And yet, here she was. Mamma, for a problematic toddler with special needs. Everything was guesswork with Rachel. Tam just kept blundering forward into the dark, desperately hoping every little choice she made would work out.
And of course, there were all the vengeful, dangerous people out there who would love to grind her into paste. Daddy Novak was number one. Georg Luksch was a close second on that list, though he wanted something other than her blood. A chill shudder of disgust racked her at the thought.
She’d been horrified to discover that he was still alive, after the Novak bloodbath. She’d been unforgivably sloppy that day, not to have killed that venomous snake while she had the chance. He’d been hauled off to prison after they patched him up, of course, but she knew how that went. No prison could hold a man with his contacts.
There were plenty of other enemies. The list was long. Tam could be run down, taken, killed, or worse at any time. She could not guarantee a safe home for Rachel, even though it hurt like hell to imagine turning away from the child now that they had bonded.
Rachel would see it as yet another abandonment. Try to explain “for your own safety” to a wigged-out, scared little three-year-old who had never been able to count on anyone in her life. See how far you got.
Still. Arrangements had to be made for Rachel. And soon. Worst-case scenario. Tam tightened her gut, and grimly forced herself to consider the various options.
She could ask one of the McCloud women or Raine to take Rachel, or at least to be her guardian, should she get herself wasted. They were the only women friends she had, if one defined friendship loosely. Or if it wasn’t friendship, it was the closest Tam had ever come to it. They all owed her. They’d all gone through the fire, having found themselves on some scumbag’s hit list at some time or other. But not due to their own arrogance or bad behavior, as was the case with Tam.
Those women weren’t fools. They knew the score. They had no problems with tenderness, either. It would be hard and exhausting for them, and their men would be unthrilled, but whatever. Expensive, too, with the surgeries that Rachel had in her future, but Tam had plenty of money socked away. Money was never going to be a problem for the kid, for the rest of her life. That, at least, was a non-issue.
Any of those women would do it. Not one of them would say no to her. She knew that in her bones.
And still, she cringed to think of asking a favor that huge. Truth to tell, she was uncomfortable dealing with women friends at all. The bother of it, the noise, the time sink. Having them in her face on a regular basis. Having them care, for some strange reason. Their questions, their concern, their laughter, their chatter, it drove her nuts. Their very femaleness grated on her, unfair though that was. Estrogen overload. She could only take so much. She was a solitary creature. Atypical, asexual, asocial. Royally screwed up, yes. She had no illusions about that, and she made no apologies for it. She was what she was, and if someone didn’t like it, tough shit for him. Or her.
Not that their men were much better than the women. The McCloud Crowd menfolk were relatively intelligent, as men went, but they were all alpha dogs to the last woof, and as such, they all had that fog of testosterone obscuring their brains. Which made them prone to the usual arrogant, posturing male bullshit, for which she had no time or patience.
And yet, there they were. Underfoot all the fucking time. She couldn’t get rid of them. They felt protective of her, of all crazy things. Nick, too, now. After the organ pirate adventure, he’d landed himself squarely on that short list of people with controlled permission to annoy the living shit out of her without getting killed for it. Maimed, maybe, but not killed.
Their efforts to be her friends were puppyish and earnest. She was charmed by it—sometimes. Amused, even, when she was in the mood. Which hadn’t been lately, with all these nightmares she’d been having. They were way too much like the stress flashbacks she’d suffered back in her younger days. Before she’d turned herself into a human icicle. Robot Bitch, her alter ego.
She wasn’t an icicle now. Particularly not when she pictured Margot, Erin, Liv or Raine parenting Rachel. A jealous, vengeful and totally disproportionate rage blazed up inside her when she pictured one of those women sweetly, gracefully, effortlessly being a better mother to Rachel than she could ever be.
Fuck
that.
It wasn’t their fault. There was nothing wrong with those women. Oh, no. That was the exact problem. Everything was right with them. Damn them to hell. She would have laughed at herself for being so silly and crazy, if she were not mortally afraid that it would start her up crying again. Only in these naked moments in the wee hours before dawn did she let herself acknowledge humiliating truths like this. She was a jealous bitch. Bitterly envious. Not of their men, God forbid. The last thing she wanted was to be bothered with their silly, pointless, attention-hungry men, although all of those women had relatively good ones—insofar as any man could be called good. That being, after all, a blatant contradiction in terms.
