They had seen him pissed at others, often— But he’d never seemed to care enough about anyone that they could actually prick emotions they’d never known he had.
“That doesn’t mean you’re not trying to draw us into one of your damned operations,” Natches growled, clearly missing the fact that Cranston didn’t get pissed at them for saying no to a mission.
“Natches.” Rowdy said his name softly, warningly, his gaze locked on the former agent. “Let’s see what he has to say.”
“Why?” Dawg grunted. “He’s obviously out to cause trouble.”
“Or to alleviate some,” Cranston stated softly, the cool smile that crossed his lips sending that chill racing up Rowdy’s spine again.
Cranston stood slowly, the expression on his face hinting at not just anger, but also that inner disappointment that had Rowdy confused as hell. “Had I known this would be my reception, I would have just told you over the phone,” he stated. “Rather than believing we had been friends for the past four years.”
Rowdy’s shoulders tightened as Cranston focused his complete attention on Dawg.
Natches and Dawg had stiffened as well, the undercurrents suddenly whipping through the room finally piercing their suspicious anger.
“Told us what?” Rowdy growled.
He knew Cranston. It was too late to repair whatever insult he’d perceived. Better to just get this meeting over with and find out what the hell was going on.
“Three months ago, Homeland Security received an alert from the Louisville Office of Vital Statistics,” he stated coolly. “Someone was requesting information on Chandler Mackay’s heirs.”
Dawg stiffened further as Rowdy shot him a warning look. They needed to hear what he had to say.
“I thought you resigned from Homeland Security,” Natches reminded him mockingly.
Timothy shook his head, his expression pitying. “Son, you never officially retire from Homeland Security. One of these days you’ll figure that out.”
“I was never part of it,” Natches reminded him.
“No, but Dawg was.” He nodded to Dawg. “And because you’ll stand with him, no matter the danger, that means you’ll be there to realize it as well.”
“Whatever,” Dawg growled. “But DHS and Chandler Mackay are not one and the same. He’s dead, and his heir doesn’t give a fuck, remember?”
Rowdy’s head whipped to Dawg. Hell, Dawg hadn’t said the word “fuck” since his daughter was still crawling.
“I remember.” Cranston nodded. “But tell me, Dawg, would you turn your back on Janey if she needed you?”
“Janey is family.” Dawg came out of his chair, causing Rowdy and Natches both to stand with him, as Timothy had always said they would do.
“So are the four young girls sitting in that vehicle outside,” Cranston stated. “They’re your younger sisters. Four girls, Dawg, still in their teens with no place to go because DHS found the property your father had bought for them, and because he hadn’t changed the title over to the mother, they seized the property as well as the bank accounts their mother was using to help support the girls. They’re homeless, without resources, and Mercedes never allowed the girls to work. She wants them to get an education. Now, are you going to turn your back on them as well? Let me know if you are, so I can have DHS drive them to the nearest corner and put them and their few belongings out. There might be some room left under a bridge somewhere.”
Dawg sat down slowly, at the same time Rowdy and Natches found themselves sitting as well. Rowdy’s knees felt damned weak, and his senses in chaos. God only knew what Natches, and even more so, Dawg, were feeling themselves.
Rowdy stared at Cranston, shock warring with the resurging shame. Hell, they should have known that invitation to dinner that they had ignored a few days before—Cranston never invited a soul to dinner—was more than some ruse.
“Chandler Mackay has been dead for thirteen years.” Dawg shook his head, obviously trying to reject the information. “That can’t be possible.”
“The youngest girl is sixteen.” Cranston nodded. “Not one of them is more than one year younger than the sister born before her. When their mother lost the little boy she’d been carrying, the year your father was killed, he never returned to the Texas home he’d bought, though payments on it were sent from a Cayman account until DHS was able to shut the account down and trace the payments. Now, what do I do with them?”
Dawg shook his head.
“Fine.” Cranston nodded his head. “I’ll tell the driver to take them to Somerset and drop them off.”
He turned to leave.
“Wait.” Rowdy stepped forward, desperation and surging disbelief making it hard to think. “The Nauti Buoy is empty right now. Put them there.”
Cranston turned back, his lip curling in a disapproving sneer. “Son, their mother, Mercedes, is as proud as they come. She’s not going to just unload her daughters on a bachelor barge and consider herself lucky. If she had been that sort of mother, then I would have handled this far differently. She wants to meet you. She wants to be accepted, not pushed to the side until forced to come begging.”
There was something in Cranston’s tone that Rowdy had never heard before: an edge of bafflement as well as respect.
There weren’t many people Timothy Cranston respected.
From the corner of his eye Rowdy watched a muscle jump in Dawg’s jaw.
“How old are the girls?” Dawg finally snapped.
“The eldest girl, Eve, turned nineteen on New Year’s Day. Piper turned eighteen in February. Lyrica turned seventeen in March, and little Zoey just turned sixteen this month.” Timothy gave them all a hard look. “Hell of an age to live under a bridge, don’t you think? Ever been there, Dawg? Ever seen what it was like? What it’s going to be like for four teenage girls that I’m betting my pensions are still virgins?”
They all had. They’d had nightmares for weeks.
Timothy sighed heavily. “Their mother, Mercedes, was only fourteen when she gave birth to her first child. She would have had five children if she hadn’t lost the boy she conceived only weeks after Zoey was born. Her body was just too weak for another child. She developed an infection that forced the doctors to do a hysterectomy. She’s thirty-three years old with four girls to raise, and she’s not lazy any day of the week, but neither does she have family and only very few friends. Those friends are not in a position to help her. The only education she’s had since she was fourteen was what she’s taught herself. How do you go to college with four babies?”
Dawg was slowly shaking his head. “She was a baby herself,” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes filled with horror. “She was just a baby. Fuck me. God, she’s younger than I am.”
She was almost seven years younger than Dawg, and she had four children by his father. It was unthinkable, even knowing the depraved bastard Chandler Mackay had been.
It was all Rowdy could think. All any of them could think, he imagined.
“He raped a baby.” Dawg’s voice sounded like a wheeze.
“Not much more than.” Timothy sighed, the compassion he felt in this moment making his shoulders droop as he watched the three men, wishing he could hide this part from them. “Chandler bought her from her parents in Guatemala. She was pregnant with his child when he slipped her into Texas and procured papers for her. She knew no English, had no way of supporting herself, and she didn’t have the option of running. If she ran, he told her the police would find her, and they would then send her back to Guatemala without her babies.”
“The babies of a rapist?” Dawg whispered as he stared back at Timothy in shock. “And she stayed?”
“She loves those girls, Dawg,” Timothy assured him, the sorrow he felt at this moment more than he wanted to deal with. “She’s given everything to her daughters, and survived at less than poverty level with the funds Chandler had arranged for her to receive along with the few jobs she had working under the table. He didn’t provide her a car; he didn’t provide her a means of supporting herself. And he paid others to ensure she didn’t date, have lovers, or dare to marry. If she attempted to have a lover, he promised her, then he would take the children, have them split up and placed in foster homes, and have Mercedes sent back to Guatemala. Then he proceeded to describe to her in graphic detail a horror story of what American foster families did to the little girls given to them.” He said the last with a sneer. “You can imagine the nightmares he gave her. The one time she dared to assert her independence and attempt to acquire her GED to enable her to acquire a better job, he had her babies stolen as she slept. She was a month getting them back and they all still have nightmares of those weeks.”