Page 145 of Lethal Danger

Bile slid up her throat. She swallowed it back before it reached her duct-taped mouth and choked her. How could this be happening?

She’d trusted him. Believed him when he said he wanted to get to know her, that she was family. Thought he accepted her. Loved her.

She’d thought he was claiming her as his own.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. She was supposed to go with Uncle Pierce and finally have a family she belonged to.

But he was playing her. Like the criminals she’d dealt with time and again in her line of work. How had she missed the signs?

She had let him play her like a fiddle, conning her into believing he loved her only to reject her like everyone else in her life.

How could she have trusted someone like him? Someone who murdered Butch without a thought. A man who killed his own wife without even the smallest bit of remorse. And now he was going to kill his niece and an innocent girl.

That was the kind of family Jazz had. She shouldn’t even want to belong to a family like that.

Then why did it feel like her heart was being ripped from her chest?

Maybe because it had already been wounded so much. By Hawthorne saying he didn’t want her, Nev turning her back, the PK-9 team never accepting her.

Who was Jazz kidding? It hadn’t started with them. Her heart had never healed from her dad’s rejection either. The constant reminders all her life that she wasn’t good enough for him to love. It was the same whether he was home and ridiculing her for everything she did wrong, or he was overseas, gladly leaving her with an aunt and uncle who disliked her as much as he did.

And she’d never healed from that first, possibly worst rejection of all. The one that happened before she could remember but was most deeply embedded in her soul. The mother who didn’t want her.

Even she was gone now. Dead. No possibility of an idyllic reunion someday. No chance she’d realize her mistake and want to see her daughter. Want to love Jazz and be part of her life.

The dreams Jazz had never labeled, never recognized in her own heart, imploded all at once, like whatever they’d been built on gave way. The pain of their destruction seared through her body from her stomach to her chest, shooting from there through her arms and legs.

She sucked in air through her nose, closing her eyes against the anguish.

She thought she’d always been alone. But she hadn’t tasted utter, stark, desolate loneliness until now. She had absolutely no one. And no hope of someone she could belong with in the future.

Her own family had refused to claim her as their own. No one else ever would.

Nev’s sweet face, her dark eyes filled with hurt, rose in Jazz’s memory and blocked her vision. “You wouldn’t really leave me, would you?” Nev’s voice reached her ears—the agonized whisper as she’d asked the question.

Had Nev thought Jazz was rejecting her? Horror at the possibility squeezed Jazz’s ribs hard enough it seemed they would crack.

Jazz would never do that to someone else. She knew what it felt like.

But the look on Nev’s face, in her eyes, had said differently.

Jazz’s stomach churned, sending more nausea upward.

Nev had said Jazz pushed people away first so they wouldn’t reject her.

Jazz swallowed hard as she saw it for the first time. Nev was right. And Jazz had pushed Nev away, too. The one person who’d been the closest to family Jazz had ever had. The one person who had accepted Jazz. Loved her.

Nev had been talking about the PK-9 team and Phoenix when she’d said that about Jazz putting up walls. Would those ladies have wanted to be her family? Could Jazz have belonged with them if she’d let them get close to her?

It was her fault.

The awful realization nearly choked her with grief. Maybe she could’ve belonged in this city, had something like a family, if she hadn’t pushed the team away. And she’d put the final touch of doom on the whole thing when she’d stupidly pushed even Nev out of her life. What had she been thinking?

The answer came quickly. She’d wanted the real thing with Hawthorne through a marriage or with Uncle Pierce, her actual relative.

She sure was an idiot to think she’d ever find belonging with either of them.

And now, thanks to her own foolishness, she was totally on her own. No help from PK-9 or Nev to get her out of this mess. Because Jazz had cut them out. She had thought she could handle the situation herself, and she’d already burned all her bridges with PK-9 and Nev by the time Uncle Pierce texted.

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