“I asked you to call me Lilly, Mother.” Lilly stepped into the room and accepted the drink from Desmond before striding to the sofa and lounging back. She smothered a sigh of exhaustion. Lifting the drink to her lips Lilly sipped the smooth liquor, nearly closing her eyes at the pleasurable burn that hit her stomach.
She watched as Desmond handed her mother her drink then took his seat beside her on the couch. Strange, she had never seen her mother sit with her father like that, close, intimate.
They had rarely sat on a couch, they had each had their own chairs instead. But the distance she had always sensed between her parents was present here as well.
“We need to discuss tonight,” Desmond told her firmly after taking a long sip of his drink, as though needing fortification.
“What is there to discuss?” Lilly asked him. “I met a friend for drinks. I’m of age, I have no curfew. What we do need to discuss is what the hell you were doing following me at this hour of the night.”
“What did you do?” Her mother almost whispered the words, as though terrified of the answer.
“I found her with Travis Caine,” Desmond informed her. “He has a house here in Hagerstown as well. Your daughter somehow acquired a rather racy motorbike and she broke several speeding laws to meet him at a bar, and then followed him to his house.”
“Caine?” Wide-eyed, Angelica turned to Desmond. “My God.” She turned back to Lilly.
“He’s a suspected terrorist, a man known to associate, if not partner with criminals!
Victoria . . .”
“Lilly.” Determination surged inside her. She hadn’t been Victoria for six years. She was Lilly.
“Why are you doing this? Do you want to be taken from us again?” Her mother ignored the reminder. “You’ll be arrested for sure!”
“I rather doubt there’s a warrant out for my or Travis’s arrest,” Lilly objected.
“There’s a warrant for your arrest in China, should you ever reenter their sovereign borders again, for theft of a government artifact, which they can’t prove to America. There’s a warrant for your and Caine’s arrest in Iran for the suspected death of a militant who was related to the current ruler. There’s also a warrant to bring you in for questioning in Spain for the death of a Spanish militant suspected of being part of a radical extremist group protesting against the government.”
Had she killed?
She had. Lilly felt that knowledge bleeding through her, bloodred and stained with guilt.
Had she killed in cold blood? She couldn’t imagine that. She had a healthy respect for life, more for others’ than for her own. At least, that was the thought that flitted through her head.
How would she know these things? And why was she suddenly so frightened at the thought of her mother or her uncle knowing the full truth about her?
“From what I’m hearing, if I did kill, then it was no one that didn’t deserve it,” she informed them both with an air of unconcern.
She was aware that she would have never made such a statement six years ago.
“Victoria . . .” Horror rippled through her mother’s voice.
“Mother.” Lilly shook her head as she leaned forward. “I don’t know what happened to me.
I don’t know who I was, or what I did. But I do know I wasn’t a criminal.”
“I have the report on you, Victoria,” her uncle said. “The governments may not have proof, but I have enough evidence to substantiate, at the very least, a strong suspicion that you did kill.”
There was something in his gaze then, some thread of compassion, perhaps?
Understanding? What was she seeing there, and why did it bother her so much to see it?
Lilly wanted nothing more than to run now. To escape the judgment and the disapproval she could feel coming from the mother.
She didn’t know if she could live much longer without somehow figuring out who or what she had been and why she had killed.
“I want this report you have on me.” She rose to her feet and stared at her mother and uncle. “Then, I want to know how the two of you ended up married, and why the hell my father’s murderer was never found.”
That was the source of her anger. Her father was dead, murdered, and his killer had never been caught. From what she gathered since she had been back, the search for his killer had been less than enthusiastic.
With that last warning she strode from the living room, ignoring her mother calling out to her, and her uncle’s almost silent curse.
She needed answers. She needed to know what had happened and why. And then she needed to figure out just why the hell Travis Caine felt more like a lover than a trainer, more like a friend than an enemy.
Travis sat in the underground room Wild Card had been assigned as the Harrington’s driver and listened to the confrontation as it played out in the Harrington living room.
Wild Card, a.k.a. Noah Blake, sat at the small table across from him, earbud attached to his ear, listening as well.
Travis watched the small, portable monitor as Lilly stalked from the room.
“Have the file sent up to her.” Lilly’s mother rose jerkily from the couch, her expression and her tone icily furious.
“Angelica, she doesn’t need the file yet.” Desmond sat forward, his expression concerned now. “She’s barely healed physically. The shock could be detrimental.”
“And what of the shock to the family?” She turned back, her pale face furious. “She’s determined to bring this family down to the same level she’s existed at for the past six years.
Let her see the damage she’s risking by continuing along this path.”
Travis’s lips thinned at the judgment in Lilly’s mother’s voice.
Desmond sighed wearily. “She’s been through a lot, Angelica.”
“And you think I don’t realize this?” Angelica’s voice roughened. “My God, Desmond, the thought of that report destroys my soul. Why? Why did she allow us to believe she was dead?
Why live the life she lived rather than returning to us?”
“That’s a question only Lilly can answer.” Desmond rose to his feet. “And the doctors fear it’s a question she will never be able to answer.”
He glanced back at Angelica as he made his way back to the bar.
“She was always so damned stubborn,” Angelica stated, tears filling her eyes. “I tried to tell Harold that if she were not dealt with properly when she was a teenager, then she would only harm herself.”