Page 17 of Old Secrets

I narrowed my eyes, crossed my arms, and met his stare. “I would remember an entire government entity shoving their fist directly up my ass.”

“It isn’t literal, Karma.”

“I would still remember that!”

“Karma, you’ve been handling classified information for months. You look at the clearance pages, throw them across our RV, and chitter because they annoy you.”

“That isn’t real clearance. That’s pretend clearance to make it look like I actually do something productive,” I informed him. “The amount of actual productive research accomplished before now: nil. We had to run away to Japan and China to get something done.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re not cleared.”

While foxes didn’t usually growl, humans could, and I flung in a few curses at him as well before getting up, going to the pile of paperwork, and digging through it in search of one of the clearance sheets warning we’d be slaughtered in court and elsewhere if we breached security. I located one, returned to my seat at the table we’d commandeered for our work, and reread it.

In the United States, the government had three primary types of clearances: confidential, secret, and top secret. The sheet went into the last category, which should have required a lot more verifications than we’d undergone. I could have, with a little squinting, bought into someone having given me confidential clearance on certain cases. The FBI required frequent background checks of its agents, so I could understand skipping part of the process.

“I do not remember any government entity doing a complete investigation of my person to get this, Jake.”

“As if I’d let them.”

“You let those nosy doctors,” I reminded him.

“Yes, those are doctors, not government entities. And they weren’t investigating your ass.”

“That is true.” Since I’d started gaining weight, I actually had an ass, and I liked how my jeans fit. I maintained my lean physique, but Jake’s feeding program had gotten some good results, including some extra padding where I’d been a bony mess prior to his efforts.

One day, we might be able to order pepperoni pizza without having twin meltdowns. I endured reminders of what I’d lost without gaining much in exchange. He did as well, with a bonus of having eaten so much of it he doubted he’d be able to look at another pizza for the rest of his life.

“We didn’t go through standard clearance procedures. The Inquisition handles things like that. Unlike the Normals acquiring clearance, we face death or worse for breaking our clearances. Why investigate us further than they already have done? Our loyalties have already been tested.”

I couldn’t argue with him, so I didn’t. “This would be much easier if we had a motive.”

“I know.”

“It might help if I understood why people would stoop as low as to kidnap and murder children for their ambitions.” Despite the passage of time following my ma’s attempt to kill me, I failed to comprehend the depths of her treachery and mental illness. Logically, I understood she’d harbored prejudices against anyone different from her. My skin color had been a forgivable enough sin.

My behavior, on the other hand, had not fallen in line with her expectations. I credited her with having given me a chance, unlike her son.

Mellisa had acquired the photographs of his broken body, giving me another tool necessary to fully accept everything my ma had done, none of which had been my fault. Coming to terms with having no responsibility for the madness of another would take even more time.

The therapist had done a lot of work making sure Jake and I had the time we needed to evaluate, accept, and move on from the various sources of trauma we’d faced over the years.

“Honestly, I’m wondering what had happened between your first parents being murdered and your ma taking over your care—and how she connects to the operators. Had they connected with her after London or had she been part of their group all along?” Jake wrinkled his nose. “And if she had been involved with them all along, why not kill you from the start? Why did you have more value alive?”

“Maybe they were trying to get living children to groom into their organization?”

“Your ma, for all her faults, did too good of a job of instilling ethics into you for that. My opinion, of course—but your ma didn’t behave as though she was cultivating you to become a ruthless killer.” He opened his mouth to say something but snapped his teeth together and frowned.

“She beat those tendencies out of me,” I supplied, aware of his general inability to handle the difference between his family’s playful smacks versus what I’d endured, which had gone far beyond the acceptable.

I hadn’t known that as a child, and I hadn’t clued in on it until having a few long talks with Mellisa about it.

The Thomas family pistol whipped each other, but they spoke the language of wolves, which boiled down to one part innate violence, ten parts obsessive affection, and an unfathomable need to be touchy-feely with each other. I’d gotten a hefty dose of needing touchy-feely interactions due to being a fox, and I went far beyond their displays of contained violence.

I struggled with the affection part of the equation.

That made me wonder, and I considered my husband with a frown. “Do you think she was trying to beat my general ability to be affectionate out of me? I mean, you know how much I struggle with that sort of thing. I’m more likely to kick your keys out of your hand than ask for a hug.”

“That had occurred to me, which is why I can’t dispute the possibility your ma was trying to cultivate you into becoming the kind of person this group would like. It’s possible. We might need to dig into your parents’ financials.”