Her Daring SEAL (Midnight Delta Book 5) (16 page)

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W
hen he was absolutely sure she was sound asleep he snuck out of bed and went into the bathroom where he wouldn’t be heard. 

“How is she?” Lydia immediately asked.

“That fucker strangled her with her purse straps.  She could have died.”  There was silence on the other end of the phone.  Darius didn’t say anything either.  What could he say?  They all knew the risks, and Rylie was on the frontlines, whether he liked it or not.

“Where is she?”

“She’s asleep.  My God, I can’t believe what she’s been through.”  He exhaled deeply.  “The guy’s name was Klein.  He had bad breath and blue eyes. Other than that, she knows nothing else about him.  Find out what you can about him.”

“On it,” Lydia said.

“Anything new going on?” Darius asked.

“Uncle Liu has pushed up his arrival.  He should be there tomorrow.  Something is definitely up if they sped things up like that.”

“I don’t think Albert has any idea his uncle is coming.  He’s still acting like the cock of the walk around here.  I hate this fuck and the way he treats Rylie.”

“I thought they were partners,” Lydia said.

“He’s condescending towards women.”

Lydia laughed.  “Hell, it makes it easier for Rylie.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Yeah, babe, what do you mean?” Clint spoke for the first time on the call.

“It means he underestimates her.  Men who talk down to us don’t realize how smart we are, and we can usually play them easier.”

Darius started to laugh.  Rylie did seem to be able to play Albert pretty well. 

“Tell us what you found,” Clint asked.  “Mason wants a report.  He’ll be on the call tomorrow.”

“They have a facility set-up for women to give birth.  They have pregnant women locked up over there on the other side of the island.  They’re going to sell the babies.”

“Oh no!” Lydia exclaimed.

“I’m sorry, Lydia.  The good news is, I don’t think Ursula, the girl who they said committed suicide, is really dead.  I think they probably took her and put her here on the baby farm.”

“We have to stop them before they ever get to the point of selling an infant.  We have to.”  Lydia sounded near tears.

“We will,” Clint soothed her.  Darius imagined them in their townhouse, with Clint hugging Lydia.

“We don’t have much time.  They talked about one of the women being close to giving birth, and having a buyer set up.”

“Fuck!  How close?  Do you know?” Clint asked.

“It sounded like days, a week at most.”

“I wonder if it’s why Uncle is coming in early.  Maybe he wants to check out this side of the operation before the auction.”

“Could very well be,” Darius agreed.

“How’s Rylie taking all of this information?” Lydia asked.

“I haven’t told her yet.  Hell, Lydia, when I first saw her with her face bruised and then seeing the marks on her neck, I couldn’t believe it.  Then she got to the room and threw up until there was nothing left.  But she bounced back.  Nothing stops this woman.  And I mean nothing.”

“Sounds like someone I know,” Clint said fondly.  Again Darius could see Clint and Lydia in his mind’s eye.  They were perfect for one another. 

“We’ve got to do something to force them to speed up the auction.  We can’t let the baby be sold.”

“Or we can have another buyer for the baby...” Lydia mused.

“Problem is we don’t know who the fence is for the babies.  Meanwhile, Rylie is the one who let’s folks know if more lucrative buyers are coming in for the women.  She has the power to move up the auction.”

“Would the other people purchasing still come if the date changed?” Clint asked.

“I’ll have to ask her.”

“Who would be this new mysterious buyer?” 

“Jack?”  Lydia suggested.

“Too much of an Eagle Scout, nobody would buy it.”  Darius dismissed the idea.

“Mason?” Clint suggested.

“Nope, he’s another one who screams knight in shining armor.”  Lydia nixed the idea.

“Aiden,” Clint said decisively.  Darius chuckled.

“That man has some years on him.  Nobody would ever guess he’s one of the good guys if he didn’t want them to,” Darius agreed.

“He’s a teddy bear,” Lydia said in his defense.

“You sure didn’t think so when you first met him, sweetheart.  You thought he was mean,” Clint reminded his fiancée.

“Well, he was mean in the beginning.  But he was always on Jack’s side, so that was good.”

