Chapter Six: Get Off On The Pain

Ryder

GET OFF ON THE PAIN

Performed by Gary Allan

More pain carved its way throughme at the thought of Addy watching her mother being killed. It was as if the knife that had cut Ravyn had found its way inside me, slicing away at what was left of my emotions.

What should I do?

I turned my head to find Maddox had come back. He was standing in the doorway, eyes sad instead of sparkling as they normally were. No ribbing. No teasing. Just a mirror of pain. Once upon a time, we’d commiserated over the loss of the women we loved.

He’d gotten his back, and I’d told him he’d done something I could never do…forgive.

Now I didn’t have to worry about ever getting that chance.

Ravyn was dead.

Her child—our child?—was here.

“I’m sorry,” Maddox said quietly.

My jaw worked. Tears pricked my eyes, which I refused to let fall.

“She was working for the Lovatos?” My voice sounded distant, cold, faraway, but it was either that or bleed emotions all over the floor.

“Gia seems to think so.”

Gia. Another dark-haired liar.

When I didn’t say anything, Maddox continued, “She can’t tell me a lot because their investigation is on a need-to-know basis, but she says Ravyn was some sort of computer genius, running a lot of the cartel’s business from behind the scenes.”

She’d been wildly good with numbers, websites, and software. Dad and I had hired her because of those skills. We’d needed an office-manager-slash-marketing-manager-slash-accountant. Someone who could do a little bit of everything for the little we were offering. Ravyn had shown up seeming like a godsend.

“The letter.” I swallowed hard over a lump that appeared, pushing past it. “She made it sound like they were making her do it.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know the details. I’m not sure the task force does either.”

“What do I do?”

My brother met my gaze, and the eyes meeting mine held a steeliness that was rarely aimed at me.

“Meet your daughter. Take care of her. Keep her safe.”

“I want a DNA test,” I replied.

“I think that’s smart.”

“But you think she’s mine?”

Maddox ran a hand over his face again. “I think she looks like Ravyn. I think she’s the right age, if she’s seven. I think it would’ve been possible—but not likely—for her to get pregnant with some other guy’s kid that quickly after she left here.”

That thought was a bitter pill. I’d purposefully pushed thoughts of Ravyn with some other guy out of my head whenever they had tried to poke at the corners of my mind. I’d wanted to pretend she’d never existed. This caused something akin to guilt to waft through me. Guilt I didn’t owe, and shouldn’t have, but still did.

“Okay.” I exhaled.

Maddox searched my face. For what, I wasn’t sure, but he nodded. “Let me get them back in here.”

He left, and I had mere seconds to prepare myself for the shock of seeing Ravyn’s face all over again. The little girl was still clinging to Gia. Both with heavy brows, thick lashes, and dark hair. They were similar enough that they could be related. Except, Gia was taller than Ravyn had been. Leaner. Small, tight curves to Ravyn’s voluptuousness.

Gia and Addy had their cheeks pushed together, and they were both tense and taut. Gia’s shoulders were drawn back, as if ready for a fight…or maybe she was just uncomfortable with a child clinging to her. Maybe she didn’t know what to do with a kid any more than I did. All I knew was how to spoil a child—I did that regularly enough with Mila—but I didn’t know shit about raising one. My little brother was the family man, not me. I never intended to have kids after what I’d lost.

I stuck out my hand like an idiot and said, “I’m Ryder.”

The girl hesitated before removing one of her hands from Gia’s neck, sliding her tiny palm into mine, shaking it, and saying, “Addy.”

In those two syllables, I heard the same rhythm to her speech that had been in Ravyn’s. It came from growing up speaking two languages, she’d told me. She’d been born and raised in the United States, but her father was from Mexico. Her family had spoken both English and Spanish, switching back and forth with an easy fluidity, sometimes within the same sentence.

With me, Ravyn had mostly spoken English, as my Spanish had topped off with the basic two years required in high school. But when we were making love, when her emotions poured from her, she’d slip into Spanish as if it were the language of her heart. I’d learned a little more of it from her. Not much. And most of it was now forgotten.

