Page 10 of Vision of Truth

She picked up Sabrina, still waiting for her legs to stop vibrating when Isaac circled the machine and lifted the girl from her arms. “Let me.” He easily shifted her to his hip and with one hand brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face. When the rough pad of his thumb caressed her cheek, a burn settled behind her lids. “You had the hard job on the ride up. Arms must be killing you.

“I’m fine.” She blinked and looked away. Maybe Isaac had the right idea keeping distance between them. With each soft word, each touch, her heart was shattering over and over. Hope had fueled her through many family dinners and events. Now that it was gone, how could she endure those things and still be whole?

Rowan had his head bent over his phone. “Just checking security and getting some lights on before we do a sweep.” As soon as he said the words small spotlights illuminated a path to the house—if it could be called that. The structure itself was difficult to make out, but it was much smaller than she expected. Actually, it appeared to be no bigger than the shed where the four wheelers were housed. Any place they could shore up was better than nothing, but after Isaac had told her it was set on 25 acres, she’d formed a picture in her head of some kind of impenetrable fortress.

“I’m going to hand you Sabrina. It will take us few minutes to search the house, but I want you to stay right at my back.”

“Okay.” She doubted the sweep would take more than a few seconds, never mind minutes, but she kept her mouth shut. The men flung open the door, weapons drawn. The cabin consisted of a bedroom large enough to hold a twin bed, a rustic bathroom, and a kitchenette. Not only was she going to be forced to be in close proximately to Isaac, they were going to be virtually on top of each other. She was trying to think up sleeping arrangements when Isaac turned to her.

“Do you think you can hold her going down the stairs?”

She glanced behind him to the floorboards Rowan was holding up, revealing a steep set of stairs so deep, the bottom looked like a dark pit. She swallowed hard. Sabrina would be safer in Isaac’s capable arms. She wouldn’t call herself clumsy, but she wasn’t exactly a graceful swan either. After passing a still sleeping Sabrina to Isaac and ignoring the scorch of his skin against hers as they made the exchange, she took the first step behind Rowan into the cellar. When they made it to the bottom, they took a left into a concrete hallway and opened another sealed door. It was as though they’d just stepped into an action movie complete with a hidden safehouse. Actually, that was exactly what this was. The house above was just a façade. Someone coming on the property would have to be highly skilled to determine the exact way to uncover the hidden staircase. Rowan turned the wheel on the thick door, and flipped on the light switch. Even exhausted, with her head pounding and her eyes blurring it was hard to believe they were underground. Where the cabin upstairs was rundown, the subterranean space was luxurious. Like something out of a prepper magazine. Light butterscotch oak flooring stretched through a foyer. It was long and narrow, so any intruders would have to invade single-file and could be quickly eliminated. The entryway opened up into a kitchen and living room.

“Stay here.” Isaac cupped her cheek, and she did her best to push down the hope flaring through her.No. Just no.

“Just a precaution,” Rowan shot her a reassuring grin. “This place has floor to ceiling motion sensors when the alarm is on. If it was breached, I would’ve gotten an alert on my cellphone.”

She nodded, slumping against the wall slightly when they turned their backs to her to search the house. Even though Sabrina was slight, her arms ached from holding her weight. Her injuries, old and new, were making themselves known. She slid down and sat with her legs crossed, cradling Sabrina on her lap. Typically, her student was a light sleeper. She had a difficult time both falling and staying asleep. Right now, though, she was out cold. The trauma of the past few days was catching up to her.

“All set,” Rowan said, striding towards her. Now that they weren’t running for their lives through the dark, she noticed his unique features. His hair was the color of Sasha’s—a fiery red, cropped close. A neatly trimmed beard framed his face and accentuated a pair of the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. “You’ve done amazing today. I’ll show you the bedrooms so you can get settled in.”

Isaac stalked toward her and squatted down. She caught herself on the brink of drawing in his woodsy, clean scent. Before she could protest, his arm was around her back and the other was below her knee. He lifted her and Sabrina in a way that was so effortless, laughter threatened to bubble from her throat. Not the happy, careless kind of laughter that happened when your heart was light and full, but the kind bred from nervous energy. From having your world turned inside out. From losing your heart to someone, loving them so much you’d never considered having to live without them. It was her last thought that sobered her. The death of a dream. Isaac was so close holding her like this, but they’d never been more distant.

