she said, but not for me. So she spent that time whispering her rules to me. How to survive. Making damn sure I wouldn’t end up like she did.”
He frowned, hitched his leg up and shifted his back into the corner pillow. They’d been a long time sitting this day; no doubt it was starting to ache. If so, he didn’t pay it any close attention. “You’ve never really said—”
“No. I haven’t. Who’d want to?” She felt herself grow smaller, drawn in to be as inconspicuous as a child hiding desperately in an attic. Except as soon as she realized it, she shook herself out of it, deliberately relaxed her legs to more of an open lotus position. “I don’t want to go into it right now. I can’t. I’ve got Hank to deal with. But I wanted you to know at least that much, before you watch how I handle this. Every time I say or do something you wouldn’t even consider saying or doing to your family, think about the fact that my mother used her most precious private time making sure I knew no one would take care of me but me. Making sure I always knew to have a way out. That I always knew what the people around me were doing. That I always saw them first.”
“You’re talking in halves.” He prodded her with a sock-enclosed toe, gently, and then withdrew. “There’s so much you’re leaving out.”
She heard the sounds before she even reached the house. Flesh against flesh. Chairs overturning. A muffled cry.
When she was younger, she wouldn’t let herself believe it. But she was eight now, and she had her world figured out. She flung her school papers to the ground, gold stars and all. She charged up the porch stairs and through the creaky screen door and all the way to the kitchen, and she was only an instant away from launching herself onto her father’s back, right where the sweat seeped through his shirt from the effort of hitting her mama, when Mama looked up from the floor and cried out for her to stop.
Startled, her father turned around to glare at her. “You’d better think twice, little girl.”
She’d looked at her mama, pleading. Let me help. Her mama shook her head, right there where she’d fallen against the cupboard, her lip bleeding and her eye swelling, the kitchen chairs tumbled around her. She lifted her chin and she said, “Remember what I told you, Kimmer. Stay out of this.”
And her father closed the door.
“Yeah,” Kimmer told Rio. “There’s so much I’m leaving out.”
Hank’s Suburban crawled into her driveway only a few moments later, as Rio did what only Rio could do—establish a connection between himself and Kimmer solely with the honest, thoughtful intensity of his gaze. He’d done so even before he really knew her, baffling Kimmer into temporary retreat. Always it was about trying to understand what lay beneath the surface—and though he usually did a spooky job of uncovering just that, this time Kimmer could see the struggle. He couldn’t quite fathom how it had truly been, or how resolutely it had shaped her. “You don’t have to understand right this minute,” she told him, a quiet murmur as Hank slammed the reluctant door of the old Suburban and made his way up to the porch with misplaced confidence. “Just keep it in mind.”
And Rio nodded, going quiet in that way that would leave her free to deal with Hank.
Hank jammed his hands in his back pockets and settled into the arrogance of his hipshot stance. “I get the feeling you’re not going to invite me in.”
“It’s a pleasant afternoon.” Kimmer looked out over the yard, where daffodils and forsythia still bloomed. “Why waste it?”
“Kimmer. That was Mama’s nickname, once. And you’re just like her. She didn’t know how to take care of family, either. She died to get away from us…you just ran.”
She gave a little laugh. “What makes you madder? That I escaped, or that I’ve done well?”
“Is that what you call this?” He glanced at the little house behind her, the modest yard before her. The Morrows on one side, the Flints on the other.
“Ah.” She looked over the yard in bloom, that in which she found such peace. “If this is your strategy to keep me listening, it’s not working very well so far.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got a meeting to attend, so if you’ve got something to say, best say it. Otherwise, go away.”
Rio knew better than to give her a puzzled glance, even though he knew she had nothing planned for the afternoon, that Hunter had her on call but not on assignment. That she was expected to visit and confer on some upcoming operations, but had no set time for doing so. No, Hunter wasn’t what she had in mind. Not with those long legs of his stretched out beside her—not to mention the smudge of Kool-Aid blue at the corner of his mouth. Quite clearly, it needed to be kissed off. Maybe Raspberry Reaction was her favorite flavor after all.
And then Hank blurted, “I need your help.”
For an instant, words eluded her. When she found them, they were blunt. “You must be kidding.”
“You think I came all the way up here to kid you?” Hank threw his arms up, a helpless gesture. “You think I want to be here talking to you and your—”
“Ryobe Carlsen,” Rio said in the most neutral of tones. “Konnichiwa. We can shake hands another time.”
Hank’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly Kimmer thought they looked nothing like hers at all. “You were there,” he said to Rio. “Leo said there was a man involved.”
“There were several, in fact. But I was one of them. I was certainly there when Leo mentioned how you planned to hand Kimmer over to him.”
Relief washed through Kimmer. Rio might not truly understand what Kimmer’s family did—or more to the point, didn’t—mean to her, but he knew Hank had a lot to prove. She should have known, should have trusted Rio.
Of course, that wasn’t something that came easily. Emotional trust was against the rules.
She took a deep breath, suddenly aware of just how much this encounter was taking from her. Tough Kimmer, keeping up her tough front when all she wanted to do was ease across the swing into Rio’s arms. Except—
It was her own job to take care of herself. Her very first lesson.
So at the end of that deep breath, she made herself sound bored. “I can’t imagine how you think I can help you at all.”
“Leo said…well, hell, you made an impression on Leo. He says you took down the Murty brothers when you were in Mill Springs. And he came back to Munroville spouting stories about terrorists. He said you’d taken them out.”
Kimmer flicked her gaze at Rio. “I wasn’t alone.”
“He said they shot you, and you didn’t even flinch.”
She touched her side, where the scar was fading. It had only been a crease at that. She shrugged. “I was mad.”
“He said,” Hank continued doggedly, “that you were connected. That your people came into Mill Springs and did such a cleanup job that the cops never had anything to follow through on. Even those two guys you sent to the hospital—Homeland Security walked away with them.”
“Leo talks a lot,” Kimmer said. But she suppressed a smile. Damned if Hank didn’t actually sound impressed. “And you still haven’t
