Page 29 of K-9 Confidential

She slipped her hand out of his, using only her fingertips to study the healing wound, and suddenly it felt like she was the one holding him up. Her inhale hissed in his ear. “Smaller in the front, bigger in the back. Long distance. Fresh. No more than a few weeks old from the pliability of the surrounding tissue. But the exit wound feels…surgical. Not like a normal gunshot wound. Dr. Piel was able to remove the bullet?”

“Most of it,” he said.

Charlie pressed herself into his arms, searching the floor. What she saw or what she expected to see, he didn’t know. “You were shot. Here?”

He could breathe now. Odd. Memories from the past took longer for him to recover from, but there was something about Charlie—the way she seemed to center him and unbalance him all at the same time—that cut through the fear following him everywhere he went. “In the garage. I bled out here. We were under attack. I was the only one keeping them from penetrating the upper floors.”

“Sangre por Sangre.”Setting her forehead against his jaw, she held onto him. “Why don’t you want me to see it?”

“Because then you’ll finally see what kind of man I am.” His mouth dried. “That I wasn’t strong enough to protect you ten years ago, and that I might not be strong enough to shield you from what’s coming now.”

Charlie pulled back. The overhead lights were much brighter here, accentuating the bruise patterns, cuts and blood across her beautiful skin. Her broken nose. She pressed her finger over his heart. “I know exactly what kind of man you are, Granger Morais. You’re the kind of man who runs into a fight that isn’t yours to begin with. You have a hard time trusting people, but once you do, that trust lasts a lifetime, even when the person on the receiving end doesn’t deserve it. You’re committed and reliable and the only person who has ever considered what’s best for me instead of exerting your power over me like everyone else. And nothing—not a bullet wound or any other injuries—is going to convince me you aren’t the man I want at my side for what comes next. Your dog can come too. I’m sure we can bring snacks or—”

Granger crushed his mouth to hers. The last of his uncertainty fled, and he fed off the strength she’d lent him. He had survived the past three weeks on a mixture of adrenaline and duty, and for the first time since he’d come out of Dr. Piel’s operating suite, he was beginning to feel whole. Duty wouldn’t keep him moving forward. He had to have a hand in his own future. One of his own design. It was up to him. “Have you been practicing that speech?”

“Maybe a little.” She smiled, kissing him again. Charlie intertwined her fingers with his, and it was as though they hadn’t missed a step in the past ten years. “I have a few speeches on hand. Most of them are rewritten arguments I’ve had with my sisters, so I’m the one who wins.”

Granger caught sight of Ivy at the end of the corridor. Waiting. “You got one of those for your father?”

She angled away from him, and her smile fell. This was it. What the past decade of her living on the run and faking her death had built to: giving those she’d hurt the justice they deserved. And Granger couldn’t help but admire her strength. “No, but I’m sure I’ll think of something along the way.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Charlie didn’t look back as she slipped through the door to the interrogation room. The man inside looked up at her, as though he’d expected Socorro to play into his hands all along. Knowing her father, his love of strategy and his ability to manipulate even the most seasoned preppers, she was probably right. “Dad.”

“You came.” His white-gray hair seemed to glow under the reflection of the overhead lights, aging him ten years if she didn’t know any better. The lines spidering away from his eyes and mouth seemed deeper than even twenty-four hours ago, and she couldn’t help but note the tension in his hands as he pulled against the cuffs securing him to a solid metal ring embedded in the table.

“Did I have any other choice?” Charlie forced herself to take a step forward, all too aware of the pressure of Granger’s attention from the other side of the one-way glass. And he wasn’t alone.

The interrogation room was exactly as she’d imagined. Though the ones she’d seen in her binge of movies and television she’d never been allowed to watch growing up came across grimier than this. If she’d stuck around after the attack at the pipeline, she might’ve gotten to see one herself.

Though Granger had told her he didn’t actually have the authority to hold her father on charges, she couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to him after their conversation. Would they let her father go back to Vaughn? Or would Socorro hold him indefinitely in the interest of public safety?

She pulled out the chair opposite her father and took a seat, unable to think of the last time they’d been alone together. Not as one of his soldiers waiting for their next mission assignment. As father and daughter. Charlie locked her jaw against the pain flaring in her legs and torso. The bruises on her hands were darker now. Impossible to ignore. “That woman, Ivy, said you wouldn’t talk to anyone but me.”

“I don’t trust them.” He set his cuffed wrists against the table, the metallic scratch of stainless steel on steel louder than expected.

“But you trust me?” she asked.

Henry Acker shut down any hint of what was going on in his head, pulling away from the table. His hands disappeared into his lap, the chain between the cuffs pulling tight. “I know they’re listening. Watching us from the other side of the glass. Recording us too.”

He nodded toward the camera installed in the corner of the room. The red light beneath the lens said he was right. She stared into the glass, unafraid of exposure now. It was a bittersweet feeling, contradictory to the way she’d lived her life these past ten years. There wasn’t any more fear. Because she had a promise from a former counterterrorism agent that nothing would hurt her again, and she believed him.

“They want to know about the deal you made withSangre por Sangre. And after fighting against a cartel member for my life, so do I.” Because all of this—Erin’s death, her own abduction, nearly losing Granger in that fire—could all be linked back to the man sitting across from her. Running hadn’t changed anything. He was still the father who kept his emotional distance and favored punishment and duty over the stability she’d needed all her life. And she’d been a fool to think anything would change when faced with the consequences of his choices.

“I can’t tell you about that,” he said. “Not yet.”

“Of course not. Because everything needs to be on your terms, doesn’t it? What time I woke up and went to sleep, what I ate, how many hours I spent shooting, how I spent my free time, who I talked to, who I was allowed to date.” She couldn’t hold back the humorless laugh as the anger burned. Charlie stretched her interlaced hands across the table and shoved to her feet. Though not without a shot of pain in her calf. “Can you blame me for running when I had a shot at freedom?”

“It was for your own good.” He notched that proud chin of his higher. Every ounce the man who’d molded her into exactly what he wanted her to be. “Everything I did, I did to protect you. To make sure you could protect yourself when the fight came to Vaughn.”

“What fight, Dad? The people you hate so much haven’t stepped foot in Vaughn since the night of mom’s death. And from where I’m standing, you’ve brought this mess to your own door by making a deal with a drug cartel.” She couldn’t be in this room anymore. Not with him. Not ever again. “I can’t believe I even came in here expecting a real conversation with you. You’ve never seen me as anything more than something to control. Me, Sage and Erin. We weren’t your daughters. We were tools to be used for your own agenda, nothing more, and that makes you a real son of a bitch.”

She turned to leave. For the last time.

“I couldn’t lose you too.” His voice warbled from behind. So unlike the man she’d feared growing up. “I couldn’t lose any of you. You and your sisters.”

Charlie had almost made it to the door with every intention of stepping through it and telling Socorro’s founder to do whatever she saw fit with her father. But something in the way his voice crumbled held her still. “What are you talking about?”

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