CONTROLLING BROOKS (Gray Wolf Security Book 4)

by Glenna Sinclair

  Elliott had come up to me a few days after the events at Juan Alvarez’s house and thanked me for doing what was essentially my job. I’d been thanks for my actions in combat before, but it never felt like that. It felt like I still had a purpose in this life. I’d been convinced with Jesse and Grace’s deaths that my purpose had evaporated. That I was just taking up space in this world until I could exact my revenge. But now? I was beginning to see that maybe I was meant for a little more than that.

  But there was still this darkness to deal with, still this drive for revenge pushing me forward.

  I walked toward the courthouse, reporters jumping out of the bushes to toss questions at me.

  Would I be coming to all of Mickey Connors’ appeals hearings? Would I continue with my threat to bring a wrongful death suit against him? Would I hold up pictures of my wife and daughter as I had done at previous court appearances?

  They were stupid questions. I pushed through the crowd, making my way to the metal detectors that would effectively hold the crowd back.

  I saw her before I was even halfway down the hall. Harley Connors. She was Mickey’s sister, the only person in his family who believed him innocent. Mickey was a loser from the beginning. She had a juvenile record that was a mile long and then several robbery arrests as an adult that had seen him spend five years in prison. He was actually on probation for the last offense when they picked him up for breaking into a house down the street from mine a week after Jesse and Grace were killed. It was then that he made his confession.

  There was no doubt in my mind that Mickey Connors was responsible for this darkness I’ve been thrust into. I couldn’t understand how she couldn’t see that.

  “Mr. McKay,” she said respectfully as I passed her.

  “Ms. Connors.”

  “They’re going to test the DNA again. I don’t know if you’ve heard.”

  I turned and faced her, struck once again by the incredible differences in their appearances. Mickey was dark and Irish, a tall kid with black hair and dark eyes, a sort of crushing bend to his shoulders that made you want to feel sorry for him until he looked you in the eye and you could see the psychosis there, the insanity that made it impossible for him to be a responsible human being. But her? She had hair that was a cross between brown and red, a sort of mahogany that was so rich in color that I sometimes couldn’t take my eyes from it. And she had green eyes that were pure and clear, like the green waters of a deep pool of water. Her skin was like porcelain, and she had this petite little nose that seemed to point upward, making her wide cheeks seem dainty, somehow.

  She was beautiful. But she was also the sister of the man who ruined my life.

  “They can test the DNA as often as they like, but it will continue to come back inconclusive.” I moved closer to her, glancing down the hall at her brother’s lawyers. “He plead guilty. He confessed. I don’t know why you and those lawyers waste your time with all these appeals.”

  “Because he’s innocent.”

  “But even your own mother believes he’s guilty. You know that, right?”

  She blushed, the high color bringing even more beauty into that lovely face. “Mickey and our mother had issues. But that doesn’t make him guilty.”

  “When will you believe that he did this? When are you going to believe that he took my three-year-old daughter and strung her up like some sort of animal in her own bedroom?”

  She winced. “He didn’t do it.”

  “There were details in his confession that could only have come from the killer.”

  “He could have heard it somewhere else.”

  “Then why would he confess?”

  I’d asked her that before, but she never had an answer. I started to turn, assuming today would be the same. But I was wrong.

  “I think he’s taking the blame for someone else. I think he’s been paid to do it.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  She pulled a file out of the satchel she had over her shoulder. She came close to me, opening the file and pointing to a piece of paper that looked like a copy of someone’s bank statement. The name at the top was Roger Fuller.

  “This isn’t his.”

  “Roger Fuller is an alias he uses sometimes. I think that someone paid him and he squirreled the money away, thinking he would get out sometime. I don’t think he believed they would sentence him to life if he pled guilty.”

  “Then he was a fool.”

  “Mr. McKay, I know this is hard to believe, but I have more evidence. If you would just sit down and discuss it with me….”

  I shook my head. “As far as I’m concerned, that man murdered my family and I’m not going to do anything to help you prove otherwise.”

  I turned and my stomach froze as I watched Mickey Connors marched toward the courtroom with his shackles restraining him. He stared me in the eye, never flinching.

  Those were the last eyes my wife ever saw, the last eyes my daughter saw.

  I felt sick as that thought rushed through my mind. I would make him pay. I didn’t know how and didn’t know when, but I was going to make that man pay. I didn’t care how many sisters he had out here, fighting for him. He was a murderer and he would pay.

  Finding purpose with Gray Wolf Security didn’t change my need for revenge. It just tempered it a little. And that was okay for now.

  I had twenty-five to life to find a way. Mickey Connors wasn’t going anywhere.

  ~~~