Page 46 of The Truths that Deceive

She sounds so innocent, and I’m halfway to believing her. But I stop myself. She might be young and deskbound but she’s fucking smart and they trained her.

I change tactic because yeah, I know who blew up the plane.

“Can you show me?”

“No, because—because you can’t read code.”

And she doesn’t have it on her computer. She doesn’t know what she might have seen or found, or maybe they just think she’s guilty in regard to the weapon. Because it’s a big deal, from what little I know. It’s fucking huge.

“The Collectors? Other sex traffickers?”

“I don’t know much. Just…” She opens the lid of her computer and I’m a little surprised there’s no password, but all she does is open an album. It’s full of photos. Her as a kid with a boy, as a teen with the same guy, now a young man. Her brother. And then there’s a beautiful woman and an older version of her. I’d guess those are mom and grandmother.

I look at Calista and then her mom. She had to have been asyoung as me and Sylvie, maybe younger, when she had her kids.

“Did they take her?”

Calista only shrugs. “Why don’t you have a relationship with your daughter?”

Her shrug speaks volumes. It tells me she’s convinced a Collector was involved with whatever happened to her mom.

And if so…

She’s got information on them. A girl like her would.

So I give her a little in return.

“I didn’t know I had a kid until I returned from the UK. It’d been my second trip there. I was recruited, went to college young like you, and then I trained. When I finally came back to Michigan…” I sigh, rub my face, and this time I take a swig of the rough rum from the damn bottle. Then, just before I hand it to her, I slip a small pill into it.

She takes a sip, waiting for me to finish my thought. “I discovered I had a kid. I was twenty-one at that point.”

Close to Dakota’s current age now.

And she’s marrying?—

Nope. Not going there. I can forgive some things. And Orion’s one of my closest friends. She’s good for him, too. Any fucker can tell. But there’s no fucking place here for a heart-to-heart over my kid and her future.

I’m not ready for that.

Just like I’m not ever gonna be ready to talk to Dakota about any of this.

“Your ex didn’t tell you about the baby?”

I close my eyes. The pain still festers deep in my soul. I’m not the boy who loved Sylvie. But I remember that guy. Sylvie thought that guy took off on her. In her eyes, I didn’t care.

Neither one of us knew her letters to me had been intercepted. She was lied to. And she died thinking I didn’t give ashit about her… That created jagged edges time can never smooth out.

“Sylvie was a good girl. Way better than I ever deserved. What can I say? We were kids, and hormones are beasts. But I did love her. It never would have lasted, but she never got to tell me anyway. Her parents were rich, stepped in to help, and then she died in a robbery before she got to see her daughter grow up. Before her daughter even reached five. She was twenty when she was killed. It fucking sucks.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

She shuts her computer, gets off her seat, and kneels at my feet. Then she reaches up and places a hand on my cheek. It’s warm and good, and I feel like a fucking prick. Iama fucking prick.

“Because I am. Because death just makes pain sit with nowhere to go and heal. Time never helps. The pain just wears on.”

I nod. “Time’s a bitch.”

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