by Jane Henry
“Max Pederson has had not one, but three attempts on his life while in prison.” I looked around the circle and found all traces of merriment had disappeared. “Most recently, a couple of men were able to get into his cell while he slept, and if his cellmate hadn’t woken up and scared them off, he’d already be dead. Neither of the men involved have been caught, because they threatened to kill his cellmate’s family if Luis identified them.” I looked around the circle. “Given that they had enough pull to get into Max’s locked cell, it’s no wonder Luis believed they have enough connections to pull strings on the outside.”
“Luis?” Walker asked.
“Luis Rivera,” I confirmed. “His cellmate at the time.”
Walker began typing on his tablet. “I’m running a check now.”
“Luis has a mother at home,” I told them. “He’s petrified. He told Max the men involved were somehow connected to the people who got him sent down for a rape he didn’t commit.”
“Lots of innocent men in this prison of yours,” Ethan remarked. “God save us from do-good reformers.”
Caelan reached over and thumped him on the knee, like a sign of solidarity, and Ethan gave him a sad smile. I was dying to know what that whole exchange was about and frustrated beyond belief that I didn’t even know who I could trust to tell me.
“Bonneville is not my prison,” I replied shortly. “And I don’t know Luis from Adam. But you’d be surprised how often it happens. Especially when you get on someone’s bad side.”
“Once again,” Walker said grimly. “You have no idea how hard we can understand that.”
I frowned, but before I could follow up, Xavier interrupted me. “Did this Luis person identify the people who set him up?”
“Nope. And I’ve never talked to him. I’m not his attorney, so it’s beyond my purview,” I said. I hesitated for a second. “I offered to represent him. After Max told me all of this, I told him to tell Luis that I’d take his case pro bono. I mean, if Luis could give me all this information on the record, I could start looking into it. But Luis flew off the handle. Was pissed Max had even mentioned this to me. Said something about how the last guy he trusted had gotten killed, and he didn’t want another soul on his conscience, or something.”
“His last attorney got killed?” Ethan was sitting up straight now and looking at me with a fire in his eyes I didn’t know how to interpret. “And you’re volunteering yourself? No fucking way are you getting tangled in that mess.”
“Yeah? Says who?” I demanded.
Ethan crossed his arms again. “Me.” He looked around the group and added after a pause, “And every sane person in this room.”
I looked at Caelan, and he shrugged sheepishly. “He’s right. It definitely wouldn’t be my first choice.”
I grimaced at this betrayal from my newfound friend.
“In any case, it wasn’t his attorney who got killed, it was a guard, if you can believe it.” I shrugged. “I mean, in my experience, prison guards aren’t particularly sensitive to inmates’ sob stories, but apparently this guard believed Luis. Claimed he had connections and would check things out quietly. He died before he got anything, though. And I don’t even know if he started to search.”
“A guard?” Ethan demanded in a fierce whisper, and I blinked. I’d never heard him—or anyone—use quite that tone of voice in my life, like he was broken-hearted and hopeful all at once. “At Bonneville? What was his name?”
At this, the entire room seemed to be holding its breath, every eye focused on me.
“Th-the guard, you mean? I don’t remember,” I stammered, shaking my head. I had no idea what was going on, but this suddenly seemed to be of the utmost importance right now. “I’ll check my notes, but I don’t think Max ever said.”
I grabbed a folder from my briefcase and started sorting through the papers. “It might all have been a coincidence, anyway,” I blathered on to fill the utter and complete silence. “Max thinks Luis might be connecting dots that shouldn’t be connected because he’s scared, you know? I mean, the guard wasn’t murdered, he was killed in a prison riot a few months back.”
Sabrina made a little, distressed noise, but I ignored her, skimming the pages in front of me. “Oh! Wait! It is here. His name was…”
Oh, fuck. Oh, fuckity fuck.
I looked up at Ethan, at those summer-blue eyes now wide with grief and anger. No matter what had happened between us, no matter how badly he’d hurt me or how much I’d thought I wanted to hurt him, I’d have given anything not to deliver this blow.
“His name was Warner,” I whispered. “Eli Warner.”
Two
“Yeah,” I said, my voice raspy as sandpaper. “That was my brother.”
“Your brother,” Haven repeated, her hands shaking as she looked back at the folder in her hand.
The rest of the men stilled, and no one said anything at first, until finally Sabrina spoke.
“Your twin brother, right, Ethan?”
I nodded and swallowed, running a hand through my hair. “Yeah,” I choked.
The drink I’d had earlier churned in my stomach like a stormy sea. I’d known one day the shit I’d pulled when I was younger would bite me in the ass, but I was unprepared for how hard it would knock me off kilter. Haven and her beautiful wide green eyes, and the heart-shaped face with adorable little widow’s peak, didn’t help. Those eyes that once looked at me so adoringly were now shuttered and hate-filled. Hell, I’d deserved it. I’d brought it on myself. She was in my past, though, or at least until tonight, she had been, but tonight was a vivid reminder that the past resurfacing was somehow beyond my control.
She looked different tonight than the last time I’d seen her. Her hair was straighter, her pale skin flushed pink as she stood in heels that brought her barely to my shoulder height. She glared at me through her black glasses, and the venomous look cut me to the core. I’d managed to push the people I’d fucked over out of my subconscious, knowing that I was working for a greater good now.
My brother had been killed and it hadn’t been accidental.
Fuck.
