Page 44 of Delta Force Defender

Mariah hissed out a breath. “He really would have done that? Your own father?”

Caradine held her gaze. “In a heartbeat.”

“Where did you go?” Griffin asked. “You survived the explosion. Then what?”

“You had five years between that night and when you came here,” Isaac added. “Is this a five-year cycle? Did you spend that whole time somewhere else?”

It was always hard to look at him, particularly when she wasn’t doing her little act. Being nastyjust because. Spiteful and prickly, even when she didn’t want to be either of those things. It was easier then, because she was constantly provoking a reaction from him. That was much better.

Because now, all she was doing was looking at him. And beneath all the fighting they’d done in the past five years, there was just Isaac.

The man who’d smiled at her when she’d walked into a strange bar, bought her a drink, and made her forget all of this. Why she’d come to Alaska in the first place. Why she should never, ever have let down her guard.

That was the worst thing about Isaac. And the best. He made her forget. And once she forgot, she began to hope.

Caradine had never been able to afford either.

“I had to figure out how I was going to survive once I ran,” she said, to no one and everyone. She focused on Isaac because he was closest. And because he was Isaac. “But I had a few things going for me. My father had refused to pay for college, so I’d gotten myself a job. He took that as a personal affront, but I still did it. That meant I already knew that restaurants were a good way to make money and stay off the radar. It’s not hard to find a place that will pay under the table. But the first thing I had to do was get out of Boston.”

“One of the reasons it’s assumed that you died in that fire is because there was no activity on any of the family’s credit cards or banks after that night,” Oz said then. Caradine thought, not for the first time, that he looked like no computer geek she’d ever known. It was disconcerting, even at a moment like this. “I would expect your father or your brothers to have access to all kinds of different unmarked accounts, and so on. But if what you’re saying is true, you were legitimately a kid working her way through college. Did you have a secret stash somewhere?”

“I had nothing.” Caradine had to be careful here to tell her part and no more. “All I had was what was in my pockets. I left my car where it was. Then I walked away from the scene, took the T into downtown Boston, and bought a bus ticket to the farthest distance I could go without bankrupting myself. Because one thing I’ve learned from a thousand movies is that if you think people are looking for you, trying to hide in the same place never works. Sooner or later, someone will see you, no matter how unlikely. So I went to Ohio.”

“Ohio?” Templeton laughed. “I didn’t see that coming.”

“No one sees Ohio coming,” Caradine said dryly. “Mostly because if they have any sense, they’re leaving the state as quickly as possible.” She lifted a hand and rubbed at the tension in her neck, though it didn’t help. “Maybe I’m not being fair. I don’t know what I expected from Cleveland. I had enough money for a motel room. I dyed my hair and got a job bartending the next day. Then waited to see what would happen. I watched the news and saw that I was dead. And since I was supposedly dead, but not, I couldn’t assume anyone else in my family was dead, either. So I bought a car off one of the regulars for a couple hundred dollars, and as soon as I could, I moved on.”

She could remember those strange weeks in Cleveland so vividly. They stayed relentlessly bright in her head when so much else since had blurred at the edges. Had she slept at all? She could remember doing nothing but watching the news round the clock, then working in the dive bar that had taken her, no questions asked. There was no part of her new, postdeath life that hadn’t felt precarious and terrible, and it had still been better than life in the Sheeran family.

It had been sharp and cruel, but it was still freedom.

And even running for her life was living it, which was more than would have been allowed her if she’d stayed trapped in her father’s clutches. Or if he really had died in that house, whoever rose to take his place.

Isaac studied her, and she bit back the near-overwhelming urge to snap at him the way she normally did. To divert his attention, because if she didn’t, how long would it take him to realize that there was nothing underneath but the same sickness that ran through the rest of her family? Because what else could there be?

“It must have been hard to go from being Mickey Sheeran’s daughter to living on tips and driving a two-hundred-dollar clunker,” he said.

Caradine directed her attention toward her clasped hands and her knees, because that was less troubling than the way his gray gaze made her feel. “The first couple of years, I moved around a lot. The minute people started to greet me by name outside my job, I would go. After a while, I learned that it was easier to tell everyone that I was a recovering addict. Because that way when I disappeared, no one would look for me. Everyone thinks they know what happens to addicts, don’t they? They’re disposable. No one comes looking. It was easy enough to keep dyeing my hair, keep taking off in the middle of the night, and keep making money waiting tables, tending bar, whatever. The problem with moving around that much is that it provides a whole lot more opportunity to be recognized.”

“Who did you think was chasing you?” Jonas asked.

“Somebody blew up my parents’ house,” Caradine said coolly. “On purpose. I didn’t know if they knew whether or not I was in it at the time. And I also didn’t know how the bomb detonated.”

“It was C-4 with a cell phone activation,” Templeton said, his voice a low rumble. “Someone called in the number and that was that.”

“Yes,” Caradine said, “but who made the call? And from where? If they were outside the house, did they see me?” She blew out a ragged breath. “I had to operate from the assumption that they saw me survive, then walk away. And then, after five years of moving around the way I had been from the start, I thought that maybe it might be better to construct an entire alternate identity. I figured that if I found a remote place and settled there, it would be more difficult, even if I was recognized, for anyone to connect the new me with that college girl who was supposed to be dead.”

She was glossing over some details there, but the end result had been the same. So she told herself it reallywasn’t a lie. It was an omission. She was both breaking her promise and keeping it at the same time.

That should have made her feel better, not worse.

Especially because Isaac was looking at her as if he already knew what she wasn’t telling him. “How did you find Grizzly Harbor?”

“I was looking at remote places. So obviously, I was looking at Alaska. I saw the ad for the Water’s Edge Café in an online magazine. I had some money stashed away, so it seemed like a good match. And, of course, I was under the impression that Grizzly Harbor was a sleepy, remote fishing village where nothing ever happened.”

She found she couldn’t look away from Isaac then. No matter how much she wanted to, it was as if she were stuck.

Maybe the thing she didn’t want to face was that she always had been.

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