I let go of the little girl’s hand and looked from her to Gia and then my brother and back. “What now?”

Gia’s eyes narrowed. “Now, we take her home.”

My chest tightened again. “We?”

Gia knelt, placing Addy on her feet. She spoke to her in a rapid-fire Spanish that spoke of years of use. Addy looked from her to me and then back. She picked up a backpack that looked almost as big as she was and stepped out of the room, sitting down on a chair just outside the office door, and pulled out a gaming device from within the bag’s depths.

Gia shut the door, turning to look at Maddox and me with an attitude that screamed defiance, as if she already suspected we wouldn’t like or agree to what she had to say.

“I’m not leaving her until I know she’s safe.”

My chest heaved. I didn’t know what that meant. Gia had said, “Take Addy home,” in the same sentence as the word “we,” but before I could think of the right questions to ask, she continued, “She’s spoken maybe a dozen or so words since we found her in the hotel room. She was hiding under the bed in a space that would barely fit a book. She had her mother’s blood on her. I don’t know what she saw, but I do know if the Lovatos even suspect she was in that room, they’ll be looking for her. And if Ravyn was able to hand off something to her that could be used as leverage that they didn’t take from the room already, they’ll be even more desperate. The cartel doesn’t leave loose ends.”

“They’d kill a kid?” The words were out before I could take them back.

“They’d kill their own child if it meant keeping their secrets.”

My gut turned nastily. Was Addy someone in the cartel’s kid rather than mine?

“Who knows she’s here?” Maddox asked.

“I kept the knowledge of her existence down to a minimum. There are six people besides those of us in this room who know, and only three of them know the contents of that letter. I trust my boss and my teammate with my life, but the Lovatos have a way of getting information that should be secure.”

“You think they’ll come for her?” I grunted out.

“Even if she didn’t see anything, they don’t know that. Only time will tell if they find out about her, if she saw anything, or if her mother really gave her something we can use. So, until we know otherwise, we have to assume she’s at risk.”

I looked through the window of the door to the tiny child with her head bent over the device, and dark fury welled through me again—this time, at the idea of anyone trying to hurt her.

“You didn’t find anything on her? That Ravyn left?” Maddox asked.

“Nothing in the hotel room. But then again, none of the electronics she needed to do her job were there either. So, they could have taken whatever proof she’d gathered with them after they killed her. All that was in Addy’s backpack were clothes, two books, some personal hygiene items, and that Nintendo. As you might imagine, tech is kind of our thing in the NSA, so I explored it a bit before I let her have it. I don’t think anything is there, but I’ll take a better look later. I think it’s fairly new as there are only a couple games on it, or maybe they didn’t have the money to buy more.”

I instantly wanted to buy Addy a dozen games. Maybe a hundred. Give her a whole damn room full of them. Give her a room full of rainbows and sparkles just like Mila’s room at Maddox’s place.

“Last I heard, no one’s been able to identify the head of the cartel. Just a large base of foot soldiers,” Maddox said.

“We’ve had some leads, and we were working a source, but every time we think we’re getting somewhere, the person we’ve got our sights on winds up dead.”

“The task force has a leak?”

“It may not be a direct leak. I’m not putting it past the Lovatos to have paid informants within multiple agencies, but it’s also much more likely that, with her skills, Anna—Ravyn—opened a door directly into some federal systems.”

For some reason, Gia’s calm, her almost lackadaisical attitude about it all, pissed me off. “What you’re telling me is you have nothing? There’s no end in sight? This child could be in danger for years—which means her being here could put my entire family at risk.”

“She is your family,” Gia snapped.

“So you and a thief say,” I growled back.

“Take a breath,” Maddox demanded, looking between us. “We’ll run a DNA test, and we’ll know for sure.”

“You can’t do that,” Gia said, shaking her head. “I didn’t even run her DNA back in Colorado. If you do it now, and there’s a match to something in the system, it’ll flag something somewhere, and you’ll end up with multiple law enforcement agencies and the Lovatos banging down your door.”