No, it was because their lives made sense. They were hooked into the world, they functioned well, they thrummed, they glowed. They threw out vibes of sexual fulfillment strong enough to knock a celibate like herself back on her scrawny ass at fifty meters.
And they were so unafraid of motherhood. At least the ones that were well into it, and she had no doubt it would be the same for the others when their time came—Liv, and Becca, Nick’s fiancée, soon to be wife. All of them had that feminine, motherly vibe, just like Margot and Raine and Erin.
Moo.
For them, motherhood was all joyous cuddling, spiritual fulfilment. Wallowing in bliss with a proud daddy looking on. Glowing at baby’s amazing progress and sparkling genius. Raine was almost due, and glowing like a full moon. Erin’s boy was a year old and Margot’s little redheaded girl was seven months old. Fat, uncomplicated babies, rolling on the rug, gurgling and laughing. In the top percentile for height, weight, good looks, intelligence and happiness. Tra la la.
Not like Tam’s intense, clinging Rachel with the fits of rage, the screaming nightmares, the developmental delays. Bone malformations in her ankles and hips, eye problems caused by months of confinement in artificial light with nothing to focus on farther away than a concrete wall in front of her face. The doctors were always muttering about possible brain damage from abuse, neglect and malnutrition, but Tam was privately convinced that it was bullshit. All they had to do was look Rachel in the eyes, and it was clear that the kid was as sharp as a brass tack, tracking at all levels. She was just a stubborn, hard-headed, suspicious little pissant who did not appreciate being cognitively evaluated by strangers wearing white lab coats. Tam could relate to that perfectly. The doctors just didn’t get it.
Rachel was determined to make up for every last bit of what she’d missed in love and affection, and no one could blame her, but her craving for attention made Tam feel she had the kid wrapped around her head sometimes. Rosalia helped, the sweet, stolid Brazilian lady who came in every day to provide Tam with a chunk of quiet time for work, but that precious chunk was always chipped away at each end by some daily emergency or other, if it wasn’t eaten up entirely, and in any case, it just wasn’t enough. She could barely hear herself think. God, she could barely breathe.
And even so. Even so. That kid was hers. Everyone else had failed her, but Tam would not. No fucking way. She would make it work. Tam pressed her eyes against her knees until the pressure made them ache, and still she saw that dusty trench in the ground they’d thrown her mother and her baby sister into. Irina had been two. Their faces, so pale and stiff and still. Their eyes, so wide. Dirt showering down on top of them. Tossed away like garbage.
The image was stamped on the inside of her eyelids.
Ah, God. Her least desirable memories, crashing into her like a runaway train. This was the price she had to pay for dredging up tenderness out of the depths of herself for Rachel.
She’d dreamed of revenge all her life, not tenderness. She didn’t process tenderness well. It crossed her wires, blew her circuits. It confused and rattled her. Revenge was so much more simple and comprehensible. Revenge she could wrap her highly functioning mind around and feel it start to buzz and hum and work.
She was a well-tuned revenge machine, programmed to locate and kill Drago Stengl, and put the ghosts of her past to rest. And now look at her, trying to manufacture tenderness for Rachel out of a revenge machine. It was like making cookies with a rocket launcher. Like making lemonade with grenades instead of lemons. Problematic as hell.
Rachel’s shrill, teakettle shriek suddenly sounded, and Tam sprang up like she was on springs and bolted for the bedroom. The kid always freaked out when she woke in the dark and found herself alone.
She slid under the covers and curled up around the rigid little body. After she had soothed the child back to sleep, she nuzzled Rachel’s neck, inhaling the fragrance of no-tangles shampoo. Feeling the magic happen. The tension, easing inside her. That soft, hot place, blooming open. So sweet. She couldn’t resist. She was strung out.
Now that the dream images were easing off, her habitual obstinacy was rearing right up to take its place. She was glad. That was much more comfortable.
