kidblink83
Cadet
Author’s note: Sorry it took me so long to update. I know I was on a role for a while there. But the excellence that is Battlestar Galactica took over, and I had to get my Lee/Kara shippyness out. BTW - if anyone wants a link to that story (‘cause I’m so proud of having churned it out in one week), I’d be happy to PM it to you if you let me know.
Chapter Sixteen
Sydney stared around at the office that was her sister’s place of work. It was definitely more inviting than the cold cell she had been cooped up in for two months with barely a break. “Nice digs,” she said as Nadia entered the room and took a seat behind her desk.
Nadia shrugged. “They work for what I need.”
“Running the Covenant?”
“Carrying on my father’s life work. All things Rambaldi are my life. You can say that, just like Arvin Sloane, they‘ve consumed me.”
Sydney stared at her a moment before speaking. “You sound really sick. I wish I knew you had existed earlier.”
“That’s just another could of to be added to your list of short-fallings, Sydney.”
“If I remember correctly, you are Rambaldi yourself,” she said, changing the subject. She did not want to start a conversation on all the mistakes and screw-ups that had occurred throughout her life. “Didn’t you have some inbred subconscious scribing thing? I remember a creepy green liquid being involved.”
Nadia just shrugged again. Just like Sydney did not want to talk about her mistakes, she did not want to give her sister more ammunition to use against her than was necessary. “Let’s get down to business. I offered you your freedom yesterday.”
“In return for me handing my daughter over to you,” Sydney pointed out.
“She is the key to Rambaldi. She needs to be raised to live up to her genes.”
“So, you want my daughter to do what exactly?”
“She needs training. We might not be close, but I am her aunt by blood, Sydney. I don’t want her going into a fight unprepared.”
“I assume you’re talking about Tyler Vaughn.”
“You’ve been keeping tabs on him. You should know that his life is bound to cross with Hope’s really soon.” Nadia watched Sydney’s face well up in confusion. “You don’t know what’s happened. That is priceless. My father was right when he said that the CIA was clueless.”
“I don’t work for the CIA anymore.”
“Good point. The real question is wouldn’t you have expected more of our mother. Seems to me she’s withholding information from you. That is what happens when you have conflicting ties.” Nadia reached for the phone. “We should probably just call her, and she can explain to you what’s happening that you’ve been kept in the dark about.”
Sydney started to laugh, and Nadia’s hand froze with the receiver halfway up to her ear. She looked at Sydney inquisitively, prompting Sydney to explain what she found so funny. “Do you really think that threat is going to work? Irina would never have contact with you, Nadia.”
“I’m her daughter just as much as you are, Sydney.”
“That’s true. Maybe I phrased that wrong. She might have contact with you, but it wouldn’t involve putting her granddaughter in any danger. If she knew something about Tyler Vaughn that was going to affect Hope‘s safety, she would tell Sark or I. If she knew that you were a threat to any of the three of us, she would tell me. So, obviously our mother does not know what you have been up to.”
“Fine. Believe me or don’t. It’s your prerogative.” Nadia set the receiver back down. “But back to the business at hand. You cannot hide your daughter away from the world. She will end up meeting the Vaughn boy one day. When that happens, she has to be prepared to defend herself.”
“It’s a valid point, but not one I agree with. I made a vow years ago not to let Milo Rambaldi rule the direction my life took.”
“That is your mistake. Rambaldi was a genius. If you only listened to what he said, your life would run much more smoothly.”
“I remember a time when he predicted I would be the end of the world. How is that supposed to make my life run more smoothly?”
“Weak translation. Rambaldi never predicted the end of the world. He just predicted the presence of a powerful woman that could affect the world as a whole.”
Sydney rolled her eyes and stood up, walking over to the desk her sister sat behind. “Okay. I don’t think these negotiations are going to go well, so why don’t we just save our time? Get your thugs back in here, and they can take me back to my cell.”
“Why are you so confident still? If I can get to you, Sydney, I can easily get to your daughter. I’m just trying to give you an easy out before I forcefully take her from you. I can’t promise if I’m pushed to that extreme that all your friends will make it out alive.” Nadia smiled at her. “I’m doing this for you.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“What good is a sister if they’re not going to look out for you?”
Sydney just shook her head and looked to the door. “Are your men at the door waiting to escort me back to my cell?”
