Gone Too Far (Devlin & Falco #2) - Debra Webb Page 0,109

truth. She was a cop. Working undercover. Her real name was Sadie Cross, and she was carrying his child. She loved him, but she had a job to do, and his father was evil. What he was doing was evil.

Eddie had moved his head slowly from side to side and told her the truth. “I cannot save you.”

The weapon had been lying on his desk. It hadn’t been a pen as she’d thought; it was a gun. The two of them were in his office alone. She had a chance—slim, but still a chance.

Sadie grabbed the gun and fired without hesitating, without thinking.

He stumbled backward. Fell to the floor. Blood spreading across his chest.

She ran.

But the guards caught her before she could escape.

The girl was there . . . the one wearing the mask. She seemed bigger, older. Sadie must be mixing up the Isabella from nearly five years ago with the Alice now.

“Shh-shhh. You must be quiet.”

It was dark. Where had the day gone? Where was Eddie’s body? Sadie was confused.

“Take my hand.”

Sadie stared at the hand. Not the hand of a child. The wrinkled, gnarled hand of someone old.

“Take my hand,” the voice demanded, “and you will be invisible.”

Sadie didn’t understand, but she took the old woman’s hand. She fell into the darkness. Deeper and deeper. There was nothing but darkness. Then the voices came. His voice. Demanding that she be kept alive. And hers . . . the woman she’d heard in the conference call. The one who seemed to be making the decisions. Then Sadie had awakened under the overpass on Eighteenth.

How had she gotten there?

Sadie didn’t know the female voice she’d heard.

But she knew his voice.

It was not Carlos or Eddie.

It was her father. She’d heard him demanding that she be allowed to live.

Sadie’s eyes flew open. She blinked. Stared out the windshield of her borrowed car—the piss-yellow one.

The taste in her mouth was of vomit and something else. A drug she had tasted before.

Pain split her skull.

She touched the back of her head. Where the hell was she?

Sadie looked around. A frown pulled at her face. Made her head hurt worse. She was home. The borrowed car parked in the alley next to her place. How the hell had she gotten here?

She stared at the steering wheel, the keys . . . her hands.

Oh yeah, she’d obviously been drugged and driven here. But by who?

Her last memory was of being at the Cortez house. She had seen the girl in the mask.

Was it the girl? Alice/Isabella?

Couldn’t have been the old woman. Hell, she was probably dead by now. She’d been ancient nearly five years ago when she was serving as the healer at the Osorio compound. Eddie had said she’d been with the family since before he was born.

Eddie was dead.

Sadie had killed him.

She blinked, held perfectly still. The rest of the dream rushed in on her.

She’d heard her father’s voice.

That wasn’t possible. She must have confused the timing. She had awakened in the hospital, and he had been there. But he hadn’t been with her before that. Not under the overpass and certainly not in Mexico.

Had he?

Cross Residence

Eagle Wood Court

Birmingham, 8:30 a.m.

Sadie beat her fist against the door. She winced at the pain the sound made in her skull.

The door opened, and her father stood there, dressed as he always was when he was off duty—in khakis and a button-down shirt. She didn’t have to look to know he would be wearing his favorite leather loafers.

This was the dad side of him. Not the hard-ass agent.

Good. This was the Mason Cross she wanted.

“Sadie, what a pleasant surprise. Come in. I’ve been thinking about you.” He said these things as if they hadn’t been estranged for nearly a year.

“No.” She started to shake her head but thought better of it. She probably had a concussion, maybe two, considering how hard she’d hit her head when she’d wrecked her car. “I have a question for you.”

He frowned now. Likely taking in her wrinkled clothes, unbrushed hair. No doubt he smelled the sweat and vomit emanating from her every pore.

“Are you all right? You don’t look well.”

That was his fatherly way of saying she looked like hell.

“You were in Mexico after I killed Eduardo Osorio.”

He stared at her, his face, his eyes abruptly shuttered. “You should come inside.”

“No. We’ll talk right here.” She tried to moisten her lips, but her mouth was too dry and bitter—probably whatever drug they had used on her. “You were there.