Dirty Little Lies: A Men of Summer Novel (21 page)

“As long as she keeps that gun in place where I’m concerned.” Grace stalked to the refrigerator, shaking her head at the man and at the young woman playing adult in ways she shouldn’t be. “Hell, who knew Zack had such a complicated life? I haven’t even heard rumors of strange military types and teenagers with guns running around, protecting all his muscles like some sister with a brat complex,” she muttered to herself. “I should shoot Cord for not warning me.”

“Cord and Zack are actually a lot alike,” Lobo drawled.

Grace pulled cold cuts, mayo, and mustard from inside the fridge and carried them to the counter, where a wrapped loaf of bread sat. “Too much alike,” Grace agreed. “They should be best friends rather than casual enemies.”

She’d thought that many times over the past years. And she even suspected that at one time, they might have been—

“They were, as kids.” Lobo’s revelation had Grace freezing as her thoughts and his statement collided. She waited, drawing in a deep breath before she turned to where he was leaning against the counter several feet from her.

“I didn’t know that either,” she sighed, turning back to the food to hide the confusion she felt.

“When they were boys,” Lobo told her. “Until the night Zack’s parents were murdered. He blamed the Maddox family for a long time, and that included Cord.”

That was where the conflict began, she guessed. Another mark against her.

“I know he once believed my family was somehow responsible for it,” she breathed out roughly, regret a bitter taste in her mouth. “Is that why their friendship ended?”

Crossing his ankles as he leaned against the counter, Lobo contemplated the tips of his boots for long moments, frowning, she suspected, over what to say at that point.

Grace made her sandwich, saying nothing more and guessing the answers might be more than she wanted to hear at the moment.

“There are a lot of secrets in this area,” Lobo finally said softly. “Connections and bonds no one could imagine, and tragedies that would break even a hard man’s heart. Those secrets, though.” He paused for a moment. “They’re just as deadly now as they were when they began. Just because one doesn’t know certain parts of the past they’re part of, or their parents’ pasts, doesn’t mean it can’t endanger them.”

She slid a sandwich to Lobo, left one for Calli, then picked up her own before facing him. “I’m very well aware of that,” she said wearily, watching him closely, making herself pay attention, making herself catch those little signs that feed suspicion and pull the truth from the subconscious. “Stop beating around the bush, Lobo. It doesn’t become you.”

“That bush might save my life, though,” he admitted with a rather sexy little wink meant to distract her. “I hear you’re a smart young woman—figure it out. And stop just accepting what you’re told. Always look beyond the obvious. It might end up saving your life.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d heard such advice.

Lobo bit into his sandwich, watching closely as Calli reentered the room.

“Zack’s returning,” she informed him with none of her earlier animosity; instead, there was a little hint of remorse. Remorse and trepidation. “We need to meet him outside.”

Lobo tore off several paper towels, wrapped one around his sandwich and then another around Calli’s before nodding to Grace and leaving the room.

Calli waited until he disappeared into the other room before meeting her gaze. “I apologize for my earlier attitude.” She propped her hands on her hips and gave a frustrated sigh. “I care for Zack. I worry.”

Grace stared back at her, feeling those threads, suspicions, and connections she wished she could ignore. “Good enough.” Grace nodded. “Consider it forgotten.”

Calli nodded, too, fidgeted for a moment, then met her gaze once again. “I’ve heard a lot about your aunt Sierra,” she said somberly. “You remind me of those stories. From what I understand, she was a very good woman. A compassionate woman, but tough as hell. And so are you.”

Tears flooded Grace’s eyes before she blinked them back hastily and gave the other girl a thankful smile. “She was the best,” Grace whispered, clearing her throat. “I miss her.”

Calli nodded again, rubbed at the back of her neck, then turned and strode from the kitchen without giving voice to whatever she so longed to say. Moments later, the sound of the front door closing signaled that she and Lobo had both left.

Her uncle Vince always said her strength was in her ability to see and hear things others didn’t catch, or weren’t really on guard for. It came naturally to her. So naturally that the suspicions now beginning to form couldn’t be immediately pushed aside as coincidence.