Hell with it. Rachel might not have a normal mom, or a normal life, but she’d have pure screaming hell on wheels to protect her if anyone ever tried to hurt her again. That was worth something. That counted. It had to count.
So Rachel was damaged. Big fucking deal. So were they all. She was also tough, and strong. Tam would try everything money could buy to help her. Anything that might give her back some small measure of what those murdering pieces of shit had stolen from her.
Rachel was not so damaged that she should be tossed like garbage in a hole. Buried with indifference and bureaucratic bullshit. Rationalizations about points of diminishing returns. Poor allocation of resources. Black holes.
Fuck
that. Rachel was not so damaged as that. And even if she was, fuck anyone who didn’t want to waste his or her precious time and energy on black holes and damaged goods, anyway. Fuck them all.
Tam snuggled the child and inhaled the scent of her hair as if it were pure oxygen in a vacuum. Rachel murmured in her sleep, and grabbed a hank of Tam’s long hair in her damp little fist.
She thought of Novak, Georg, all the rest. She thought of the prickle on her neck. Reptile brain, warning her she was being stalked.
The resolve burned itself into Tam’s mind like a brand.
Just try and take her away from me. Go ahead, try. Watch who dies, and how fast.
Budapest, Hungary
“Are you keeping him under strict surveillance, András? Your men should not take their eyes off him for a second. Vajda is a highly trained secret agent. He can melt into thin air before you know it. Who do you have watching him? When did they last report?”
András sighed, inwardly, folded his massive arms over his barrel chest, and carefully modulated his voice. It would not do to display impatience when mafiya boss Gabor Novak used that fretful, querulous tone. “Bede and Gálas reported to me exactly six minutes ago,” he repeated. “He is at the Országos Traumatólogiai Intézet, and he has not moved from the old man’s bedside, except to piss, for three straight days. Csobán hacked into the patient database, and it tells us that Imre Daroczy is due to be discharged from the hospital at midday. We can make our move this evening, when they are back at Daroczy’s apartment, if you like.”
“If I like?” Novak repeated. “If…I…
like
? What do you mean, if I like?” Novak turned his poisonous green gaze upon his second in command, purplish lips drawing back from long, yellowed teeth like some fanged beast. “You think this is a matter of liking, András? You think this is a fucking
whim
?”
András schooled his face to utter impassivity. “No, boss. Not at all,” he soothed. “Of course, we will act as soon as possible, but the Országos is too public a place to abduct them. We must be patient. We must wait until they—”
“Patient? Don’t talk to me about patience! He told me she was dead!” Daddy Novak spat the words out. “Georg told me that treacherous snake Tamara Steele choked to death on her own blood the day Kurt was killed. He lied to me! Why did he lie, András? Why?”
The gazes of the other men standing around the table shifted, darted, uncertain where to land. The boss had been dangerously unpredictable since his son’s untimely death a few years ago. People died without warning when he used that tone of voice.
The intercom buzzed, and András leaned over and punched it, intensely grateful for the diversion. “Yes?” he barked.
“It is Jakab Lajtos,” the sentry said. “Georg Luksch sent him.”
“I told Georg to come himself! Not to send one of his useless butt-lickers!” Novak snarled.
The sentry hesitated, nervously. “Should I, ah, tell him to go?”
“No. No. Send him in, send him in,” Novak muttered. “I want to talk to him.”
Luckless dog, András thought. It was Jakab’s shit luck to happen upon the boss in one of his moods. There would be a mess to clean up today. Not that he was complaining. Better Jakab than András. Oh, much, much better.
The door opened, and Jakab paused at the threshhold, sensing mortal danger. His polite smile faltered as his gaze darted from Novak’s wild grimace to the stony caution on the faces of the rest of the men. “Ah…Luksch sent me to see what you needed,” he said warily. “He could not come himself. He is in Odessa, attending to some problems at a munitions plant. There was a problem with the delivery of a load of—”
“Do you see this thing, Jakab? This filthy thing?” Novak stabbed a skeletal finger toward the huge teak table that dominated the room. A golden torque, displayed in a black velvet box, lay upon it.
The sentry shoved Jakab from behind. He stumbled forward into the room. “Ah…ah, I, ah—”