because I knew about that outfit you belong to...that—”
“INCBRO.” And was that all, Hunt? The only reason?
“Right. I knew you could get her to safety through them. I figured I’d come back and find her when I—” He stopped abruptly and ran a hand over his face and beard, a gesture of distraction she wouldn’t have thought him capable of—the Hunt she’d known, the superhero warrior. “That’s not— Look, you were the only person I could think of. That I could trust.” And then, in a voice that seemed to come from the depths of his soul, he whispered, “I sure as hell never thought you were going to adopt her.”
She didn’t answer for a moment—her mind was too busy throwing up barricades and battening down hatches. Keep your distance, Malone... Don’t let your own emotions get in the way. Your job is to get him to reveal his. And his intentions. Is he going to try to take her away from me?
But in that small silence Hunt must have seen an opening, and he took it.
“Okay, Yankee. What made you do it?”
It was her turn to suck in a breath—she hadn’t expected him to turn it around on her. At least, not so soon.
Hoping to buy herself some time, she said sharply, “Do it? You mean, adopt her? What kind of question is that? Why does anyone adopt a child? Because—”
“Usually because they want one very badly,” Hunt said, and though his eyes were hidden now by the deepening dusk, she could hear the steel in his voice. And the disbelief. “You said it yourself—you hadn’t had any experience with kids until I dropped one in your lap. It never occurred to me you’d suddenly develop motherhood instincts. I thought you’d get her to safety through that child-bride rescue outfit you work with. I figured you’d—”
“Pass her off like a hot potato? A traumatized little girl?” Again her voice came sharper and louder than she’d planned, partly because the words he’d spoken hit so close to the mark.
Motherhood instincts? I was terrified, Hunt. Bullets flying past my ears never scared me so much as those shimmering golden eyes gazing up into mine. And when a tear detached itself from the shimmer and slid away down her cheek... I didn’t have a clue what to do. I remember kneeling down...putting my arms around her...feeling her body trembling. She was trying so hard not to cry. I think I picked her up then. I must have, because I woke up on my cot with her wrapped in my arms, sound asleep.
She paused, then went on in a half whisper. “What kind of person do you think I am?”
“I don’t really know that,” he said, matching his voice to hers. “Do I?”
“You know a whole lot more about me than I do about you.” She threw that at him, tight and quivering with emotions, three years’ worth of fear and uncertainty and unanswered questions. “I live my life in the public eye. You live yours in the shadows. You’re a...a—”
“Ghost?” A single word, spoken softly in the darkness.
Her chest constricted with the pain of remembering. She gave a helpless whimper of a laugh and turned away from him.
His voice followed her. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
She shook her head and looked up at the night sky, where the stars were veiled by the lights of the city, as they were in New York and Los Angeles and all the other cities where she lived most of the time. Starry nights were one of the things she missed now that she was no longer reporting from remote battlefields.
“Why did I keep her with me and not hand her off to some stranger?” She paused, then took a careful breath and answered truthfully. “At first, I guess it was because she seemed so...lost. So scared. So wounded.” She has your eyes. Did you know that? I know it’s not unusual for Afghans to have light-colored eyes...blue or green or hazel eyes. But Laila’s eyes are your eyes. “The way she looked at me...as if she trusted me.”
“I told her she could.”
How different his voice sounded. Did she only imagine it was emotion she heard? Or was she projecting her own inner turmoil onto him? Surely the Hunt Grainger she knew would never allow himself to be caught in such an unguarded moment.
But then, I really don’t know him at all.
If only I could see his face, she thought, then remembered, The same darkness protects us both.
“And was that it?” His voice was relentless. Implacable. “Just...she looked scared? So you decided to take on the responsibility of raising a child? Come on, Yancy.”
He’d had enough interrogation experience to know when someone was lying to him. Or being evasive, at least.
He knew he’d cornered her, so he wasn’t surprised when she jerked around to face him, squaring off again, obviously angry, struggling to find the right words. Which was pretty amazing, considering words were ordinarily her best weapons of choice.
The qualities of the night hadn’t outwardly changed—the same soft darkness, the sound of trickling water from a fountain in a neighboring garden set against the far-off percussion of city traffic—but the courtyard was no longer peaceful. Now it seemed more like a battlefield, crackling and humming with tension.
“Obviously, Laila isn’t—wasn’t—just any child.” Yancy’s voice was infused with the same tension that filled the air around them. “And even if she was, we don’t simply pass them along, like...like shipping off a package on a train. Every case is different, and we always try to do what’s best for the child. Sometimes that means educating the family, even paying a bride-price or school tuition so the child can stay with her parents. We only take a child away if she’s an orphan or in immediate danger.”
“She was—I told you that.”
“In danger, yes. But not an orphan, not entirely. She had a father, someone she knew.” She paused, and there was accusation in the silence. Then, in a breaking voice, she said, “I thought she had you.”
“So, you kept her because she was mine?” It took some doing, but he managed to keep any trace of emotion out of his voice.
“Of course I did,” she lashed back, then caught a breath that suggested she might not have wanted to admit that. After a moment, she said on the exhalation, “She was yours—you’d told me that—so naturally I assumed you’d be coming back for her.” Again she paused, and this time when she went on it was in her reporter’s voice, vibrant with controlled passion. “Which I thought would be a few days. Then a few weeks. But you didn’t come back, and after a whole year had gone by, I thought you must be dead. Surely you were dead, because, I thought, how could any man abandon his own child without one word?”
Or me! The thought intruded, slipped past her defenses. How could you abandon me?
She rushed on before he could respond. “Anyway, by that time I’d grown so attached—” She shook her head as if throwing that word away. “Okay, I’d fallen in love with her. It’s not hard to do, you know. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. So I started the process of adopting her. It wasn’t easy, but I’m in a unique position to get some strings pulled and cut through a lot of red tape. The adoption was final six months ago. She’s my child, Hunt. My daughter.”
“Did you even try to get in touch
