Operation Reunion. Justine Davis

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СКАЧАТЬ down—bombed—over Scotland in 1988.”

      Kayla gasped. “I remember my parents talking about that, on the anniversary of it, when I was little. They were horrified, all those innocent people. They thought it was one of the worst things that would ever happen.”

      “I wish they’d been right,” Hayley said quietly.

      The unmentioned memory, of the even more hideous attack that had happened thirteen years later hung between them for a moment.

      “That was, in essence, the reason our foundation exists. When they turned the man who did it loose, the injustice of it, when those men in back rooms who had never suffered the loss made that decision, Quinn made one of his own.”

      “And started the Foxworth Foundation?”

      Hayley nodded. Kayla understood.

      “September 11 was one of the reasons we moved here,” Kayla said. “My parents wanted to be out of the city. My mother couldn’t even bear to look at a skyscraper, and my dad would stare at every jet that flew overhead until it was out of sight.”

      She stopped abruptly, the old, sad irony battering at her. She heard a bark from outside and wondered vaguely if it was Cutter.

      “And two years later, they were dead anyway.”

      Hayley’s words would have seemed cold, harsh even, had they not been spoken in such a gentle voice. And if they hadn’t been exactly the words Kayla had been thinking herself.

      She tried to pull herself together. Everything seemed so much closer to the surface than it had been for a while. It was like that whenever a note came, but she had to admit this was more. Because this time she was dealing with it without Dane’s help, without his steadying presence, without his unwavering strength bolstering her.

      “Yes. They were.”

      “What happened to you? At sixteen, you were too young to be on your own,” Hayley said.

      “My dad’s sister happened, bless her. She took me in until I went off to college. Aunt Fay never had kids of her own, couldn’t, but she loved me. She did her best, we got along great, she was fun and smart and the best thing that could have happened to me, under the circumstances.”

      “Dane,” Hayley said.

      “He was already in college by then. I—”

      “No. I meant…” She gestured toward the door to the meeting room. Kayla turned.

      He was here.

       Chapter 6

      Quinn, who had come into the room right behind Dane, signaled to Hayley and they left them alone to talk. It was, oddly, Cutter who seemed most reluctant to go. The dog, who had arrived with Quinn, lingered in the doorway, looking from Kayla to Dane as if he didn’t want to leave them alone.

      Maybe he thinks we’ll start fighting, Kayla thought with a sigh.

      But when Dane crossed the room and sat in the chair Hayley had vacated, she realized that, although he seemed tense, he wasn’t angry. She could read his mood almost as well as her own, sometimes better, and he wasn’t angry. Because he’d given up? Had he let all the anger go when he’d walked away?

      “I checked them out,” he said abruptly. “From what I could find, they seem to be who they say they are.”

      Kayla went still. If he no longer cared at all, surely he wouldn’t have bothered, right? She didn’t ask, mainly because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. She didn’t know why he was here, and she didn’t want to ask that either. Instead, she explained what Hayley had told her about the founding of Foxworth.

      “So Quinn was a victim,” Dane said.

      She heard the musing note in his voice and understood; it was hard to picture today’s strong, tough Quinn as any kind of victim.

      “He was only ten,” Kayla said. “And Hayley’s father was a police officer who was killed when she was twelve.”

      He drew back slightly. “Is that why you trusted them both so quickly? You felt connected because of all that?”

      “I didn’t know all that then. But I knew they understood.”

      “And I don’t.”

      “I didn’t say that. I’ve never said that.”

      “But I’m lucky, right?” He was starting to sound confrontational. “I’m not a member of the club. I’m the only one here not damaged by tragedy.”

      She winced at the oblique reference to her counseling group. She’d called it Collateral Damage because that’s what they were. Just as wounded as the actual victims, yet still up and walking around. She’d thought of Walking Wounded, but that didn’t make the point she so strongly believed in—that the perpetrators didn’t care who else they hurt. In war, it was an expected part of the grim business. But for civilians, it was the ugliest of side effects.

      “Believe me, it’s a club you don’t want any part of.” She took in a quick breath. “Besides, I always thought you’d been damaged by mine. Because you loved me.”

      As quickly as that, his demeanor changed. He let out a long, compressed breath.

      “All right,” he said. “If these people are as good as they say, maybe they can do something.”

      Her heart leaped in her chest, and hope sparked to renewed life.

      “Dane!”

      He reached across the table and took her hands in his. The touch, the contact, made joy well up inside her, as if some vital part of her had been restored.

      “Listen to me, Kayla. I’m willing to give them a chance. Everything I’ve found indicates they are really good at what they do.”

      “Yes,” she answered, tightening her fingers around his, feeling an elemental fear that if she didn’t hang on, he would somehow vanish again. “Yes, I think they are. Maybe even the best. Hayley showed me some of their case records. No names, but—”

      “Then if they can’t find Chad, it’s likely nobody can.”

      She saw suddenly where he was going. And knew his next words would require a decision from her. A difficult one. But nothing could be more difficult than his absence from her life the past two weeks.

      “Yes,” she finally said.

      “Then if they can’t, if this comes to nothing, will you quit making this the sole purpose of your life?”

      She drew in a deep breath. she’d had a brief taste of life without him, and it had been immediately clear that it was worse, much worse, than life without knowing how and where Chad was. And she knew Dane, knew she’d pushed him to the edge, and that he was here now at all was a testament to the power of what they’d built together from the day he’d climbed up that tree to sit beside her. He’d understood her even then, that what she’d wanted, СКАЧАТЬ