Chapter Fifty-Five
As soon as they walked inside, Sam heard footsteps approaching.
Her heart sank like a lead weight. Garrett had actually done it. He’d double-crossed her.
Even as she pulled the Glock from the back of her jeans, she couldn’t believe it. She punched him in the arm, right where his new stitches were, then kicked him in the crotch, causing him to drop to the floor.
Take that, Magic Kingdom.
She put her foot on his neck and aimed the gun at his head.
A man and woman rushed into the room, saw Garrett, and immediately held up their hands, showing they had no weapons.
Garrett moaned. “What the hell, Sam?”
“Don’t ‘what the hell’ me, asshole. You’re the one who slept with me, then turned me over the bad guys.”
He struggled to sit up. “You’re—”
She pressed the muzzle into his scalp. “Don’t move! Don’t any of you move! I swear, I’ll shoot the first person who so much as twitches!” Okay, she sounded like a bad movie, but it wasn’t an empty threat. She was really going to do it. “Give me your damn keys.”
“I’m not giving you my keys,” he said firmly, though wincing in pain.
That stumped her for a split second. Fuck. Now what? Did she really want to shoot him?
As she tried to come up with an alternative, an older man stalked in behind her. “You slept with my daughter?” he snapped, glaring at Garrett.
Wait. What?
She whipped around so she could aim at any one of them. She was so confused.
Garrett looked up at her and rolled his eyes. “Just shoot me now. It’ll be easier that way.”
Her brain took another second to process what was happening. It didn’t help. But one thing had stuck in her mind.
She aimed the Glock at the older man. “Daughter? What the hell are you talking about?”
“McKendrick? Why is Samantha holding a gun on me and my best deputy marshals? Can you do something about that, please?” The older man didn’t seem too worried about the gun she was pointing at him.
Garrett staggered to his feet. To his credit, he wasn’t holding his crotch. Maybe she’d missed.
“I will shoot you,” she warned, her voice as steady as her hand. Which was to say, not so much.
“No, you won’t,” Garrett said. “Please put the gun down. Nobody wants to hurt you.”
She backed away in case he planned to lunge for her. “Seriously, Garrett. I will shoot you if you take one more step.”
“Sam, this is my boss, Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Josiah Thorne, and these are Deputy Marshals Ryan and Larson.”
She snorted. She wasn’t about to believe a single word out of his mouth. “Don’t even try with that shit. You screwed me over, and I. Will. Shoot. You.”
“Sir?” Garrett winced as he looked at his arm. Blood was soaking the sleeve of his gray sweatshirt. “Damn it, Sam! You ripped my stitches.”
The man’s brows flickered. “Enough, already. Get control of this situation, McKendrick.”
“Me? This is all your doing, sir. I distinctly recall telling you this was not a good idea.” Garrett glanced at her, worry clear on his face. “Besides, I think she’s really going to shoot me.”
He should be worried.
The older man growled, “Good. Save me the goddamn trouble.” Then he waved at her gun. “Dane.”
“Sir?” Deputy Marshal Ryan appeared uneasy.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” The older man threw his hands in the air. “Will someone please take the goddamn gun away from her?”
Ryan was the unfortunate one who moved first. Since he was unarmed, she only shot him in the leg. He went down, and she retrained her gun on Garrett.
The man on the floor moaned. “She shot me. She goddamn shot me.” He actually sounded shocked.
Do these people not know how to listen?
Garrett put his hands up. “You know what? I do not want to get shot again. Let’s talk this out. Keep the gun. But no one here is going to hurt you. I swear it.”
“Oh, good. You swear. Because you haven’t been fucking lying to me this whole time.”
“Okay, sure. I did lie. Today. But not before today. Think about it. Why would I teach you everything you know if I just planned to turn you over to Howe’s people?”
This wasn’t the first time that particular thought had crossed her mind.
