in a knock-down, drag-out fight with Quinn Foxworth.
It wouldn’t be pretty.
But then, none of this was pretty. And Quinn had been no angrier at him than he himself had been when he’d finally surfaced from his five-year nightmare and found that the life he’d left behind didn’t exist anymore. When he’d learned what they’d withheld from him so he wouldn’t be “distracted,” he’d been angrier than he’d ever been in his life, except for the day his father had been killed.
So you left home angry, and you came back angry. Great.
But what was he supposed to feel when all they’d had to say was that they couldn’t compromise the mission?
Oh, by the way, there were a couple of things we couldn’t tell you, because we couldn’t risk compromising the mission. Your mother’s dead and your sister got married. Here’s your phone with the messages.
Admittedly, it hadn’t been quite that blunt or cold, but it might as well have been. He should have suspected when they’d made him hand over his old pay-as-you-go cell phone, saying it was for his own safety. He’d learned that lesson now, that anytime the government started talking about taking things away for your own safety was the time to be wary.
At least they’d kept the phone active, ancient though it now was in technological terms. Although he doubted it was for his benefit, given that they’d used it to send short, meaningless texts to his sister, maintaining the fiction that he was still wandering. And they hadn’t deleted anything, which at first had made him laugh wryly at the scruples.
And then had come the painful jolt of listening to Hayley’s strained voice telling him of their mother’s illness nearly five years after the fact. And later of her death, two years too late.
They’d paid him a nice chunk, enough to keep him going for quite a while. And bought his ticket home. Cabrero—who threatened to flatten anyone who used the hated nickname Toby—had even taken him to the airport after the long debriefing, but Walker thought that was mostly so he could pound home the warning one more time.
“I’ll check in on you now and then. But you can’t tell anyone anything. You know that, don’t you? We’re close to making our move, and if you let even one thing slip, it could jeopardize operations all over the country.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“That means not even your sister. Especially not her. It could put her in danger.”
When he stepped out of the bathroom in only his jeans, that sister was walking down the hall. She looked him up and down. For an instant he saw her gaze snag on his left arm. The tattoo, he thought. He needed to do something about that. Cabrero had told him they could have it removed, but he’d been in too much of a hurry to wait around to have it done. At least Hayley wasn’t likely to recognize it for what it was—the symbol of belonging to a group of men who were brutal beyond anything he’d ever imagined.
All she said was, “I should send you to our friend Laney. She’s groomed sheepdogs before.”
Apparently her request for time didn’t mean she wasn’t going to speak to him at all, and he was thankful for that.
“I know I need a haircut. I was...in a hurry.”
For a moment she just looked at him.
He sighed. “Go ahead. Say it.”
“Say what?”
“That I’m way too late to be in a hurry. I know that.”
Her green eyes, so like their father’s, seemed to zero in on his face. “There is one thing I would like to ask.”
He hadn’t wanted to have this conversation standing here in the hallway, but he had the feeling dodging it now would do even more damage than he’d already done.
“Ask.”
“Why?”
He’d thought of little else on the flight here, what he could tell her. Everything involved a lie of some sort. He didn’t want to lie to her. He never had, had never felt he had to, because Hayley always understood. But now he did have to, or say nothing.
“There’s a reason. A good one,” he finally said. His mouth tightened before he added, his voice rough, “And I can’t tell you what it is.”
“Ever?”
“Maybe.”
For a long moment his sister just looked at him. Then, “All right.”
But the way she walked past him to head downstairs told him that she was far from accepting his absence through what had to be both the worst and best moments of her life. Moments she’d gone through without him, the brother who should have been with her every step of the way.
“Well, that was just a beautiful explanation and apology.”
He spun around, saw Amy standing in the guest room doorway. Her arms were crossed in front of her, her mouth—when had her mouth gotten so luscious?—quirked with an emotion that looked unsettlingly like disgust.
“‘I can’t tell you what it is’? Really? She’s supposed to just accept that?”
“She knows I wouldn’t lie to her.”
“No, you just abandon her and—oh, never mind. This is pointless. You are who you are.” She gave him a look then that made his stomach knot. “Whatever happened to that boy, Walker? The one who rescued me that day, the one who would have stood with and for his sister through anything?”
His mouth twisted. “Life happened. Death happened.”
“It happened to Hayley, too. She didn’t run away.”
“Is that what you think I—never mind. You’re right. This is pointless.”
He couldn’t take this, the way she was looking at him. He turned around and followed his sister downstairs.
* * *
Amy shook off her upset at the truly pointless conversation, grabbed up her jacket and her big purse and headed down to the living room. Hayley was by the door, tucking her phone into a pocket of her much smaller purse. Walker was standing a couple of feet away. Maybe he thought she’d finally punch him herself, and so was keeping out of arm’s reach.
As Amy came in, Hayley was speaking to her brother.
“We’re going over to Foxworth,” she said. “Would you like to come along?”
Her tone was polite, composed and almost impersonal, as if he were just a casual guest, and the answer didn’t really matter to her. No, Hayley wasn’t as accepting as she’d first thought.
And right now, she stood there wishing the fact that he was still wearing only a pair of low-slung jeans didn’t unsettle her so.
Amy doubted he even knew what Foxworth was, other than apparently that family business Quinn
