Mimics of Rune 02- Surrender (8 page)

She stepped around him. “I have you?” Even as she said it, the harshness of her tone sent her back a foot. “I didn’t mean that, Cael.” Lily buried her face into her hands.

Charley, James and Cael had become her family—had saved her from herself. The woman, the mother, the inhumane person who’d sold her to the government for experimentation—Lily hoped never to see her, but to have held from her that he’d found them broke the trust she’d had in Cael.

“Oh, my goodness.” Her head popped up. “She started changing, I’ll guess, about a year ago. She’s my real niece. That means Max is my real nephew. They’re real, Cael, not fantasy. I feel it.”

“Feel what?”

Lily crossed her arms over her chest and returned to the window. “A line. A tug. A something when I’m around Max. Maybe that’s why. Because he’s
actually
a relation.” She spoke to the ocean, leaving Cael behind her.

The sensation that he stood within touching distance hit her before his arms wrapped around her, and his chin rested on the top of her head. “I didn’t tell you because you weren’t ready. You never asked again, but if you had, I’d have come clean. I just never expected them to steal you from me.”

“Steal me?” A small giggle bubbled up. Standing in Cael’s arms, she went on to recap the events as she knew them. “I need to find her. And Leigh.” Waves crashed as she took comfort in Cael’s arms, warming her throughout. “I—I have to deal with this. Right?”

“No, you don’t. Ever. I can get you away from here.”

She shook her head. “I think I need to … you know … at least know of them. Not … the woman, though. Not her.” Cael would know she meant her mother.

“Blood relatives aren’t always the best family.”

She spun in Cael’s arms, laying her head against his chest.
Friends.
They’d been friends for so long, yet the sound of his heart beating beneath her ear sent tingles to her center. “If Angela ended up in Rune, do you think she knows about me? Do you think she was looking for … me?”

“She could have been, but why, then, are you back here without her—your—daughter-niece?”

Lily shook her head. “I don’t know. Leigh could have been at a hotel or something when a case of mistaken identity brought me here instead of Angela. I don’t know what the PI Tony hired told him except that she was spotted in Rune, and Tony wasn’t able to get in touch with her, so he offered a reward for her return.”

“Like a missing ring or dog? That’s cold—”

“No, Cael.” When her hand snaked up his chest, the muscles under his hunter green shirt jumped. “He loves her with more than his heart and soul. I can feel it when he talks to her and about their separation. They’ve been apart for two months now, and on this last attempt to find a solution for their daughter, she went poof. She quit communicating with him about three weeks ago. Maybe a month.”

“Right after Charley and Wyatt—”

“Could this be related to them getting together?” Lily asked.

Cael’s hands rubbed up and down her back. “No idea.”

“I want to find her and the girl. I need to help them.”

He lowered until he met her gaze straight on. “Do you really look like her?”

Lily nodded. “It’s uncanny. We could be twins, though I’m twenty-seven years older than her. Do you think Angela is a Mimic?”

“No. Otherwise, she’d have recognized the signs from going through it herself. She’d have known how to deal with it.”

“Right. True.” Lily kept her hand against Cael. “Who then? How?”

Cael pursed his lips. “There is one other player in California who knows what you are.”

Searing pain erupted within Lily’s heart like a knife slicing through. “My mother.”

Cael’s lips touched Lily’s brow. “I’ll deal with that part. You just take care … of the kid.”

“If she told Angela about Romania, do you think Angela took Leigh there and left her? Why would she do that again? It’s not—” Her breath caught as tears slipped over the rim of her eyes.

Cael pulled Lily in tight. “We don’t know anything, yet. Lily, I’m really, really sorry. This isn’t how I wanted you to find out about any of this.”

Air gushed from her. He understood. He always did. “I know.” She relaxed, breathing in the scent of Cael, thankful she had him.
As a friend.
“Will you help me find Leigh?”

His fingertip ran down her spine. “Of course.”

“I can’t leave Tony and Max.”