“Actually, there’s no one out there. I don’t really expect for you to leave this room until you’ve accepted my offer. You really have no other choice.”
Sydney sank back down into her chair. “You have no idea how good I am at stand-offs then. We might be here for a while.”
“I could just shoot you and get it over with,” Nadia pointed out.
“But that would only lead to your own death.”
“A point that I haven’t lost sight of. I just wanted you to know that chances are if I kill you, I would survive. I’m just as good as you are. That’s the way Rambaldi wanted things to develop. Or maybe you don’t remember his prophecy about our fight to the death.”
“I gave up on that prophecy when I searched for you for fourteen years without any success. If that fight was going to happen, it would have been done and over with by now. Face it. Your intellectual genius was wrong.”
“A quick bullet to your head right now would prove you wrong.”
There was a sudden bang on the door that called both women’s attention. “Is that how your goons knock?” Sydney asked.
“First off, the men you keep calling goons and thugs are highly trained agents of the Covenant. They could kill you with one hand.”
“I seemed to get the best of them every single time I got bored and decided to escape.”
“And by ‘got the best’ do you mean they kept you from escaping?”
“Escaping was never really my goal. I was just trying to fish out the weaknesses.” There was a second bang on the door. “Are you going to answer that?”
Nadia shook her head. “That’s not any of my agents. So, no, I think I’ll just let it be. See if whoever wants to get in is good enough to work around my security locks.”
As soon as she said that, there was a faint click of the lock mechanism turning. This time when there was a third loud bang, the door flew open.
“Hi, honey. I’m home,” Sark said, smirking at both of Irina’s daughters. “Did you miss me?”
“Hello, Julian,” Nadia said, nodding at him.
“Did I miss something? Have you two met before?” Sydney asked.
“Not formerly,” Nadia explained, still not moving from her seat. Obviously Sark’s presence didn’t alarm her in any way. “Your husband and I have met throughout the years on some of his assignments. The first time was over fifteen years ago, I think. Why were you working with the Argentine government, Julian?”
“I don’t recall.” He turned to Sydney. “Are you ready to go?”
“Don’t bother,” Nadia said, waving her hand at him. “My men should be here within twenty seconds to make sure you don’t make it more than ten feet out of this office.”
“You have a lot of faith in your men, don’t you?”
“I train the best to be the best.”
Sark looked down at his watch. “They have about ten seconds left.”
“They’ll be here.” Nadia smiled as an alarm started to ring throughout the building.
“Alarms don’t mean anything,” Sark informed her. “I still don’t see any men. Five seconds.”
The trio stared at each other as the five seconds passed by. “No one,” Sydney said, shaking her head at her sister. “Looks like you aren’t as good as you thought.”
Nadia nodded towards the opening doorway where one man stood, his bulk taking up the entire doorway.
“One guy?” Sark said, practically laughing in her face. “You expect us to be stopped by one man?”
“Hey! I know this guy!” Sydney cried. “Thug #2! How are you doing? Do you think your boss lady will let you banter with me while I kick your ass?”
She didn’t wait for a reply before punching the man squarely in the nose. He didn’t flinch nor did he move, but she really hadn’t expected him to on the first punch. Sark turned back to Nadia as his wife had her fun with one of her many captors. “I guess that leaves you for me.”
“You got the short end of the stick.” Nadia stood up and smoothed her pants. “Don’t get too bothered by the fact that you’re trying to hurt your wife’s sister. And try to ignore the fact that I look quite a lot like her.”
“I should do fine,” Sark informed her, shifting into a fighting stance.
“We’ll see,” she answered, smiling at him knowingly.
Sark registered both the hand grabbing his shoulder and the punch across his face at the same time. He really hadn’t seen the other man standing behind the goon Sydney was currently taking to town. A knee to the stomach later and he found himself sprawled face down on the floor.
“A little harder than you thought, isn’t it?” Nadia said, taunting him from somewhere above.
“No,” he growled, rolling onto his back to block another kick from the man who had sucker punched him two seconds earlier. “It just got a little more interesting.” He pulled himself to his feet, dodging a few punches, and then hit his opponent in the face three times in quick succession.
When the man appeared fazed slightly, Sark looked over at his wife. She was currently pinned up against the wall and was taking a few shots to her abdomen. “Syd!” he yelled. When she blocked a punch and looked over at him, he grabbed a statue off of Nadia’s desk and lobbed it at her.
