No Rules by Starr Ambrose

unwilling to accept that her father had changed. Daddy’s girl still mourned his loss. But to think that he’d lied to them from the moment he’d come home from Iran? “I don’t believe you.” She’d meant to say it with more conviction, but was having a hard time finding any. “But even if I did, what’s your point?”
    “That you don’t know everything you think you do about your father.”
    “Big deal.” Sarcasm, on the other hand, came easily. “I didn’t even see him for the last fifteen years of his life, so of course I don’t know him.” And whether he’d loved her or not, whether he wanted to see her or not, her father had obviously begun keeping secrets after his time as a hostage. If he hadn’t, she wouldn’t be here right now. Possibly many secrets. Donovan, a complete stranger, knew them, and she didn’t. It was like being rejected by her father all over again.
    “Being held hostage, and escaping the way they did, with no help from the State Department, changed him,” Donovan said. “Changed his priorities.”
    “You don’t have to tell me that. It’s called post-traumatic stress disorder, and it tore our family apart.”
    “Actually, it didn’t. Forming the Omega Group is what tore your family apart.”
    He contradicted her so calmly that she wondered if he even realized the jealousy that ripped through her every time he claimed to know more about her family, about her father, than she did. Fifteen years later she was still working on getting over the rejection she’d felt when he left. Even if that rejection had been a lie invented by her mentally ill mother, realizing that Donovan might have replaced her in her father’s affections was another slap in the face. She sat stiffly, fists clenched, as he went on.
    “After their experience, Wally and Evan devoted their lives to seeing that an organization existed that could rescue hostages when our government couldn’t, or wouldn’t. They recruited people with special skills and developed a training program. Your mother couldn’t stand knowing he would put himself back into dangerous situations on purpose, and they argued. She refused to live in constant fear, but he wouldn’t abandon the idea. According to Wally, that’s what drove them apart.”
    He paused—the perfect opportunity to rip him a new one for being an arrogant ass. Except what he’d said knocked all the righteous indignation clean out of her mind, replacing it with disbelief. “Are you saying my father trained people to rescue hostages?” She pictured the meek, slightly rounded professor of linguistics and ancient history that she remembered. Walter Shikovski as Chuck Norris? “You’re crazy.”
    “Actually, the CIA operative who helped them escape is the one who did the training. Still does. They recruited him for their new organization. He saw the need for it, the same as they did, and wanted to be part of it.”
    She wanted to scoff at the whole thing, but it explained too many things. It was obvious that Donovan believed it, at least. “There’s a need for an organization that just rescues hostages?”
    “Too much of a need, in all parts of the world. Most of our clients are corporations who’ve had employees taken and held for ransom. If companies pay the kidnappers, they only encourage more opportunistic groups to take hostages. So when governments can’t persuade these groups to release their captives, the corporations turn to the Omega Group.”
    “And you save the hostages.”
    His mouth flattened into a line, as if holding back something he didn’t want to admit. “Most of the time.”
    She didn’t want to ask about the other times. Escaping from terrorists, rescuing hostages—it was like discovering you were playing a bit part in an action-adventure movie. She turned away, staring out the window, trying to absorb it all.
    For the first time she noticed that they’d left the lighted city streets and were driving through a semirural area of