by D. D. Ayres
“I don’t know.” Cole closed her eyes for a moment. “But I never heard what he had to say. I ran away.”
Becca stared at her for a long time then nodded slowly. “You need closure.”
“I hate that expression. But, yeah, I guess that’s what it is.” Cole took a deep breath. “It’s been two years. I have to do something. You, more than anyone, know I haven’t been able to move on.”
Becca brushed a stray hair from her sister’s cheek. “Promise me you won’t let him hurt you again.”
“I’m armed, Becca.” She grinned as her sister eyed with alarm the pistol she wore. “That’s not what I meant. I have Hugo.”
Becca smiled. “How is that bruiser of yours?”
“At home alone, probably ready to chew my upholstery. He hates days when I’m called in for desk duty.”
They rose and hugged. “You be careful. And tell your ex if he so much as makes you tear up, he’ll have to deal with your newly edgy hormonal big sister.”
Cole laughed and hugged her sister. “Love you, too.”
As she walked back to her cruiser, Cole realized the decision was made. She was going to do this.
She had made only one other rash decision in her life, and it had cost her, emotionally, everything she had. At least this time, she knew what to expect.
Trouble.
As she slid behind the wheel her cell phone beeped with a text.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Cole laughed. Becca could so read her mind.
CHAPTER FIVE
Scott pulled into the driveway of a modest-sized two-story Colonial house on Eastern Avenue in New Brunswick, New Jersey. There were no other cars parked there yet. He was early. That didn’t help his state of mind. Going home was like taking a dive headfirst into murky waters with unknown hazards. Showing up early only meant he’d have more time to think about that dive.
When fellow D.C. law enforcement officers found out he was originally from New Jersey they teased him about being “connected” à la The Sopranos. That, or that his life growing up must have been a version of Jersey Shore. Neither could be further from the truth. His parents were scholarly professionals. His dad was a professor of political science at Rutgers University. His mother was a judge in family court. Today, his father’s sixtieth birthday, marked the first time he’d been home in more than a year.
Izzy, who had been a silent passenger all the way up, poked her big snout through the doggy door of her backseat kennel and rested her chin on Scott’s right shoulder. He reached up absently to scratch her head. That was all the invitation she needed. She was through the opening and onto the front seat in a long chocolate-fur movement.
Unlike most times, the sight of his partner didn’t improve Scott’s mood. “Down, girl.” He gently stiff-armed her head aside. His mother would notice if he came in smelling of dog.
Undeterred, Izzy made a few turns then stretched out to fill the bench seat and rested her large head on his thigh. A thin thread of doggy drool traced across his chinos as she bounced her chin in a comforting motion. So much for spotless.
In no hurry to get out of his truck, Scott pulled Izzy in close to his body and studied the house he had been reared in, as if the outside would give him clues to the mood inside.
The house could stand a coat of paint. His father would be certain to point that out to him, as if he should have thought of it beforehand and brought along cans of paint, brushes, scrapers, and a ladder in order to get started. His father never thought anything Scott did do was as important as what was not being done. Only Gabe had ever gotten a pass. Nearly three years after his older brother’s death, the pain still felt raw for the entire family.
Gabe was the stuff of legend. His father never spoke about his eldest son without a catch in his throat. Gabe had graduated from a military academy while Scott was still trying to make his way through public junior high school. Gabe went to college and then into the Marines. In no time he was Special Ops. By the time of his death, he’d made SEAL Team Six.
“Stay, Izzy. I’ll be back for you later.” No point in bringing her in until he decided if he was staying long, and/or if the number of people his mother promised were coming would be too much for Izzy to deal with on an informal basis.
Scott wiped a hand across his mouth as he headed toward the back door, nervous in the way chasing an armed suspect down a dark alley made him edgy. Gabe had been his lodestar for as long as he could remember. He used his older brother as the measure of how he was doing in the world. Success was according to how close he could come to Gabe’s scores on everything: college grades, physical endurance, drinking, even women. He’d always come up short. Except with Nikki—Cole. “Shit.” She would always be Nikki to him.
When he’d asked her opinion of his brother, after the one and only time they met, Nikki had said Gabe had obviously inherited the Lucca charm and good looks, but he wasn’t her type.
Her response had made Scott want to take out a full-page ad. Always before, when Gabe was around, Scott was an also-ran for women’s attention.
And then three years ago, six months into Scott’s marriage to Nikki, Gabe was gone. Killed in action in a covert operation somewhere in the Hindu Kush mountains of the Kunar province. The military returned a small locker with his personal effects. They said Gabe’s body wasn’t recoverable.
Scott sucked in a long breath as he reached for the back-door knob. His compass and direction, his benchmark, his nemesis, and his much loved brother, all of it was gone. He knew to whom his father had looked to fill those shoes, and how miserably he had failed, and was still failing.
“Scott!” His mother greeted him with a big hug as soon as he entered. “I thought I heard your truck.”
She held on to him for so long Scott began to color with embarrassment. Message clear; he’d visited so rarely these last two years, she couldn’t control her joy at actually laying her hands on her only surviving child.
