Page 76 of React

And with that she was gone from the room off to work on her personal checklist while I wandered helplessly around the room, watching the clock in the corner count later and later until time ran out for Lake. Avery began to pace in time with me, staying next to me but not stopping me.

“Hey, baby bro?” Her voice was light but also gleeful. I stopped and looked at her ready to rant about how she could be so cheery right now, but the light in her eyes was welcome as it warmed my insides a single degree. I couldn’t speak, so I simply raised my eyebrow at her and waited. “You said you love her.”

I let out a long breath and nodded, looking to the floor. Suddenly that light in her eye felt more like a single bulb in a noir interrogation room than the sun. “I did say that. I do love her. I thought I hated her at first,” I chuckled and abruptly stopped when Fitz snorted from his makeshift workstation.

“You were the world's biggest asshole to her.” He said, confirming that I’d struggled with my feelings in the beginning.

“She obliterated the calm I’d worked hard for,” I said through gritted teeth, trying to ignore his input.

“That’s not calm, Decker, that’s like, toxic compartmentalizing,” Avery said, attempting to inject softness into her words and failing. Badly.

“Thanks.”

“It’s true, though! I can already tell how this all went with her, and I didn’t even have to be there. You thought she was a smokeshow and deservedly so. I may be straight but she could bend a ruler if you know what I mean.” Unfortunately I did. At my lip curl of disgust at the idea of my sister trying to put the moves on my woman, she waved a hand dismissively. “I digress! You wanted her, she was a client. You don’t do well with feelings so you attempted to shove it down and ignore it and it blew up in your face until you finally admitted what you wanted and took control.”

“Did you talk to Kasey about all of this already?”

My question had us both pausing to frown down at the floor. We still weren’t able to see him, but he hadn’t had any other issues and the nurses were still watching him. Still, the idea of not having my friend there to crack jokes and keep us all on even footing was a torture I’d never known I’d have to endure. Once we’d come home and started the company, Kasey rarely left his batcave for field work. The amount of information each team needed at any given time would have had him too distracted to work out of the office anyway. So he’d never been in danger like Cabot or Fitz who were gone more often than not. In all the morbid scenarios my war-altered brain had conjured up, it was never Kasey lying in a hospital bed clinging to life.

“No, I just know you. Rigid and by the book since you could read it.” She gripped my hand in hers and gave it a squeeze. “It might make you an annoying little brother, but it makes you a good man.”

“Need a fucking tissue?” Cabot’s question broke through the moment, and I turned to face him and tell him to fuck off, but he wasn’t even looking at us. He was looking down at the man behind a laptop who had been watching our exchange and was wiping away stray tears.

Avery and I exchanged confused looks before we both began to laugh. And fuck even that small bout of laughter felt good as it broke up the constant string of fear, anger, and doubt. But it was gone all too soon and we had to go back to the gloom hanging in the air.

A small knock on the door came and John Landow strode into the room followed by Scout and the small blonde, Ellie. Scout and Ellie went to where Scout had been parked earlier and John strode to me with a hand outstretched. “Mullins, please tell me you have information on where Robert and Lake are.”

I took his hand and gave it a firm shake. “We know who has them, but we need to know more about him to hopefully figure out where he might have gone.”

“Who?”

“Dominic Parker.”

John took two shaky steps back, eyes bulging in surprise and horror. “He wouldn’t.”

“He did.” This response came from Scout. “He’s Lake’s half-brother.”

“That’s insane, Robert would have told me if he had a son!”

“Robert isn’t his father,” I said, trying to get this shit back on track.

The truth in my words seemed to unfold too slowly for John Landow as he shook his head slowly staring at the wall across the room. He was lost in thought and I was hoping he was replaying every encounter with Parker so I could get something new out of him. “I never did like that boy,” he said finally.

“Explain,” I urged, a little harshly. Scout cleared her throat in warning but I ignored her.

“He was very involved in conversations regarding Lake. I didn’t like that he was so quick to tattle on everything she did. I know she wasn’t the easiest child after Caroline passed, but it was like he had it out for her. It eventually seemed to ease up over the years, but he was still far too personally involved in Robert’s life.

At one point I wondered if he was in love with Robert. Nothing overt but the obsession with being at his beck and call. Well, I’ve never had an assistant like that. Then I wondered if he might have been in love with Lake.”

At this, everyone stopped working and looked at John Landow. He seemed to puff up at the silence, waiting for a fight and not knowing who was going to swing first. He was just as on edge as the rest of the room.

“Why did you think that?” I asked as calmly as possible, but judging by the step back John took from me, it was a deadly calm that gave me away completely.

“He used to bring women to events that seemed to resemble Lake. Not a look-alike, but if you were scanning the room, you’d think ‘wow what’s Lake doing here and why is she talking to Dominic’. Then you’d look closer and see they didn’t look too much alike.”

“Is it possible they resembled Caroline?” Fitz asked the question while holding up his iPad to face the screen toward the room. My mind immediately went to Lake, but when I focused on the picture more I saw what he’d meant. It was a picture of a young Caroline, probably even before her secret love child, standing on brick steps and posing for the camera. Her dress was dated but skimpy for the times, the mischievous glint in her eye had been passed down to her daughter along with the thick chocolate brown hair that cascaded down her shoulders. While their build had been similar, Lake was much fuller in the breasts and ass and I had to look away from the screen. Thinking about the specific parts of Lake that I’d kissed and stroked would only make me crazy faster.

“Yes.” John’s one word answer snapped me out of my pity party and he was nodding at the screen when I looked back at him. “I’d forgotten what a looker Caroline was in the day and watching Lake grow up with so much time since her mother’s passing… I never made the connection.”