Chapter 3
Hanna left feeling no better for her conversation with her uncle but there was little to be done at this point. She didn’t expect him to question her. He’d wanted to pin something on Roarke since the beginning and, even with their brief partnership in the failed attempt to lure Isabelle into custody, that sentiment didn’t seem to have changed. Yet, here she was, having to explain herself to him when she practically gift wrapped a giant tip for him.
Her phone still had no calls or messages from Roarke and she tossed it face-down on the passenger seat. She was done waiting for him as well. The men her life seemed to be causing her a lot more harm than anything else these days and she needed a long vacation from it all. Getting out of Texas when this was over, with her child, would be a smart move. She was a good cop, she could find a job at any station in the country. Maybe they’d move somewhere more tropical, like Florida, or actually experience winters up in the northeast. The idea of having the world open to her like that took a bit of the weight off her chest.
As she moved along, however, she noticed the sight in her rearview had not changed for several blocks, despite quite a few turns she made along her way. A black pickup truck was behind her with tinted windows, following at a fairly close pace. She knew drivers in Texas could be assholes, but she wasn’t about to chalk it up to a jerk with something to prove. She knew the town too well for that, she also knew the games Hell Hussars liked to play on the roads. They’d booked plenty of them for getting a little too rough, running marked vehicles off the road.
She gave it a few more blocks, taking experimentally loops and turns before she decided this truck was, in fact, following her. She led it out of downtown, to the more rural parts of the town where she could pull off and confront whoever was behind the steering wheel, trying to scare her. It wasn’t exactly smart to go where witnesses were scarce, but she wasn’t about to have it out with a gang member in the middle of the town square.
She pulled over and the truck did the same, parking only inches from her rear bumper. She got out of the car, keeping it unlocked in case she needed to reach for the gun in her back trunk. She stepped across the gravel as the door to the truck opened and out swung Isabelle, hopping down from the truck that was far too big for her, and walking over to Hanna like they were getting together for lunch.
“I don’t think we’ve actually sat down and talked,” Isabelle said.
“I’m not going to consider that a shame.”
Isabelle smiled. “Finally, someone intelligent I can talk to. Roarke and his friends are such meat-heads, I swear it’s impossible to have a conversation with them above a fifth grade reading level.”
If she was trying to get a rise out of Hanna by insulting Roarke, it wasn’t going to work. She was willing to agree with just about any insult someone could throw at him right now, even from Isabelle.
“You came out of a doctor’s office. The OB/GYN,” Isabelle said.
“Yearly checkup,” she said with a shrug. Isabelle seemed to accept it but narrowed her eyes, nonetheless.
“You knew I was following you,” she said.
“Yes. I’m not blind. You should learn to be a bit more subtle.”
“I wanted your attention, so clearly I was doing something right.”
They stood there, facing each other, hands across their chests and each taking something of a power stance as they looked at each other. Isabelle was a child, a dangerous child, but still barely out of her teen years. Psychologically, she was highly likely to make a mistake in the next ten minutes. And she had an advantage. Isabelle didn’t know she was a cop, she didn’t know she was dealing with someone trained in combat. It was more than just gang shootouts and drive-bys. She’d spent years in martial arts training and months in the academy. She trained every week at the station. Isabelle had no idea who Laura was and who she was really dealing with. Hanna didn’t intend to let that out until the right moment. It would be her trump card.
“So, what’s so important that you wanted to pretend you were going to run me off the road to talk about?” Hanna asked.
“I’ll get to that in a second,” she said. “First, I’m wondering why you haven’t tried to call my brother or one of his goons. I know they’ve been running themselves all over town following my bread crumb trail.”
“Because that’s the obvious thing to do, and unlike them, I’m not going to play into your hands.”
“If you don’t know my plan, how can you know whether you’re playing into anything I want from you or not?”
“Are we going to talk in riddles or are you actually going to say something worthwhile?”
“Fair enough.”
Isabelle took a few steps closer and Hanna didn’t flinch. She knew this was a test as well. She wasn’t going to give Isabelle any satisfaction or any reason to think she might have an upper hand. She stayed put, even when Isabelle moved within inches of her space, staring right into her eyes like they were a telescope into something deeper. But Hanna wouldn’t be moved, Isabelle wouldn't find what she was looking for there.
“I wanted to explain myself to someone,” she said. “And you seemed the most sensible with Roarke on the rampage and Amber turned against me.”
“I was never on your side in the first place,” Hanna said.
“No, but you’re neutral, based on your actions so far. So I’ll talk to you,” she said.
Hanna frowned but didn’t give up any more than that. She needed Isabelle to keep talking, she knew that much. And the gun was just inches away if she needed it. She wouldn’t be incredibly fast getting to it. But Isabelle was small. She doubted that she matched her mental chess game with any real physical skills. It would be easy to distract her, knock her to the side, make her tumble and reach for the gun.
But Hanna had no desire to hurt Isabelle. Roarke wanted vengeance, he wanted to hurt her. If he were in this position--if Isabelle ever let him get this close--he’d have tried to break her neck by now. She wasn’t going to be that person. She wasn’t going to give into the horrible emotions that were forcing Roarke to act the way he was. Someone had to be the good person. And she wasn’t going to hurt someone else while a child was growing inside her, being nurtured, hoping for a bright future.
“What do you want to say?” Hanna asked.
She allowed her guard to visibly come down. She wanted Isabelle to feel safe. Or as safe as she could feel. If she was telling the truth, if she felt safe, they might actually get somewhere.
“I want someone to know why I was doing what I’m doing,” she said.
“Because you’re nuts?”
“Very funny.”
