breast cancer? I started to shake. No. God, no.

"Come now." Mama's words and her own light Irish accented words barely made it through my nearly deaf ears. She gave us her normal no-nonsense look, as if she was pushing away any emotion that might be inside her right now. "No sense in you all looking like it's the end of the world."

"Mama!" Rori flung herself from her chair to our mother. Her sobs were loud as she wrapped her arms around Mama's neck and cried against her large bosoms.

I stared at those bosoms as voices started reverberating in my muffled head. She had cancer. There. Strange thoughts went through my mind as I sat in my chair. Her thick gray hair might be gone soon. Her breasts, too.

What if the cancer had progressed farther? What if—

I squeezed my fists on the checkered tablecloth. A strangled sound tried to come from my throat but didn't make it out.

Everyone but Ryan and I had gone to Mama to hug her. Daddy must have told Ryan about the cancer to bring him

home, to be with us when he told the rest of the family the gut-wrenching news.

My big, hulking brothers didn't bother to hide the tears that trickled down their cheeks. I caught a glimpse of Ron's blotched red face and swollen eyes.

And still I sat.

My skin numb. My face numb. My eyes as dry and painful to blink as my dry throat hurt to swallow.

Daddy gripped the spindles on the back of Mama's chair, and his fingers were bloodless. He bent his head, his chin

touching his chest, his eyes closed.

"Everything's going to be fine." Mama's voice wavered yet at the same time sounded strong and determined. She shooed everyone away. "Go on now. Sit down."

Rori was the last to release Mama and force herself away, tears slipping down her blotchy face.

Still I sat.

I couldn't move. My muscles didn't want to work. Didn't want to obey me as I told myself I should go to my mother.

Hug her. And let loose the tears that burned behind my eyes. Tears backed up from countless years of being unable to cry. Even now at the most important time of all.

Shame burned my cheeks as my brothers and sister returned to their chairs and sat. Mama met my gaze and smiled,

like she knew what emotions were building inside me that wanted to spew like a volcano, my body shaking me with

the force of it all. Her eyes said it was okay. Everything would be okay.

It wasn't okay.

Mama turned her gaze to Daddy as she looked up at him and patted one of his hands gripping the chair spindle. When

he raised his head he was tight-lipped, his normally tanned face pale and drawn.

Daddy started to talk, but nothing came out. He cleared his throat then managed to speak. "The biopsy report showed the cancer is invasive." The sound his throat made when he tried to clear it again was strangled.

Mama patted his hand and she said what he couldn't. "The doctors started me on chemotherapy last week." She spoke easily, as if this were a simple thing. "The cancer is far enough along that the docs need to shrink it before they perform surgery."

Her words didn't seem real. None of what she and Daddy said felt real.

Ryan finally took his gaze from his plate and focused on our mother. His voice was rough, serious. "You're too goddamned tough to let it win, Mama." He looked around the table. "She's going to beat it. She raised us, didn't she?"

"Do not take the Lord's name in vain, child," she said, as she always did if we strayed over that line.

She then moved her gaze to each of us, and there was strength and determination in her eyes as she spoke. "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; He will never

leave you nor forsake you."

"Deuteronomy thirty-one, six," I found myself saying in a whisper, the words coming to my mind automatically from my Irish Catholic upbringing. I had long ago turned away from the faith I had grown up with. But at that moment I

found myself praying that there really was a God and that Mama's faith in Him would eradicate every bit of cancer

from her body.

I finally found that I had the ability to move my body. The chair legs scraped against the wood floor as I pushed my chair back. The ache in my legs was as if my muscles still wanted to refuse me, but I made it to Mama. The wood was hard beneath my knees as I knelt beside her chair and wrapped my arms around her waist. I pressed my cheek against

her bosom and squeezed my eyes tight.

"I love you, Mama," I said as I breathed in her scent, which reminded me of love and home and precious memories. "I love you."

Her lips were soft against my head as she pressed her lips to my hair. "I know you do, child. Everything is going to be fine."

I wanted to believe her, but I said nothing and just pressed myself closer to her and held her tight, as if that would anchor her to earth forever.