“Okay, arrange it.  In the meantime, I’m going to go check out the clinic a little more thoroughly.  I want to see if I can get a patient records list as well.  It would be great if we could find out how many babies have already been sold, and to whom, and who their mothers are.  We need to get them reunited.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful.”  He could hear the tears and steel in Lydia’s voice.

“You better get back to Rylie before she wakes up,” Clint said.

“You’re right about that.  I don’t want her to wake up alone.  That woman has been alone too much in this life.”

“How can you say that?” Lydia asked.  “She’s surrounded by a huge family.”

“Yeah but, all of that responsibility for the family rests on her shoulders alone.  I’m amazed she stays upright.  I want to be there for her.”

“How does she feel about that?” Clint asked.

“She’s coming around to my way of thinking.”

“If anyone can wear down a stone with drops of water, that’d be you.  Go get her, man.” 

“I plan to.”  Darius hung up the phone and quietly opened the bathroom door.  Rylie was still sleeping quietly.  Her form barely made a lump in the bed, she was so small.  But still, she was a perfect size to fit in his arms.  He walked around the bed and crawled in beside her.  She immediately cuddled up against him.  Darius loved the fact that in her sleep she came to him for comfort. 

***

R
ylie woke with a start.  How she had managed to sleep was beyond her.  She had come into this bedroom chased by the hounds of hell and managed to find heaven in Dare’s arms.

Someone was knocking at the door.  All the warmth left the bed, and Rylie realized Darius had just gotten up.  She heard some murmuring and then smelled something heavenly.

“You awake?”

“God, yes.  What’s that smell?”

“Smells like meat and potatoes.”

“I didn’t know they could do just good plain food.”  Rylie sat up in bed, and Darius wheeled in a serving cart like they used in hotels.  She looked out the window and saw the moon was up high in the sky.  “What time is it?”

“Nine p.m., that’s what time I told Carver to bring up dinner.  You needed your sleep.  Apparently you get to skip the evening meal with his Lordship when you get beaten up.”  Rylie bounded out of bed and headed for the closet and found some leggings to put on with Darius’ T-shirt so she could sit down and eat.

By the time she got to the little table, he had all of the covers removed, and she found beef stroganoff and mashed potatoes.  “Sylvia’s cover must be blown if Carver knew to bring this for dinner,” Rylie said around a forkful of food.

“Nah, I put in the food order.  I said Sylvia would eat the asparagus.”

Rylie wrinkled her nose.  “That’s all yours, buddy.”

“Score!”

“You even arranged for ginger ale instead of wine.  You are a God!”

“Again, it was for Dare.”

“Well, I really like Dare’s selections.”  Rylie took a long sip. 

Darius doled out the food and laughed when Rylie insisted on even more potatoes. 

“I’m from Oklahoma, we live on this stuff.”  At that moment her stomach grumbled to back up her statement, so he piled the food even higher.  When she finally set down her fork, she saw he had cleaned his plate.

“How could you have already finished?”

“I’m a growing boy, and I had an incentive, I wanted to hear more about you.  I want to get to know Rylie Jones, the woman from Oklahoma, not the superspy extraordinaire.”

“She’s boring,” Rylie answered, and he snorted.

“No seriously, I’m boring.  I do computer tech work from home.  I mostly stay at home and do laundry, and sometimes pick up the house.  The kids say I’m a terrible cook, which I am.  I play a mean game of Candyland.  That’s me in a nutshell.”

“How old are you?  Twenty-one, right?”

“I turned twenty-two last month.”

“How did someone who is twenty-two end up with three kids in her care?”

“I don’t suppose you would let me tell you it was complicated and leave it at that?”  Rylie looked at Darius’ face and saw it wasn’t going to work.

“Seriously, honey, I’m amazed.  I was in the system, somehow you worked a miracle, and I want to know how.  Not just with Sawyer and Charlotte, but how in the hell did you end up with custody of Georgie?”

“Georgie was the easiest.”  Darius’ expression was priceless.

“Now you have to tell me.”

“After I was no longer with the Edwards, I had to keep my promise to Char and Sawyer that they could come and live with me.  I had wanted them to come and live with me at the foster home I had been taken to, but that would never have worked out.”