Cael held Lily at arm’s length. “You want to keep mimicking Angela until we can return her? But … Lil … next week is your birthday, and you can’t—”

She tugged herself back into his fold. “If we can figure out where Leigh and Angela are before next week, all will be okay. I know I’m not very good …”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” His arms squeezed around her. “You can definitely do it, but … what if we don’t find her? Are you going to hide for a day when your hair pales and thins, when your eyes turn that little bit of yellowy-green, and when the freckle you hate so much on your cheek comes back?” His finger slid down the side of her face, right over the spot she removed after every forced birthday change back to her true self.

“You found me in a few hours. Won’t you be able to find her in, maybe, a day?”

He brought her hands up to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “Princess, you gave me the easiest tracking mechanism of all. You texted me from a phone that is probably still sitting inside this house. If she’s been avoiding Tony, there’s a reason. If she loves him the way you say, she’s probably protecting someone … maybe even Tony himself … or Max. If she’s not dead, she wants to be hidden for a reason. Charley—”

Lily gave a quick head shake. “She’s focused on the wedding.”
And so should I be.

“Charley can do some searching with Wyatt and James back home. We’ll ask Maggie to mimic Angela, and you and I—”

“But there’s a kid involved and Maggie’s …
Maggie
.” Panic flowed through Lily. She bounced to let it out.

“She’s been with Chase for three weeks. I think she’ll have learned a thing or two about being a mom. And from the best kid on earth. You say so yourself, you know.”

“But she’s not … nice.”

Cael smirked. “This’ll be a good gig—a good test of her patience.”

“I’m not leaving Tony. Get Maggie here, Cael, but I’m not putting him through more. Or Max. They need … some normalcy.”

He lowered to her eye level again. “You have to prepare yourself for the other possibility. The what if something
has
happened to her answer. You either put them through hell now or in a little while.”

Tears threatened as Lily considered Cael’s logic.
What if something did happen to my sister, and I’ve just given her husband more hope than I should have.
She gasped. “What if I stay?”

Cael cocked his head. “You’d … you’d stay? Is he a match for you?” His tone vibrated with deadly seriousness.

A screech had Lily spinning as Tony’s Mercedes bumped its way up the drive.

“You have to go. I’ll tell him you were just giving me an update.”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

“He’s not going to be happy about housing a guy who pointed a gun at him.”

The muscles in Cael’s jaw bunched. “I’m not leaving.”

7

“Angela?” Tony’s voice carried from downstairs.

“Mommy?” Tiny footsteps raced up the first floor stairs and down the hall to the second stairs. On the second floor, they scrambled across the room above, echoing from the area to the upper right of where Cael stood.

“Mommy?”

At the second call out, heavier feet started from downstairs, too, stampeding up as the tiny ones raced back across above.

“Angela!”

Cael nodded to Lily. If ever she needed to play a role, he understood it to be then. She’d never live with herself if she couldn’t give the little boy something back. Her own history, her own sorrows told Cael that—despite the pain it inflicted on his heart. He could imagine her as a mother, but he never pictured her as the wife of another man.

“In here!” She shuffled to the door and out into the hall. “Sorry! I was just—still tending to business stuff.”

Max wrapped his arms around Lily’s thighs. Tony stood at her side, running a hand through his hair. He jerked up as he and Cael made eye contact. “What the hell … are you still—”

Cael held up both hands as his heart beat hard in his chest.
You better appreciate this someday, Lil.
“No harm, there, Tony. Name’s Cael Aldridge.” He stepped forward, one hand outstretched. “Just a simple misunderstanding on my part.”

Tony’s brows furrowed as his eyes darted from Lily and back to Cael, to Max and back to Cael, before landing on Lily again. “If you’re helping my wife find her sister, where is my daughter?”

Cael reached for his phone. “I don’t know anything about a daughter. My job was only to search for … someone else.” He pushed through the door, past Tony and started toward the stairs.

At the hand on his bicep, Cael spun around. He had Tony by a good three inches, twenty pounds and the ability to knock him flat with one push. He withheld.

“I want some answers, and I want them now.”

The sneer held tight to Cael’s lips, but he banked it as desperation emanated from Tony. “If you’ll give me a few minutes, I’ll make a couple calls. I work this side of the country, not the other.”

“Then why the hell did you break in my door if you’re not supposed to be following my wife?”

