Broken Angels (33 page)

“Don’t tell me you’re trying to take responsibility for this.” Her tone was hot enough to melt steel. “You’re doing it again. Trying to control everything. To shoulder the blame.”

“It’s all I know how to do,” he answered honestly. “What got us into this mess in the first place. If I’d only let sleeping dogs lie—”

“Stop. Just stop.” She closed her lids to block out the sight of him. “We’ll blame the sick bastard who took them. That’s who we’ll blame.” She bridged the distance between them, waited for something he was unable to give.

He went as far as to lift his arm, but as much as he ached to pull her to him and reassure her everything was going to be all right, something held him back. Maybe it was his sense of inadequacy. He didn’t know how to be the man she needed, never had. With a short, exasperated breath, he let his arm drop to his side.

She studied him. The broken look on her face stabbed him, dead-center, in the heart. “It’s happening again,” she whispered so softly he barely made out the words. “You’re pulling away from me. I’m losing you.”

Her statement bowled him over. She was afraid of losing
him
? Maybe he wasn’t the man she needed, but she was all he’d ever wanted. He’d die before he let her go again. This time when he reached out, he wrapped his fingers around hers and drew her close. Her heat singed him, thawed the splinters of ice in his bloodstream. Her bottomless eyes drew him in, swallowed him like quicksand, and his lungs suddenly felt heavy, full of mud.

He slid his palms up her arms. “I sucked at being a husband,” he confessed. “Turns out I suck at being a father as well.”

She shook her head in protest, and he silenced her by pressing his finger to her lips. “But I’m in this for the long haul. In good times and in bad. For better or for worse. Isn’t that what we promised each other? I forgot that for a while. But I remember now.”

He gripped her shoulders, gave her a nice, hard squeeze. “I need one more promise from you, though. You’ve got to stay with me this time because I can’t bear to watch the pain bury you again.”

Clutching his shirt for support, she nodded feebly and curled up against him. Her softness, her tender heat sapped all his energy. The overwhelming urge to collapse in a heap on the ground with her tucked safely in his arms seized him. But he kept standing, infusing her with whatever strength he had left. Stress and despair hollowed out a space inside him he was desperate to fill, so he crushed his mouth to hers. He needed to believe that all wasn’t lost, that some hope still remained. He wanted to chase away the crippling numbness that had clung to him for days, to feel alive again, if only for a few minutes.

She went limp in his arms, and he lifted her off her feet and carried her to the couch where they’d made love for the first time, before things had gotten so complicated. He just wanted to hold her, kiss her, press her to him and know she was still his. He was drowning again, grasping at an elusive lifeline, struggling to stay afloat any way he could.

He couldn’t think, could barely breathe. He just wanted to feel, to bury himself in the one woman he just couldn’t teach himself to live without. There was a limit to how much loss a man could handle, and he’d reached his. This was his way to strike back, to tell fate it wouldn’t take another damn thing from him.

With a fire in his blood that bordered on desperation, he peeled the blouse from her shoulders, kissed her creamy skin, tossed her sweater on the floor…

Something fell out of the pocket and plunked to the ground, distracting him. He shot a cursory glance at the heap of wool at the foot of the couch, and stilled. It looked like fate had taken him up on his challenge, happily turned around and kicked him in the teeth yet again.

Next to Becca’s gray sweater—rolling ominously toward him—was a small bottle of pills.

Chapter Thirty-One

The look on Zach’s face when he saw the tranquilizers said it all. Rebecca scurried off the couch, cursing herself for ever being stupid enough to let Tess talk her into taking the bottle.

She leaned over to retrieve it, but Zach beat her to it. “What’s this?” The cold accusation in his voice froze her solid.

“Sedatives,” she admitted warily. “Tess insisted I use them to help me sleep. I just took the bottle to get her off my back. She can be very persistent.”

He didn’t believe her. She saw it in the stiff set of his shoulders, the thin line of his lips. There was a hard glitter in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

Seconds later, he echoed her thoughts. “I don’t believe this. I’m such an idiot.” His fingers tightened around the bottle before he pitched it on the table. His anger was tangible. She could feel it fisting around her, taste it in the thickening air, hear it in the deafening silence pulsing between them.

