"My daughter has stayed here when she could have run from Sorenson's cruelties years ago," Ethan pointed out furiously. "She could have raised that kid of hers, herself, rather than sobbing in grief each time she's had to watch her baby fly away after the secretive visits she was terrified would result in the Slasher or Wayne following her. And you blame her for not telling you those secrets, even knowing the leak you have in your organization? You blame her, even knowing how desperately she's always loved you? Well, aren't you just a f.u.c.king fine piece of work, Callahan."

Crowe watched him with scathing fury. "No, Roberts, I blame you and that accident-waiting-to-happen brother of yours for convincing her to place our child in danger rather than keeping her so safely hidden that even Ivan, with all his contacts, couldn't find so much as a whisper of suspicion that Amelia had given birth to that child, no matter his suspicions. I blame the two of you because your f.u.c.king adrenaline addiction meant far more to you than the child Amelia has risked her life to protect every day of her life, for nearly seven years. That's who I f.u.c.king blame."

"Resnova couldn't have suspected a d.a.m.ned thing." Roberts glared at him through narrowed eyes, his hands flexing on Thea's shoulders as she glanced back at him warily.

Crowe gave a bitter, cynical laugh. "If she'd had a lover there would have been time spent in motels, or a little love nest with DNA of some sort present. There would have been evidence of calls to an unknown party on her cell phone or home line. Or there would have been a burn phone hidden somehow that would have activated long enough for his men to get an unknown signal from her vicinity. There were none of those signs of a lover. What there was, was Amelia leaving for Aspen-and once she reached it she simply disappeared." Crowe stated. "She would return within a week, eyes reddened, her demeanor almost grief-stricken and obviously attempting to hide it. Ivan's been trying to track where she goes and who she leaves with ever since he forced himself into this little game with the Callahans and the Slasher and learned there was a single, living past lover I was determined to hide. His notes reveal he's suspected she had my child for the better part of a year now. Especially since she has refused to see her gynecologist since I left over seven years ago."

It galled Crowe that even he had believed, for a time, that she'd had a lover.

"She was already six weeks' pregnant when you left," Thea whispered, her voice still thick with unshed tears. "We showed up a few weeks after she learned of her pregnancy, and she learned then I hadn't died or just run away. We begged her to leave with us until we learned who had attempted to kill us. To hide with us. Ethan was certain he was getting closer when he learned who had sold the military-grade explosive used in the bomb placed in the car. She refused to leave. Four months later she called, hysterical. She was in some d.a.m.ned nasty hotel room, six months' pregnant and certain she was in labor. She'd run from Wayne's the second she'd begun having pains, terrified she wouldn't be able to hide her baby, trying to reach the clinic she'd had the pregnancy confirmed in, and returned to monthly for checkups because they didn't require an ID. The clinic was an underground medical facility, though, and had moved for whatever reason. She was terrified of losing her baby, and just as terrified that the Slasher would take her infant if she checked into a hospital. It was a miracle we were even in the States."

Crowe felt horror twist in his guts then.

G.o.d, he didn't want to hear this. Those underground f.u.c.king clinics were often butcher shops. For all the good they did, there were the instances of agonizing deaths and botched attempted surgeries that made his guts twist in terror for Amelia.

"By time we reached her, Kimmy was in distress. She wasn't in the proper position in the birth ca.n.a.l and Amelia was half out of her senses with pain and blood loss." Remembered grief twisted Ethan's and Thea's expressions. "She was screaming for you, Crowe, as some old Navajo medicine woman chanted between her thighs and tried to coax Kimmy into the proper position." Ethan wiped his face, his jaw working fiercely. "It took about a second for our medic to figure out what to do. He shot her full of painkillers as the medicine woman was pulled away from her. By the grace of G.o.d he managed to turn Kimmy and I watched as this tiny, whimpering little form was delivered into his hands an hour after we arrived."

"Less than a minute after Kimmy was laid against her chest, Amelia died." Thea delivered the bombsh.e.l.l as a sob shook her entire body.

