“No, that scar isnae from combat.” He showed them his arm. “I got that when Jack’s killer—that bastard Lewis—chibbed me last November.”
Whitehall had been sentenced to thirty-five years in prison and would probably never walk free again. Nicola and her father had helped to put him there, giving depositions against him that were used to get a confession with regards to trafficking girls, pornography, and giving drugs to minors. Nicola had also been able to give a deposition about Katie Cameron’s overdose. A jury hadn’t believed Whitehall when he’d claimed not to know about Katie or that Lewis had murdered Jack, especially not after seeing evidence of communications between him and Lewis that discussed both.
The long prison sentence—by Scottish standards, anyway—couldn’t bring Jack back, but it was hard-earned justice.
“Have you ever jumped out of a plane?” Paige asked Quinn.
It was then Elizabeth spotted her—an older woman with a care-worn expression who stood inside the entrance staring straight at Quinn.
Quinn followed her gaze. “Paige, is that Ma over there?”
Paige glanced over her shoulder, her eyes going wide. “I’m so sorry. I dinnae know what she’s doin’ here. I didnae bring her or invite her to come. I’m no’ even sure how she knew where to find us.”
David looked sheepish. “That might be my fault. I told her where we’d be today. I didnae think that she’d decide on her own to show up.”
Elizabeth leaned closer, spoke for Quinn’s ears alone. “You don’t have to see her if you don’t want to.”
But Quinn stood, motioned to her to join them, then sat again. “I know what it feels like to be rejected and left out.”
God, Elizabeth loved him.
* * *
Some partof Quinn wanted to get in his mother’s face and tell her exactly what she’d done to him by cutting him out of her life and leaving him with an alcoholic abuser. But the moment he got a good look at her, he felt nothing but pity.
The woman he remembered was gone.
At fifty-three, she looked seventy—and not a healthy seventy, but worn down, weary, broken. She had no teeth, her skin lackluster and sallow, her red hair thinning and streaked with gray.
Paige stood. “You sit here, Ma.”
Quinn didn’t stand but took Elizabeth’s hand, her presence steadying him. “Mother.”
She looked at him, a bit breathless, tears filling her eyes.
Och, he didn’t want her tears.
She ducked her head in a mousy gesture that he recognized as fear. “Yer all grown, a big man now.”
That’s what happens to a boy in twenty-two fuckin’ years.
He thought it but didn’t say it. “This is my fiancée, Elizabeth Shields. Elizabeth, this is my mother, Margaret.”
God, it felt strange to say his mother’s name after all this time.
Elizabeth had sworn she’d cuss his mother out if she ever met her. Instead, she gave her the smile Quinn loved. “Hello, Margaret.”
“Fiancée? So, yer gettin’ wed, are ye? And to an American by her speech.”
“I told you she was American, Ma,” Paige said.
“Och, well, aye, I remember you sayin’ somethin’ aboot it.”
“She used to work for the CIA,” Paige said.
Quinn’s mother gaped at Elizabeth. “Is that no’ too dangerous for a woman?”
Elizabeth laughed, gave Quinn’s hand a squeeze. “No more dangerous than it is for a man, and I enjoy risk.”