"I could never not like you," Crowe whispered over the protest Amelia would made.

Kimmy looked confused now. "You don't want me?"

"Kimmy, stop," Amelia ordered the little girl gently. "Stop, baby."

"I do want you," Crowe promised her, feeling that possessiveness rising inside him now like a fever he couldn't control. "Yes, Kimmy, I do want you."

"Then why do you look so mad at me and Mommy?"

"I'm not mad at you," he promised. "I'm not mad at you in any way."

"You're mad at Mommy?" she asked softly.

His lips quirked. "I'm not mad at Mommy."

"Come here, squirt." It was Ethan who rescued them all as he took the girl from her mother's arms.

Crowe's fingers fisted at his sides as he fought to hold back the urge to jerk his daughter from the mercenary's arms. Ethan had obviously been with his daughter from the beginning, just as Amelia's mother, Thea, had been.

"Mr. Roberts, Rory will show you and Amelia's mother to your rooms." Ivan stepped forward then, his expression cold and hard as he glanced at Amelia. "Once you've settled in, we can make arrangements for your men. For the moment, the spare house that was once Amelia's has been housing the agents on duty here. They can stay there."

"Jack stays here," Ethan informed the other man, his tone firm as he turned back to the others. "The rest of you go ahead to the spare house. I'll contact you once I've settled things here."

Four battle-hardened, scarred, icy-eyed men of war. None of them were married or had families, but before they left, each of them took Kimmy in his arms and accepted a hug and a kiss as though it was some f.u.c.king ritual, Crowe thought.

He recognized the jealousy crawling through him as well. They had been there as his daughter grew, as she turned into the fiery, outspoken little minx she so obviously was.

Other men had raised and protected his child.

His child.

He should have been protecting her. His cousins should have been her uncles. He shouldn't have been introduced to his daughter after she was old enough to realize he hadn't protected her and her mother.

Finally, Kimmy gave her mother a kiss and tightened her arms around her neck.

"I can live with you now, Mommy?" she asked, obviously determined that she wasn't going to be separated from her again. "I'm always scared the bad man's hurt you when you're not home at night."

"I know, baby." Amelia held her with a desperation Crowe couldn't have missed if he'd wanted to. "And I promise, I'm trying to make sure you get to stay with me every night."

She couldn't promise her daughter they'd be together.

She couldn't even promise her daughter that the bad man wouldn't hurt either one of them anymore.

Ethan took Kimmy from her arms, kissed Amelia's cheek gently, then followed Rory up the stairs while Thea hugged her daughter tightly before following.

Her uncle, Jack Roberts, moved forward. He didn't hug Amelia. He faced Crowe instead. "I think of the sacrifices my niece has had to make because she loved you," he said, his voice soft. "We could have taken her from here." He looked around the house. "We could have taken her anywhere in the world and she could have lived safely with her daughter..."

"Jack, stop, please," Amelia begged him, her hands catching his lower arm in supplication. "Please don't do this."

He didn't even glance at her. "She deserved a life that didn't include hanging around here to protect you until that d.a.m.ned Slasher could be caught. A life that didn't include lying to her family about the son of the b.i.t.c.h she had to claim for a father that was abusing her." Anger filled Jack's voice.

"Uncle Jack, please. Please don't do this."

Crowe turned his gaze to her, his fists so tight he swore his knuckles were going to pop from the flesh. "Enough, Amelia," he growled. "You couldn't tell me the truth. At least let someone else do it."

"No," she protested, glaring at her uncle. "Stop this now, Jack. It wasn't his fault."

"It wasn't then," he agreed, his expression scathing as he turned back to Crowe. "But the second he decided to accuse and judge you for whatever the h.e.l.l it is he has in his mind, then it becomes his fault."

"For G.o.d's sake, Jack," she whispered, pain filling her voice as Crowe saw the aching regret in her eyes. "He didn't know and I won't have this. Not now. Not like this. Let it go. Now." Her voice hardened. Jack grimaced before staring down at her like a d.a.m.ned teenager wondering if he could get away with some prank.

"Amelia..."

"Now, Jack," she demanded. "Let it go."

The look Crowe was given would have worried a lesser man. A man who didn't know his own strengths, his own abilities.

"We'll talk later," Jack promised him.

"I'll be waiting for you," Crowe a.s.sured him, inclining his head in acceptance of the upcoming confrontation.