Sydney caught it and cracked her thug with it over the head. She turned back in time to see Sark go hurtling to the floor as his man tackled him. “Idiot,” she groaned under her breath. He had taken his eyes off his opponent in order to help her. The man’s every move was practically governed by his heart these days. He was really out of practice in tuning into the inner cold-hearted bastard that she had grown to love so many years earlier.
At least she knew that he could take care of himself just as well as he could take a punch. That left her to finish up the other loose end who was currently staring at the action without taking part.
“Time to prove your little mentor right,” Sydney said, smiling a little too sadistically. She tended to get this way when her family was threatened. It was even worse when her family was threatened by other members of her family. Sark’s brutal ways must have transferred over to her at some point during their marriage. It was almost as startling as it was ironic.
Nadia didn’t waste any time to being afraid or intimidated. It was obviously to Sydney that they really were of the same blood when her sister started swinging. The first blow narrowly missed her head, and the second one caught her in the side before she could block it.
Before Sydney could recover, Nadia grabbed her body and threw her up against the wall as hard as she could. She could feel her body crack under the impact, but she wasn’t really sure what had gotten damaged as she slumped to the ground. The only thing she knew was that they had been fighting for less than thirty seconds, and it already hurt her to move.
“Tough luck,” Nadia leaned down and whispered in her ear. “I thought you might actually last a full round before I took you out.”
“Stop taunting me,” Sydney hissed back.
“It’s what we Derevko women do best. You know, Syd, I think I finally figured out the point where you and I differ. I used to think that we were so similar when I was growing up. I couldn’t understand why you got to have the fun life while I was stuck in an orphanage. But I finally realized why that was.”
“Enlighten me.”
“I have what it takes to survive while you don’t. You come so close, but you never really make it on your own, do you?”
“No.” Sydney’s frown of pain shifted slightly into a small smile. “I guess you’re right. But see, that’s why I never make it a habit to travel alone.”
Nadia felt her head whip back as Sark grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her to her feet. “You better hope you didn’t hurt her or else there will be no chance for mercy.”
Sydney watched from her position on the floor as her husband threw the sister she had never known from one end of the room to the other. She knew that she should probably feel sorry for Nadia. A lot of the choices she made in her life hadn’t been her own. Sydney wished she could change that, but she couldn’t. Now all she could do was watch while the woman learned her mistakes firsthand.
Sark managed to pull himself back as Nadia was about to drift out of consciousness. He had pummeled her whole body rather viciously. Taking a moment’s rest, he turned back to Sydney to see her smiling at him. “What?” he said, walking over to her.
“For a second there, I thought you had lost your love of all things violent.”
“No. It’s still there.”
She let him help her to her feet, trying to keep from wincing at the pain of the movement. “Obviously. What should we do with her?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. I just want to get you home.”
Sydney allowed herself to be led across the room by her husband. As they reached the door, a muffled noise from where Nadia lay caused them to look back. “What did you say?” Sark asked.
Nadia struggled but finally managed to use the desk to pull herself up into a sitting position. “I was asking Sydney if she wanted to know where Tyler Vaughn is going to be in about five months time.”
“No, I don’t,” Sydney said. “Let’s leave.”
“Then watch out for your daughter. Los Angeles is not that large of a city,” Nadia called as they walked out the door and down the hall.
“Did she say that Tyler was coming to L.A.?” Sark asked.
“There’s no way he could be,” Sydney replied. “Vaughn and Lauren know that we moved back to the city years ago. They wouldn’t let their son have the opportunity to meet Hope. They are as scared as us that the damn prophecy might be true. I wouldn’t trust a thing she said, either. She had an agenda. For whatever reason, part of it is to have Hope working at her side.”
“Our daughter is not going to end up in the spy business.”
“That’s what I told her.” Sydney came to a halt as they exited the building. “Fresh air. God, I missed that.”
“Sorry it took me so long,” he apologized hesitantly.
She smiled at his worried expression. “I’m not mad at you. It gave me time to try to figure a few things out about our current predicament with the next generation of super spies.”
“Did you come up with anything?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “But it didn’t hurt to try. Now let’s go home. I want to see firsthand that my daughter hasn’t become a delinquent.”
