Wicked Torture (Stark World 3)

"Why go back?" I ask. "If she was desperate to see Noah, why leave now that she's found him?"

Dallas frowns, but doesn't answer. And before I can press the question, Noah looks at him, his expression tortured. "All that time with Deliverance searching for victims, and I never found her."

"Noah, don't." Dallas's voice is firm. "You joined Deliverance long after Darla disappeared. She was never one of our cases. And even if you would sometimes look, follow a lead, whatever, the fact is you didn't have all the information."

"I knew where she went missing. I knew where Diana's body was found." His voice is as hard as stone. As if every syllable is painful.

"You were looking for a woman alone," Dallas says with the unnaturally stiff posture of someone delivering a devastating blow. "And you were expecting to find a path to a body, not to a survivor."

"Alone," Noah repeats, his voice wary. "What do you mean?"

"She says she has a son. She says he's yours."

Noah stumbles, and I hold my hand out to steady him, feeling horribly unstable myself. Like I've been thrown back ten years, and it's happening all over again.

"Mine? That's impossible."

Dallas draws a breath. "He's almost nine, Noah. If Darla was newly pregnant when she was kidnapped, then it's possible. The boy could be yours."

I'm numb as we go back to the hotel room to pack. We both are. We move like zombies through the room, gathering our things.

The air is cloying, as if it holds even more horrible surprises, and although I try to talk to Noah, he's lost in silence. When he does speak, it's only in monosyllables.

"Noah, please." I'm sitting on the edge of the bed, my small carry-on bag already packed. "You should talk about it. You'll feel better."

"Will I?" he snaps. "Talking will make me feel better about leaving my pregnant wife behind in Mexico? About not looking for her hard enough when I had a

ll the resources at my disposal to do that?"

I cringe, not only from the force of his words, but from the pain within them. But it's the most words he's spoken since we arrived in the room, and I try to hold onto that fact as a mini-victory.

"It's not your fault," I say. But the look he gives me makes perfectly clear that he doesn't agree with that at all.

"What are you going to do?" I ask.

"Make it better." His voice is laced with a fierce determination, and I'm struck by a sudden, horrible memory. I have to make it right, he'd said to me ten years ago. I have to make it better.

"Noah," I begin, but I can't go on. My throat is too full of tears and the past is pushing painfully against me. I force myself to breathe, then try again, hoping desperately that I'm not looking down the path that we're about to travel. One we walked already, ten years ago.

Finally, I manage to form one simple question. "How?"

"I don't know," he says. "Whatever it takes to make it right."

I swallow, then nod numbly, my worst fears confirmed. I've lived this nightmare before, and I know where it's going. I blink back tears, hoping that I'm wrong. Hoping that everything we've rebuilt hasn't just crumbled into dust around us.

"We should go," I say.

He picks up his bag and swings the strap over his arm. For the first time, his eyes seem clear as he looks at me. "Kiki, oh, God, Kiki. I'm so sorry."

He moves closer, then brushes away the tears that are trailing down my cheek. "But I need to go do this alone."

22

"I'm fine," I lie, as I pull Celia's snuggly purple blanket up around my shoulders. "You didn't have to put me up tonight. The hotel would have been fine."

"Fine?" she repeats. "Do you know what a completely lame word that is? Because seriously, sweetie, unless you define fine by whether or not you're on this earth and breathing, you are not fine at all."

I grimace. "Well, that's something at least."