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“I wasn’t protecting you.”

“You were protecting her by keeping me ignorant?”

Dad’s mouth tightened.

Sunshine shook her head once. “That makes absolutely no sense, Buck.”

“It made sense at the time.”

“To you.”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “To me.”

That took some of the air out of her. Not the anger. Just the fight.

Marion was still staring at Riot. “You too?”

Riot nodded.

She gave a small, disbelieving laugh with no humor in it. “Twenty years married and apparently I’m still finding out what you consider optional information.”

Riot rubbed one hand over his face. “I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, Marion.” His voice softened. “I do.”

Declan hadn’t softened. At all. “You didn’t just keep it from Hazel,” he told them.

Dad looked at him.

“You kept it from me.”

Riot’s shoulders lowered slightly.

Declan stepped closer to me without seeming to realize he’d done it.

“How did keeping that from me help me better protect her? Explain that to me.” His voice stayed low, but the drawl had gone rough around the edges. “You knew I was with her through all of it, every fucked up thing that’s been going on. I searched this house with a gun because she called me and you let me walk into it all without knowing the man who took her was free.”

Nobody interrupted.

“You knew I’d be there every time something happened. You knew I was the one she reached for when she went somewhere we couldn’t follow.” His eyes moved from Dad to Riot. “And you didn’t think I needed to know what I might actually be protecting her from?”

Riot took that without flinching.

Dad did too.

“You’re right,” Dad said.

Declan’s jaw worked.

Dad continued, “We should have told you.”

That surprised him enough to stop whatever he’d been about to say.

Riot nodded once. “That part was a bad call.”

Declan looked at his father. “A bad call?”