Rugged Daddy

to save the only piece of family I had left, and they killed him. Right there, just—”

My gaze panned up to his, and I saw tears crest his eyes. Oh my god. This wasn’t some line to drive me away. This man was telling me the truth.

“I memorized that man’s face from the shadows, memorized the man who used that gun on my brother, and when I saw him on the street two weeks later, I snapped.”

“Did you kill him?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “But it was close enough. I got in enough licks to get my point across. They took the only ounce of family I had left besides my daughter and they destroyed it even after I’d paid off hundreds of thousands of dollars to them. They still killed him.”

“Are you in some kind of witness protection or something?” I asked.

“Or something,” he said.

“Don’t you dare get cheeky with me,” I said as I stood to my feet.

“I’m not in witness protection. A very good friend of mine works for the FBI, and when I told him what happened, his only suggestion was to lay low. Then, chatter on his end struck up about finding me a couple of months after what I’d done, so he got us new identities.”

“Holy shit.”

“I didn’t want to hide this from you anymore,” he said. “I wanted to come clean with you because—”

I whipped around to face him when he stopped. “Because why?”

“Because I think they’ve found me.”

I looked into the eyes of a man I thought I knew, a man I thought I was getting to know. But if his identity was a lie, everything I knew about him was probably a lie. When I looked at him, I found a stranger looking back at me. Andrew. Cameron. Audrey. Rebecca. It was all so insane. What did he expect me to do? What reaction was he hoping for? What reaction was I supposed to have about something like this?

“Cameron.”

“Yes?”

“That’s your name.”

“It is.”

“You didn’t go out of town to see family, did you?” I asked. I watched his face fall, and I shook my head. “Where did you go?”

“Heather, it’s—”

“Answer my damn question, Cameron.”

I clenched my fists at my side, trying to control the anger swelling in my body. His daughter was still down the hallway, and I knew there was no way in hell she could know about any of this.

My heart ached for her.

“No, I didn’t go to see family,” he said.

“Where did you go for an entire month?” I asked.

“My friend in the FBI? His name is Hudson. He came to town with the possibility that I could work with him to get Audrey’s and my life back. So I went to DC with him to talk to some agents about what really happened that night.”

“You went to testify,” I said.

“They’re trying to build a case against them, yes. I went to give my side of the story and offer help in any way I could. Resources. Money. Whatever they needed. I thought I’d come back with the ability to lead a normal life again, but things didn’t pan out like we thought. So Hudson told us to keep laying low until he had more information for us.”

“And now they’ve found you,” I said.

“That’s my assumption.”