Chapter Two #3
She didn’t answer, her attention fixed on Willow instead. The moment she looked at her, the color drained from her face, and her eyes quickly filled with tears.
Jay Bird had seen people look shocked before, but this was different. Mia looked like she’d just seen a ghost.
Stitch slid an arm around her waist. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
Mia shook her head slowly. “Oh, my God. It’s really her.”
Jay Bird frowned. “You know her?”
Her gaze finally shifted to him, although only briefly, before returning to Willow.
“Yes.” Mia’s voice broke.
Everyone around them seemed to fall quiet, the weight of the moment settling over the group, and Mia instinctively leaned harder into Stitch’s side as if he was the only thing keeping her steady.
“Willow and I worked together at the veterinary clinic in New York.” She swallowed hard.
“Three years ago, she disappeared. Nobody knew what happened to her. There was an investigation.” Her voice cracked, and Stitch pulled her closer.
“They found some of her belongings near the river, and they assumed the worst. They thought she was dead, though with no body or hard evidence, the case was set aside.”
Jay Bird stared at Willow, the word dead echoing in his mind. For three years, everyone had believed the woman he was holding right now had been gone, erased from the world entirely. But she hadn’t been.
She had been somewhere bad enough that she had eventually shown up in Virginia Beach looking half-starved, scared of every man who moved too quickly, carrying a toddler who knew enough at two years old to talk about a bad man hurting her mother.
A cold fury settled into Jay Bird’s gut.
“What happened to her?” Mia asked.
Riley, who was standing with Nails, scrunched her eyebrows together. “Wait. You said three years ago?” She looked at Mia.
“Yes. It was around the holidays.”
“In New York?”
Mia nodded.
Riley stared at Willow.
“It couldn’t be.”
Nails moved closer to his woman. “What is it?”
“When I was working trafficking cases in New York, we hit a warehouse connected to an operation we had been investigating. We got several women out, but there was supposed to be another victim.” She looked at Mia.
“A woman was missing, but we never found her. There was evidence she had been there, but by the time we raided the location, she was gone.”
“You think it was Willow?” Stitch asked.
“I don’t know for sure.” Riley stared at Willow. “But the timing fits.”
Jay Bird’s jaw clenched as the weight of it hit him all at once.
His gaze dropped to Willow again, and suddenly the exhaustion written across her face meant something entirely different.
Wherever she had been, she had survived it for three long years, and somehow, against everything stacked against her, she had managed to get her daughter out with her.
Mia looked at Riley. “How do you know her?”
Riley looked at Willow as tears filled her eyes. “Because she saved my life.”
Silence fell around them.
Mia stared at her. “What?”
“When Chen had me, Willow was there.” Riley’s eyes filled again as she looked toward the unconscious woman. “She helped me escape. She gave me that knife.”
Jay Bird knew enough about Riley’s kidnapping to understand what that meant, and he wasn’t the only one. Everyone on Bravo team did.
Chen Pham. The name hit like a fucking grenade going off in his head.
Jay Bird looked down at the little girl in his arms, then back at Willow, the weight of what he was seeing settling in all at once. Son of a bitch.
“She risked everything to help me,” Riley continued. “If she hadn’t...” Riley swallowed and glanced at Nails. “I don’t know if I would’ve gotten out.”
Mia began crying, and Stitch turned her into his chest, holding her while Riley wiped at her own cheeks.
Jay Bird didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. His mind was already spinning through every possible scenario, automatically assessing threats and trying to fill in the gaps before anyone else even realized there were gaps to begin with.
If Willow had been with Chen for three years and helped Riley escape, could Chen have eventually discovered her betrayal?
If that were the case, it meant that Willow hadn’t just escaped. She had likely been running for her life, and she had done it all while carrying a two-year-old with her.
The little girl shifted against him, lifted her head, and was staring at Willow’s closed eyes. “Momma sleep?”
Her bottom lip trembled.
Shit. Crying kids were definitely not covered in BUD/S.
Jay Bird adjusted his hold, making sure Willow remained supported while allowing the little girl to stay against his chest.
“Hey,” he said quietly.
Her big brown eyes turned toward him.
“Your mommy’s sleeping right now.”
“Momma?”
“Yeah. She’s tired.” He lowered his voice even further. “So we have to be really quiet and let her rest, okay?”
The little girl stared at him, and Jay Bird put a finger against his lips. “Shh.”
She mimicked him, putting one tiny finger against her mouth. “Shh.”
“Exactly.”
She settled her cheek against his chest again.
Jay Bird glanced up and immediately realized every damn person around him was staring.
Bear looked like he was fighting a grin. Joker wasn’t even bothering to hide his. Snow’s eyebrows had disappeared somewhere beneath his hairline, while Duke looked as if he were witnessing a scientific phenomenon that required further study.
“What?” Jay Bird growled.
Joker’s grin widened. “Nothing.”
“Then quit staring at me.”
A few quiet laughs followed, but Jay Bird ignored them, his attention already drifting back down to the kid.
For reasons he couldn’t begin to explain, the little girl trusted him, and that alone settled something deep in his chest. Whatever this was, whatever had led her to him in the middle of all this chaos, he wasn’t going to screw it up.