“Anita begged me not to do it. To wipe her.” Quinton’s voice cracked and he slid his hands into his white hair, shaking his head. “She was crying. Sobbing, actually. Hysterical. Sienna looked just like her mother in the safe house, when we tried to wipe her.”
No wonder Quinton had handed the remote off to Rafferty and had hesitated to do it himself.
“Anita was one of the first humans to be wiped,” Quinton said brokenly. “And she fought me until the process was complete.”
Ice crystals slid through Warrick’s blood at the similarities to what had happened with him and Sienna. He didn’t respond. Sensed the older agent needed to purge this secret that had no doubt haunted and tormented him for decades.
“I left the country for a few years after the affair. I couldn’t see her and live with what I’d done. When I returned and Anita had another child…I just assumed she was Kevin’s.”
But she hadn’t been. She’d been Quinton’s. Sienna was—always had been—half shifter. And they might not have ever known if Sienna hadn’t taken that dart yesterday for him.
Kevin Peters had gone into the lab immediately with a sample of her blood. Running various tests to discover that it was the drug she’d been shot with—the same one the ferals had in their blood—that had awakened her dormant shifter genes. Causing her body to try to shift.
If he’d been thinking clearer, Warrick might’ve seen it last night when she’d clawed up his chest during sex. The wounds had not been from a human fingernail. But he’d been too distracted by the passionate moment, and he’d healed too fast for him to really analyze them.
Warrick’s gaze slipped to Sienna once more and his chest tightened with emotion. She looked so damn young. Vulnerable. Curled up beneath a purple comforter, even though it was an almost eighty degrees outside. One palm was tucked beneath a tear-stained cheek, the other clutched the empty space beside her.
Everything within him wanted to crawl into the twin bed next to her and pull Sienna into his arms. Comfort her and reassure himself she was still here. He’d come so damn close to losing her again.
“I always thought she took after her mother in appearance,” Warrick said quietly. “She has your eyes.”
He glanced back at Quinton. Found the man staring at the daughter he’d never realized he had. There was a torment in his gaze that Warrick couldn’t begin to imagine.
“When I was interviewing Sienna out in the woods that day,” Quinton began raggedly, his expression haunted, “she told me her mother had struggled with depression until the day she died. I keep thinking…dammit. Did Anita remember me? Remember us? Subconsciously?”
Warrick’s brows drew together as he struggled to reply. “I don’t think that’s possible. All research has shown those who were wiped retain zero memories of the time we erased from them.”
Quinton nodded and for a moment Warrick thought he spotted the sheen of tears in his eyes. Clearly the older agent wasn’t convinced.
But then neither was Warrick. His gut twisted and his throat tightened. Anita Peters had always seemed so sad. When Warrick would come over as a kid to hang out with Daniel, he’d find his friend’s mom sitting in silence, staring off into space, or out a window. Always seeming so forlorn. So deep in thought. Lost. He’d always thought she seemed kind of lost.
A shiver jetted down his spine and he swallowed hard. Jesus. What if they’d been wrong? What if there were some things that couldn’t be erased? Like something so simple, and so complicated, as love.
He blinked rapidly, needing to dispel the repercussions of what that would mean. Right now they had enough on their plate.
“Kevin said he should have the antidote for the ferals by morning,” Warrick muttered.
“Yes.” Quinton’s expression lightened some, as if the distraction was needed for him as well. “We’re checking the numbers in the cell phones of the dead men. See if we can trace whom they were working for.”
Warrick’s cell vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it free and answered the call from Larson. He hung up a moment later.
“I need to drive down and assist in the relocating of the ferals to the lab.” His gaze slid uneasily back to Sienna. “Could you—”
“I’ll stay with her.” Quinton hesitated. “I’d like to talk with her when she wakes anyway.”
Warrick’s jaw tightened. He hated to leave Sienna, but knew she would be out for at least another hour or two anyway. And even with all the shit that had hit the fan, he still trusted Quinton with a bone-deep intensity.