Page 18 of Deceive Me
Something soft mixed with the remembered kick of pain and panic that rose whenever Elliot thought of her mother’s death. She’d been thirteen when her mom and stepdad got into their car, turned the key, and ignited a bomb that killed them instantly. Sydney was far younger than thirteen, and though the little girl had her father, that didn’t make up for all the moments in the future when Elliot knew the need for a woman would arise. She’d faced each of those moments alone. Would Sydney? Or would Deacon find a new wife to take Julia Walsh’s place?
“What’s your mom like?” Sydney asked, rubbing a brown crayon absently over the horse’s legs.
Elliot drew up the memory of her mother. It had been so long she sometimes wondered if what she remembered was real or just an idealized version of the woman who’d birthed her, protected her for as long as she could. “She was always telling me stories and reading with me.” Nora had wanted her to be able to escape their life on the run—the constant vigilance, the unending training. By the time she’d lost her mother, Elliot had been proficient with a knife. She probably wouldn’t have arrived at General Ingram’s compound otherwise. He’d been a friend of her stepdad’s, if men like that had friends, and had agreed to take them in if an emergency arose. Instead he’d been saddled with a thirteen-year-old girl, orphaned, half-starved, desperate.
That trip cross-country had been the first time she’d used her skill with a knife to protect herself. She didn’t think she’d share that aspect of her childhood with Sydney.
The four-year-old was focused on something else, though, her eyes wide and round. “Your mom died?”
“She did. I was a little older, but I know what it’s like.” She didn’t know what it was like to share her grief either; by the time she’d talked about it openly, she’d been an adult, the grief a faint echo of the savage pain she’d first experienced. Searching for words, she finally settled on, “It’s…hard. We never stop missing our mothers.”
Sydney stopped coloring to stare up at Elliot solemnly. “Daddy’s home now. He used to go away a lot. But I miss her.” The child’s green eyes welled with tears.
Elliot couldn’t resist the urge to settle a hand gently on Sydney’s head. The little girl’s hair was soft beneath her fingers, warm. She knew from last night’s bedtime routine that it smelled of baby shampoo, lightly floral, a scent she remembered from her own childhood, oddly enough. Another thing they had in common.
“She was sick for a long time,” Sydney was saying. “Daddy took her to the doctor so many times, but the medicine didn’t work. Not like when I had an earache.”
“Cancer isn’t like an earache or the flu,” Elliot agreed. “We wish it was, but it’s not.”
“Did your mom get sick?”
“No.” How did she explain to a child that a terrible man, one who might be after her now, had planted a bomb in her mother’s car in hopes of killing her and Elliot? “She was in an accident.”
Sydney finished with the brown crayon and set it back in the pile. Elliot picked it up absently and went to work on Prince Charming’s hair.
“Elliot?”
She was beginning to see why Deacon was so far gone over his daughter. Every time those green eyes stared up at her, Elliot felt this melting inside. And yet she couldn’t afford to lower her guard, not with Sydney as their primary target. She glanced back at King, arms crossed, gaze missing nothing as he swept the room—even her attempt to connect with him. All he gave her was a wink.
Big help he was.
A tug on her wrist pulled Elliot’s focus back to Sydney.
“What?”
Sydney gave Elliot what could only be described as puppy-dog eyes. “Maybe you could read to me the way your mom read to you. Daddy does it sometimes. Or Fionn—he does really good voices. But…”
But Sydney wanted to connect with another female. It was only natural. Elliot couldn’t bring herself to feel impatient in the face of those big eyes. She wasn’t going to get night shift anyway; Dain had made certain of it.
Early morning run it is.
“I think we could arrange that,” she told the little girl.
Sydney’s grin prompted a tugging at Elliot’s lips that she quickly squashed. “Great!” She looked down at Elliot’s picture. “He really does look like Daddy, doesn’t he?”
With the brown hair and black shirt Elliot had given him? Yeah, he did. Too much like Deacon for her taste.
“Five minutes, class! Please start cleaning up your station,” the teacher called from the front of the room. Elliot helped Sydney scoop crayons back into the bin and stack coloring pages and books. As Sydney joined her classmates at their desks, Elliot folded the coloring page she’d been working on and slid it into her pocket. She’d throw it away later. Deacon might look like Prince Charming, but they didn’t live in a fairy tale and she was no sleeping princess. She was more likely to break someone’s nose if she woke to find them bending over her.
At least that’s what she tried to tell herself as she went to join King at the back of the classroom once more.
8
Security waved Deacon and Fionn through after a quick swipe of their IDs and fingerprint scans. One thing about Global First—they never took security for granted. Deacon led the way through the entry and down the long hall toward the medical wing where Trapper was being treated.
“What did Sheppard say about surveillance?” he asked Fionn as they walked, nodding to staff members along the way.
“We’ll be swinging by her office on our way out,” Fionn said.
