told me, years later, that when they found mom and dad, they were in each other's arms. They'd taken shelter at a friend's but the house had collapsed on them all. Mom and dad were the only ones killed."
"Sugar, I'm so sorry." Chase hugged her tight, and Brian kissed her hand.
"So Chloe raised you?"
"You'd think, but no. She wasn't yet old enough, you see. We both got put into separate foster homes. The family I got placed with moved about a month later. Chloe had been in touch with our parents' lawyer, but he didn't seem very interested in helping us out any.
"They didn't even let us say good-bye to each other before they moved me. I was having some emotional issues - I guess I'd wake up at night screaming."
"Who wouldn't? Darlin', you were just a baby, really."
Carrie couldn't prevent the quick grin. Trust a man to think a eleven-year-old girl was a baby. But really, hadn't she been just exactly that? She'd grown up sheltered and na?ve, raised by parents in an openly loving home, parents who would never have harmed her in any way.
"Well, my new family didn't care for the idea that the pretty little girl they had gotten might have problems, so I got sent to another foster home, and then another and another.
"Chloe tried to find me, but she was trying, too, to go to school and work part-time. She needed to be ready, she said, so that she could assume responsibility for me."
"Didn't your parents leave an estate for the two of you?"
Carrie shrugged. "We didn't know it at the time, but my dad's business partner managed to grab hold of the whole thing. An investigation was launched, but they never did find the man."
"No wonder you keep to yourself, sugar. Can't say that I blame you one bit."
She could end it here, this telling of her past. She could end it and they would consider it enough.
But she couldn't. She needed to be honest - and lying by omission was still lying.
"That's not the reason."
She felt the tension in both men. She couldn't quit now. She'd never get here again if she did.
"The last family I moved in with - when I was thirteen - was the Lockwood family. They had a nice house in a nice neighborhood in Abilene. The father was a teacher, the mother a nurse. They had a son, George, who was sixteen, and, to all appearances a bit of a nerd."
"Children's services moved you into a home with a teenaged boy?"
Carrie shrugged. "Every other prospective family had shied away from taking me. I guess I was a little difficult - I don't remember all that well, but I do recall being very angry all the time."
"Jesus Christ."
Brian's epithet eased her emotions, some. No question these two cowboys were on her side, looking at things from her perspective.
God, she wished she'd met them earlier.
"I stopped being a problem when I lived with the Lockwoods. I thought, if I behaved, then George wouldn't hurt me anymore."
"What did he do to you, sugar?"
"The first night I had my nightmare, I awoke to find him in the bed with me, telling me to hush. At first I thought, 'How nice, he's not screaming at me to shut up.' And then he raped me.
"He told me that if I told anyone, he'd kill me. And then he would find my sister and kill her, too. He told me that I was his gift from God, and that it was my duty to let him do whatever he wanted to do to me."
"Dear God, sweetheart." Chase scooped her up and held her on his lap. She saw the pain in his face. Looking at Brian, who'd moved closer, scooped her legs onto his lap, and stroked her, she could see his expression mirrored his brother's.
"How did you get out of there, darlin'?"
"When I was fifteen, my sister found me. She contacted me at school. And because by then, neither of us trusted 'the system,' we made a quick plan. The next day when I left for school, I crammed as many clothes as I could into my backpack and I left - not for school, but to join my sister, who had a car, and a job, in Dallas."
"Did you report that son of a bitch to the cops?" Chase asked.
Carrie could feel him shaking, and knew that his anger was on her behalf. She sat up and looked him straight in the