Ultimate Sins (37 page)

“Resnova couldn't have suspected a damned 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 damned 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.

God, he didn't want to hear this. Those underground fucking 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 canal 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 God 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 bombshell as a sob shook her entire body.

“What the fuck—” Crowe all but wheezed, icy chills of terror racing through him. “What the hell 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 fucking 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 hell 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 God, 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 fucking 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 God 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 passed 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. “God 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 fucking 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. Damned 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 reassure 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. God, 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! Damn 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.