“Tell me about the Edwards, were they nice?”

“Can we save that story for some other time?”  She saw him struggle with himself, but finally, he relented and nodded.

“Sure, you don’t have to tell me about your time with them, at least not now,” he qualified.

“I was seventeen when I left the Edwards.”

“That was when the house burned down, and everyone thought you were in it, and you died?”

“You read about that?” her voice was hoarse as she asked the question.  Rylie still remembered the flames as she escaped through her bedroom window.  That night had been hell on Earth, for so many reasons.

“How did you manage to fake your death?  They found a body.”

“Please, Dare, don’t ask me questions about that...not tonight.”

“Okay, you tell whatever story you want, but can I ask a favor?”  She wasn’t sure.  She really didn’t want to talk anymore about the foster home she had lived in for three years, and hoped he wouldn’t press her for more information.

“What is your favor?”

“Can I hold you?” 

“What?”

“Can we go back to bed, and I just hold you in my arms?  I already miss not touching you.”  How could a woman resist Darius Stanton?  The idea of being held in his strong arms made her shiver.

“I miss touching you too.”  He came around the table and held out a hand.  She took it, and he pulled her against him. 

“You fit perfectly in my arms.  Have I told you that?  You rest right under my chin, I can feel your breath on my neck, and it drives me crazy.”  Rylie cuddled closer.  He led her to the bed, and tucked them under the covers, and arranged the pillows so she could continue to breathe him in.

“You were telling me how you had to keep your promise to Charlotte and Sawyer.  I don’t understand.  You were either seventeen or eighteen, and you managed to convince authorities Sawyer and Charlotte were your brother and sister and they needed to be under your care.  Fuck Rylie, they were in the same God damn orphanage, and they didn’t even have the same last name, how in the hell did you pull that stunt off?”

Rylie giggled.  It had been quite the piece of work.  She had manufactured quite the computer backstory.

“Apparently I’m an idiot savant when it comes to the computer.  The teachers in my high school were amazed what I could accomplish.  Mrs. Pearsall was the one who took me under her wing.  She didn’t seem to care when I could do things she couldn’t.  She brought in more books to teach me more programming languages.  Looking back, I could see a lot of adults who would have been intimidated by the student surpassing the teacher, but she just continued to encourage me.  She was fantastic.”

“You went to her after the fire, didn’t you?”  Rylie’s head shot up. 

“How’d you know?”

“She was your mentor.”

“I stayed with her for almost a year.  She had a little apartment above her garage that her son had lived in before he died overseas.  I told her what I was going to do about Sawyer and Charlotte, and she was the one who had the idea that we all could have had the same deadbeat father.  I went into all of our online records and changed our birth certificates to show our father as this man who had died.  I stated that the mother’s had used their names as the children’s last names, including mine, and petitioned the courts to gain custody of my brother and sister.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I already had bought a house.  At that time, I was more willing to use the money I had stolen from criminals for me.  I had enough to take care of me and them.”

“But why did you go to all of that trouble to get custody?”

“I promised them I wouldn’t leave them behind in the orphanage.”

“But you were just a child yourself.  How old were you?”

“I was eighteen.  But I was a really old eighteen by then.  And I needed them, as much as they needed me.  After losing Pammy, I needed them.”

“That’s your sister, right?  Your deaf sister?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me about her?”  A wave of sadness overwhelmed her, and she gripped Darius tighter.

“Not now.  I can’t talk about her, okay?”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead.  “Okay, so now you have a house, and two children living with you.  That had to have been a handful.”

“Actually, it was pretty easy.  Sawyer and Charlotte were a lot like me.  They had been in the system so long they knew a good thing when they had it.  They worked as hard as I did at staying under the radar of the social workers, did well in school, and helped make our family work.  Char mothered us, and Sawyer, even at twelve acted like the man of the family.  He scared the hell out of me.  He kept trying to take on too much responsibility.”

“I get that.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I got taken in by Henry Shoemaker, my friend Steve and I worked hard to act like the men of the house.  Finally, Henry had to knock our heads together and tell us we were kids, and it was all right to act like kids.”

“How old were you when you went to stay with him?