LITMIR.BIZ

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queen or not, this time she flat-out hesitated. She and the DEA knew damn near everything about him, including where he was from, why he’d left and why he’d go hundreds of miles out of his way to avoid the place. They knew Georgia wasn’t an acceptable answer. They’d already demanded too much from him and he’d given it, but this...

      “Copper Lake,” she said with the first hint of emotion he’d ever heard from her, as if her frozen little heart knew what a huge request—order—this was. But it was just a hint. Emotion didn’t rule Alexandra Baker. She didn’t sympathize, never felt regret, never let feelings get in the way. She was committed 100 percent to her job, and by God, she would do what she had to do.

      Which meant everyone around her would do what they had to do.

      “No.” He never thought of the place if he could avoid it, never considered it home. Home was a place where a person belonged, where he fit in, where people wanted him around. Copper Lake was a nightmare that had taken eighteen years to escape.

      Baker didn’t say anything.

      “I didn’t have much of a choice in ratting out Craig.” There were limits to what he could overlook, and his boss had stomped all over them. “But I’m not doing this. I’m not going back to Copper Lake.”

      “Kolinski will ask you to go, and you will. You don’t have a choice this time, either.”

      The calm disinterest in her voice, as if the idea that she wouldn’t get her way had never occurred to her, got under his skin. He shoved his hand through his hair, dislodging water. “The hell I don’t. I’ve told you everything I know about Craig’s business and his personal life. But there’s no freaking way in hell that I’m going to—”

      “It’s about Maggie.”

      That sucked the air from his lungs. He hadn’t heard his little sister’s name in more years than he wanted to count. He tried not to think about her, either, in a situation worse all those years ago than his own. She’d cried when he left and begged him to take her with him, and, bastard that he was, he’d promised to send for her just as soon as he got settled.

      Did it make any difference that part of him had wanted to take her with him and give her a better life? That he hadn’t known he would land in prison, just like every Holigan man before him?

      No, no difference. Because from the time he was twelve years old, he’d intended to leave everything behind, including Maggie. He’d wanted a life with no responsibilities but himself. He’d wanted to escape the curse of his family, and how could he have done that dragging his baby sister along?

      “What about Maggie?” His voice was rough, harsh, in the night air.

      “Did you know she’s involved romantically with one of Kolinski’s people?” She didn’t pause long enough for him to answer. She already knew the answer. “She lived with the guy before his most recent arrest. They trust him to keep his mouth shut about the business. They don’t trust her. You know what happens to people they don’t trust.”

      He’d seen it for himself once. Imagining his sister in that position, terrified, on her knees, begging for her life... Bile rose in his throat, and for one moment he thought he was going to puke right there in front of Baker. Nothing like showing weakness to someone who was as cold-blooded and single-minded as Craig was.

      “He’ll call you into the garage today and tell you to go to Copper Lake. To keep an eye on Maggie. To determine whether she can hurt him. He’ll use your information to figure out the best way to deal with her.”

      “Am I supposed to believe you’ll use it to keep her safe?”

      Baker nodded, the action practically lost in the folds of the oversize hood.

      How the hell had Maggie caught the attention of one of Craig’s dealers in the first place? And why in hell had that dealer been in Copper Lake long enough to even meet her?

      Leverage, maybe. Sean had been loud in his opposition to Craig’s first expansion of the business, to the point that he’d almost walked away from the garage he’d worked his ass off to help save from bankruptcy. Craig had made a few concessions, keeping what he laughingly called his parts supply service separate from the garage and keeping the next expansion to himself.

      And maybe sending someone to Copper Lake to find something to hold over Sean if it became necessary.

      He shook his head slowly. “I won’t do it.” But even as he heard his own words, he recognized them for the lie they were. Maggie was the only person in the world who could make him return to the town he’d run away from.

      “We’ll be in touch with you once you get there.” More sure of him than he was of himself, Baker tugged the hood forward another inch, then melted into the darkness. He didn’t hear her footsteps as she retreated, couldn’t even sense her presence. She stepped around the corner and was gone.

      He let his head fall back until it connected with the warehouse wall with a solid thunk. How the hell had he come to this? Was this the payoff for betraying a friend? For abandoning his family as if they’d never existed?

      He snorted derisively. Craig was a friend, yeah—one who’d made a fortune in stolen vehicles and drugs. What felt like a betrayal to Sean was really just the regular action any normal person would take. If Craig had dragged Maggie into this to control Sean, that was a betrayal.

      Sweet damnation, all he’d wanted was a regular life: a job that didn’t make him want to shoot himself; enough money to pay his bills and have a little fun on the side; a place to live that wasn’t falling down around him. He hadn’t wanted any attachments to people, places or things. Drinking buddies, not friends. Hookups, not girlfriends. No obligations, no emotional connections, no having to think of anyone besides himself.

      And he’d had that for a lot of years. Until three months ago, when he’d stopped by the garage late one night to pick up the cell phone he’d left behind and walked in on Craig shooting a man in the back of the head.

      Everything had gone to hell after that.

      Tomorrow he was going to another kind of hell, better known as Copper Lake. He would hate every damn second of it, but he would go and do whatever was necessary to protect Maggie. He’d let her down once before.

      He wouldn’t do it again.

      * * *

      For Sophy Marchand’s entire life, Sunday morning had meant church, and though she’d missed the past two Sundays, she vowed that stopped today. She stood in the guest room of her second-floor apartment, one hand on her hip, watching the two little girls snuggling together in one of the twin-size beds, eyes closed, lips parted, looking angelic in sleep.

      Except they weren’t asleep, and God bless them, there was absolutely nothing angelic about them.

      “Dahlia, Daisy, this is the last warning. Get up now, or we’ll be late to church.”

      One of them—Dahlia, she thought—made a sound that was more snort than snore, but neither moved. No lashes fluttering, no eyes shifting beneath their lids, no twitch of their mouths.

      You are the most incompetent foster mother in the history of the world, Sophy chastised herself, but that didn’t stop her from lifting her free hand, fingers wrapped around vivid yellow plastic, and squirting both girls in the face with cool water. It was a trick her grandmother had used when trying to rouse five recalcitrant boys to do their chores, and it proved effective.

      Daisy, the younger, slighter child, shrieked and dived under the covers, while Dahlia, older by a year, sprang upright and fixed a mutinous glower on Sophy. She refused to swipe the fine mist from her face but instead folded her thin arms over her chest. “You could’ve just woke us up.”

      “I woke you up. Three times.” Sophie set the spray bottle on the table just outside the bedroom door, then went to the closet. “You’ve got just enough time to brush your teeth, comb your hair and get dressed. Hustle, now.”

      Dahlia

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