Page 20 of Falcon’s Forever

Her voice breaks and I move before I think better of it, one step, and she stiffens, and I stop dead and feel like the worst kind of idiot. The distance between us is maybe two feet. It feels like miles.

"I looked," I say.

"What?"

"I looked for you for four months; every lead, every call, and every rumor I could chase down. Then somebody handed me security footage that made it look like you walked out on your own. I believed it. So I stopped looking because I thought you didn't want to be found."

Cara swallows hard, and her gaze drops to the notebook clutched against her chest. “I left a note.”

“I know,” I tell her.

Her fingers tighten around the cover. “I didn’t write it.”

My blood goes cold. Some part of me already knew that. I think I’ve known since the day we discovered she’d been taken, but hearing her say it aloud does something to me that I don’t have words for.

Cara lifts her eyes to mine. “What did it say?”

“You don’t remember?” I ask.

“No.” She shakes her head slowly.

Of course she doesn’t. I rub a hand over my face, trying to block out the memory of finding it. “Just, ‘I’m sorry.’”

Cara’s eyes close, and pain tightens her features. “That sounds like them. They liked making us responsible. They’d make us apologize for the things they did. For being difficult. For crying. For getting sick.”

Rage rises so quickly that it narrows my vision. I force it down before it can take control, because this isn’t about what I want to do to men who are already dead. This is about her.

Cara opens her eyes and searches my face. “They wanted you to think I chose to leave.”

“They did a good job,” I admit, my voice rougher than I intended.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice cracks, and she presses the notebook more firmly against her chest.

"No." It comes out harder than I mean it and she flinches, so I lower my voice fast. "No. You don't apologize for that. Ever. That's on them."

A tear slips down her cheek. My hand almost lifts to wipe it away and I stop myself, because it's her choice, always her choice, and she wipes it away herself.

"Thank you," she says, and neither of us knows where to go from there.

Gravel crunches behind me. I turn. Zip's coming across the yard with a radio clipped to his belt, and he slows the second he sees what he's walked into.

"Sorry," he says, not sorry at all.

"What?" I ask.

"Vulture wants you. Something about the south camera feed. Condor found another vehicle."

That wipes the moment clean off the porch. "Same SUV?"

"Maybe."

Cara's face tightens. "Stay inside tonight," I tell her.

She folds her arms across her chest, which isn’t unexpected after everything she said in Church. “I live here.”

“I know you do,” I tell her.

“So don’t order me around,” she warns.