CHAPTER FOUR

Nick

Nick Donovan clenched his hand around his cell phone before he shoved it into the clip on his belt. He braced his

forearm against the wall beside the window of the third-floor Manhattan apartment and stared at the Elite Gentleman's Club through the gap in the dingy but thick gauze curtains. He, Steele, and Kerrison had gone over the Elite's building schematics before they left so they knew the layout well.

The phone conversation he'd just had with Lexi played over in his mind. It wasn't like her to let the smallest amount of personal pain into her voice. At one time she'd shared some of her dark past with him. In that moment he'd known that what she'd been through had hardened her to the point where she thought showing any kind of emotional weakness

was a flaw.

Like his own past had hardened him. A past he couldn't let die. Or wouldn't.

In the background, Jensen and Weiss argued about the best surveillance tactics to use as they kept an eye on the Elite Gentleman's Club on East Sixtieth Street, between First and Second Avenues.

Nick and Steele's team were camped out above a camera shop. It hadn't been easy renting the apartment and getting

their gear in without attracting attention once the place was cleared.

Weiss had posed as a cable TV worker who was installing cable in the apartment Jensen had just rented with Smithe.

She'd refused to room with Weiss. If it wasn't for the fact Lexi's behavior had set his gut to roiling, Nick would have found the memory of Weiss and Jensen's last op during
Cinderella
amusing.

Getting the former occupants out of this apartment had been an even harder job, but Takamoto and Weiss had found

the couple new digs and made sure they would keep their mouths shut.

A seasoned RED agent, Weiss had an uncanny ability to change into multiple personas, each distinct from the others—

more so than any operative Nick had known. Weiss even looked damned brutal and deadly when he wanted, and no

doubt he had scared the shit out of the couple in one way or another.

"Something up?" Kerrison said from behind Nick, her southern accent light.

Nick tried to relax his clenched his jaw as he thought about the slight tremor in Lexi's voice while she'd told him her operational status.

"Steele just called in." Donovan glanced away from the window to look at Kerrison. "She'll arrive at JFK tomorrow instead of tonight." That fact alone had been enough to send off alarm bells in his head. Lexi was never late on an op, much less not giving some kind of explanation for a change in plans. "You and Steele will move into your place in Brooklyn Tuesday instead of tomorrow afternoon."

"Works for me." Kerrison smirked as she inclined her head to Weiss and Jensen. "If those two can shut up long enough for us all to roll out our sleeping bags and get some rest tonight." Kerrison tilted her head and studied Nick.

"Something's definitely up with you."

The new agent was too damned observant.
Save it for the op.
"Just thinking about the setup," Nick said.

Kerrison gave a slow nod before she left and walked toward the small apartment's grungy kitchen. Nick couldn't hear her, but she said something to Smithe, who hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans and grinned at her.

Nick focused his attention on the window and stared at the Elite. His gut churned as the memory of his own sister

being auctioned as a sex slave and the fucking hell she'd been put through. Even killing the sonofabitch who'd bought and sexually abused Kristin hadn't given Nick one goddamned ounce of satisfaction.

Maybe bringing down Hagstedt, the man ultimately behind the auction ring that had emotionally devastated his sister, would.

Nick barely kept from ramming his fist into the wall.

Hagstedt was a dead man.

Nick's thoughts turned back to Lexi. He didn't know how it happened, but he'd started caring for her far more than he'd expected to. Hell, he wasn't the relationship type. He had too much darkness in his past.

But then again, so did Lexi.

Now he knew what the expression meant when someone had "gotten under your skin," because that was how he felt when he was around Lexi, or when he thought about her. Like she'd become a part of him that he couldn't separate

from himself.

"Shit." Nick rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "Way too deep, Donovan." Not to mention dangerous territory. Letting Lexi Steele have that kind of effect on him was just asking for trouble. "Because that's what the little shit is," he mumbled under his breath. 'Trouble."

CHAPTER FIVE

Guinness and Pecan Sandies

Seeing Donovan when I walked into baggage claim shot heat through my chest. I almost came to a stop on the grungy