The Cinderella Mission (Family Secrets #1)(43)
Author: Catherine Mann

“Okay.” He processed the information and couldn’t decide whether he’d wanted it to be true. Finally, he decided he was glad. Eugenie was already his mother in the ways that counted and he had to be relieved she hadn’t felt the need to lie to him out of some sense of shame.

“What makes you ask now?”

She was lying about something, however, and he needed to know. “I’m going to ask you a question again. And this time I want the real answer. It doesn’t matter to me what it is, as long as it’s the truth.”

Eugenie shifted her shopping bags in her hands, but stayed silent, her lack of a promise not escaping Ethan.

“What happened to my parents?” Still, she didn’t speak, her face staying an oddly blank mask similar to the one he’d perfected over the years. He pushed on, determined she wouldn’t stonewall him this time, “I’m days away from learning on my own, so if there’s something you need to tell me, tell me now.”

She stared back at him while the winter wind whistled through the eaves. She studied him with an intensity reminiscent of the time he’d asked to go white-water rafting. After consideration, she’d decided fourteen was old enough. He wondered what would concern her that much now.

Placing her bags on the hood of Cook’s Beetle, Eugenie started toward Ethan. “We may not be biological mother and son, but we do share the same genetic tendencies. We’re both unconventional. We love to travel.” She traced a finger along the sludge-encrusted side of his Jag, leaving an indelible mark in his rudimentary field-craft tamper check. “What you don’t know is that we share a common reason for why travel is so important.”

Eugenie rubbed her index finger and thumb together until the dirt flaked free. “Nice trick with the car. But of course I used the same in the past. Ethan, I used to work for the same employer you do.”

Shock rooted his feet to the cement. His aunt? Short and soft Aunt Eugenie, with her steel-gray bun and her hedonistic lifestyle?

His complete incredulity must have shown since she continued to explain, “You know the wealthy lifestyle offers the perfect cover for sliding in and out of countries. The circles our family ran in gave me entry to hearing more than you can imagine. Or maybe you can.”

He could. And slowly the image of her doing the same shifted and settled with such clarity he couldn’t imagine how he’d missed the possibility for so many years.

She glanced around the garage with a new edge to her eyes Ethan recognized well.

He nodded to her. “It’s clean here. I sweep the garage and my rooms for bugs daily.”

“Good boy,” she said as if he’d brought home a clay paperweight from school. “I was recruited in my early twenties. I put in twelve good years before retirement. Not too shabby for a field operative.”

A full-fledged operative. In the field. Not an entry-level paper pusher. Those twinkling blue eyes of hers had seen the same harsh world he had. Those soft hands that had bandaged his banged-up knees had held a gun.

She’d given all that up, a job he couldn’t imagine living without, to take care of him. The thought humbled him with the magnitude of the debt he owed her, beyond anything he’d imagined.

“My God, Aunt Eugenie. I’m sorry for what I cost you.”

“Don’t be so quick to jump to conclusions. I didn’t choose to retire. Things went very wrong.” She twisted her rings around her fingers, the diamonds refracting overhead lights in a disco display. “Not all branches of the CIA are squeaky clean. Thirty years ago, scientific research into genetics was just exploding onto the scene. There were so many new possibilities and the CIA needed to be on the cutting edge or the rest of the world would be there first. I had some friends in a Black Ops division called MEDUSA.”

Ethan kept his face blank. ARIES fell under the MEDUSA header, the whole division and its section being given mythological names. “Friends?”

“We all started out as low-level operatives, but some were more ambitious than I was—Clyde Hanson, Samuel Hatch, Willard Croft, all went over to a secret section of MEDUSA called PROTEUS.”

“Whoa. Hang on a second. You and Samuel Hatch knew each other?”

A smile flickered across her face. “Yes, Ethan. Samuel and I were…friends.”

Ethan’s world tilted at the implication, but then his aunt was only about five years older than his boss. Hatch’s confidence about distractions from partners on the job suddenly took on a whole new complexion. “What does all this have to do with my parents?”

Eugenie smoothed back a lock of Ethan’s hair as if he were ten again. “Well, there I was with my high ideals, thinking I was invincible, as all young people do. I asked the wrong questions about the genetic testing. I angered the wrong people in this country, as well as others. The next thing I knew, your parents were dead.”

A cold wad of certainty clenched in Ethan’s gut. He knew too well where this was going, had heard of it happening to others, but never considered…

“The bullet in your father’s head and one threatening phone call told me all I needed to know.” Eugenie tipped her head back, staring unblinking up at the ceiling for a moment before leveling her gaze at Ethan and continuing, “I was expected to shut up and get out, or my nephew would be next.”

The long-ago sound of that bullet popped in his memory. The swerve of the car. The lurch off the road, flipping, tumbling, his world rocking right along with it. Never quite righting itself again.

All the anger and frustration and even fear he’d felt then surged to the surface now. Renewed memories his child’s mind had suppressed elbowed to be set free. He forced himself to function. “Why didn’t they just kill you?”

“Because unfortunately for my poor brother and his beautiful wife I documented what I know. It’s tucked away as your life insurance. If anything happens to either of us, it goes to a friend of mine in the press.”

Ethan gripped her shoulders and tried to ignore the slight curve inward, from age or worries, he didn’t know right now and couldn’t afford the sympathetic distraction. “Aunt Eugenie, you have to tell what you know. You can’t keep secret something that might hurt others.”

“Says who?”

“Me.” His grip tightened. He respected his aunt, but couldn’t reconcile the shifting image of her. “There’s a code we have to live by. We may bend rules, but to protect people. Not to execute them. Whoever did this has to be stopped.”