"Chill out, bada.s.s." Jack grinned, his head dipping to kiss the top of Amelia's head gently. "We're going to make everything work out, just you wait and see."

They were going to make everything work out?

Unclenching his fists long enough to rake his fingers through his hair, Crowe turned and stalked from the foyer and from Amelia.

He couldn't trust himself, couldn't trust his own response to her or the self-disgust raging through him.

Because he should have known, he told himself. The day Clyde had called, weeks after Crowe had left, to tell him Amelia had been at the ranch looking for him, he should have known.

He had known.

Striding through the kitchen and out the back door. The shock of icy wind slicing through his clothes barely registered. The snow swirling through the air, the hint of the blizzard moving in-none of it registered.

His daughter.

All he could see was his daughter, her soft little voice asking him why he didn't like her. Telling him her mother had protected her, that was what she did.

"You f.u.c.ker!" The words tore from him as he glared into the darkness. "Come on out, Wayne. Come on, you son of a b.i.t.c.h, because I'm going to cut your f.u.c.king heart out. Wherever you're hiding, however you're hiding, enjoy it tonight. Enjoy it, because I'm coming for you."

He stared out at the cold, the snow, the moonless night wrapping around him.

"I'm finished playing, Wayne. You're dead."

CHAPTER 22.

"Crowe?" Thea Roberts stepped into the darkened kitchen as Crowe refilled the coffee cup he'd brought down from the security center. "How have you been?"

He was sucked back into the past just that fast.

Thea Teague Sorenson and Kimberly Corbin had been the best of friends, even before marriage. Thea had been a regular part of Crowe's life until his parents' death. And then for several years later, until her own supposed death.

Turning from the counter and staring back at her through the dim light, he realized she looked different. Not just physically, though she retained enough of her former looks that he could identify who she was. She looked stressed, but there was an inner contentment in her gaze. The look of a woman well satisfied by not just her lover, but also her relationship with him and the life he provided her.

"What happened, Thea?" he asked her, leaning back against the counter to watch curiously as she pulled a stool from beneath the center island bar and lifted herself to it. "Why did you desert Amelia?"

"Desert her?" Thea shook her head, her once naturally dark hair a soft, dark blond, her green-and-gray-toned hazel eyes enhanced by contacts and appearing more green than they had before her disappearance. "I would have never deserted her. She was my baby. But, just as Amelia was forced to do, I had to make a choice to let her live safely where she was, or force her to live with the same danger Ethan and I believed we faced."

He propped his hands on the counter behind him and watched her intently. "I thought Wayne was the danger you faced?"

"But we didn't know that then." She sighed, brushing her hair back from her forehead as her lips twisted wryly. "Wayne learned Ethan had returned from the navy. He was having us watched, though we were unaware of it. We were heading to Aspen to see a divorce lawyer, then we were going to return to Sweetrock and pick Amelia up from school before leaving Colorado and moving to California. We were nearly to Aspen when the brakes went out on the car. Ethan had nearly managed to get us to the bottom of that last mountain on the old route into Aspen, along the river, when the car exploded and we went through the guardrail into the water."

He frowned. The old route had been closed several years before because of the number of vehicles crashing through the guardrails and catapulting into the churning rapids below.

Lowering her head and obviously fighting to keep her emotions under control, Thea dragged in a deep, hard breath. When she looked back at him, tears glittered in her gaze. "I was six weeks' pregnant with Ethan's child. Our second child." Her lips twisted with bitterness. "Neither Ethan nor I was aware I was pregnant when I married Wayne. Ethan had left the night after our first time together, several weeks before I was due to marry Wayne. Ethan had no idea I was preparing to break off my engagement with Wayne; he believed I was marrying Wayne despite the fact that I was a virgin when he took me to his bed."

"What made him believe you were going to continue with the engagement?" Crowe asked, wondering at the countless lives Wayne had destroyed.

