Page 92 of When He Lies
“With some fantastic assistance from me,” she murmured.
His fingers pressed to the warmth of her skin. “I never intended for you to get hurt. Having a bounty put on your head was not on my agenda.”
“Having you jump in on my kidnapping was not on my agenda, either,” she returned softly. “But then again, getting kidnapped in the first place was not on my to-do list. So much for those best-laid plans, huh?”
He had so many questions about her. Ryan had discovered that when it came to Simone, he wanted to know everything. “Why do you do it?” he asked her. “Why…retrieve?” That was the word she liked. Retrieve. Not…steal.
“Because people shouldn’t lose the things that matter to them.”
I don’t want to lose you.
“I lost everything when I was a kid.”
He hated her pain.
“Not just my parents, my family, but the life I’d had. The house. Even the damn cat.”
Yeah, okay, at the first opportunity, he was finding the black cat that she’d liked in London. The cat would be going home with her.
“My toys. My clothes. Everything that was me, everything that was mine, it was all gone in an instant. Guess you could just call what I do now some serious overcompensation. I return things to others because I lost everything myself.” A yawn. “Or maybe I’ve just got some seriously sticky fingers, who knows? Not gonna lie and say there is no thrill involved. I get a rush.”
“Adrenaline.” Oh, yes, he could certainly understand that.
“I was afraid to feel anything for years. Afraid of more pain coming. So the adrenaline surges I got from my retrieval missions made me feel alive again.”
“What’s the first thing you retrieved?”
A sliver of laughter. “My buddy Logan lost a baseball card when we were kids.”
Logan. The name slid through his mind and an alarm bell rang. A loud one.
“We were both in foster care back in those days.” Slightly slurred, as sleep pulled at her.
He shouldn’t be questioning her when she was so tired. She was revealing things that she might not normally say. “You don’t have to tell me more,” Ryan heard himself say.
“I want to tell you everything.”
His heart ached.
“You get little bags when you’re in foster care.” Not so tired. Not so slurred. “Your whole life fits in those bags. My bag was mostly donated clothes. A scarf. A photo of my parents.” Her hand slid over his chest. “Logan had this old baseball card. It wasn’t valuable. Not like it was from some famous player. It was a card he’d gotten at a minor league game. He’d gone with his dad before his whole world imploded, too. The thing was dog-eared to hell and back. Wrinkled and bent from the times he’d carried it everywhere with him.”
He knew where this story was going. “Someone took the card. It wasn’t lost. It was stolen, wasn’t it?”
“Logan was sad. Couldn’t have that.” Her fingers began to make small circles on his chest. “So I got it back for him. Don’t know what was better at the time, the rush I got from actually snagging the card and slipping away unnoticed or the way I felt when Logan smiled.”
Logan. Another piece of her puzzle. A piece that could prove highly dangerous to the mission. “You and this Logan sound like you were close.” Sure, yes, jealousy would claw at him. But he held it back.
“I guess he’s the only family I have. Don’t worry…” A sigh. “We never fucked.”
His hold on her tightened. “Fantastic to know.”
“Like I said, he’s family so that would have just been…gross.”
A smile tugged at his lips. “Logan is gross. Got it.”
Sleepy laughter. “Family isn’t just blood.”
Her words pierced through him. Ryan found that he had to swallow—twice—before he could speak. “I know. Couldn’t agree more.” His lips brushed against her temple. “My brother Nash is adopted, and I don’t care what anyone else says—he is family. To his core. I’d kill for that guy in a heartbeat.”