"What the f.u.c.k-" Crowe all but wheezed, icy chills of terror racing through him. "What the h.e.l.l are you saying. She's alive-"

Ethan breathed out roughly, "'Save my baby, Daddy,' she whispered as Thea kept trying to bring her fever down with the ice the medicine woman had ready, and a bottle of alcohol. 'Please, Daddy, don't let the Slasher take my baby. Crowe's baby.' Then she just closed her eyes and let go." Ethan was fighting his own tears. "If the team and Jack hadn't been with us, we would have lost her. Our medic always carries his gear with him. He managed to shock her back while I contacted a nearby military base and had a medical support chopper sent out. She was airlifted to the base and hospital and recovered there while Kimmy was stabilized after being born three months early. Amelia had been sick, and none of us knew it." Ethan swallowed tightly. "She didn't know that she'd developed a very rare, very deadly infection caused by the pregnancy itself."

"The same infection your mother fought in the last months of her pregnancy with Sarah." Thea was crying now. "I nearly lost her, Crowe, because she loved your child and you, more than she cared for her own safety and well-being."

He needed to f.u.c.king sit down. Every bone and muscle in his body was locked tight, pain radiating through his heart, striking at his soul and leaving bleeding gouges in his spirit as Ethan and Thea revealed the h.e.l.l his too delicate little fairy-girl had gone through after he'd left her.

"Don't you ever stand before me again and blame my daughter for a single decision she's made where you or Kimmy is concerned." Ethan's tone was filled with a dark promise of death now. "If you care an iota for Amelia or even think you might want to be involved in your daughter's life, then by G.o.d, you'd better fix the pain you're causing both of them. Because so help me, Crowe, if you don't convince Kimmy you love her better than a kid loves ice cream then I'm going to make it a priority to ensure you never f.u.c.king see either of them again. And you had better go ahead and eat one of your own bullets if you ever cause one of them to cry again, let alone both. Because if you do, then I'll by G.o.d force-feed you one of mine."

The promise of violence didn't even register with Crowe. All he could see was Amelia, her pretty turquoise eyes closed in death as the too tiny form of his premature child whimpered for her mother.

For warmth and safety.

His Amelia had died without him. If only for seconds, she'd still pa.s.sed from life without him to hold her, to force her to hold on to him, to hold on to every chance they could have together.

Shaking his head, his fury lost in the realization of all Amelia had gone through, Crowe could only stare back at them in stark agony.

"Not care for them?" he whispered, barely able to speak past the emotions threatening to choke him to death. "G.o.d help me, Ethan, I've loved her until my soul felt like a dark, dying husk without her. And that child I met tonight was already such a part of my heart that all I can think about is eating that f.u.c.king bullet myself if the evil shadowing us manages to touch her or her mother, for even a breath of a second."

He stared at the couple, in equal parts furious and jealous that they had raised his child rather than himself and Amelia, and overwhelmed with a thankfulness that acknowledging it ripped from his heart. Those emotions battled side by side with the blank horror of knowing he'd nearly lost both of them and the overriding fact that he still could.

"Crowe-" Thea moved as if to touch him.

He stepped back with a quick shake of his head. "I have to think..." His throat worked convulsively as he fought against the emotions overwhelming him. "I have to finish some things."

Turning, Crowe strode quickly from the kitchen, back through the foyer and up the stairs to the second floor.

It was late. d.a.m.ned late, he realized, and he knew Amelia hadn't left their daughter's room, which was connected to Ethan and Thea's room.

He had to see her.

He had to rea.s.sure himself she was still alive, that she had survived, as illogical as it sounded, even to himself. He had to make certain he hadn't lost her forever.

CHAPTER 23.

She had died, and he hadn't been with her.

She had suffered. He had nearly lost not just the child he hadn't known existed, but also the woman.

She had kept him from freezing entirely, Crowe thought as he sat in the small chair at the end of the bed and watched them sleep. To become the man, the agent he'd been, he'd cut himself off from all emotion. Only the most basic loyalties had remained. Those to his cousins, and to the safety of the woman who had risked so much to help them.

It wasn't loyalty that had kept that small corner of his humanity alive, though. It had been the memory of her touch, of the pure emotion in her eyes each time they met his, and the broken agony he'd heard in her voice the night she had read the letter he'd left her.

Amelia had kept him human. She had kept him from becoming a very different sort of monster, but a monster all the same.