She doubted they could ever be pushed aside as coincidence. The implications of what she’d seen and what she’d heard in the shifting tones of voice and the flash of certain emotions in both Calli’s and Lobo’s expressions bothered her far too deeply.

Could the betrayals from those she loved go so far?…

She was being used as a pawn; she’d known that all along. Now she just had to figure out why.

Just as she had to figure out how to deal with the pain of those betrayals.

chapter fifteen

Zack listened to Lobo’s report and felt a disappointment he hadn’t wanted to feel. As Lobo spoke, Zack turned to Calliope, his gaze meeting the painful, conflicting emotions in hers. The remorse and pain in her eyes weren’t going to get her out of trouble, though. He’d warned her before he ever allowed her to play a part in protecting Grace.

In the past few years, Calli had developed an animosity for Grace that made no sense, considering the fact that Calli had never been in the area until now. Her parents were at a loss for the reason why, and Calli never explained it. She had promised him it wouldn’t interfere in her job, though, and he’d believed her.

His mistake, Zack acknowledged; he wouldn’t make it again.

“She realized she was wrong, Zack,” Lobo stated, his voice low. “She made it right.”

She made it right, had she?

Lobo was always quick to defend Calli, just as he was quick to inform her when he thought she was wrong. The problem was, Lobo was beginning to develop a problem with others letting her know she was wrong.

“Don’t look at me like that, Zack,” Calli whispered, distressed as he simply stared at her. “I should have had more control—”

“Should have had more control?” he asked her carefully. “Is that all you can say, Calli? Is control all you lacked tonight? If that were true, then I wouldn’t be nearly so concerned about it.”

Her lips thinned, jaw clenching as she turned away from him and shoved her hands into her back pockets, refusing to hold his gaze. “I’m justified…” she finally protested, still refusing to look him in the eye.

“Justified?” Zack blinked down at her in shock. “Where, Calli? Where is the justification? How can you even excuse your actions?” He was mystified by her attempt to excuse her actions and blame Grace instead.

“Because I know what happened now,” she whispered painfully, finally looking up at him. “None of you wanted to tell me, but I know. I’ve known for years.”

Rubbing at the back of his neck, Zack glanced at Lobo, wondering if he knew what the hell Calli was talking about. Lobo’s answer was a flash of confusion in his gaze and a negligent shrug.

“What the fuck do you know, Calli?” Zack shook his head, wondering where he’d managed to miss important information where Grace was concerned. “What did she do?”

Tears shimmered in Calli’s eyes. It wasn’t often he was reminded of how young she was, but now he wondered if perhaps he should have fought her parents harder over the decision to let her join Lobo’s team.

“She told them where he was,” Calli hissed, surprising him once again. “That night, she told them where Dad was, Zack, and you know it. That’s how they found him and how they found your mom and dad, because of her.”

The past was a dirty fucking bitch chained to his ankle with no hope of escaping her.

“No one knows that for sure, Calli. But she was a kid,” he snapped. “A child with no knowledge of what was going on. He shouldn’t have told her, if that’s true. But none of it can be blamed on her.

Calli couldn’t even look him in the eye, but he glimpsed the tears in hers. That sheen of moisture she rarely freed, rarely acknowledged.

“She’s your sister, Calli—”

“No.” Calli turned on him, fury erupting and escaping the tenuous hold she had on it. “She’s one of them…” she bit out between clenched teeth.

“For God’s sake, so are you.” He wanted to shake her, to make her see what she was feeling wasn’t hatred or dislike or even animosity.

Confusion and fear were emotions Calli always had a hard time facing. Just as Grace did.

Calli’s arms crossed over her breasts, and she stared off into the darkness, refusing to discuss the issue further.

“Do you want me to tell you what’s going to happen when she realizes how she’s been lied to?” he asked her carefully.

He knew, Zack thought. He knew Grace and he knew this would destroy her completely. Everything she knew about the past and her father’s and his parents’ supposed deaths was a lie. Realizing that lie, realizing Ben had left her alone and escaped only to make another family, to father another daughter, would rip her soul apart.

“Come on, Zack,” Lobo protested, disgust filling his voice. “Don’t do this. Let it go for now.”