She stepped closer to Hanna who tried not to let her hackles come back up too obviously. Trust was key here. She didn’t trust Isabelle, not in the slightest, but Isabelle needed to believe there was no reason that Hanna was going to do anything rash. And people who were paranoid were the most likely to do just that.
“I know you’re judging me, you’ve been doing it since day one,” she said. “All of you. You think you know so much about me. It was such a shock right, when it happened? When Roarke found out what he was really dealing with? Because he assumed so much about me. His head is so empty, it was easy.”
Hanna couldn’t exactly argue with that.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like growing up the way I did? I wasn’t just born into a gang, I was born into a dynasty,” she said. “My grandfather, my father, my brother. I’d never inherit the throne, as it were, but so much was expected of me. No. Not even expected of me, forced on me. By the time I could talk and walk I knew no other life except to do what my brother said, for the good of the gang.”
Hanna watched the wall come down, her facade was cracking the more her rant went on. It did take away from the fear Hanna had been feeling, after all the scariest thing about this girl was her Cheshire grin and the way she made it seem like she knew everything there was possibly to know about any given situation. She was a young girl again, quite suddenly. The twenty-one year old from the party was still there, but saddled with a new weight that Hanna couldn’t help but pity.
Maybe that was part of her game too, though.
“Did you know I wanted to work at the movie theatre? All my friends were working there and I could see movies for free, stories about people going off and doing wonderful, crazy things,” she said. “But no. The second I was legally old enough to work, Roarke shoved me behind the front desk of the auto shop and then when I turned eighteen he shoved me behind that bar. All my days were spent making me money, flirting with the right people to get him the deals he wanted. Did he tell you that part? I never did anything with these sleaze-balls but he basically wanted me to encourage these guys to mentally fuck me so he could get the drugs and guns he needed into town.”
Hanna felt a shiver and thought again of the child inside her that she felt more and more sure was going to be a girl. A girl whose father was willing to very nearly sell his own sister into some sort of pseudo sex trade to get what he wanted. He wasn’t kidnapping anyone, but hadn’t he? Isabelle had no choice, she was born into a specific type of destiny that no one wanted to tell her she could escape from. He kidnapped her at birth and forced her to play his games for very little reward on her part. Would he do that to his own child? If it was a boy, would he shove a glock in his hand the second he started walking and tell him no one would suspect a child and teaching him to make kills?
She didn’t want to side with Isabelle. She was too afraid of everything lurking under the surface here to truly be on her side, but it was impossible not to be afraid of the man she thought she knew. It was her own fault, really. She’d known him for a matter of months, how could she expect to get at the soul of a person in that time with rose colored glasses and post sex glow fogging up her vision?
“I know, that if I were you, I wouldn’t want to bring up a child in this same environment.”
Hanna’s blood went from a shiver to completely running cold. Her spine became ramrod straight and she tried not to gasp because Isabelle’s smirk was back, her momentary look into the humanity of this girl was over. She felt watched, she felt like she needed to shower. She felt like she needed to do whatever was possible to get as far away as she could.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said steadily. “If this chat is over, I need to go.”
Hanna turned, not waiting to get permission from her. She walked towards her car but felt a cold, hard hand come to grasp her arm and pull back, slightly. She wanted to turn around and strike her, all her training and years of work were telling her to do it, to move in on Isabelle like a snake. But she stopped herself. There was a child inside her. She had to fight those instincts to fight, replace them with instincts to protect.
“You should have stayed far away from Roarke,” Isabelle very nearly whispered.
She knew. There was no way she could. She had seen any of them in person in weeks. But somehow she knew or thought she knew and that was just as bad because she was getting the reactions out of Hanna that wanted and needed.
“Thanks for the advice,” Hanna said, pulling back her arm with a hard jerk, breaking Isabelle’s grip a little too expertly.
“I know you’ve had your cop friend following me,” she said. “I’ve been doing research on him, too. You know.” Hanna swallowed. “James. Nice name, respectable looking guy. I also know he had a daughter. An adopted daughter, according to the paperwork. And when I took a good hard look at her I could help but notice how incredibly familiar she seemed to look…”
Hanna turned to face her now, looking her right in the eye. She wouldn’t let this child scare her. Isabelle thought she was tough only because they were giving her that illusion. Hanna had the choice not be scared of her, not to be unable to meet her eyes.
“I hope the little girl won’t miss her too much…”
“What are you talking about?”
She was slipping. She was giving in. She was doing what she said she wouldn’t do, giving Isabelle power where she said she wouldn’t.
“I had him taken care of. If you hurry you might be able to see him before he gets carted off to the hospital,” she said. “I left him out as a gift in front of the Hell Hussars’ bar. They probably found him by now, hopefully called the proper authorities.”
Hanna couldn’t stop it. It was a rage she couldn’t hold back or push away. She launched herself at Isabelle but the girl as quicker, expecting it. She moved out of the way and pinned Hanna to the car with force. Hanna panicked, remembering what she carried and needed to protect. She forced Isabelle off her. She was bigger, she was stronger, and she pushed back against her, throwing her off her and turning to get back in the car.
She didn’t say a word, didn’t think to look back. She just slammed the door of the car and drove and drove. She headed off in the direction of the bar, not caring as she powered through stop signs and street lights and ignored the honks of other cars or the possibility of cops following after her. She swerved and turned and heard the screech of her own tires.
If James was hurt, if James was dead, it would be her fault. She was the one who got him involved, she was the one who got far too close to Roarke and let her judgement get cloudy. She was the one who was losing sight of that small, scared girl who took comfort in the only real father she’d ever known. And now she got him killed, endangered her own unborn child, and chose the worst possible man as the father of her baby.