Chapter Eight

The magnitude of how big Isaac had fucked up with Jules was beginning to settle over his soul. He’d brought her and Sabrina into the bedroom, and while Jules tucked the little girl in, she’d demanded he go find a first aid kit. There was one in the attached bathroom closet and he laid it out on the counter by the sink. He’d insisted on looking her over first and cleaning up her various cuts and scrapes. After, she’d silently washed the blood from his skin with the warm wash cloth, cleansed the bullet graze, then wrapped it up tight. Her demeanor clinical and detached. The effervescent light in her eyes had gone flat, and when she was through, she turned without a word and climbed into the bed beside Sabrina. He’d tried to thank her, talk to her, but she shut him out.

Even as she built her walls higher, he was more determined than ever to break them back down. When he walked into the living room, Rowan was sitting on the couch, feet planted wide, with a beer in his hand.

“Figured you’d need one too.” Rowan gestured to the open bottle on the coffee table by the couch. He picked it up, and the glass iced his fingers, coating his skin with condensation.

“Now, are you going to fill me in?” His teammate sat back against the couch, one brow raised.

“The FBI paid us a visit tonight.” Isaac lowered himself onto one of the leather cushions. “Sabrina is one of Jules’s students and her father was deep cover for the bureau. Jules is a witness to that agent’s potential homicide. Now she’s on The Unified Brotherhood’s radar, caught up in a power struggle between emerging leaders.” He rubbed his hand over his face and took a long pull from the bottle.

Rowan straightened. “I don’t know what’s worse. The bureau letting a kid get caught up in a case like that or the father hiring a therapist with the knowledge she’d be pulled into the danger, too.” His teammate’s lips pressed into a thin line, muscles rigid. “What did she see?”

“More heard.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and dropped his tone. The last thing he wanted was to disturb the girls. “The agent was having a business meeting and told Julie to take Sabrina upstairs for the session.”

“Must’ve known there was trouble and purposely scheduled meetings when Julie was there. Again, I’ll never understand how they could involve a child in an operation like that, but this agent had to have known your sister,” Rowan emphasized the familial word, raising his brows. “Would be able to care for Sabrina if shit went sideways.”

He ignored Rowan’s comment about Julie being his sister. There was too much pressure building in his chest, tightening around his sternum at the idea of Vesey purposely using Jules’s time with his daughter so he could conduct business. Of putting her and the little girl in direct danger. “There’s something not right about Agent Vesey letting such dangerous people have knowledge of his daughter at all.”

“Or bringing them into his home—assuming that was his real home and not one the bureau had set him up with.” Rowan’s phone beeped, and he glanced at the screen. “Admiral just approved my leave request.”

Isaac nodded. They operated as a team for so long, it wasn’t a surprise that he’d been granted an emergency leave too. “As far as I know, that was his home, not some government assigned one, and he was the sole parent and relative of Sabrina. Vesey changed his will before this all went down, putting Julie as his daughter’s guardian. And before you ask, she had no clue until the hospital released the girl into her care and had no relationship with Vesey beyond that of her student’s parent.”

“Christ, what a cluster.” Rowan shook his head. “No wonder the feds are tripping over themselves to talk to her. Sounds like Vesey might’ve been a little too invested in his cover. I’ll hang around, in case you need back up.”

“Appreciate it. I’m going to have to use your secure line to reach Gus later. He knew I went after Julie, but he has to be losing his shit right about now when she and Sabrina weren’t found at the crime scene.” Rowan took security seriously, and had an encrypted line for outgoing and incoming calls. Not that anyone would have the number for his safehouse.

“Yeah, of course, but first, are you going to explain why you and your sister act more like starcrossed lovers than family, or do I not want to know?” Rowan smirked and he gritted his teeth.

He considered his teammate a brother, too. Trusted him with his life, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a pain in his ass, busting his balls all the time. “Jules is my foster sibling, like Gus, but we’ve been family—me, Jules, Easton, and Gus—since the day we met. The problem is I’ve been in love with her just as long. It’s so fucking wrong, but as the years pass, I get weaker and weaker. The time I spend apart from my family gets harder, but when I’m with them it’s torture. She’s everything. I can’t lose her.”

“Never understood why you spend more leave time with me than your family. Especially when I hear in your voice how much you care about them. Shit, Isaac, what the fuck are you doing out here with me instead of being by your woman’s side when she needs you?”

And damn if that didn’t feel like a punch to the gut. He was lucky to have good people in his life. Rowan was an only child whose parents died in a home invasion, and here he was whining about loving someone. “Because I was an idiot. When Gus and Easton told me that the bureau wanted to find out the relationship between Vesey and Jules, I couldn’t think straight. The thought of her with someone else messed with my head. I kissed her. I knew her reaction would tell me what words couldn’t, even though I had no right to be mad if she was with Vesey. I’m the one who’s put distance between us. Never her.”

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