Zack flicked the other man a hard look before returning to Calli. “Answer me, Calli. Let me tell you what’s going to happen. For about five seconds, she’s going to be that five-year-old little girl who idolized her father. She’s going to stare at him with so much joy that you’ll think she’ll never give a moment’s thought to the fucking lies she’s had to eat for so many goddamned years.” He stepped closer as her chin trembled for just a second. “Then you’re going to see all that joy die at the very moment she realizes he left her. He fucking left her to a cold-assed traitor of a mother and a family living under the shadow of a killer. He left that child who sobbed inconsolably for him for months … who fell asleep on his fucking grave as she cried for her daddy…”

He remembered it. He’d been no more than a boy, a teenager who haunted the mountains when he couldn’t sleep. And that night, he’d wished he stayed in his bed.

“Stop,” she protested, her voice ragged.

“And she’s going to think, and rightfully so, he left her for his lover and the child they later had. Walked away from her when she would have willingly walked with him—”

“Enough—” She flinched, jerking away from him, one hand lifting in a gesture of finality before stalking away from him and jumping into the Jeep she and Lobo had arrived in.

“Think I haven’t tried that?” Lobo snapped furiously. “Think that’s helping, Zack? It’s not. You’re only hurting her more.”

Zack turned on him, the burning lash of fury erupting inside him. “Then you better figure out what will help, real fucking fast, Lobo,” he ordered his cousin. “Because Ben called me directly tonight. He caught wind of what the hell’s going on here. He knows everything now, and he’s on his way here, along with Calli’s mother. The past is getting ready to fuck us all up the ass, my friend, unless we find some way to fix it before the family descends on this damned place like a plague. You got me?”

Lobo watched him with dawning realization for long moments before his head jerked to the side, his gaze finding Calli. “They’ll both be hurt,” Lobo breathed out heavily.

“Exactly!” Zack snapped. “There’s no saving Grace’s heart, and I’ll be damned if I want to see Calli savaged by this because her parents refuse to explain what the hell happened. So you better find a way to talk to her, or she’ll end up hurting herself more.”

Lobo strode away from him, leaving him with Dylan and Eamon to join Calli and her anger. Zack would have much preferred Calli’s anger to what faced him once the family arrived. He had three days to tell Grace that everyone she had loved most in the world had betrayed her, lied to her, in the worst possible way.

Him included. Because he’d known for years that Benjamin Maddox was still alive and living with the lover he’d taken just before the attempt on his life, on hers, and on the child she’d carried, at the same time trying to uncover the identity of a traitor.

Lucia had been a conspirator, not a leader.

And until the head of that traitorous nest of vipers was found or Ben finally remembered the events of that year before the explosion, not Grace nor Calli, Ben or the Kin were safe. But they’d known that for years. And every step Zack had taken since he was eighteen in his own investigation had led back to the same answer.

The traitor was a Maddox.

Not an in-law.

Not a soldier.

It was someone old enough to have orchestrated Zack’s parents’ deaths, Sierra’s murder, and the attempt on Kenni, as well as the attempt on Ben.

The traitor was part of Grace’s family.

“Tech find that van yet?” Zack breathed out, his voice rough as Eamon shifted in the Jeep behind him.

“Not yet, boss,” the other man answered quietly. “It up and disappeared on them. The family’s ETA is actually forty-eight hours now, though your uncle has promised they’ll take covert protocols for another forty-eight. It’s still gonna get bad.”

Yeah, it was going to get bad, Zack admitted. There was no way to stop it, no way to soften it.

“What about your brothers?” Dylan asked as he leaned against the back of the Jeep and stared out at the night around them. “You haven’t told them yet, either. Have you?”

Zack could only shake his head. He’d have to talk to them, tell them; there was no way to keep any of it a secret now. When he did, Jazz and Slade wouldn’t hate him or desert him, but there was a chance they’d use their fists on him. Some things could only be dealt with during a good old-fashioned brawl, Jazz was prone to explain when they all ended up in a fight.

When he looked up at Grace’s bedroom balcony, he saw her then, behind the patio doors, staring down at him before stepping back, the curtain falling into place once again.

Grace wasn’t stupid. She might not be trained to strap a gun on her thigh and race into danger, but the instincts he knew she possessed were just as important. If not more so.