dispersed and headed his way. A dark-haired boy walked alongside Levi making gestures as if asking for tips on his fighting stance.
A couple of teen girls got excited when they spotted Declan.
Fuck, they probably thought he was that Captain America actor with the beard.
“I’m not him,” he called out when one of them batted their lashes. He proceeded to ignore them, until they finally gave up trying to gain his attention and got into their cars and drove off.
Jesus. That never changed.
As Levi and the boy got closer, instincts honed by his years as an Army Ranger throttled his senses into high alert. No threats of a roadside bomb or lurking terrorists were imminent, so this feeling of getting ambushed threw him off. Lightheadedness gripped him and quick bursts of breath sawed through his lungs. A panic attack? He hadn’t had one of those in a long fucking time.
Five feet away, he saw that the boy was clean shaven as opposed to his trim beard. He took in Theo’s face—its angles, his jawline, his nose, even the shape of his eyes. Declan finally realized why seeing the teenager gave him a strange feeling of déjà vu, why he kept comparing the boy to himself.
It was like staring at a mirror into the past.
In fact, Theo Cole could have been him at seventeen, and the only difference was the color of their irises. Hazel to his green.
What the fuck is going on?
“You must be Roarke,” Levi called out as ground-eating strides diminished the last few feet between them. Declan straightened from his slouch against the tree and held out his arm.
“Yeah.”
“Levi James—Levi.”
He barely acknowledged his colleague, his eyes riveted on the teenager. “You must be Theo?”
The boy gave him a chin lift.
Forcing his eyes to Levi’s, he said, “He wasn’t what I was expecting. The image on the file is different.”
“Dude! Ever heard of the internet?” Theo smirked.
“Wasn’t me who arranged the dos— the file,” Levi said.
Did Kade mislead him? Although, Declan suspected Garrison had a hand in it.
“So you’re Peter Woodward’s grandson?” Declan asked. He shoved his hands into his front pockets to refrain from grabbing the boy and demanding answers.
Levi and Theo frowned.
“Roarke, you—” his partner started.
“Didn’t you read the file?” Theo glanced at the other man. “Your back-up is messed up, Levi.”
“You’re seventeen?”
“What’s with all these stupid questions?” the teenager snapped. “Read the file. I’m not doing your job for you.”
Peter Woodward is your father as much as he was the Pope.
“You okay, man?” Levi asked, a sharpness entering his tone. He realized he wasn’t making a good first impression, but Declan was past giving a fuck.
But creeping out the teenager with his staring wasn’t going to get him any answers.
“Give me a minute.” He raised a finger and spun away from the duo.
“I’m gonna go get cleaned up at the house,” Theo muttered to Levi. “Fix this mix-up. Because this guy …?”
As a tornado of possibilities tumbled in his head, Declan imagined Theo miming the crazy circle gesture with his fingers.
At that moment, Declan wasn’t sure whether he was trapped in a dream, a nightmare, or a hallucination.
But regaining control of his equilibrium evaporated when a sedan rolled down the driveway and, before he could stop himself, he went stalking toward it to confront the driver.
“Roarke, man, what the fuck?” Levi shouted from behind him.
He reached the vehicle and yanked open the door, about to snarl his questions, but he wasn’t prepared for the full blast of magnificent brown eyes that still had the power to captivate him and render him speechless.
Gabby.
They stared at each other for an eternity.
He gritted out a brusque. “Get. Out.” His own voice sounding foreign to him.
“Dec?” His name a whisper. Disbelief etched on her pale face… disbelief and something else.
“What the fuck is going on?” Levi growled, coming up beside them.
“Stay out of this, James.”
Gabby slowly stepped out of the vehicle as if any sudden movement of hers would incense a wild animal.
She shot Levi a dazed look. “I got this.”
“Not sure you do,” Levi replied which pissed off Declan more.
“Call Spear,” Declan snapped. “Tell him no thanks for this clusterfuck he sprang on me.”
“Roarke …”
“Now!” he growled.
Levi crossed his arms. “Not until you fucking calm down and I know you’re not gonna do stupid shit.”
His lungs refused to expand with much needed oxygen, so he waited one beat, two beats, fully aware that the woman who’d haunted him for seventeen years was standing right in front of him. Seeing Theo