Page 75 of Montana Justice

The silence stretched until I thought I might suffocate in it.

“Twins?” Beckett picked up the phone with reverent care. “What? How? Where is she?”

“Ray has her.” The words burst out of me, along with everything else. Everything that Piper had told me over the past few hours.

How Ray had shown up and beaten her when the twins were two months old. Her waking up and finding Sadie gone. Ray’s ultimatum—spy or never see her daughter again. How he’d demanded information and she’d provided it then gave me the watch a few days ago so Ray could hear everything.

“Three months. That bastard has had my daughter for three months. Using her as leverage to make Piper—” I slammed my fist on the table hard enough to make everyone jump. “Fuck!”

“Lachlan—” Beckett started.

“She should have told me!” The rage erupted, impossible to contain. “The second she showed up with Caleb, she should have trusted me. Instead, she let me believe…let me fall…” I couldn’tfinish. Couldn’t admit out loud how completely I’d fallen for the woman who’d been betraying me since day one.

“Would you have believed her?” Hunter asked quietly.

I whirled on him. “What?”

“Three weeks ago, I was the one saying not to trust her. Warning you she might be playing you.” Hunter leaned forward, his gaze steady. “If she’d shown up that first day claiming Ray had kidnapped her daughter, would you have believed her? Or would you have thought it was another con?”

The question hit like cold water. I wanted to say yes, of course I would have believed her. But would I? After she’d stolen from me, disappeared for a year, shown up shoplifting baby formula?

“That’s not the point?—”

“That’s exactly the point,” Hunter interrupted. “She was terrified, traumatized, and completely under Ray’s control. She made the only choice she thought she had.”

“People died because of the intel she gave him!” My voice bounced off the walls. “Kids overdosed on drugs that made it through because our operations were compromised!”

“And if she hadn’t cooperated, your daughter may be dead,” Aiden said bluntly. “It wasn’t a chance she was willing to take. That’s a mother’s love for you: willing to do anything, risk anything, for her child.”

I pressed my palms against my eyes, seeing stars. The photo of Sadie burned behind my eyelids—dark hair, rosebud mouth, my father’s nose. A little girl I’d never held, never even known existed.

“Every time Piper cried…” My voice came out strangled. “All those nights I held her while she sobbed, I thought it was postpartum depression. Exhaustion. But she was crying for our daughter. And I just… I didn’t know. How did I not know?”

“Because she couldn’t tell you,” Travis said through the speakers. “I’ve been analyzing her communications since you left. The level of surveillance Ray maintained… He would have known immediately if she’d tried to get help.”

“She still should have trusted me.” But even as I said it, my conviction wavered. What would I have done in her place? If someone had Caleb, if the price of his life was betraying everything I believed in?

I’d have sold my soul without hesitation. I still would.

“We need to get Sadie back,” I said, the words coming from somewhere deep and primal. “I don’t care what it takes. Stopping the drugs and weapons are important, but not as important as getting my daughter home safely.”

“Agreed,” Hunter said immediately. “And I owe you an apology.”

I looked up, surprised.

“I was wrong about Piper,” he continued. “I saw Ray Matthews’s daughter and assumed the worst. But she’s been fighting a war none of us knew about, trying to protect your children the only way she could.”

“She lied to me.” The betrayal still burned, even understanding why. “Every kiss, every night in my bed, all of it was built on lies.”

“No,” Beckett said firmly. “The situation was built on lies. But what’s between you two? I think that’s real, man. I’ve seen how she looks at you.”

“You mean how she looked at me while reporting my every word to her father?” But the venom had drained from the words. I kept seeing her on the floor, broken, screaming about missing three months of her daughter’s life.

“A mother does whatever she has to do,” Hunter murmured. “I’m not saying that makes everything okay between you two, I’m just saying that she’s not necessarily the bad guy here. It’snot that black or white. You guys gave Jada a chance when it wasn’t so simple, and I, for one, am willing to give Piper the same chance.”

If anyone knew that choices weren’t always black or white, it was Hunter and his fiancée Jada. But everyone else around the table was nodding too.

And while I appreciated my friends’ support, figuring out all this stuff with Piper had to wait. Right now, we had bigger issues at hand. “Thank you. But let’s focus on getting my daughter home where I can meet her and getting Ray Matthews placed behind bars.”

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