"Wayne," she admitted painfully, staring at the bar where she traced a faint scratch with her nail. "Ethan and I were, and still are, fiery together." Lifting her head, her hand stilling, she made the admission softly. "But Ethan was a hothead in those days. Wayne suspected we had begun seeing each other again, the manipulating b.a.s.t.a.r.d. The day after Ethan and I were together, he made certain Ethan overhead him telling a friend that I had gone with him to pick out a ring that morning and how excited I was now that the wedding was drawing closer. Then he pretended to confide in that friend that I had shared his bed in the house we had chosen. He even claimed that I wasn't a virgin, but it didn't matter to him because he knew I'd make a loving, proper wife," she sneered. "Ethan knew I was a virgin when we were together, but we had argued that night and I cruelly told him I'd marry Wayne regardless. He believed me, I guess." She shrugged. "When he disappeared I stupidly went ahead and gave in to parental pressure and married Wayne, not realizing until too late that I was pregnant with Ethan's child. Ten years later Ethan was in Sweetrock visiting friends when he saw Amelia and realized she was nearly identical in looks to his younger sister, who happened to be nearly Amelia's age."

Crowe watched her closely, carefully, well aware that she had adeptly sidetracked from the originally explanation.

"What happened after the explosion?" he asked her, firmly enough that she realized he had no intentions of letting the subject go.

"Ethan was terribly hurt," she sighed. "But I nearly died. The car was carried miles down the river before he was able to get us out of it. By then I was unconscious, losing blood and of no help at all. He managed to get us out and onto dry land, but my purse and his cell phone were in the car, leaving him no way to contact his team. It took Jack and his men nearly thirty-six hours to find us. Ethan managed to keep me alive, but he couldn't prevent the loss of our child. The majority of the explosion had been on the pa.s.senger side of the car as well. The windshield blew out, the force propelling the gla.s.s into the car and striking my face." When she brushed her fingers against her left cheek self-consciously, he realized where the few changes were concentrated now. "By time Jack had us transported out of the canyon in a way that ensured no one realized what was going on, I'd developed an infection. I spent years fully recovering. The plastic surgeries were horrible enough, but the injuries from the explosion had ensured I could never have more children. Ethan would have sent Jack and the others after Amelia immediately, but he had no idea who had attempted to kill us. He believed for years that it had happened because of the nature of his work. It simply never occurred to us that Wayne was behind it until he was revealed as the Slasher and Ethan's contacts in the forensics division of the FBI told him that the explosion that killed Wayne's cousin was identical in design to the one that nearly killed us. What was more, the unusual compound used in it was, to the last test, the exact same compound used in Ethan's car. All this time we hadn't taken Amelia with us, terrified that his enemies would target her if they were aware we weren't dead." Her voice broke on the statement while tears escaped her eyes and for a moment she fought the sobs that would have escaped as well. "We would have gotten her out of here, just as we took Kimmy as she begged us to, to protect her from the Slasher. We begged her to go with us as she prepared to leave the baby. It was destroying her, to leave Kimmy to be raised by us while she made plans to return to a life that was destroying her. A life no one else knew she was living. She wouldn't leave with us, though." Thea sniffed tearfully. "She was afraid the Slasher would become suspicious, or that Stoner would return and do as he'd threatened by gossiping about the two of you until the Slasher came looking for her, and managed to find Kimmy as well." Her gaze was tormented. "And she was certain if she didn't return, then Wayne would do as he threatened and have you and Cami arrested for the file she had helped you steal from his office the summer before."

"He couldn't have-" Crowe began.

"He would have." A slender, shaking finger was suddenly pointing toward him as her voice hardened, her expression filled with remembered pain and a glimmer of fury. "Not even I or Ethan learned the full truth of this until recently, Crowe. Kimmy was, and is, her heart, and it killed Amelia to leave her baby. But she returned because she knew Wayne was preparing to have Cami arrested, and had already completed the paperwork that would have forced the army to return you to Corbin County for trial. Just as he had threatened her he would do if she tried to leave."

Crowe felt his fingers turning into fists. The need to strike out at Wayne burned through his senses.

"The army wouldn't have let me go at that point." He shook his head, remembering the black ops training he had been inducted into about the time Amelia would have given birth to Kimmy. "Trust me, Thea. I was far too important to them by then."

Thea sat back in her seat slowly. "Even Ethan was unaware until only recently of your acceptance into whatever group you were a part of." She wiped her hands over her face wearily. "Your secrets ran just as deep as hers. And were just as dark and filled with pain." The anger in her gaze receded as he continued to watch her, crossing his arms over his chest and meeting her stare steadily.

"Did you know when she learned she was pregnant, she went to Clyde to try to contact you?" Thea asked then.

He blinked slowly. "She didn't tell him why she was searching for me."

