“That bad?”
“Yes.” He kept possession of her hand when she tugged at it to pull away from him. He wasn’t going to let that happen. Her father had hurt her, not him.
“Was he going to give me to Whitney?”
“Damn it, that’s not fair.”
“They hit my mother. He would do anything for my mother. If he thought they’d hurt her, he’d give me up and never look back.” She turned toward Kadan. Lights from oncoming cars played over her face and then left her in shadow. “I know he loves me, Kadan, but it’s always been about my mother.”
“And that’s all right with you?”
“I grew up knowing that. It was normal. I don’t know what it’s like for a child that isn’t adopted, but . . .” She trailed off. He was so still. His mind was still, even when she touched it. She turned the pieces of the puzzle over and over in her brain. She was good at solving puzzles. Things clicked into place for her. And the click wasn’t what she’d expected. She shook her head in denial. “I remember being in Whitney’s laboratory. It was horrible. There was so much pain. There were other girls there and nurses. He had this little soundproof room he’d take us into. Some of the girls would have seizures and we’d all get nosebleeds. He’d just record everything, with this strange little remote smile on his face. If he frowned, you were in trouble. I even remember the day he brought me to see my parents for the first time.”
“Both of them together?” Kadan asked.
“No. Just my father. I remember the way he stared at me. He reached out to touch me and I flinched away. I was wearing gloves, but it was so hard to control impressions and they hurt my head, so I didn’t want him touching me.”
“How was he looking at you?”
There it was again, that note. A piece of the puzzle. He wanted her to see for herself, but she kept turning away from the truth. She tightened her fingers in his, wanting strength. She was asking for the truth. She was causing him distress by insisting he tell her, yet she didn’t want to see. She pulled up the memory.
She’d been so frightened. All the girls were frightened. A couple of the nurses tried to comfort them, but never around Whitney. He looked at them as if they were insects, and he didn’t want the nurses “coddling” them. A couple of the girls were outwardly defiant, and that made him harsh and cruel. Even as a child she recognized the taint of madness, even though she couldn’t really read him.
And then the girls began disappearing. Whitney would never respond when they dared ask where one of the girls had gone. When he’d taken her out of the laboratory, she’d been terrified, her imagination running wild. She didn’t know what the outside world was like and it was so huge. Enormous. The sky was frightening; the noises overwhelmed her. He’d dragged her into a room and shoved her toward a man who had been sitting quietly in an office chair.
She stumbled and looked up at the man. He was tall and fit, with white gold hair, and he turned his eyes on her and she had been afraid to move. Shock. Absolute shock registered on his face. For a moment something fluttered in her mind. Recognition? But she’d never seen him before. She thought . . . I belong. She hadn’t known what a father was before then. Now she did. She moistened her lips and glanced up at Kadan’s stone-set features. “He’s my birth father.” She continued to look up at him. “Tell me how.”
He told her then, all of it, holding on to her hand, his voice a soft, compassionate caress, his thumb stroking back and forth across the back of her hand.
She kept her head down, long hair spilling around her face so he couldn’t see her expression, but he was in her mind, trying to surround her with warmth, with love, with everything protective in him. She remained very still, even in her mind, as if she was afraid that if she moved, she’d shatter.
Baby. He breathed the endearment, tempted to pull the car over to the side of the road and hold her tight. She didn’t want him to though, he read that much. She needed time to assimilate what he’d told her.
“You’re absolutely certain?”
“He told me himself.”
“Mom doesn’t know any of this?”
“No.” He brought her hand to his chin and rubbed his jaw back and forth in an effort to comfort her.
“Good. I don’t want her to ever find out.” She looked at him then and he saw raw pain in her eyes. “Can you find out if my birth mother really is dead?”
“Whitney keeps files, and Lily has access to them using some complicated back door to a computer I don’t understand. I’ll ask her to start looking. If he has records on you, and I’ll bet any amount of money that he does, she’ll find them.”
She gripped his hand tighter. He felt her in his mind. “Did you kill him? Is that why we had to leave so fast?”
“I wanted to,” he admitted quietly, wishing he could feel remorse or shame. The man was her father. “For a minute I thought I might. But I think he’s punished himself more than I ever could. And he does love you, Tansy. He certainly loves his wife.”
“Don’t tell me he loves me. He didn’t love me.”
“It feels that way right now, baby, but when you look back over the years you had with him, you’ll know he couldn’t fake the way he treated you. He loved you.”
“But he didn’t want to risk what he had to save the rest of the girls, or to find out if my birth mother was alive or dead or even murdered by Whitney.” Her fingers fisted in his shirt. “He would have had Fredrickson turn me over to Whitney if I’d gone back.”
“He wouldn’t have had a choice. Fredrickson would have been willing to kill everyone to take you back to Whitney.”
“You wouldn’t have wanted to kill him if he had been trying to save my mother. You would have understood. It was more than that.”
He didn’t know what to say to ease her pain, and he cursed his lack of words when she needed . . . something. “I’m sorry, Tansy.”
He wished he could take her pain on himself. He would have done anything for her, but instead he could only feel helpless. “I put a pillow there between the seats so you could lie down if you wanted.” He willed her to close her eyes and rest. They had a long day ahead of them and she was worn out.
Tansy didn’t reply, but she did straighten the pillow and lie down, her head against his hip. He stroked little caresses over her hair while he drove through the night. She didn’t sleep for a long time. He had been afraid she’d cry, but when she didn’t, it felt worse to him.