Even when she released his body she held on to him at the elbows, smiling despite wet eyes. “You look good, Scott. Your hair’s longer. And you’re tan.” Her gaze fell to his arm. “But what’s this?”
“Zigged when I should have zagged. It’s nothing, Mom.”
She touched the bandage very gently, biting back the urge, he knew, to warn him to be careful. “As long as you’re okay.”
He grinned and leaned down to plant a kiss on her cheek. “You’re looking good. You stepping out on the old man?”
“Smart mouth.”
Scott looked up past his mother’s shoulder. “Happy birthday, Dad.”
John Lucca stood a few feet away. He looked much younger than the sixty years they were gathering to celebrate. Tall and still lean from a regimen of handball and swimming, he had a full head of gray hair that suited his professorial status. According to his mother’s e-mails, his father’s students still adored him, though four decades now separated him from most of them.
When his mother released Scott, his father came forward and held out his hand. “You’re almost late.”
Scott shook it. “A worse offense than actually being late, right, Dad?”
His father immediately frowned, making Scott wish he hadn’t been so fast with the comeback. But, damn, his father always had something negative to say about whatever he was doing or not doing. No way to win.
“Now, John, don’t tease Scott.”
“I wasn’t—”
“He wasn’t—”
Father and son exchanged uneasy glances before looking away.
“Please come in and relax. We’re waiting for your father’s sisters, and cousins Edward and Sharon. And, of course, Ashley and Teddy’s brood before we get started.” His mother waved a hand toward the kitchen table that all but groaned under the weight of dishes waiting to be served. She was prepared to serve an army. “Would you like a beer?”
“Maybe later.”
“Come through.” H
is father turned and headed toward the living room. Scott joined him.
His mother followed. “What do you hear from Nicole?”
His father rolled his eyes. “Now why would he hear from her, Cathy?”
“You never know.” His mother smiled at him. “I did so hope you two might, well, talk things out after a while.”
“If he hasn’t heard from her by now it’s because she has nothing more to say to him. He screwed up and made certain of that.”
“Thanks for the benefit of the doubt, Dad.” Scott held back the sharper words that came to mind. His father didn’t even know exactly what had happened between them, yet he’d come to the conclusion that it was Scott’s fault, and it was unforgivable.
“John, that’s not fair. When two people love each other the way they do … did…” She glanced at Scott for help.
Scott retreated to the safety of professional detachment. “Leave it, Mom. Please.”
He sat on the family room sofa opposite his father’s well-worn leather recliner. He looked around, hoping desperately for some topic of interest to appear. Not sports. His father was a Giants and Yankees fan while he had long ago moved to the Redskins and Orioles camp.
“Just to spite the old man,” Gabe had once declared in front of them. Not true, but Scott saved his breath. Gabe had said it, it was now fact.
“So, sixty years.” Scott nodded slowly. “That’s some achievement, Dad. Anything left on your bucket list?”
“I thought I’d be a grandfather by now.” John’s voice rose in challenge. “You were supposed to make me a grandfather.”
The jab hurt. It was supposed to. Scott, even knowing better, shot back. “What made you think that was going to happen?”
“Nicole promised us.”
“John!” His mother looked thoroughly put out by her husband’s disclosure.
Scott felt his stomach drop into his shoes. “When did Nikki say that?”
His father merely hunched a shoulder and looked away.
His mother frowned, biting her lip. “The last time we were all together for Thanksgiving. At your little apartment in D.C. At first we thought Nicole was teasing us. But she looked so pleased with herself. So then, well, we decided you two were waiting to make the big announcement official when you came up here at Christmas. But then, things didn’t … work out.”
Scott was still waiting to reach bottom as his thoughts were in freefall. “There was no baby. You misunderstood.”
“Wishful thinking, I guess.”
His mother glanced at her husband, and Scott caught the disappointment in her eyes. They had hoped to be grandparents and once again he had let them down. The cold queasy feeling of failure slithered through him.
He quashed it, replacing that emotion with annoyance with Cole for leading them on. He raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t understand why she would make that promise, even in jest.”
His mother’s face filled with sympathy. “Maybe, Scott, because she wanted it to become the truth. She was ready to start thinking about a family.”
“Maybe she would have told you what she was thinking if you’d been around long enough to listen.” His father looked on with a fault-finding gaze. “Nothing was more important than what you wanted. You didn’t even make it through carving the Christmas turkey. One text and you’re out the door, leaving your wife to serve the meal by herself. Typical of you in those days. So self-absorbed you couldn’t see past your nose.”
“I was working twenty-four-seven. Nikki understood that.”
“So you say.”
“John, please.” Cathy laid a hand on her husband’s thigh.
“Fine. But the truth is you left that girl on her own too damned much while you rode around on that damned bike, pretending to be, what? What was it that was so damned important?”
“I was SWAT, Dad. I had people whose lives depended upon me showing up, ready, at a moment’s notice.”
“That’s right. Your father just means that we loved Nicole. She was just naturally part of the family from the beginning.”
“Best thing that ever happened to you was her. You should have held on to her.”
