you kill him?”
He managed a slight smile. “No. I don’t do revenge killings. The cartel did it. While they appreciated the information, they knew he could never be trusted, so they killed him.” He didn’t mention they’d slit open his belly and left him to bleed out and be eaten in the jungle.
“Did they hurt you?”
He thought about the scars on his torso, reminders of the knife fights he’d been forced into. He thought of the beatings and the starvation, of how they’d poisoned him just enough to make him wish he would die, but not enough to actually kill him.
“Joylyn, I’m fine. Why do you want to talk about this?”
“Because I should know what happened to you. What if you’d died? What if the last thing I ever said to you was that I didn’t want to see you anymore? I thought you were just ignoring me, and now I find out you were in Colombia and kidnapped and I never knew.”
“Maybe if you’d bothered to talk to me, this wouldn’t be such a surprise. I showed up every damned weekend for months before taking the first assignment. When I got back, I kept showing up. Every weekend, Joylyn. Until you graduated from high school. What the hell?”
She stared at him, wide-eyed. “You’ve never sworn at me before.”
“You’ve never poked at the open wound before.” He sighed. “I’m sorry. I won’t swear at you again.”
“It’s okay. I probably deserve it.”
He leaned toward her. “Tell me what happened. Please. I want to know. Why did you turn your back on me? I want to say it was just some teenage thing, but I know it wasn’t. I can’t think of a single thing I did that was worthy of that kind of rejection. Just tell me.”
She lowered her gaze before looking at him again. “It was Sandy.”
“My ex-wife? What does she have to do with anything?”
Sandy had never been thrilled to have a stepdaughter, he thought, then reminded himself it wasn’t the stepdaughter she’d objected to as much as Garrick’s devotion to Joylyn. That was what had pissed off Sandy.
“When you two split up, she came to see me.” She bit her lower lip. “She said you’d thrown her out because you’d gotten tired of her. She said you’d never really loved me and that she wanted me to prepare myself because I was next. She said you couldn’t wait for me to grow up so you could be done with me.”
“What?” he roared, coming to his feet.
Joylyn stared at him without speaking. Probably for the best, he thought, pacing the length of the kitchen, looking for something to throw through the window.
How could she? That bitch. Only the word wasn’t strong enough and he couldn’t think of one bad enough. How could she have done that? Who would have done that to an impressionable kid?
He returned to the table and sank back in his chair, then stretched out his arms and took Joylyn’s hands in his.
“I love you,” he said, doing his best to keep his voice calm. “Joylyn, I have always loved you. Do you believe me?”
She hesitated before nodding.
“Good. Now look into my eyes so you can see I’m telling the truth. I did not dump Sandy. She left me because she hated everything about our life. She made that very clear. She was angry that I wouldn’t move to a different city or find another job. She wanted me to sell insurance or some such nonsense.”
“You’d be really bad at that.”
“I probably would. Salespeople have skills I don’t begin to understand. Anyway, I came home one day and she was moving out. She had a whole list of reasons.”
“Was I one of them?”
Now it was his turn to pause. He weighed the consequences of lying, only to realize he had to be completely honest. “Yes.”
“She never liked me.”
“I think the person she didn’t like was me, kid.”
One corner of Joylyn’s mouth turned up. “That might be true.”
He squeezed her hands. “I never wanted to stop seeing you. I didn’t look forward to you growing up and moving on. If it were up to me, I would have kept you nine forever.”
“Why nine?”
“It was a good age.”
She smiled. “Dad, I couldn’t be nine my whole life.”
“You didn’t even try.”
She laughed, then started to cry. She pulled her hands free and wiped her cheeks. “Sorry. I’m one blubbering emotion these days.”
“It’s okay. I want you to believe me. I’ll give you the phone number of some of my