Covert Complication
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Nicole Helm
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She ran away to protect herself. Now she's back to save her family. Nina Oaks tried to forget Agent Cody Wyatt, but her old feelings come flooding back the moment she sees his face again. Now she's in danger — and so is Cody's daughter. He'll do anything to protect them both, even if that means confronting the most dangerous men in the Badlands.
Chapter One
Moving back home to his grandmother’s ranch was not what Cody Wyatt had envisioned for his adult life.
Despite being the youngest of six, despite having five bossy, obnoxious older brothers, Cody had never excelled at people telling him what to do. He accepted it from his grandmother—she’d raised him and his brothers, had saved him and his brothers. There was no challenging Grandma Pauline.
But he was pretty sure he was going to punch Dev’s lights out if his brother kept criticizing the way he took off a horse’s saddle.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’d gotten in a physical fight with his brothers, but rarely did he get frustrated with Dev.
With six brothers, certain smaller relationships existed. The oldest, Jamison had saved all of them from their father’s biker gang and secreted them out to Grandma—their late mother’s mother. Jamison had tried to father him, and Cody had allowed it and chafed at it in turn. He looked up to his oldest brother, but there were so many years between them, and such a feeling of responsibility on Jamison’s shoulders that Cody hadn’t understood when they’d been younger.
Brady and Gage were twins, their own playmates and companions—operating on their own frequency. Cody loved them, respected them, but they were two sides of the same coin who spoke their own darn language half the time.
Tucker, closest in age to Cody, idolized Jamison. Tuck shared that core goodness about him that Jamison had, with a little less martyrdom weighing him down.
But Dev had shared that angry thing inside of Cody. A darkness the other brothers didn’t have or didn’t lean into the way Dev and Cody did, or had. That darker side had almost gotten Dev killed years ago—and Cody had vowed to hone it into a different kind of weapon.
It was a little harder these days now that he was back at the ranch after his last mission with the North Star group. Too many truths about his involvement in the secretive operation had been revealed.
He missed North Star and his confidential work there. It had become vital to the man he’d built himself into. But he’d also been very aware his time with North Star was temporary, just as everyone else’s was. It was what made the group effective in taking down large, dangerous organizations.
Like his father’s.
The Sons of the Badlands hadn’t exactly disbanded last month when their leader had been arrested and their second-in-command had been killed. But they were weaker.
Cody had to let other people dismantle the remaining membership. While he sat on the sidelines herding cattle with his brother.
It just about ate him alive.
He glanced over at Dev, who was rubbing down his horse after an afternoon in the saddle moving the cattle to their new pasture, his two ranch dogs at his feet. Dev kept his expression carefully blank, but even if Cody hadn’t been around much the past few years he knew that meant Dev was in some serious pain.
“So, he’s really going to stay there?” Dev asked.
Cody didn’t ask for clarification. As weeks passed, they all waited for word that Ace would somehow wiggle out of a trial or sentencing. But he was in jail at least.
“For now.”
Dev made a considering snort. The dogs sniffed the air, cocked their heads, then both got onto their feet and loped out of the barn. Cody figured Grandma had put some scraps in their bowls.
Dev squinted toward the horizon. Three figures on horseback were coming closer. Duke Knight and his two daughters. Well, Rachel was his biological daughter, Sarah was one of his fosters. The only one he and his wife had managed to legally adopt before Eva Knight had died.
Sometimes Cody thought losing Mrs. Knight had been the beginning of all their problems—even though the real start was the moment they’d been born to Ace Wyatt, head of the Sons of the Badlands.
Thanks to Jamison, Cody had had a pretty normal childhood, getting out of the gang just shy of his seventh birthday. He’d also had his brothers. The Knights had been the kind of ranching neighbors that were more like family. All their daughters—fosters or biological—had been the Wyatt brothers’ playmates.
Sometimes more. As had been the case with Liza and Jamison, before Liza had run back to the Sons.
Then later, Cody and Nina.
Cody didn’t think about Nina much anymore. He’d erased her from his mind. Or had, until he had to come home.