“I know, Dad. You’ve said so before. I got the message. You would rather have divorced me and kept her.”
His father started. “That’s not what I said.”
Scott didn’t bother to respond. Sometimes what wasn’t said was a helluva lot clearer than what was. He’d ruined his life, Nikki’s life, and now he knew he’d ruined his parents’ hopes for the future, too, by losing her. Fine. Fucking great!
Scott got up and headed for the kitchen. “Need some water. I’ll be back.” He tossed words over his shoulder so his mother wouldn’t come after him.
But once in the kitchen he just stared at the refrigerator without opening it. There was a small color photo attached at eye level by one of those magnetic frames a little smaller than a Post-it note. It was of Gabe in full battle gear with a thousand-watt chick-magnet smile that outshone the reflective surface of his silvered sunshades. Gabe could live off the land with only a knife and two days of water in a two-week wilderness training. Gabe could do anything, and everything.
“Except come home safe, you bastard!”
Scott snatched the picture off the silver face of the refrigerator and looked around for somewhere to toss it. Instead, his fist closed around the frame and he squeezed until the metal rim digging into his palm and fingers threatened to draw blood. He missed his brother so damned much. He could really use some advice.
After a few moments, he carefully replaced the photo, adjusting it to his mother’s eye level. Gabe wasn’t here. The world inside his own head was all he had left. Piss poor as that might be.
He braced an arm on the fridge and lowered his head against it as he tried to think his way logically through the revelations of the last few minutes.
Nikki had thrown their history and his failings in his face when he went to see her the other day. He didn’t think she’d held anything back. If she had been pregnant, she would have told him then. She was too honest to do otherwise.
She hadn’t mentioned wanting to start a family, not in any concrete way, the last few months of their marriage, either. Of course, even before the wedding, they’d agreed that one day, in the future, they wanted children. Later. After things settled. When they were financially stable and their careers established.
Yet some long-neglected memory was wriggling its way to the surface of his thoughts. Their last Christmas Eve, she’d placed something on the tree. What was it? Something about Christmas wishes. A tiny red stocking with a white fur trim. She’d said …
Scott sighed and shook his head. He couldn’t remember. After he left that Christmas afternoon, he’d been gone for three straight days. She wasn’t talking to him by the time he returned. And not much after that. By spring it was over.
Emotion welled up inside him, a longing for so many things he was afraid he might never have and knew he didn’t deserve. What was a man supposed to do with this huge wad of longing? He’d chased down armed felons, run with one percenters, even squared off with hopped-up addicts who didn’t know they’d been shot. But the emotions coursing through him now scared him more than anything ever in his life. It felt as if the only answer was that deep abyss he’d crawled out of just last year. He could feel it, just beyond the edge of his consciousness. Waiting, in case he got tired.
Get in touch again with who you really are. Department counselor’s advice. Great advice. If he’d had any idea who he was in the first place.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. The background photo was blurry because Cole almost caught him taking it in her kitchen. But the sight of Nicole’s face gave him a jolt of life. He knew he could go on living without her. He’d done that. But the sight of her, after all this time, made him want to find out if there was a way back to having her in his life again.
His involuntary smile at that thought surprised him
almost as much as the relief that coursed through him with that decision. He was about to make an all-out assault on Nicole Jamieson’s heart. And this time, nothing was going to screw it up.
The doorbell rang as he came back into the living room.
His mother sprang up. “Right on time. Thank goodness. I was getting worried about all that food getting cold or overcooked.”
As she moved to open the door to their guests the scream of a motorcycle engine disrupted the quiet.
Scott looked up, every nerve alert. “What the fu—heck is that?”
“New neighbors.” His mother pressed her lips together in disapproval. “The son comes and goes at all hours. The neighborhood association has filed a noise complaint with the city. But what are you going to do? He says it’s his only mode of transportation to and from work.”
“He can buy a muffler, for starters.”
“I’m sure he’ll do something after the next town hall meeting. Your father’s on the agenda to speak on the subject.”
Scott was only half listening. That motorcycle didn’t belong to a kid, not unless he’d joined a biker gang. This was a serious machine. “I’ll be right back. Left Izzy in the truck.”
He was through the back door and across the neighbors’ backyard in seconds. He only caught sight of the back end of the rider and bike. It was enough. Denim-clad sleeveless jacket and a patch he knew so well he didn’t need to be close enough to read. Pagans.
Every hair on his arms lifted. His parents had some disturbing new neighbors, or the rider was not passing by by accident.
He stood several minutes listening as the noise from the bike faded like a fire engine’s siren once it’s passed by. He noticed the rider didn’t stop in the neighborhood.
He supposed he needed to think about why this was the second time in a month he’d seen a Pagan biker. First outside his apartment in D.C. and now outside his parents’ home. Was it coincidence, or something more?
“Scott?” His mother had poked her head out of the back door. “We’re waiting for you.”
Scott held his breath. Nothing stirred in the air. He went deeper, sensing through whatever extra survival instincts being undercover had honed in him to the point that sometimes that edgy energy kept him awake for twenty-hour hours at a time. He felt … nothing.
