Page 84 of Delta Force Defender

Neither one of them had wanted that on their conscience, no matter how unpleasant Danny was when he’d gotten himself into this state.

The place still smelled the same. It was dank and shadowy. There was the scent of decay in the air and the creepy echoing sound of leaking pipes.

It was easier to walk down this hall—this narrow tunnel—without dragging the dead weight of a fully grown man between her and her frail sister, but that didn’t make what Caradine was doing any easier.

There was not one part of her that wanted to do this. She preferred Isaac’s plan to this, a thousand times over.

But this time she intended to keep the promise she’d made to her sister. Not the old promise, but the new one. That Lindsay had died out there on the run. That she was out of this, no matter what.

She wanted to make it clear to whomever waited for her that she was the only survivor of that bomb ten years ago. So no one would bother looking for anyone else.

And if no one was looking for Lindsay, no one here would discover Luana’s existence. Ever.

She wanted to run again. She’d trained to defend herself when attacked, not throw herself into a fight she might not win. She wanted to find a way out of this—ora way out of Boston again. She could turn beige before she got west of Worcester, then disappear for good.

But she kept going, because she was done running. There was more to think about here than her feelings. Or her panic. Or what she might lose.

And besides, she knew—she hoped—she only had limited time. If she knew anything about Isaac, it was that he’d come after her. And soon.

She had work to do first.

It was a long walk even without dragging Danny, who had stunk of booze and uglier things and had kept insisting he was fine and should be left alone. The walls were uneven and too close. Nothing smelled good or clean.

Caradine didn’t really want to think about all the terrible things that had happened down here over the years. The things her father and men like him had done here. The deals they’d cut, the betrayals they’d enacted, the revenges they’d indulged. She was afraid that if she breathed in too deep, she would get all that violence, all that despair, into her own lungs. Like some kind of tuberculosis.

She couldn’t afford to get sick.

But who was she kidding? She already had all that mess in her blood. She couldn’t outsmart her own genes. Or outrun them, either. God knew, she’d tried, and here she was again. Not just in Boston butunderneathit. Walking toward the destiny she’d escaped a decade ago.

Maybe the lesson here was, there was no escaping. Not really.

Escapingwould have meant living a real life. Not hiding, walling herself off, pretending not to connect with anyone or anything....

She tried to shake that off. It was too late now.

Eventually she came to the door on the far end of the subterranean hall that crossed the main street Sharkey’s sat on and veered south, taking her down to the cornershe’d crossed aboveground. She paused there, refusing to let herself shake.

She could be still. She could breathe. She could make herself do it.

Caradine had watched Isaac and the rest of them turn to stone at will, though as she tried it now, she quickly realized it was another thing they must have trained hard to do. Because every part of her felt alive and electric and buzzing with what she was choosing to callanticipation.

Not panic. Not terror.

She put her hand on the door and tried to prepare herself.

Because she still didn’t know who she expected to see on the other side. Nasty, vicious Francis, who would probably have become far worse than her father if he’d had the time? Or a member of her own family—her own blood—who had always been pretty horrible on his own?

Nothing can possibly be worse than drawing this out any longer,she snapped at herself.You need to get out there and do what you came here to do.

One way or another.

Because she might have a new family in Alaska, but she needed to do what she could to protect the only part of her real family she had left.

I would go and do whatever had to be done if I could,Lindsay had said in Hawaii.But there’s Luana.

And Luana deserved to be free of the Sheeran family in a way Caradine and Lindsay never had been.

But when Caradine cracked open the door and stuck her head through, there was nothing but another basement. There were boxes piled against one wall and enough dust in the corners to make her nose tickle, but mostly there was nothing but a latticework of pipes above and a concrete floor below.

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