Page 80 of Caught By Menace

His mouth went dry. “Contact?”

Pierce shook his head. “No, not that kind of a contact. He’s the fixer you ran into during your trip to retrieve Flare’s bride.”

“Dankirk?”

Pierce nodded. “From what we can tell, the man knows everyone and everything that goes on in the seedy underbelly of The City and Connor’s Run. She still maintains that she has no ties to the Splinter cell or her mother and brother, but she didn’t deny that Dankirk might be able to help her find them. He’d be an interesting asset to catch.”

Menace wondered what kind of pressure Terror had applied to Naya to make her lure a friend into what was very possibly a trap.

On screen, the door opened and Dankirk appeared in the room. Menace held his breath as he watched the two old friends stare at each other. Dankirk cursed loudly, closed and locked the door and then rushed to Naya. The sight of her collapsing into the other man’s arms ripped out his heart. It should have been his arms that held her tight, that gave her security and support, but he’d turned his back on her like a coward.

“What in the blue hell is going on, Naya?” Dankirk cupped her face. “I don’t hear from you in weeks and now this? Did he hurt you? Is that why you ran?”

Naya shook her head and wiped at her wet face. She took a step away from him and turned her back on the camera. “It’s worse than that, Danny. They know.”

The man’s face slackened. “About you running guns as a kid? Shit!” He rubbed his face. “I tried to get one of my guys on the inside to grab your records, but they were already gone.”

“They have it,” Naya confirmed, using her hands to emphasize. “They think I’m working with the Splinter cell that attacked one of their ships and stole a weapons shipment. They told me that the guns are here in The City. Is it true?”

Dankirk nodded and started to pace. “Of course it’s true.” He jammed his hands in his pockets as he walked. “You knew when you left that line of work that the Sixers were getting into bed with those Splinter dicks. The day that bomb went off, what did you tell me?”

Softly she answered, “That the risks and consequences were real now. That I couldn’t compartmentalize what I was doing to justify the money I was making.”

“And I told you to run, to get out of that line of work and start over,” he said. “You built a good life for yourself but then what the hell did you do? You just had to swoop in and save Jennie. That backfired, didn’t it? Now you’re the one who needs saving and all you’ve got is me.”

“We’ve gotten out of tighter scrapes.”

Dankirk dropped his hands to his side in resignation. “I don’t think we’re getting out of this one.”

“We’ll see.” Naya wiped at her face again. Knowing she was crying and he couldn’t do anything to soothe her pain killed Menace. “Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“They told me something else.”

“What’s that?”

“That my mother is here in The City.” She hesitated. “That was just one of their lies, right? That was just some tactic to trip me up and make me beg for a deal, yeah?”

Dankirk perked up. “Did you? Cut a deal, I mean? Because if you did, I get it, Naya. I won’t mind taking it in the neck for you.”

The realization that Dankirk was willing to go to prison to protect Naya made Menace feel even worse. It drove homethe point he’d been mulling over all night. He didn’t deserve her trust. In his rush to protect her from the threat of Terror unleashing Torment, he had capitulated too easily. He should have demanded to see her first, to speak with her, to let her know he loved her and would find a way to save them. Instead he had trusted in the justice system and left her to believe the very worst of him.

“No, I didn’t, Danny. Stop trying to change the subject. Is it true? Is my mother here?”

“Yes,” Dankirk reluctantly answered. “She’s here.”

Naya inhaled a noisy breath. “How long have you known? How long have you kept that from me, Danny? Months? A year?”

“Ten,” he said finally. “Ten years, Naya.”

She sobbed loudly. “Ten fucking years, Danny?”

“She didn’t want you,” he said, tearing up now. “I went to her. The second I learned she’d come back with that new man of hers, I made my way there. You remember that summer when I left you in charge of the other kids in our pack so I could make a trip?”

Still crying, she nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well, that’s where I went,” he said. “I found her and her husband, the leader of the Sixers, and I told her that you were alone and living on the streets. I tried to make her see how dangerous it was for a thirteen-year-old girl to be living that way but she didn’t care. She was cold. Heartless,” he added. “I couldn’t bear to tell you. I couldn’t break your heart again.”

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