Page 3 of Protecting Bree
“I’m going to figure this out,” Smiley told her.
Bree snorted.
“I am,” he insisted.
“I’ve been racking my brain trying to decide what to do. Figure out how my life came to this point. With no luck. I don’t know how you can possibly find the guy who’s looking for me.”
“I have connections,” he said simply, his mind spinning with the things he needed to do. The people he needed to contact. “You have family?”
“A sister in Washington. But I don’t want to involve her. And we aren’t close,” Bree told him.
“Parents?”
“Well, I wasn’t hatched, if that’s what you’re asking,” Bree told him with a slight grin.
There it was again. Smiley was already addicted to this woman’s smiles. Because he had a feeling that, like him, she didn’t smile often. Each one was a gift. A reward. Andhe craved them like he craved the adrenaline rush he got while on a mission.
“You close to them?” he asked, returning to their discussion.
“I was. But my mom got colon cancer a few years ago and passed. My dad was hit by a drunk driver just a couple months later.”
“Shit, Bree. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, it wasn’t a good time in my life.”
Smiley figured that was a massive understatement.
“My dad used to beat the shit out of my mom while I hid under the bed in my room,” he blurted. “I should’ve done more to stop it. Stophim.” He wasn’t sure why he was telling her this, except that she was sharing painful memories, and he felt as if he needed to reciprocate.
“How old were you?”
“Six. Seven. Ten. It went on for quite a few years.”
“Smiley, you were akid. What could you have done?”
But he shook his head. He’dneverforget those mornings, finding his mom in the kitchen the next morning, making him breakfast, covered in bruises. Sometimes still bleeding…and smiling at him, pretending nothing was wrong. All while his dad was passed out on the couch, snoring loudly, still drunk from the night before.
He did his best to push the memories to the back of his mind. “I’ll make sure your sister is covered, that no one will go through her to get to you. I’m going to need as much information as you can give me. The name of your ex—that asshole who sold you—what he did, whereyouworked, friends…everything.”
Bree sighed and closed her eyes. Seeing the frown on her face made Smiley’s insides twist.
“Sometimes I can’t believe this is my life. I had a job that I didn’t love but was at least good at. A boyfriend. People I hung out with and considered friends. And now I’m homeless, on the run from a man who wants to use and abuse me in the worst ways, and wondering where I went wrong.”
“Most of the time it’s notyouwho went wrong, it’s just life. It has a way of shitting on you when you least expect it.”
Bree’s eyes opened, and Smiley could feel the weight of her stare as she asked, “Do you truly believe that?”
“Yes.”
“You need more fun in your life, Smiley.”
He snorted. “Fun? Killing terrorists is fun. Blowing up ships full of people who want nothing more than to kill innocent civilians is fun. Seeing evil people get what’s coming to them is fun.”
“Um, that’s not the kind of fun I was talking about,” she told him. “I meant…bowling nights. Picnics in the park. Lying on the sand at the beach, soaking up the sun.”
“That’s not fun. That’s torture. I hate sand,” Smiley said.
“Of course you do,” she said, laughing.