She seemed to exist like a ghost here at the ranch. All the what-ifs. All the whys.
But it didn’t matter. She’d left him. Disappeared and begged him not to follow.
So he hadn’t.
“Guess they’re coming over for dinner,” Cody forced himself to say. It wasn’t easy to sit in Grandma’s kitchen with Duke Knight, who still blamed him for Nina’s disappearing act.
But they pretended it didn’t matter, because otherwise Grandma would whack them both with her biggest wooden spoon.
“Not normal,” Dev replied.
Which was when Grandma appeared in the barn. But she wasn’t dressed to work, and she looked pale.
“Come inside, Cody.”
He shared a look with Dev, who shrugged. Grandma seemed grave, which wasn’t like her. She usually gave orders with an ornery glint in her eye. This was muted.
Cody had learned a long time ago not to react to most situations. He’d interned in the CIA, and he’d been trained by the North Star group. Not to mention how much he’d learned from looking up to Jamison, who might have saved Cody from the Sons at seven, but had been stuck there until he himself was eighteen.
Cody couldn’t access all that training and habit in the face of his very grave grandmother. He was stiff as something like fear actually made his heart beat too hard in his chest.
Still, Cody followed her toward the house. When he saw the ambulance lights he hurried to it, passing up Grandma’s slower gait. A woman was on a stretcher being loaded up into the emergency vehicle.
A woman whose face had him stopping in his tracks.
Grandma caught up to him, sounding a little out of breath.
“Why is Ni—” Before he could say her name, Grandma hit him. Hard.
The EMT closed the doors and Cody stared at his grandmother.
“I’ll explain soon enough. She isn’t who you need to see right this moment,” she said, somehow graver than she’d been. Cody might not understand what was going on, but he understood what his grandmother wasn’t saying.
That was Nina, and she was in danger. The less talk right now, the better to assess the danger.
“I’ve already called Gage,” Grandma said. “He’ll take care of everything at the hospital, but she was hurt too badly for me to patch up. She needed a hospital.”
Cody stood, frozen in the spot even as the ambulance began to pull away. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him. Maybe that wasn’t Nina. Maybe...
“Follow me.”
Grandma strode into the house and Cody didn’t know what else to do but follow. The sight of Nina, pale and bloody, made it feel as though his brain had short-circuited. Nothing made sense, and all he could do was follow his grandmother into the house.
Through the kitchen, up the stairs, then to the room Liza and her half sister, Gigi, stayed in when they came to visit.
Liza and Gigi weren’t there. They’d moved into a house in Bonesteel with Jamison, but another little girl was. She was huddled in the corner, clutching a doll. A doll that had blood on it. Just like her clothes.
“She’s unhurt,” Grandma said, just standing in the doorway with him.
“Who is she?” he asked, though something felt all wrong. Something clawed at him, dark and painful.
“Nina knocked on my door. She’d been hurt—there was so much blood I called 911 right away. I tried to help her, but she’d been shot in the stomach. I couldn’t fix that. Not the way she was bleeding.”
“Who is this, Grandma?” Cody reiterated, though the idea of Nina being shot in the stomach... What on earth had she gotten herself into?
“Nina said I needed to hide her,” Grandma said, nodding to the girl. “No matter what, I needed to hide her. She just kept begging me not to let anyone know she was alive.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think you do, Cody. The last thing Nina told me before she passed out was that the child’s name is Brianna. And that you had to protect her.”
The little girl looked up at him with scared eyes and a bloodstained face. She looked vaguely familiar, but Cody couldn’t place her. Not with the way his heart thundered in his ears and his body felt like lead.
“She won’t let me touch her,” Grandma said sadly.
“What makes you think she’ll let me?” Cody managed to croak. Even knowing what his grandmother would say, sensing what all this meant, he couldn’t get his brain to jump into gear. Couldn’t seem to add up all the facts laid before him.
Grandma shook her head. “You’re her father, Cody. I’m about sure.”
NINA OAKS STRUGGLED to swim out of the black. There was beeping, and her baby was not here with her.
Brianna. Brianna.
Take care of her. He has to protect her.