“She’s here. She exists. And everyone in Willow Creek is going to know about it as soon as I show up anywhere with her at my side.”

Gia looked as pissed about this as I was about the entire situation. Her jaw worked as she looked out the door at Addy. Then, her chin went up as she turned back to us and said, “We’ll say she’s mine for now.”

I scoffed. Gia didn’t look old enough to have a seven-year-old daughter, no matter her confidence and don’t-fuck-with-me attitude. “What? You were a teen mom?”

“She’s seven, asswipe, not twelve. There are plenty of people who have kids at twenty.”

I could feel Maddox watching the bouncing match between Gia and me. I was pretty sure if I looked at him, he would be trying to decide whether to laugh or defend me. The laugh was probably winning.

“Addy and I can stay in one of the guest cabins at the ranch. You can get to know each other without the pressure of living under the same roof. I can make sure she’s safe. We all get what we want.”

I was just about to retort with something along the lines of when hell froze over when my brother’s soft voice stopped me. “Except for her. I’m pretty sure all she wants is her mother back.”

And that seemed to take the bluster out of all of us.

A little girl had lost her mother. Maybe witnessed her being killed. I thought about Mila’s traumatized tears after she’d seen me accidentally kill the crow yesterday. What Addy may have seen…it made acid burn through my stomach faster than lye through grease. Who might come after her—and Gia as she stood watching over a child who might be mine…I couldn’t even think it all the way through.

“The cabins aren’t fit for anyone right now. Construction is going on all around them with the additions we’re putting up,” I grunted out. “You’ll stay with me.”

Gia’s eyes widened, and her breath hitched. And damn, did I want her breath to hitch for all the wrong reasons, which meant inviting her into my home, into the place I’d never taken any woman, was as wrong as it was right.

“People will talk, Ryder,” Maddox said. “You know what they’ll say.”

Gia’s gaze met mine. I wasn’t sure if it was resignation or a dare that burned in them.

“Let ’em talk,” I said quietly.

I’d walked into the sheriff’s office with dread and premonition following me, but all I felt right now was resolve. If someone came after Addy, and Gia because of it, then I’d be there with my damn gun, defending them. I had no doubt this confident, smart, lean-muscled undercover agent had been trained to protect herself and might be able to guard Addy with more skill than me, but I’d be another body between them and her. I’d be the one thing the little girl could depend on.

“What about Dad and Mama? Our family?” Maddox asked.

“We’ll tell them the truth,” I said, meeting his gaze with a sure one.

“I don’t think it’s wise to tell more people who she really is,” Gia said, arms across her chest.

“I’m not a liar. I don’t lie to the people I care about. Let the rest of the town think what they want, but I won’t be anything but honest with the people who matter to me.”

Maddox looked over at Gia. “If you and a little girl all but move in with Ryder without telling our family the truth, they’re going to roll out the welcome mat and start planning a wedding.”

Gia grimaced, and her cheeks flushed ever so slightly. “I’m not moving in. We’ll just say we needed a place to stay, and Ryder offered.”

“You don’t get a say in what I tell my family,” I growled.

“And you don’t get to put her and an entire operation at risk just to relieve your conscience.”

Maddox huffed out a mix of laughter and exasperation before saying, “I’m not sure this is a good idea. While it would be entertaining to watch the two of you go at it, that little girl needs peace around her, not a constant battle.”

It shut us both up once again.

After a long moment, I uttered words I wasn’t sure I felt but was convinced I had to try. “He’s right. Truce?” I offered her my hand.

She stared at it for a long time and then took it. Heat swept over my palm, up my wrist, and along my arm. We both pulled away quickly, and Gia rubbed her hand along her thigh, proving that what I’d felt every time she was in the same vicinity as me plagued her as well. But I was a grown-ass man. I could ignore the unwanted attraction. Gia Kent would be there for a matter of days, just long enough to ascertain if the Lovatos were coming for Addy or not.

Then she’d be gone, and I’d try to figure out what pieces of my life were left and how to pull them all together.