The light dawned in his eyes. “You’re talking about the night that the whole city practically flooded? And the lightning was nonstop? And the tornados were everywhere?”
“Yes. That’s the one.”
“It was awful.”
“And the next day the neighborhood was in shambles.”
He nodded. “I was a little shook when I learned the tornado had swept through our neighborhood and missed our houses by mere feet.”
“Same here. Anyway, during the storm, Nathan was terrified and had come to join me. It didn’t take him long to fall asleep, and just as I started to go back to sleep, there was a break in the noise. I heard somebody in the house making a racket. So I went looking for the source. My mother, who liked her nightly three or four glasses of wine, had apparently decided to drink the whole bottle and passed out cold. I knew my father was supposed to be coming home and figured it was him. The closer I got to his office, the more noise I heard. Dad and someone else were fighting.”
Caden’s brows drew together over the bridge of his nose. “Fighting? Who?”
“I don’t know. Dad subdued the guy and I was going to call 911, but he told me not to. He said he’d take care of everything. I was stunned. I thought my dad was more like Clark Kent, but that night, he was Superman.”
Caden huffed a small laugh. “Bet that was a bit of a shock.”
“I can’t even really describe how stunned I was. I slipped out of his office but stayed close enough in case he needed help. In the end, they were both speaking Russian.”
“You know what they said?”
“Not at the time, but I managed to figure it out after a couple of weeks.”
He raised a brow. “Really? How’d you manage that?”
“I wrote down what I heard phonetically and asked a friend at school—who was a Russian exchange student—to translate for me. My father said, ‘How did you find me?’ The other guy said, ‘You’re too arrogant for your own good.’”
Caden blinked at her. “You remembered what was said . . . phonetically?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “I have a good memory.”
“I can relate.” He paused. “Okay, so what did he mean by that?”
She shrugged. “When I asked my dad about it later, he got really agitated and shut me down. Even after he took me into his confidence about his real job, there were things he never told me. One of those things was the details related to that night and who the guy was that broke in. And trust me, I’ve thought about it. I’ve finally decided that on one of my father’s overseas trips, he didn’t cover his tracks well enough and someone followed him home.”
“What happened to the man?”
“I don’t know.” She paused. “I was good friends with the resource officer’s daughter at my school. She and I shared several classes. I told her about what happened, in spite of my dad asking me not to.” She held up a finger. “Keep in mind, I didn’t know my dad’s involvement with the CIA at that point and I was scared to death the guy would come back when he got out on bail or whatever. She told her dad and he asked me about it the next day. I told him that my dad had turned the guy over to the authorities and had told me not to worry about it any longer.”
“But?”
“But I don’t think he did.”
“Why not?”
“Because when my father wouldn’t talk to me, I called the police station a few days later and asked about him. I was told no one had been brought in with that description. And definitely no civilian had brought anyone in with a story about capturing an intruder in their home. And, last, no one with a Russian accent.”
“I see. What do you think happened to the guy?”
“I think my dad either let him go for whatever reason or . . .”
“Or . . .”
“Or he killed him.”
Caden hid his internal flinch. “Killed him? You mean killed him—killed him? When did you come to that conclusion?”
“Not until after I figured out what my dad did for a living.”
“Yeah, you haven’t really said how you discovered that.”
“I asked him the next day how he learned to fight like that. He made up some stupid story about taking karate as a kid and it all came back to him when he needed it.” She scoffed. “But I knew anyone who fought like that practiced on a regular basis.” She rubbed a hand over her eyes. “And even at the age of fifteen, I was really good with a computer. I followed the digital footprints my dad thought he’d erased and came across some interesting files. But I also followed him whenever he left the house.”
“Followed him?”
She nodded. “He did most of his work overseas, but he had some kind of meeting one afternoon, and I followed him to a little café not too far from our house. I took pictures of him handing over a manila envelope in exchange for something else. I hacked into the local police department’s facial recognition software and ran the guy’s face. He was on the FBI’s most wanted list, with terrorist ties in Russia and China. When I took the information to my father, I thought he was going to either kill me or have a coronary. He did neither, fortunately. Instead, we had a long talk about what he did and how I had to keep my mouth shut if I didn’t want him to wind up dead.”
Caden let out a low breath. “You hacked int—” He stared. “And you were fifteen?”
“Yes.” She shrugged. “I had skills and a vivid imagination. Not necessarily a good combination. Looking back now, I can’t believe I wasn’t caught. But I wasn’t. Probably would be today, thanks to all of the technology improvements, but back then . . .” She offered him a small shrug. “Anyway, I was fascinated with law enforcement and was always reading true crime stories, CIA and FBI thrillers.”
“I remember you always with a nose in a book,” Caden said.
“It was a good tool to use to shield the fact that I was watching you.”
He blinked. “What?”
“When I was trying to figure out how to flirt with you.” She grinned.
He really had been a clueless dork.
“So,” she said, pulling his scrambled brain back on topic, “when my mind went where it did, turning my beloved fiction stories into real life, I let it. Although, to be honest, I was surprised that it wound up being true. Fiction come to life. Now, how often does that happen?”
“Like . . . never?”
“Well. At least once. For me anyway. The night we had our little talk, before he came clean, my dad tried to tell me he was undercover FBI. I didn’t buy it because of what I’d already seen on his computer. I flat out asked him if he was CIA. He finally admitted it was true.” She gave him a tight smile. “He showed me some very graphic pictures of former officers who’d been discovered. Needless to say, I understood the gravity of the situation and swore I’d never tell a soul—or press him about what he was doing when he was gone. And I didn’t. I wasn’t going to be the reason my father wound up in the hands of people who’d see him dead.” She ran a hand over her hair and shrugged. “He said he’d made the difficult choice to keep his true profession from his family because he didn’t want to burden us with his job. He told me something I’ll never forget. He said, ‘When you speak falsely because of an ignorance not of your own making, it is very different than having to tell a lie every day of your life. Especially when you’re a truthful person in general.’” She shrugged. “He was right. Having to lie to my friends, my family, everyone, was hard. I wound up hating talking about my dad, because I didn’t want to lie to the people I loved.”