"Wayne and Clyde were old friends. She had no idea how deep Clyde's loyalty to your cousins went. No one did. His rough att.i.tude and weekend desertions of the three of you when you were younger had many of your parents' former friends suspecting Clyde had no more love for you than your mothers' families appeared to have."

And that was no more than the truth, Crowe knew.

"It was deliberate," he told her, realizing now that he should have told Amelia of the many and varied subtleties and progressions of lies Clyde had used to protect his charges. "Clyde was investigating the deaths of our parents until the day he was killed. He never trusted Wayne again, though, after the night I showed him that file Amelia led me to."

But he had never told Clyde who had helped him steal the file, or that he had been seeing Amelia secretly.

"And neither Wayne nor Amelia knew Clyde believed you over him," Thea revealed. "Amelia overheard Wayne's meeting with Clyde when he learned she had given you that information. He told Clyde he'd only just learned that Amelia had given you a file she'd changed the names on, changed the information on, to convince him she was helping him, to get her into your bed. He made Amelia appear to be a sort of secret groupie. Clyde gruffed and growled and told Wayne he'd not seen the file, but he'd be certain to ensure Wayne was given a copy of it if he did. To Amelia, Clyde's loyalty to you was a lie. She couldn't trust him."

Who had Amelia been able to trust? he wondered. From the sound of it, there had been no one to turn to, no one to help her shoulder the burden she carried. Watching Thea, he remembered how his mother had loved her like a sister. Just as, he knew, his mother's death had devastated Thea.

"There's so much anger in you, Crowe," she said, her expression saddened. "And so much pain and fear in Amelia now. She didn't want you and Kimmy to meet this way. And she didn't want Wayne to ever learn of the child she's hidden from him. But Ethan is just as stubborn as you can be, and he knows Wayne will never show himself unless he's pushed."

The control Crowe had been holding on to broke.

"My daughter and my woman are not Ethan Roberts's f.u.c.king bait!" The words were torn from him before he could stop them, dragged from the depths of his soul and rasping with burning rage as they shot toward Amelia's mother like verbal bullets.

Grimacing, he pushed away from the counter. The anger he was fighting to pull back only surged higher as Ethan himself stepping into the kitchen, no doubt listening from the doorway-just as Crowe would have been had his woman been confronting another man's anger in such a way.

"But my daughter was your bait." Moving to Thea, Ethan laid his broad hands on her shoulders, standing over her protectively, his eyes blazing with paternal anger. "When I would have convinced her to leave and return to Europe with Kimmy, you walked back into her life and made your demand that she weave that little illusion of being your lover to draw Wayne out," he sneered. "How did that work out for you, a.s.shole?"

"Ethan, don't." Thea touched his hand, turning her head to stare back at him. "Amelia's been hurt enough. Don't add a confrontation with the man she loves to her heartache."

"She could have told me," Crowe snapped furiously. "She could have discussed this with me before bringing our child into this."

"And Wayne would have learned of her child at a time when she didn't have that child with her. And no matter her trust in her parents, her uncle, and the men they fight with, still, she would have been terrified for Kimmy. And Wayne would have found a way to use that fear against her."

Crowe froze, staring at the other man, his jaw clenched to the point that his back teeth were in danger of cracking.

"Are you suggesting I would have allowed that secret out?"

Ethan's smirk only tempted the rage that years of training barely held in check.

"Crowe." The gentleness in Thea's voice hardly registered. "Would you have told your cousins? Or Ivan? Would you have trusted any of your men?"

He narrowed his gaze on her with a deliberately icy look. "I would have seen to her protection, so what's your point?"

"Wayne's managed to stay one step ahead of you from the moment he was revealed as the Slasher," Ethan pointed out. "I'm really f.u.c.king surprised you haven't suspected what Amelia has known for weeks. You have a break in your security. Somehow, somewhere, someone is giving Wayne your secrets."

Oh, Crowe didn't suspect a d.a.m.ned thing. He knew. Just as Ivan knew.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," Ethan cursed softly. "You were aware of it."

Crossing his arms over his chest and staring back at the couple, Crowe didn't so much as bat an eyelash. He didn't owe Ethan Roberts s.h.i.t and he sure as h.e.l.l didn't owe Thea Roberts-or Sorenson-or whoever the h.e.l.l she was-a d.a.m.ned thing.

Especially not explanations.

"Do you have a suspect?" Ethan growled.

"Go to h.e.l.l," Crowe suggested mockingly.