Sark slipped his hand into hers and led her over to where he had parked the car he had rented at the airport. “Well, it’s a long story. But Hope hasn’t exactly been living with me in L.A. She’s been with Will on a ranch upstate…”
Chapter Sixteen
Sydney stared around at the office that was her sister’s place of work. It was definitely more inviting than the cold cell she had been cooped up in for two months with barely a break. “Nice digs,” she said as Nadia entered the room and took a seat behind her desk.
Nadia shrugged. “They work for what I need.”
“Running the Covenant?”
“Carrying on my father’s life work. All things Rambaldi are my life. You can say that, just like Arvin Sloane, they‘ve consumed me.”
Sydney stared at her a moment before speaking. “You sound really sick. I wish I knew you had existed earlier.”
“That’s just another could of to be added to your list of short-fallings, Sydney.”
“If I remember correctly, you are Rambaldi yourself,” she said, changing the subject. She did not want to start a conversation on all the mistakes and screw-ups that had occurred throughout her life. “Didn’t you have some inbred subconscious scribing thing? I remember a creepy green liquid being involved.”
Nadia just shrugged again. Just like Sydney did not want to talk about her mistakes, she did not want to give her sister more ammunition to use against her than was necessary. “Let’s get down to business. I offered you your freedom yesterday.”
“In return for me handing my daughter over to you,” Sydney pointed out.
“She is the key to Rambaldi. She needs to be raised to live up to her genes.”
“So, you want my daughter to do what exactly?”
“She needs training. We might not be close, but I am her aunt by blood, Sydney. I don’t want her going into a fight unprepared.”
“I assume you’re talking about Tyler Vaughn.”
“You’ve been keeping tabs on him. You should know that his life is bound to cross with Hope’s really soon.” Nadia watched Sydney’s face well up in confusion. “You don’t know what’s happened. That is priceless. My father was right when he said that the CIA was clueless.”
“I don’t work for the CIA anymore.”
“Good point. The real question is wouldn’t you have expected more of our mother. Seems to me she’s withholding information from you. That is what happens when you have conflicting ties.” Nadia reached for the phone. “We should probably just call her, and she can explain to you what’s happening that you’ve been kept in the dark about.”
Sydney started to laugh, and Nadia’s hand froze with the receiver halfway up to her ear. She looked at Sydney inquisitively, prompting Sydney to explain what she found so funny. “Do you really think that threat is going to work? Irina would never have contact with you, Nadia.”
“I’m her daughter just as much as you are, Sydney.”
“That’s true. Maybe I phrased that wrong. She might have contact with you, but it wouldn’t involve putting her granddaughter in any danger. If she knew something about Tyler Vaughn that was going to affect Hope‘s safety, she would tell Sark or I. If she knew that you were a threat to any of the three of us, she would tell me. So, obviously our mother does not know what you have been up to.”
“Fine. Believe me or don’t. It’s your prerogative.” Nadia set the receiver back down. “But back to the business at hand. You cannot hide your daughter away from the world. She will end up meeting the Vaughn boy one day. When that happens, she has to be prepared to defend herself.”
“It’s a valid point, but not one I agree with. I made a vow years ago not to let Milo Rambaldi rule the direction my life took.”
“That is your mistake. Rambaldi was a genius. If you only listened to what he said, your life would run much more smoothly.”
“I remember a time when he predicted I would be the end of the world. How is that supposed to make my life run more smoothly?”
“Weak translation. Rambaldi never predicted the end of the world. He just predicted the presence of a powerful woman that could affect the world as a whole.”
Sydney rolled her eyes and stood up, walking over to the desk her sister sat behind. “Okay. I don’t think these negotiations are going to go well, so why don’t we just save our time? Get your thugs back in here, and they can take me back to my cell.”
“Why are you so confident still? If I can get to you, Sydney, I can easily get to your daughter. I’m just trying to give you an easy out before I forcefully take her from you. I can’t promise if I’m pushed to that extreme that all your friends will make it out alive.” Nadia smiled at her. “I’m doing this for you.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“What good is a sister if they’re not going to look out for you?”
Sydney just shook her head and looked to the door. “Are your men at the door waiting to escort me back to my cell?”
“Actually, there’s no one out there. I don’t really expect for you to leave this room until you’ve accepted my offer. You really have no other choice.”
