swirling inside me, and for some reason, I heard myself saying, “Protecting whoever I hide is a part of me. It’s ingrained in me. I cannot break that vow. I was that vow. My mother is a vow. Do you get that?”
His nostrils flared, but that was his only response. His head hung low.
“I didn’t hide her, but I did help her.”
He lifted his gaze, and I swear, he stopped breathing. He went so still.
I couldn’t look at him, not with what I was about to say, because this would destroy a part of me.
“It’s exactly how you said. My roommates went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep, and Brooke found me. She showed up at my door, drenched. It’d been raining that night. I gave her a ride to a train station three hours away. I hugged her, gave her papers for a new identity, and that’s it. When I said I don’t know where she is, I don’t. She mentioned meeting someone, but I watched her get on a train.”
“Where was that train going?”
“It was going to Winnipeg.”
“You drove her to Edmonton?”
I nodded. “I took back roads. The kind that wouldn’t have gas stations with security cameras.”
“She’s not in Edmonton. I had people check that place. They combed everywhere.”
He began to pace, his head down, rubbing his forehead. His shoulders bunched tight, his shirt stretching over them.
“If she got off the train, there would’ve been video footage of her somewhere,” he said, mostly to himself.
There wouldn’t have been. Not if she moved the way I told her to move, head down, new hairstyle. New clothes. A hood or scarf or a hat to cover her face as much as possible. She needed to stick to far corners, move as little as possible. Use cash. And the other piece of information, the fake passport I gave her.
“You have to tell me where you think she is.”
“That’s all I know.”
“You’re lying. I can see it on your face. I know how to read you by now, very well. Please, Riley. No agenda here. No calculation. I’m not manipulating, threatening, nothing. I’m asking as an older brother. The longer she stays away from me, the more likely an enemy will find her. If she’s with Levi, they will be found. His family probably knows by now he was turning evidence on them. They’ll be out in full force too.”
There was a nagging.
If she was with him, and he was working with the government… But no.
Or could they have?
“What?” He saw. He knew.
I shook my head. “Nothing.” I frowned. “I mean, it can’t…”
“What?”
“Just…” I still couldn’t quite grasp it. “I know you have men in the FBI. Can you see if there’s actually an active investigation into the Barnes family? Not where they’re just taking what information they can get from him before deciding to open a case against them?”
His eyebrows lowered. He was deep in thought. “You think if there is, the government is hiding him.”
“Which means they’re hiding her.”
“If they’re together,” he added.
No, the pieces were falling into place.
“Why would she go to you to hide if the US government was hiding her as well?” he asked.
This was not good. So not good.
“To either further hide her tracks or because they don’t know they’re hiding her.”
Kai sank down on the bed next to me. Bending over, his elbows rested on his knees and he caught his head in his hands.
“Shit,” he breathed.
My heart tugged. I didn’t want it to, but it did.
“Call whoever you have in the FBI,” I said softly. “Don’t ask for her. Ask about him.”
He didn’t move at first. Silence filled the room for a few seconds, and then he reached over. His hand grabbed mine and squeezed, just for a moment, before he stood.
When he walked out, his shoulders seemed to sag in disappointment, and he looked as if he’d aged ten years.
He left through the bedroom. I heard the main door closing as he stepped out into the hallway.
A second later, I heard the soft tread of footsteps over the carpet.
I hadn’t moved.
The door hadn’t been open before Kai shut it. Whoever was coming toward me had been in the wing the whole time. They’d overheard everything.
Tanner stood in the doorway. “I can’t believe you did that.”
Yeah. Neither could I.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Tanner and Jonah kept me company for the day.
No Kai.
They didn’t talk about him, and I didn’t ask. We acted like we were friends having a movie marathon. They ordered pizza—or had someone make it.