The door opened, and her father stood there, dressed as he always was when he was off duty—in khakis and a button-down shirt. She didn’t have to look to know he would be wearing his favorite leather loafers.

This was the dad side of him. Not the hard-ass agent.

Good. This was the Mason Cross she wanted.

“Sadie, what a pleasant surprise. Come in. I’ve been thinking about you.” He said these things as if they hadn’t been estranged for nearly a year.

“No.” She started to shake her head but thought better of it. She probably had a concussion, maybe two, considering how hard she’d hit her head when she’d wrecked her car. “I have a question for you.”

He frowned now. Likely taking in her wrinkled clothes, unbrushed hair. No doubt he smelled the sweat and vomit emanating from her every pore.

“Are you all right? You don’t look well.”

That was his fatherly way of saying she looked like hell.

“You were in Mexico after I killed Eduardo Osorio.”

He stared at her, his face, his eyes abruptly shuttered. “You should come inside.”

“No. We’ll talk right here.” She tried to moisten her lips, but her mouth was too dry and bitter—probably whatever drug they had used on her. “You were there. I remember hearing your voice. You pleaded for my life.” This part should make her feel good about him. She should be grateful. Except she wasn’t.

He had been there. At the compound. There was no other explanation.

He exhaled a big breath. “I knew you would remember eventually. There was no guarantee the drug therapy would be permanent.”

She stared at him, startled that he’d actually told the truth. What the . . . ?

“I listened to the recordings of your sessions with Holden. He gave them to me. Unwillingly, of course.”

Fury belted her. “You blackmailed my shrink into giving you my private files.”

Her father nodded. “Don’t blame him. He had no choice. He genuinely felt bad for you, but his need to protect himself overrode his sympathy. Besides, I paid him well.”

Sadie held up a hand. “So you were there—in Mexico. You’re admitting this?”

He nodded. “I was there. You’d gone missing, and no one in the official operation seemed able to figure out what happened. I went directly to the compound.”

“Wait. Wait.” Sadie held up her hands stop-sign fashion. “They let you in and then allowed you to leave.” She laughed. This was crazy. He was lying or leaving something out. Maybe he was the one who’d had a breakdown. Maybe insanity ran in the family.

Or maybe this was another of her bizarre dreams. She could be hallucinating. Last night and this morning could be just one long hallucination. Maybe she wasn’t even here, standing at her father’s door, talking to him.

Holy shit, she was so screwed.

“Everyone has secrets, Sadie. There was one person in the Osorio family with whom I could negotiate. That person made a deal with me. I agreed, but first I insisted on proof of life. I wanted to see you for myself. Once I knew you were alive, I agreed to the terms of the negotiation.”

A sound burst out of her. A kind of laugh but not. “You came there, saw me, and left. You left me there to be tortured and brainwashed for months.”

He nodded. “I did. Those were the terms. You would be released alive at a place and time they chose. I was just grateful I would get you back alive.”

Okay, so maybe this wasn’t a hallucination. “You made this deal with a woman, not with the old man. I remember a woman’s voice.”

He stared at Sadie now, his face rearranged into that blank she knew so well.

“Who set the terms of the agreement?” she demanded.

“I’m afraid I can’t share that information with you.”

“Did you share it with your superiors? With the BPD?” She was yelling now. She didn’t care. “Was this an under-the-table deal? Is that what you’re saying? Did your superiors even know about it?” Of course they didn’t know! All this time everyone had looked at her as if she’d done something wrong. Had something to hide. Because no one could figure out what happened. Why she was even alive.

“You son of a bitch,” she snarled.

“You should come inside and have coffee with me.”

Jesus Christ. Her old man, the hard-ass DEA agent, had crossed the line. Oh, he’d left the “father” line behind decades ago . . . but this . . . this was that holier-than-thou, self-righteous asshole-of-the-century line. The one he revered above all else. Mason Cross, the decorated hero, had just confessed to crossing—or at least blurring—the line of honor, of duty.

Sadie backed away. “No way. You made a deal for my life, and I want to know who else was involved. It was my life.” She pounded her chest. “I have a right to hear the details.”

“I kept you from being executed,” he stated, his patience thinning. “You should be grateful, not questioning my methods. Especially in light of the sacrifice I made.”

Sacrifice? She held up her hands again. “Fine. Fine. Then tell me this, Daddy. What did you give them? A negotiation is about give-and-take. What did you give? What was your sacrifice?”

“I can’t answer that question either.”

Outrage blasted her. “Can’t or won’t?”

“It’s the same thing, Sadie. You’re alive because I did what I did. Please, let that be enough.”

Her cell vibrated in her pocket before she could say anything else. She dragged it out with the intention of stopping the damned distraction, but Falco’s face flashed on the screen. She crammed the device against her ear. “What?”

“We need your help. Tori is missing. We think she’s with Alice. We just pulled up at the Cortez house.”

Worry sloshed over her fury, dousing it as surely as water pouring onto a fire. “I’m on my way.”

Sadie shoved the phone back into her pocket and glared at her father. “I will have the answers to my questions.” She turned and headed for the shitty yellow car parked at the curb.

“Sadie!”

Despite her best efforts to ignore him, she couldn’t. She turned back and waited for him to impart whatever the hell fatherly wisdom or asshole warning he had on his mind.

“If you continue down this path, I fear I won’t be able to protect you. I’ve done all I can.”