Sprawled in the chair, still, silent, he simply watched them sleep, telling himself he couldn't wake them. How many nights had Amelia ached to hold her child against her in such a way? How many nights had she cried for the newborn she'd been forced to let go? How many times had Kimmy cried for her mother?

What justice had there been over the years for them?

What consolation had there been for them?

He knew there had been none for him. He'd existed in a void he'd created himself just to survive. A void of emotionless deception that barely held back the raging fury pounding just beneath the surface.

He let his gaze caress Amelia's profile. The gentle arch of her brow, the little pert nose that could lift to the air with such disdain when she was irritated. Her lips. G.o.d, what her lips could do to him. Just the touch of them was more pleasure than he'd ever known in his life.

The delicate line of her graceful throat, so sensitive to his kisses, to the rake of his teeth against the tender flesh.

Tucked beneath the quilt with Kimmy's arms wrapped around her like clinging vines, she held the girl with a tenderness that had his throat tightening.

As he watched, her lashes flickered restlessly, then seconds later opened, focusing on him immediately.

"Crowe?" she whispered, her voice filled with concern.

Crowe shook his head slowly. "Everything's okay."

The world around them was still turning. So far, no one else had suffered at Wayne's hands, but his own world had changed with such a force that he wondered how he would recoup quickly enough to find his balance.

Kissing their daughter gently on the forehead, she disengaged from the snugly wrapped arms and slid from the bed.

Crowe straightened, moving to the door as Amelia tucked the blankets around their child before following him.

"I didn't mean to awaken you," he said softly, closing the door behind them as they stepped into the hall.

"She's not easy to sleep with," she said nervously, tucking the long strands of hair that fell over her shoulder behind her ear as they moved to their room. "I usually move in a few hours out of self-preservation. She has sharp elbows and no scruples about using them."

He remembered his father saying that about him once, Crowe realized. Laughing, his voice would fill with love as he stated that letting the seven-year-old Crowe sleep with him and his wife was like taking his life in his own hands.

He closed the bedroom door behind them moments later, watching as Amelia moved across the room before turning to face him.

She didn't clasp her hands before her. She stood carefully as though ready to move at any moment, tension radiating through her body.

"I know you're angry..."

Shaking his head, he turned away from her to pace to the bathroom door, raking his fingers through his hair as he fought to sort out the emotions he did feel.

He wasn't angry. Not at Amelia.

What he was, was fighting that ice. Fighting the need to go hunting for Wayne by himself, even knowing the risks.

And that he couldn't do. He couldn't go back into the cold again without destroying himself in the process.

Watching Crowe warily, Amelia fought the tears that wanted to fill her eyes, fought the need to sob at the agony resonating through him.

"You talked to Mom and Dad, didn't you?" she whispered then, knowing her father.

Ethan Roberts hadn't agreed with Amelia over the years in her refusal to contact Crowe. After a few years, he'd seemed to blame Crowe for it, though, rather than her. As though he had begun to believe that she doubted Crowe would come to her and Kimmy's sides. No amount of arguing had changed his mind, and no amount of it had changed hers.

"Logan returned for a week the month after I left," he said quietly as he turned back to her, his gaze predatory, sharp with the anger he held back. "I know he saw you in town. Why didn't you contact him? Why didn't you tell him? You went to see Clyde, but you wouldn't talk to Logan?"

"When I went to see Clyde, I was nearly desperate," she whispered, remembering that week with a vivid slash of pain. "Before I left he looked at me with that stare he had." A way of warning a person to say no more than they had to. "As I got into my car he leaned in close and asked me if I cared for you." Her breath hitched on a sob as Crowe's gaze sharpened. "I nodded. That look..."

"You didn't speak, you listened when you saw it," he finished for her roughly.

"He said if you came back, blood would spill." She lifted her hand to hide the shaking of her lips for a moment. "Then he said we'd definitely see you in prison, along with your cousins, if you had to kill for me." The sob she was fighting escaped. "He asked if that was what I wanted. And I knew he wasn't talking about the Slasher."

"Because he knew Wayne was abusing you," he snarled. It wasn't a question so much as an indication of knowledge.

"If you came back for me, for our baby, then blood would have spilled," she whispered. "I knew you'd kill for me, Crowe. If you did, you could have gone to prison. I couldn't let that happen. I wouldn't let that happen."

