Icing The Heart のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 71 - チャプター 80

The first memory I ever lost was of a girl holding my hand while a building burned around us.I remembered her eyes.That was the part I could not get rid of.Everything else came in pieces.Smoke crawling along the ceiling. Red lights pulsing through a corridor. Someone shouting behind a locked door. My bare feet against a floor so cold it hurt. A woman screaming for us to keep moving.Then the girl.Small.Terrified.Her fingers locked around mine.Jack.She had called me Jack.No one called me that anymore.My mother had when I was young. My father had used it exactly twice that I remembered, both times before I was old enough to understand why hearing affection from him felt more frightening than anger.But the girl had said it differently.Like she knew me.Like she had said it a hundred times before.And now that girl was standing ten feet away from me with a gun in her hand.Cruz stared at me.“What did you call me?”The house had gone silent after Voss spoke.The anchor rememb

I had imagined meeting Jaxon’s dead father before, but in none of those versions did he begin by objecting to our unborn child.For several seconds, nobody moved.Rain came through the open doorway behind Richard Kane, blown sideways by the wind and landing in dark spots across the wooden floor. Four men stood farther back in the driveway. I could see another vehicle beyond them, headlights cutting through the rain.Jaxon stood directly in front of me.Completely still.That frightened me more than if he had shouted.I knew his anger.I knew what it looked like when his jaw locked and his shoulders tightened and every word became so controlled that the control itself was a warning.This was different.His father had been dead for fifteen years.Except he wasn’t.Apparently, death had become more of a suggestion than a permanent condition for the people involved in our lives.Richard’s eyes stayed on Jaxon.“You weren’t supposed to get her pregnant.”Jaxon laughed.One short sound.The

The problem with remembering your childhood twenty-two years late was that every lie you had ever believed suddenly had somewhere to die.I stared at my father.He stared back.Around us, the house seemed to hold itself still.Amelia stood halfway up the staircase beneath the floor. Rory was beside me. Bennett and Cruz still had their weapons raised. Mara looked as though someone had reached inside her chest and pulled out a ghost.But all I could see was Richard Kane.My father.Alive.Standing twelve feet away from me while a memory I had apparently spent most of my life without continued unfolding inside my head.A door.A book in my hands.A girl sitting on the floor on the other side.My own voice.Younger.Higher.Annoyed because I could not pronounce a word.Then another memory.Rain against a car window.My father shouting at someone on the phone.My mother crying.A building I had never seen before.Except I had.I had seen it in dreams.For years.“You came looking for me.”

There were probably kinder ways to discover that a dead man had built part of his life around finding you, but the Kane family had never been particularly interested in kindness.Robert Kane stood on the stairs beneath us.Alive.Old.Smiling.And looking at me.“Still protecting the wrong child, Richard.”The words settled slowly.Then all hell broke loose.Richard raised the gun.Robert didn’t move.Bennett shouted, “Nobody fires!”Jaxon stepped in front of me.Again.Cruz aimed down the staircase.Mara grabbed Amelia and dragged her farther from the opening.Elena pulled Lila back.And I—I was getting really fucking tired of people looking at me like I was a secret somebody had misplaced.“Wrong child?”My voice cut through everything.Robert’s eyes found mine.His smile deepened.There was something deeply unpleasant about being smiled at by a man whose name had spent weeks appearing in files beside money, facilities and children who had been turned into subjects.“Rory.”Jaxon’s

Fear looked strange on Robert Kane, mostly because men like him spent fortunes making sure someone else always had to feel it first.I saw it the moment Rory said the words.“You took me.”Robert’s face changed.Barely.Anyone else might have missed it.I didn’t.His shoulders remained level. His hands stayed loose. His breathing barely changed. He didn’t step backward.But his eyes did something.They moved to the door.One glance.Less than a second.An exit calculation.I knew it because I had made the same calculation thousands of times.Robert Kane was afraid.Not of Richard.Not of Bennett’s weapon.Not of the agents surrounding him.Not even of whatever was moving beneath the house.Rory.He was afraid of Rory.“Bennett.”She looked at me.I didn’t take my eyes off Robert.“Don’t let him move.”“I wasn’t planning to.”Robert smiled.The fear disappeared behind it.Almost.Rory stood in front of him with Jaxon behind her, one hand at her waist.She looked nothing like a threat.