Page 42 of Delta Force Defender

And that was the first time he saw a crack in her armor. She blinked and looked down. He thought he could see that softness to her lips that was the only sign he’d ever seen that Caradine, the real Caradine, was in there, no matter how she was acting or what stubborn, prickly thing she was saying.

“To clarify,” Templeton drawled, “I’m not opposed to putting a family member in jail if warranted.”

“Amen,” Kate agreed, and they looked at each other with a little more heat than Isaac thought incarceration fantasies warranted.

Templeton continued, “But I would argue some extenuating circumstances for Mickey Sheeran’s daughter.”

“Caradine,” Everly said quietly, “you’re not alone any longer. No matter how badly you wish you were.”

Isaac thought she might run then. He braced himself for it.

But Caradine took in a deep, visibly ragged breath, thenblew it out. She looked around as if she were only then noticing where she was, though Isaac doubted that. Then, instead of taking the chair he’d set aside for her, she moved to sit in the armchair where he usually sat, if he sat during a briefing. She lowered herself gingerly, making him wonder what it had cost her to stand so still and proud, despite everything. He knew grown men who wouldn’t have been able to handle it.

Or maybe it was the fact they’d all basically excused a mass murder she might have committed—or said they would consider excusing it—that was getting to her. Or maybe the simple, obvious truth in what Everly had said.

Caradine pulled her legs up under her in the chair and gazed out at the gathering. At these people who’d called herfamily.

And were acting like one. Not the kind many of them had suffered through, but the kind they’d all wanted.

“You’re asking me to break a promise,” she said after a moment. With no trace of her trademark smirk. “And breaking that promise could be nothing short of catastrophic.”

And Isaac couldn’t very well demand that she make herself vulnerable when he wasn’t willing to do the same thing himself. Could he?

He thought about the catastrophes he’d lived through already and figured one more couldn’t hurt.

“Baby,” Isaac said deliberately. Outing himself—and her. He didn’t care that he was confirming whatever suspicions remained, and that half the people in this room had money riding on it. All he cared about was the woman sitting in that chair, looking, if not precisely vulnerable, something like bruised instead. He could do the same, if that made the difference. She didn’t have to do it alone. “Catastrophic is what we do.”

Caradine cleared her throat. She laced her fingers together in front of her, and for a long moment, stared at them.

Then she lifted her gaze. She looked at Isaac, then took in the rest of the room.

“I didn’t kill my family,” she said, her voice still quiet but sincere. “But I would have. If I’d thought of it, I would have done it happily.” She pulled in another breath, another ragged sound. “Because there was no other way to survive in my father’s house. One way or another, he was going to kill us all.”

Eleven

Caradine felt hungover. There was a headache pushing at her temples, her mouth was alarmingly dry, and everywhere else she felt raw and heavy at the same time.

She was breaking her promise, when she’d always believed that was impossible. That it was a line she wouldn’t cross. It was like a shattering inside her, sharp and painful, making every breath hurt.

But she’d started down this road, and she didn’t think she could stop now.

Everly had said she wasn’t alone, which almost canceled out the hugging.Catastrophic is what we do, Isaac had said, all that silver and steel in the gaze he’d leveled on her. The gaze that had held her up, even if it wasn’t all that friendly.

He’d called herbaby, in public, and what was she supposed to do with that?

The real truth was that she wasn’t as upset about breaking her promise as she should have been. What hadkeeping it ever done for her except keep her alone and scared and on the run?

“I guess it never occurred to me that people would think I was capable of killing,” she said now, slowly, carefully, because these were stories she didn’t tell, and the words felt precarious against her tongue. “I don’t know whether to feel insulted or complimented. But then, I’ve learned a lot about myself in the past ten years. Caradine Scott can and will do what she has to do. But Julia Sheeran?”

There was something deeply humbling in the way all these people hung on her every word, watching her solemnly, as if they’d been waiting a long time to hear what she had to say. Five years, maybe. “Julia was the worst kind of sheltered.Iwas. Because it didn’t matter what books I read in college or what bright futures I imagined for myself. My father was never going to let me go off and live my own life. Never. I was the property of the family, and he ran the family. It was always going to end badly for me.”

Isaac had used that word. He’d called herfamily, and he hadn’t meant bruises and threats. He meant... this. Thisthingthat had been happening all this time she’d been in Grizzly Harbor that she’d been denying and pretending wasn’t there.

She’d had to sit down to keep from being knocked flat.

Caradine had defenses against everything else, and a thousand contingency plans. He could have interrogated her for hours. He could have tied her up again. He could have called her a murderer, everyone else could have agreed, and all of them could have arrayed themselves against her and flung accusations left and right. She had been prepared for all of that. She could have wisecracked for days.

But he’d called herfamily.

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