Page 6 of Forging Caine

“My wife and I used a cypher like that a few times when I had to leave suddenly, so I recognized it. It saved my marriage, but I eventually moved to the FBI so we’d have fewer secrets.”

I didn’t want to hear this. My father abandoned us and I’d accepted that eons ago. My sister would say I’d never gotten over it, but it was a constant in my life. It was a fact. Him leaving couldn’t have been something my mother saw coming. She wouldn’t have hidden that from us.

Would she?

“Your father and I worked together for a few years and it was only our second trip together—”

“Hewas your mentor?”

Elliot nodded.

No. I was asleep and dreaming. Having a nightmare. There was no way. “Where was the trip to?”

“East of the United States.” He gestured toward the translation. “That’s all I can say. Other than the obvious—he didn’t come home with me.”

I picked up the original, covered in the swirls and shapes that were now letters on a separate sheet. My mother used to curl up with her old copy ofThe Merchant of Veniceand a glass of wine at night. Had she been reading the book or sneaking the letter out every time? “I don’t understand.”

“You do.” He slid Lucy’s translation across the table to me. “You just don’t know what to do with the information.”

Not only had my mother hidden this from me, so had Elliot. All the years we’d worked together, all the chances he’d had to tell me what happened, he never did. “Were you with him when he died?”

Elliot let out a long breath. “I wish I could give you details, but even with the additional security I’m trying to get for you, that’s where my story has to end.”

Screw that!

“Your storyhastoend? Seriously? You drop this bomb on me and that’s it?” Energy built up inside of me, pinging around, telling me to move. To get out of there. To do something other than sit still and face this.

“Sam.” Elliot put up a hand, probably trying to calm me down.

I shoved back my chair and stalked across to the breakfast bar. “You throw everything I believed since I was five years old on its head and you’resorryyou can’t tell me more?”

He stood as well. “I met your mother a few times before that trip. We kept in touch over the years—I think it was because I was the only one she could really talk to about him, although I had to keep a lot of secrets from her. She never stopped loving him.”

That’s why Mom never remarried. Never even dated. Did she think Dad was coming home someday?

“I was still in Organized Crime when you started showing signs of wanting to join Art Crime, but as fate would have it, I’d switched a year before your mother brought up the internship idea. And she said—”

I stopped him with a raised finger. “So all this stuff about me and the FBI: The internship, getting me into Quantico early, plumb first assignment? What? All of it was to ease your guilty conscience?”

Elliott’s lips tightened and he looked down at the original letter. “I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this, but you’re a lot like him. Stubborn, obstinate even, driven. I talked it over with your mother when she suggested the internship. I know what this life can do to people. The lies, the secrets, how hard it is on relationships. But she was right. It’s where you belong. Just like the CIA was where your father belonged. And she wanted you to know.”

My mother should have been the one to tell me. Not to lock up all her memories of Dad so tightly, I barely knew he existed. “National security is a really shitty reason to raise me believing my father abandoned me.”

“But there it is.” He shrugged. “How much have you told your family about helping me investigate the smuggling ring?”

I could have thrown the box of photos at Elliot. Tossed a chair over. Kicked him out. I hadn’t told them anything about the smuggling ring. Fucking national security. “I can’t tell my sister about this, can I?”

“Would it change anything in her life?” He was so goddamn calm. Like fucking always.

“That’s not an answer.” As much as I hated him for it, he was right. Cass had been older when Dad left. Unlike me, she had good memories of him. What would telling her the truth accomplish? Make her go through it all again? Put her back into therapy?

“Deb told me you took his leaving hard.”

I needed to go for a run. That was it. That was what I needed. Get my workout clothes and go to the gym. Or maybe outside.

“She couldn’t explain it to you when you were little.”

What I really needed was Antonio. The thought of him closed my throat and the emotions threatened to spill over. I should have dropped everything and driven to Chicago the second he called. Skipped whatever work I had left and flown wherever the first plane leaving after the storm could take us.

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