“Why wouldn’t I have turned you over the minute you were in my Jeep, or when I knocked you out with the drugs?” He glanced over his shoulder at the older man, who had started scowling fiercely. “Accidentally, with pain meds. Because you were in pain.”
“You drugged her and slept with her?” the other man demanded, clearly about to blow a gasket.
“I am so fucking dead,” Garrett muttered. He glanced at her accusingly. “Go ahead, shoot me. If you honestly believe I would betray you, after—” He shook his head. “Go on, shoot me. Right in the heart.”
The look in his eyes when he said that last part made her pause and take a giant mental step backward. He looked perfectly sincere.
What the hell was going on here? Was the older man really his boss? And had she just shot a deputy marshal?
Oh, shit.
No one had made a move toward her, threatening or otherwise. The older man was standing his ground, fuming. Deputy Marshal Ryan was moaning and muttering while the woman tended to his wound.
A wash of guilt slowly diluted Sam’s fear. Oh, God. Had her lack of trust just caused her to make a huge mistake?
“Tell me what’s going on,” she demanded of Garrett. “And I want the damn truth.”
His shoulders visibly notched down and he took a deep breath before casting the older man a reproachful look. Garrett looked back at her, and she could swear there was a hint of apology in his voice when he said, “Samantha Hutchinson, I would like to introduce you to…your father, Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Josiah Thorne.”
For a second, she froze in place, a chaos of emotions tumbling through her.
Followed by an avalanche of anger. Seriously? This was their game plan?
“My father is dead, and his name wasn’t Josiah,” she snapped. “Try again, liar.”
Garrett struck like a snake. One moment he was still rubbing his arm and breathing heavily, and the next the gun was out of her hand and she was pinned to the floor with his weight on top of her.
Instantly, he moved off her again. “Sorry. Had to do that. Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not okay! Are you crazy?” she yelled. “You are all insane!”
“Sam, let’s have a seat and discuss this. It’s family business,” the older man—Josiah Thorne—said as he held out his hand to help her up from the cold floor.
“Sir, I wouldn’t do that. You’ll want to stay back,” Garrett warned, as if she was a dangerous animal.
It was at that point, she broke. Something inside her just…broke.
Maybe it was sheer exhaustion from running for her life for months. Maybe it was the fact that the man she loved and trusted had betrayed her so badly.
Maybe it was because the other man had called her “daughter,” vividly reminding her of the happy family she had always dreamed of—and never had—as a child. And that the closest she’d ever come to it was a Christmas spent with a stranger in a borrowed house.
Whatever it was, the fight went right out of her.
She didn’t care what happened to her anymore. She had no one. What was the point?
She pushed both their hands away and stood on her own, glaring at Garrett as she followed Thorne into a glass-enclosed office. She flopped down in the chair by the desk. Garrett stayed outside the door and closed it, blocking her exit. What did it matter? She had nowhere to go.
“I have to say, I’m impressed you took down two of my best deputy marshals.” The older man smiled.
She didn’t.
She just stared at him. At his graying hair and the creases by his green eyes.
Her own eyes were green. Her mother had always told her she had her father’s eyes.
She thought about the photo that had hung in their living room. The young man with his arms wrapped around her mother. He was strong and tall. Like this man.
She glanced down at the watch he wore. It was identical to the one on her own wrist.
“Are you noticing the similarities?” he asked. His voice had gentled from the harsh orders he’d given in the other room.
“My father’s name was Samuel Hutchinson. He was killed in a car accident before I was born.”
“Sam, you also supposedly died in a car accident. Yet, here we both sit.”
“Yes, but…”
But what? The whole idea was so insane, she didn’t know what to think.
He spread his hands. “Are you not willing to entertain the possibility that I’m still alive?” He smiled.
And with that smile, her doubts faded away. His smile was the same as the one she saw when she looked in the mirror. The same one on her face in every school photo and selfie.
It was her smile. And this man…
Could he really be her father?