Sydney sank back down into her chair. “You have no idea how good I am at stand-offs then. We might be here for a while.”
“I could just shoot you and get it over with,” Nadia pointed out.
“But that would only lead to your own death.”
“A point that I haven’t lost sight of. I just wanted you to know that chances are if I kill you, I would survive. I’m just as good as you are. That’s the way Rambaldi wanted things to develop. Or maybe you don’t remember his prophecy about our fight to the death.”
“I gave up on that prophecy when I searched for you for fourteen years without any success. If that fight was going to happen, it would have been done and over with by now. Face it. Your intellectual genius was wrong.”
“A quick bullet to your head right now would prove you wrong.”
There was a sudden bang on the door that called both women’s attention. “Is that how your goons knock?” Sydney asked.
“First off, the men you keep calling goons and thugs are highly trained agents of the Covenant. They could kill you with one hand.”
“I seemed to get the best of them every single time I got bored and decided to escape.”
“And by ‘got the best’ do you mean they kept you from escaping?”
“Escaping was never really my goal. I was just trying to fish out the weaknesses.” There was a second bang on the door. “Are you going to answer that?”
Nadia shook her head. “That’s not any of my agents. So, no, I think I’ll just let it be. See if whoever wants to get in is good enough to work around my security locks.”
As soon as she said that, there was a faint click of the lock mechanism turning. This time when there was a third loud bang, the door flew open.
“Hi, honey. I’m home,” Sark said, smirking at both of Irina’s daughters. “Did you miss me?”
“Hello, Julian,” Nadia said, nodding at him.
“Did I miss something? Have you two met before?” Sydney asked.
“Not formerly,” Nadia explained, still not moving from her seat. Obviously Sark’s presence didn’t alarm her in any way. “Your husband and I have met throughout the years on some of his assignments. The first time was over fifteen years ago, I think. Why were you working with the Argentine government, Julian?”
“I don’t recall.” He turned to Sydney. “Are you ready to go?”
“Don’t bother,” Nadia said, waving her hand at him. “My men should be here within twenty seconds to make sure you don’t make it more than ten feet out of this office.”
“You have a lot of faith in your men, don’t you?”
“I train the best to be the best.”
Sark looked down at his watch. “They have about ten seconds left.”
“They’ll be here.” Nadia smiled as an alarm started to ring throughout the building.
“Alarms don’t mean anything,” Sark informed her. “I still don’t see any men. Five seconds.”
The trio stared at each other as the five seconds passed by. “No one,” Sydney said, shaking her head at her sister. “Looks like you aren’t as good as you thought.”
Nadia nodded towards the opening doorway where one man stood, his bulk taking up the entire doorway.
“One guy?” Sark said, practically laughing in her face. “You expect us to be stopped by one man?”
“Hey! I know this guy!” Sydney cried. “Thug #2! How are you doing? Do you think your boss lady will let you banter with me while I kick your ass?”
She didn’t wait for a reply before punching the man squarely in the nose. He didn’t flinch nor did he move, but she really hadn’t expected him to on the first punch. Sark turned back to Nadia as his wife had her fun with one of her many captors. “I guess that leaves you for me.”
“You got the short end of the stick.” Nadia stood up and smoothed her pants. “Don’t get too bothered by the fact that you’re trying to hurt your wife’s sister. And try to ignore the fact that I look quite a lot like her.”
“I should do fine,” Sark informed her, shifting into a fighting stance.
“We’ll see,” she answered, smiling at him knowingly.
Sark registered both the hand grabbing his shoulder and the punch across his face at the same time. He really hadn’t seen the other man standing behind the goon Sydney was currently taking to town. A knee to the stomach later and he found himself sprawled face down on the floor.
“A little harder than you thought, isn’t it?” Nadia said, taunting him from somewhere above.
“No,” he growled, rolling onto his back to block another kick from the man who had sucker punched him two seconds earlier. “It just got a little more interesting.” He pulled himself to his feet, dodging a few punches, and then hit his opponent in the face three times in quick succession.
When the man appeared fazed slightly, Sark looked over at his wife. She was currently pinned up against the wall and was taking a few shots to her abdomen. “Syd!” he yelled. When she blocked a punch and looked over at him, he grabbed a statue off of Nadia’s desk and lobbed it at her.