Cael forced himself not to clench his fists or to knock Tony to his ass. “Because I had a tip that Ms. Jenkins here arrived against her will, and since she’s my client, I have a duty to her.”

“Who tipped you?” An I-don’t-believe-a-word-you’re-saying expression claimed Tony’s face.

“No one you’d know.” With that, Cael yanked himself free and descended.

At the car, he leaned against the side, the ringing tune humming from his phone.

“Well, well, well … if it isn’t the prodigal son.” Charley laughed as she answered.

“Wyatt told you, huh?”

“Did you find her?”

“Yes.” Cael breathed in, salt water lending the air a freshness they didn’t get in Rune. “I need to tell you something …” He went into the story he’d told Lily and what Lily recounted to him. Charley’s responsive gasps grew louder and more forceful with each comment. “And this girl is missing. And there’s another kid involved here, and—”

“And you’re sure they really share the same mom? “Wyatt interrupted. “Maybe the one woman you found and Angela’s mother aren’t the same person?”

“Mimics pass the gene on only through the mother. If Leigh’s a shifter, she had to get it from her mom, who would have gotten it from her mom, et cetera,” Charley said.

“It gets worse,” Cael said. “Lily’s mimicking her sister so her husband can have his wife, and the kid can have his mom back.”

“Oh, god.” Another intake of breath. “Have you checked his birthday to make sure it doesn’t match? Because if it does, you know she’s going—”

“I know. And I’ll get to it. She’s got
the pull
, so someone’s a match for her—or it could just be the familiarity. A simpler sense of connection, perhaps. We’ll deal with that separately. Right now, we need to find the woman and the girl and return ‘em … if they’re still alive.”

“So you want to find Lily’s Mom, then?” Wyatt asked. “Is that so bad? I mean, Lily doesn’t have to tell the woman who she is—”

A soft click of a receiver preceded James’s voice. “It’s bad, Wyatt. You thought Montreal was going to give you information on human trafficking … well, Lily’s background is so far out of that league … only worse because her own mother gave her up.”

“Shit,” Wyatt said. “That’s why you guys were so secretive in Montreal.”

Cael agreed, though he didn’t say as much. “I do think having a chat with dear old mom is important. I don’t, however, think Lily should do it. She’s been through enough in her life not to go there.”
And you should have seen the horror in her eyes when she realized the connection.

“You can do it, right, Cael?” Wyatt asked.

He’d mimicked plenty of women, though not all Mimics could switch genders. “Yeah, but I think we need someone more suited to manipulation of the female variety.”

“I didn’t think James could be a girl,” Wyatt said.

“He means Maggie,” James said with a chuckle.

“You think she’ll do it?” Cael asked. He kicked at a rock on the driveway. “I think she also needs to mimic the wife, because Lily’s cover is already breaking. The ends of her hair are already back to a pale blonde, more than I’ve seen before.”

“How are you holding up?” Charley asked.

Cael stared out at the water. “I don’t need to change until my birthday. You know that. Lily’s the only—”

“I meant how are you dealing with Lily in the arms of another man?”

Cael kept his growl to himself.

“So—” Wyatt’s voice broke through as a scuffling sound whispered in the background. “Maggie. She comes back with Chase Saturday. We can fly her out that night if she agrees. By Sunday, she’ll be the replacement. Can Lily hold out for two days?”

Cael blew out a breath. “She’ll have to. If she can’t, I’ll jump in temporarily, but you guys better convince Maggie because if I have to sleep in the same room as the guy, you’re all going to pay for my torture.” A small smile broke Cael’s constant scowl.

“If anyone can convince her she’s needed, it’ll be you, James,” Wyatt said.

Wonderful. The two on opposing ends of the life-is-about-me spectrum need to talk.
The wind kicked up, blowing more salty sea air Cael’s way.

“No,” Charley said. “It’ll have to be Chase that convinces her. He asked her to stay. She did. He asked her to take him to the fun parks in Florida. She did. Everything she’s done in the last month has been for Chase. He’ll need to know what’s going on so he can both agree to let her go and convince her to do so.”

Cael turned toward the house.
Lily can’t stay here, even if she wants to. I’ll have to convince her to let Max go, no matter what.

The front door opened to Lily standing in its midst. She waved him forward.