He jumped to his feet, the muscles on his back rippling beneath his shirt. He refused to meet her gaze. “This was a mistake,” he spat at her. “I knew we’d end up right back where we started.”

Her own anger flared. She’d had enough of being continuously reeled in only to be tossed aside. “You’re really full of shit, you know that?”

Shock momentarily sliced through his fury. “I’m full of shit?
I’m
full of shit?”

She wanted to punch him. Badly. Almost as badly as she’d wanted to kiss him earlier. “One minute you’re jumping my bones, the next you’re telling me it’s a mistake. Make up your mind, because I’ve had about as much as I can take. You either want me or you don’t.”

“Is that what you think this is about? Wanting you? Good God, Becca, wanting you was never the problem. The problem is that I’m too damn selfish to let you go.”

His statement floored her. Anger dissipated until only weakness remained. “If you want me so darn much, why have you spent the last two years pushing me away?”

The dam broke, and a sea of anguish shone in his midnight blue gaze. “Because I’m bad for you. This relationship never seems to work. Things always go south, and I just don’t know how to fix them.” His anxiety was finally catching up to him, and his voice splintered under the pressure. “I’ve failed you over and over again. Now I’ve gone and failed my sister’s kids, too.”

It all became clear then. Every question that haunted her turned to dust and rolled away. He hadn’t walked out on her because of her failures but because of his own. The weight of his responsibly crushed her. “You’ve failed no one. No matter how strong you are, no matter how hard you try, you can’t stop life from happening. You can’t live in a bubble, and neither can the people you love. Believe me, I’ve tried. Pain still finds you. The only difference is that you have to bear it alone.”

Their eyes locked, and raw honesty passed between them. “I wasn’t going to take the pills,” she told him with as much passion as she could muster, and this time she almost sensed he believed her.

He took a step toward her, his expression alight with a burning intensity that incinerated her flesh and left her bare, exposed. She wasn’t sure whether he planned to shake or embrace her, and she never found out. He stopped when he kicked something half concealed by the sofa. The blow knocked the object against the leg of the couch, and it shattered. His attention diverted, Zach fell on his haunches and picked up the broken pieces of porcelain. “Where did this come from?”

Rebecca bent over for a closer inspection. One of Pat’s figurines, the angel Will had been fixated on, stared back at her with deadened eyes. “From Tess’s house. Will must have snatched it when I wasn’t paying attention.” Regret slid through her. How was she going to tell her friend and neighbor that they’d broken one of her husband’s prized possessions?

Maybe she could glue it back together. She fell to her knees next to Zach and proceeded to amass the pieces of the broken angel, then stopped short. Kristen’s innocent ramblings from a few nights ago came back to her.

“Amy’s dad said the children are disappearing because the angels are broken.”

Broken Angels.

The words scrolled through her mind. Why did they sound so familiar? Then it came to her. That was the name of the organization she’d seen on the pictures she’d pitched in the trash.

Like a curtain, the fog in her mind parted, replaced by a spark of understanding. She thought of Voula and what she’d told her:
“I think Liam may have gotten himself into some kind of trouble. He was acting very strangely before he died. He told me if the kids were here and anyone came knocking on my door, I shouldn’t let them in, even if I recognized them.”

“You were right,” she whispered. “It’s all linked.”

Zach raised a pair of questioning eyes her way.

“Liam and Lindsay’s murder, Pat’s case, the kids going missing…all linked.” The shards she’d collected clunked to the ground as she bounded to her feet. “When you had those photos developed, did you download all of them on Noah’s iPod?”

Confusion pleated his brows. “As many as I could. Why?”

“I need that iPod.” She ran to boot up her laptop, frowned when it wasn’t where she’d left it. “Have you been using my computer?”

“No. Becca, you’re not making any sense.” He followed her around the house while she searched for her laptop. She finally found it in the kitchen.

“Just get me Noah’s iPod. I’ll explain everything in a sec.”

He lingered while she waited for the screen to come alive, then hastened from the room when she gave him a pointed look.