When she opened her eyes, there were familiar ones staring back at her.
But not the ones she’d expected to see. Or maybe hoped to. Maybe someday she’d learn how not to hope, but she was beginning to doubt it.
She remembered, suddenly, everything. The break-in. The masked man. Hiding Brianna.
The masked man had shot her, but then she’d managed...
She closed her eyes against the memory. She’d been shot. She was in a hospital. And Brianna...
“Gage,” she croaked. She supposed any Wyatt brother would do, even if it wasn’t the one she really needed to talk to. They knew her. They’d protect her. They were her only hope.
“Hello, Mal.”
She scrunched her face up against the pain, and the wave of confusion. “That’s not my name. Gage, you know who—”
He placed his hand very gently on her arm that had an IV hooked up to it. “I know your name is Malory Jones,” he said, his gaze on her, his words rote and devoid of emotion. “I found you on the side of the road. We’re going to get you patched up. Don’t you worry.”
That wasn’t what happened, but even in her foggy brain she knew better than to argue with him. He looked bigger than she remembered, but she supposed it was just the uniform. She was used to seeing him at Grandma Pauline’s. Not in tiny hospital rooms.
Malory Jones.
He knew who she was. She had to believe Gage knew who she was. It hadn’t been that long. Only about seven years. She hadn’t changed. Not really. Not to look at anyway.
“I don’t remember...” She had to remember things. Get everything sorted in her head so she could make a plan. So she could...
Brianna. He has to keep her safe.
“That’s all right. It’ll be clearer when you’re not getting pumped full of drugs. Right now you just keep quiet and focus on healing. Quiet is the best thing, Mal.”
He was keeping her identity a secret. She couldn’t quite remember things. “Gage, I need to know...” Even with what she couldn’t remember, she knew she couldn’t utter Brianna’s name. She had to keep her daughter’s existence a secret.
But she desperately had to know Brianna was all right. Nina remembered being shot. She dimly remembered grabbing a jagged piece of the lamp that had been broken and using all her strength to lodge it in her attacker’s neck.
She remembered the blood, and his screams, and she remembered crawling to Brianna’s bed and getting her daughter out of the house before anyone else could come after them.
Then she’d had to burn it down, to keep Brianna’s existence a secret. Burning it all away to cinders was the only way to escape the Sons’ detection.
“Gage... Gage... Please.” She felt a tear trickle down her cheek. She didn’t remember past the fire. She didn’t remember where Brianna was.
Gage crouched down so he was eye level with her as she lay in the hospital bed. “Listen. Everyone’s fine and safe now. We’ll get you patched up.” He reached out and brushed the tear away. “Everyone is fine. Everyone. Okay?”
He meant Brianna. He had to mean her. She nodded. She tried to breathe and believe. She would do anything for her baby. Suffer anything. Nina had to believe she’d gotten Brianna to safety.
To the Wyatts.
Cody. She was almost certain she hadn’t seen Cody. And almost certain she wouldn’t be able to avoid that eventuality. Or what it meant.
He wouldn’t understand. She wanted him to be able to, but he wouldn’t. He was too good and brave and sure. He’d believe he would have been able to stop everything and that she should have come to him.
Nina didn’t believe that, even now. Even coming to him and his family and tasking them with keeping her daughter safe.
Cody would be dead if not for her. Brianna would be dead if Nina hadn’t done what she’d done.
Cody would never forgive her, and she would never be able to believe it could have been different.
The door opened and both her and Gage looked over to the man who stepped into the room.
Furious energy pumped off him. Tall and rangy and ready to attack. She should have been afraid.
But she’d seen all of that in him all those years ago—loved his dark side and being the one to lighten it.
There’d be no soothing anymore.
“I need to talk to her,” Cody ground out as Gage slowly got to his feet.
Gage moved in front of Cody, trying to block his route to her bed. “Not here,” Gage said, putting a hand on Cody’s chest. “Not now.”
Cody’s hazel eyes blazed with furious, righteous anger. She would have expected nothing less.
Still, she closed her eyes and let the encroaching black win rather than face it. And him.