Sydney caught it and cracked her thug with it over the head. She turned back in time to see Sark go hurtling to the floor as his man tackled him. “Idiot,” she groaned under her breath. He had taken his eyes off his opponent in order to help her. The man’s every move was practically governed by his heart these days. He was really out of practice in tuning into the inner cold-hearted bastard that she had grown to love so many years earlier.
At least she knew that he could take care of himself just as well as he could take a punch. That left her to finish up the other loose end who was currently staring at the action without taking part.
“Time to prove your little mentor right,” Sydney said, smiling a little too sadistically. She tended to get this way when her family was threatened. It was even worse when her family was threatened by other members of her family. Sark’s brutal ways must have transferred over to her at some point during their marriage. It was almost as startling as it was ironic.
Nadia didn’t waste any time to being afraid or intimidated. It was obviously to Sydney that they really were of the same blood when her sister started swinging. The first blow narrowly missed her head, and the second one caught her in the side before she could block it.
Before Sydney could recover, Nadia grabbed her body and threw her up against the wall as hard as she could. She could feel her body crack under the impact, but she wasn’t really sure what had gotten damaged as she slumped to the ground. The only thing she knew was that they had been fighting for less than thirty seconds, and it already hurt her to move.
“Tough luck,” Nadia leaned down and whispered in her ear. “I thought you might actually last a full round before I took you out.”
“Stop taunting me,” Sydney hissed back.
“It’s what we Derevko women do best. You know, Syd, I think I finally figured out the point where you and I differ. I used to think that we were so similar when I was growing up. I couldn’t understand why you got to have the fun life while I was stuck in an orphanage. But I finally realized why that was.”
“Enlighten me.”
“I have what it takes to survive while you don’t. You come so close, but you never really make it on your own, do you?”
“No.” Sydney’s frown of pain shifted slightly into a small smile. “I guess you’re right. But see, that’s why I never make it a habit to travel alone.”
Nadia felt her head whip back as Sark grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her to her feet. “You better hope you didn’t hurt her or else there will be no chance for mercy.”
Sydney watched from her position on the floor as her husband threw the sister she had never known from one end of the room to the other. She knew that she should probably feel sorry for Nadia. A lot of the choices she made in her life hadn’t been her own. Sydney wished she could change that, but she couldn’t. Now all she could do was watch while the woman learned her mistakes firsthand.
Sark managed to pull himself back as Nadia was about to drift out of consciousness. He had pummeled her whole body rather viciously. Taking a moment’s rest, he turned back to Sydney to see her smiling at him. “What?” he said, walking over to her.
“For a second there, I thought you had lost your love of all things violent.”
“No. It’s still there.”
She let him help her to her feet, trying to keep from wincing at the pain of the movement. “Obviously. What should we do with her?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. I just want to get you home.”
Sydney allowed herself to be led across the room by her husband. As they reached the door, a muffled noise from where Nadia lay caused them to look back. “What did you say?” Sark asked.
Nadia struggled but finally managed to use the desk to pull herself up into a sitting position. “I was asking Sydney if she wanted to know where Tyler Vaughn is going to be in about five months time.”
“No, I don’t,” Sydney said. “Let’s leave.”
“Then watch out for your daughter. Los Angeles is not that large of a city,” Nadia called as they walked out the door and down the hall.
“Did she say that Tyler was coming to L.A.?” Sark asked.
“There’s no way he could be,” Sydney replied. “Vaughn and Lauren know that we moved back to the city years ago. They wouldn’t let their son have the opportunity to meet Hope. They are as scared as us that the damn prophecy might be true. I wouldn’t trust a thing she said, either. She had an agenda. For whatever reason, part of it is to have Hope working at her side.”
“Our daughter is not going to end up in the spy business.”
“That’s what I told her.” Sydney came to a halt as they exited the building. “Fresh air. God, I missed that.”
“Sorry it took me so long,” he apologized hesitantly.
She smiled at his worried expression. “I’m not mad at you. It gave me time to try to figure a few things out about our current predicament with the next generation of super spies.”
“Did you come up with anything?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “But it didn’t hurt to try. Now let’s go home. I want to see firsthand that my daughter hasn’t become a delinquent.”
Sark slipped his hand into hers and led her over to where he had parked the car he had rented at the airport. “Well, it’s a long story. But Hope hasn’t exactly been living with me in L.A. She’s been with Will on a ranch upstate…”