He returned a few minutes later and handed her the device. Her blood pumped thick and scalding through her veins as she attached it and proceeded to copy the files. Then she began inspecting each and every one of them until she came across the one she sought.

The image was blurry, the resolution low, but she made out the words just the same.

Broken Angels.

A list of names and contact numbers followed. She opened file after file until she found the birth certificates. Then there were pictures of children she didn’t know, gazing up at her with frightened eyes.

“What the hell is this?” Zach had been glancing over her shoulder, his body stiffening with each document she opened.

“I’m not sure. But it’s important.”

“Son of a bitch.” Tension spilled from Zach’s limbs like a current of pure electricity. “They’re forgeries. Fake birth certificates. Passport pictures.”

Her pulse stumbled and crashed. “What for?”

“My guess—to smuggle children out of the country…or into another one.”

“Human trafficking?”

He nodded ominously. “And from the looks of it, Liam put enough evidence together to hang the scumbags.” He clicked on the first document. “Take a look at this.”

One name in particular stood out. Her gaze settled on it, and her stomach plunked all the way to her toes. “Oh, God.”

The expression on Zach’s face reflected the same staggering disbelief rioting through her. “The goddamned bastard killed them. He killed my baby sister.”

Everything inside her shriveled. “And now he’s got Noah and Kristen.”

Rage contorted his features, underscored by a wild rush of determination. “Not for long.”

They heard the front door swing open. Zach must have forgotten to lock it when he’d gotten home tonight. Seconds later, Martin stepped into the kitchen, caught sight of their troubled expressions and froze. “What’s happened?”

“It’s Neil Hopkins,” Rebecca blurted out. “He has the kids.”

Neil wasn’t normally one to make mistakes. He liked his affairs tidy, all loose ends tied up, nice and snug. These past few months, however, he’d messed up. Badly. There was one rule he’d always made it a point to live by—never shit in your own backyard.

But that was precisely what he’d done when he’d targeted Noah Birch.

He never should have probed the kid for his Falcon World user name when he’d seen him at the Birches’ Christmas party, never should have approached him online. But the boy was perfect, exactly what the Broken Angels wanted—healthy, strong, with a dark, brooding look their clients valued. Neil knew the kind of kids a certain depraved brand of people favored…because his father had taught him.

Couldn’t say the old man never gave him anything.

He killed the motor and anchored his boat next to Raymond York’s. He’d have to remember to get rid of that hunk of junk, but there was no rush. Raymond was a lone wolf. No search parties would be called, no missing person’s report filed, so the boat was of little consequence.

Right now, getting the kids ready for the drop-off, which was scheduled to go down at midnight tonight, was far more pressing. The documents were finalized, secured in a manila envelope in his briefcase. Beside it sat a couple of Happy Meals. No one could ever accuse him of not being a good host.

He grabbed the briefcase and the paper bags, used his motorized dinghy to zip to the shore, then scaled the small bluff and took the familiar path to his childhood home. The winery came into view, a white-washed gingerbread house, capped by a red roof. The sunny yellow shutters shone gray in the moonlight, the walls draped in shadows, making the usually cheerful structure look unnaturally sinister.

He used his key to let himself in and hastened to the plant, where rusted vats and metal tanks hunkered like weary soldiers in the dark. He could almost hear them whisper familiar words of welcome as he slid between them. His digital camera swung from his shoulder, its task completed. The twenty-four-megapixel Nikon was top of its class, nothing like the antiquated device his father had used. When Neil closed his eyes at night—which was becoming less and less frequent—he could still see that long, probing black lens boring into him, could still feel the light of the flash spilling over his naked flesh in blinding sparks. Each degrading click had taken a bite out of his dignity, left him a little emptier.

He shoved the memories aside, buried them deep in a place within him no one knew about, then gave himself a quick, mental shake. There was no use dwelling on the past. He was the one in charge now, the one with the camera. But unlike his dad, he only took headshots. Shots he could later use to forge passports for the children he recruited for the Broken Angels. What they did with the kids afterward was their business. He wanted no part of it.