"You died! d.a.m.n you, Amelia, what would have happened to me if you hadn't been revived?" He didn't yell, but that rasp of fury in his voice caused her to flinch. She began trembling with not just the memory of it, but the awareness that Crowe was angrier than she'd suspected.

"Ethan would have contacted you then," she swore, frowning in confusion. "He would have offered to keep Kimmy until the Slasher was taken care of." Her heart rate picked up as the glow of gold in his eyes seemed to spark like flames. Her own anger rose then, racing through her senses as she remembered those agonizing weeks after Kimmy's birth. "What do you want me to say, Crowe?" she cried, reaching out to him before pulling her hands back and wrapping her arms across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s defensively. "If I had told you about Kimmy none of us would have been safe and you know it. You were in the military; they wouldn't have just let you leave. We didn't know who the Slasher was, or the lengths he would go to. I was terrified for you and Kimmy. Terrified I'd cause you to lose more than you already had."

"You didn't trust me to protect you and our child," he rasped dangerously. "Is that it, Amelia?"

"You know, Crowe, I didn't trust my father, my uncle, and their team to protect my daughter if anyone learned of her, before we discovered who the Slasher was," she reminded him painfully. "It had nothing to do with trust and everything to do with the fact that I was terrified for both of you." She dashed at the tears that escaped her eyes. "I wouldn't have been able to live if anything happened to either of you, because of me. I wouldn't have survived it."

She couldn't have drawn another breath had it happened.

Turning away from him, she fought the sobs rising inside her.

"I did my best, Crowe," she whispered. "I did my best."

"You died!" he snarled again as he swung her around to face him, the savagely hewn lines of his face filled with such fury, such pain, she lost the battle with the tears.

"And if saving you and our daughter meant never drawing another breath in this life then that was the price I'd pay," she cried out, her hands fisting in his shirt, jerking at the cloth, desperate to make him understand. "That was all that mattered to me, Crowe. Nothing else. I couldn't bear losing either of you. I couldn't live with it."

Sobs tore from her chest, the desperation that filled her that night a bleak, haunting memory.

"I would have been there." Naked, burning, the fury that filled him whipped in the air like a brutal wave. "I would have been with you, Amelia. I would have been there for you and you took that choice away from me."

"And I knew you'd be furious," she sobbed. "I knew the chance I was taking that you would hate me forever, Crowe, that you would never forgive the choices I had to make. Is that your prerogative only? Is no one but you allowed to make the hard choices to protect those that mean the most to them?"

"I will kill a thousand times over for you. That choice is far different..." His hands tightened at her shoulders, the hold firm. He didn't hurt her; he would never mark her skin and she knew it. But the brutality of his pain was killing her.

"Crowe, I would die a thousand times over for you," she whispered. "For you and Kimmy. I'd give my last breath just as easily as you would have given up your freedom if you were caught."

Except he wouldn't have been caught.

Crowe knew he wouldn't have been, but it was a knowledge he knew Amelia didn't have.

Releasing her slowly, he stepped back.

Distance. He had to find a distance, he thought, forcing back the emotion for the brutal objectivity that had ensured his survival over the years.

"Crowe..." Her tear-filled voice was breaking him.

"I'm not angry with you." Keeping his voice calm now, pushing back the rage, he moved slowly, tiredly to the door.

"Crowe..." She whispered his name again.

"I have to stop this." He forced the words past his throat then. "Until Wayne's dead, neither of you is safe. Until he's dead, neither of you really belongs to me, do you, Amelia?" He turned back to her then, hating the tears that fell down her face. "Because I won't let you or our daughter live in this f.u.c.king nightmare one second longer than I have to."

He forced himself from the bedroom and went to the security room, all the while feeling his soul howling.

She had died. And he hadn't even been there.

CHAPTER 24.

It was the sound of Kimmy's screams, high-pitched and echoing shrilly through the house, that woke Amelia from a sound sleep, two days later.

Before her eyes were fully open she was out of the bed and racing across her bedroom to the door. Throwing it open and running along the hall, she was only dimly aware of the sun spilling weakly through the tall foyer windows to the middle of the curving staircase.

Another full-throated scream was followed by a muted, male growling sound that made very little sense.