Secret Agent Surrender

It was their best way in, because years of trying to infiltrate Carlton’s organization had proved he wasn’t willing to work with anyone he didn’t know. This was the DEA’s way of upping the ante, because they knew Carlton had always wanted to expand his connections. The problem was, if Carlton had a personal connection to the Costrales family they didn’t know about and he asked about Marco, he’d quickly find there was no such person.

And then today’s beating would look like a party in comparison to what would happen to Marcos.

“How are Cole and Andre?” Brenna asked, bringing him back to the present. “The three of you are still family, too, I assume? Even after your biological family came into the picture?”

Was that wistfulness in her voice? Had she never found anyone to call family in all her years in the system?

He knew it happened. He’d bounced around from one foster home to the next from birth until he was seven. Then he’d landed in the foster home with Cole Walker and Andre Diaz, and for the first time in his life, he’d realized how little blood mattered. These were the brothers of his heart. Five years later, when their house had burned down, they’d been split up until each of them had turned eighteen. And now they lived within an hour of one another and saw each other all the time. The way real brothers would.

“They’re doing good. Both are getting married in the next year.” He didn’t mention their profession, because how could he explain being a drug dealer if he told her Cole was a police detective and Andre an FBI agent?

“Did they ever put you back together?” She twisted her hands together, like she knew she was getting into dangerous territory.

“You mean after you set the house on fire?”

She flushed. “I didn’t know you realized... I was young. It was stupid.”

“Why was our foster father in the back of the house with you when that fire started?” It was something he’d been wondering—and dreading finding the answer to—for months. He’d never expected to be able to ask Brenna herself.

“What?”

Brenna’s eyes widened, and she had to be wondering how he’d known that when he shouldn’t have even known she’d set the fire in the first place. At the time, all the reports on the fire had called it an accident. Only recently had he seen an unsealed juvenile record showing that Brenna had set the fire. But it had been his brother who’d remembered that neither Brenna nor their foster father had been where they should have been when the fire started.

The rest of the family had been upstairs in bed, asleep. So why had Brenna and their foster father been downstairs, in the back of the house, in his study?

“How did you know that?”

“Was he hurting you?” Marcos’s chest actually hurt as he waited for the answer.

She shook her head. “No. It was...look, he found me in his office. I’d lit the candle, and he came in and I tossed it.”

Why was he positive she was lying? “I don’t believe you.”

She looked ready to run away on those more sensible shoes. “Why not? You said you knew I’d set the fire.”

Marcos leaned back, studying her, wondering why she’d lie about the reasons for setting the fire, the reasons for his foster father being nearby, when she so easily admitted to setting it. His agent instincts were going crazy, but he wasn’t sure about what. “I meant, I didn’t believe you about why he was there.” There was way more here than he’d ever realized. “I think you owe me the truth.”

“You, Cole and Andre were reunited, right? What does it matter now? I was upset about my mom’s death. I—”

“I almost didn’t make it out of that house.” The fact was, it was amazing none of them had died in there that day.

She sucked in an audible gasp.

Those moments after he’d dived through the living-room window came back to him, Cole slamming into him, knocking him to the ground and patting out the fire that had caught the back of his pajamas. He remembered Brenna running around the side of the house a minute later, just as the ambulance doors had closed. He didn’t think she’d seen him, but it was the last memory he had of that day.

Brenna’s terrified face, their house burning to the ground behind her.

* * *

“STAY HERE!”

Her foster father’s voice rang in her ears now as clearly as if he was sitting right beside her, as clearly as if it was eighteen years ago. But back then, she couldn’t have moved if she’d tried.

She’d been dry heaving into the grass, her lungs burning from all the smoke, her eyes swollen almost shut. The fire had caught fast. She wouldn’t have made it out of there at all if he hadn’t screamed at her, then yanked her right off her feet and ran for the back door.

He’d practically flung her on the grass, then turned back, surely to return for his wife and the other foster kids in the house. But the door they’d come through had been engulfed by then. She’d watched through watery eyes as he’d tried to break a window, searched for another way in. She didn’t know how long he’d contemplated, before he took off running for the front of the house.

She’d picked herself off the ground and limped after him and relief had overtaken her. Their foster mother was clutching two of the foster kids close. Three more were huddled together closer to the house. Only—

No, it wasn’t three. It was two, with a paramedic tending to one of them.

Panic had started anew because Marcos had been missing. Then she’d seen the ambulance as it flew away from the house. She’d started screaming then, and hadn’t stopped until someone had told her over and over again that Marcos was okay.

Within hours, she’d been at the hospital herself, getting checked out, then hustled off to a new foster home. She’d never seen anyone from that house again. The truth was, she’d never expected to.

“I saw the ambulance,” she told Marcos now. “But they told me you were okay, that it was just a precaution.”

She must have looked panicked, because he got up and sat beside her, taking her hand in his. And it should have felt very, very wrong so close to Carlton’s house, after what had just happened, but instead it felt right. Her fingers curled into his.

“I’m okay. But I spent years wondering what bad luck it was that I’d finally found my family, only to have them torn away from me.”

Tears pricked the backs of her eyes. She knew exactly how that felt, only in a different order. All her life, it had just been her and her mom. They’d been more than family; they’d been best friends, the two of them against the world. And then one drunk driver, one slippery patch of road, had taken her whole life away.

“At least you got them back,” she whispered, even though she knew it was an unfair thing to say. It wasn’t his fault her mom had died. And it wasn’t his fault he believed she was to blame for splitting up him and his brothers. She’d told him as much.

“I did, eventually,” he said softly. “What about you? You never found anyone to call family after you left that house? I’d always hoped you would.”

Her hand tightened instinctively in his. She didn’t like to think about those days. They were long gone now. “No.”

“And what you were telling Carlton, about why you wouldn’t sleep with him? About your file? You want to tell me about that?”

His voice was softer, wary, like he was afraid what she might say, and she hesitated. It was in her file in the foster system, because back then, she’d been stupid enough to think that if she could just get out of that house, the next one would be okay. Maybe it would be like the one with Marcos. Maybe they’d even move her wherever they’d sent Marcos. But they hadn’t. And she’d learned to take care of herself.

She was going to shake her head, but when she glanced at him, she realized if she didn’t tell him, he’d think the worst. And somehow, even after believing she’d purposely set fire to their house and almost killed him, he still cared what had happened to her.

“The place I was sent to next, there were two older boys who lived there. One was in foster care, like me. The other was the foster parents’ son. The first night I was there, they came into my room, and they told me they owned me now.”

Marcos didn’t say anything, but his jaw tightened. “You were eleven.”

“Yeah. Not all foster homes were like the one we were in.” As she said it, she realized the irony. In his mind, she’d been the one to destroy that.

But all he said was, “I know.”

“It was bad.” She glossed through the rest of it. “They came after me, and I got lucky. And after that, I learned how to fight. That’s what you saw today.”

A shiver went through her at the memory. Those boys had been fifteen and sixteen, and much bigger than her. They’d come toward her, and she’d screamed her head off. One of them had tried to smother her with a pillow while the other yanked at her clothes. She’d expected her new foster parents to come running into the room, because she knew they were home, but they hadn’t. Luck had been on her side, though, because police officers happened to be on a traffic stop down the street and heard her screaming.

She’d told the cops what had happened, she’d told the foster care workers what had happened, and instead of looking as horrified as she’d felt, they’d looked resigned. They’d moved her to a new foster home, and the first thing she’d done was to steal a steak knife and hide it under her pillow. That year, she’d stolen money from those foster parents to pay off some older kids at school to teach her to fight.