I knew this, but I didn’t dwell on it. I threw myself into my work and wouldn’t let myself think of Eli. I knew the purpose of our meeting here, why the five of us had been joined together, and yet it was easier to think of what I had to do today than think of the ultimate purpose of why we’d banded together. It was inevitable that I had to face the grief that bubbled and simmered below the surface of my thoughts. Just because I didn’t think about my brother’s death didn’t mean I didn’t feel it. Sometimes it was a soft swell of a wave, making me sway with a memory. And then sometimes, it crashed on me like a tsunami, destructive and uncontrollable.
Eli and I had gone to Yankee Stadium every year. The first time we’d ever come to see a Yankees game, we’d managed to wrangle tickets from a scalper in exchange for counterfeit money, reasoning the game would be over before the guy ever found out, and it’d be worth whatever beat down we got even if he did. He never did find out.
Jesus, I’d been a little shit.
Eli transformed in high school. He’d always been the more righteous one between us, anyway. Even as a kid, his moral convictions would hold him back. Everything changed for him in high school, when he fell in love, and he headed for the straight and narrow. I guess falling in love can do that to a guy. I wouldn’t know.
He’d met Anna in Biology class as a junior and had fallen head-over-heels. She was the daughter of a preacher, a good girl who wore cardigans and skirts. She’d been bullied as the class “nerd,” and he’d defended her honor. He’d gone to fucking youth groups and shit, much to my family’s shock and my father’s chagrin. Then Anna had moved away to Bible school and they’d parted, but Eli never was the same after that. He went from giving up grifting to getting a real, bona-fide job, and he ignored the scorn from my father and, if I was honest, me. Real jobs led to real school, and Eli was the only one in our family who ever went to
college. In a total juxtaposition of the hopes and dreams most parents had for their kids, my father disapproved of Eli’s going to school. He’d said Eli thought he was “too good” for us.
Me, I knew better. Eli’s moral compass was ingrained deep, and I never could fault him for that. He was following his own course. And he was my brother. So I gave him shit, but I also gave him my respect.
Hell, if it didn’t make me damn proud of him. We’d even joke about the irony of our emergence into adulthood: I evaded prison with finesse, and he worked at the reformation of criminals. He didn’t just see himself as a corrections officer, but a beacon. He’d see to the training and rehab of those sent to jail and motivate them to do better. I eased my way into sales, hoping my own repudiation of my past would somehow make it disappear. And then, one day, I’d gotten a knock on the door.
Random prison riot, they said. He didn’t make it.
Fuck the way fate played out. If either of us deserved hell and damnation for what he’d done, it should’ve been me, not the brother who’d transformed his life, and lived for the good of others.
This year I’d gone alone to Yankee Stadium, ostensibly to celebrate my birthday. But Eli had been my twin. The tradition was in memory of him. I’d gotten plastered at the game, and given myself the day to mourn the loss of him. By the time I’d sobered, I’d shoved it all back down again.
Until Haven. The beautiful, furious reminder of my past. My crimes. And now, my grief.
I watched as she talked animatedly to the others, her beautiful hands with the long, tapered fingers waving around as she made her point, and my dick grew hard.
Fuck it.
She was as curvy and vivacious as the day we first met, and fuck if watching her talk didn’t make me want her all over again.
Xavier watched her in rapt fascination, and I wanted to grab him by the collar and shake him. Anson, who was predictably sitting next to Sabrina with their knees touching, listened, paying attention to every detail. Walker’s fingers flew over the keys to the laptop he’d fetched, but I knew he missed nothing, and Caelan watched her with eyes filled with empathy and compassion. She was passionate about her work. It showed. But there was another reason they didn’t look at me. I knew this, from my years of people-watching. They gave me space to process through my own grief.
I watched until I couldn’t take it anymore. Hell, I hadn’t heard a word she’d said after Eli Warner anyway. I needed to get Haven alone again, but how? And why the fuck had I lost my mind with her like that in the kitchen? I heard less and less of what they said while blood pounded in my ears. I shook my head. I needed to get my head in the game.
I pushed myself to my feet and walked to bar where we kept a variety of alcohol. Anson and Caelan never touched it, Walker preferred beer, but Xavier would have a few fingers of whiskey a few days a week as he sat in brooding silence. I drank when I felt like it, and when I did, I didn’t much care what it was. I tipped something into a glass and brought it to my lips, welcoming the fiery burn that trailed down my throat and into my gut, refusing to gasp or sputter but forcing myself to master it before I plunked the glass down again and tipped out some more. I wasn’t aware of the rest quieting behind me until I felt a hand on my arm. I blinked up at Anson, his dark eyes looking at me with concern.
“Need you at your best for this, man,” he said in a low voice only I could hear. “You sure that’s the smartest thing to do?” I looked at the glass in my hand, then back at him, and shook him off. These men were like brothers to me, joined in grief and shared losses, united with the unspoken promise that if life or death was on the line, we’d lay down our lives. We knew each other’s darkest secrets, had risked our own asses for each other, and like real brothers, gave each other shit from time to time.
But tonight, they weren’t my brothers. My brother was dead.
It was Xavier, his voice as sharp as a razor’s edge, that brought me back to the present, who reminded me of where we were and why.
“Warner,” he said, holding himself erect on the edge of the sofa, his eyes fixed on me. “Tell us what you know about your brother’s death.” His eyes bore into mine and his voice lowered. “Remember your purpose.”
The Masters all knew the stories of the deaths that brought us together. We’d had to share all in order to move ahead with our investigations. So I knew he wanted me to refresh their collective memories for our purposes tonight, and bring Sabrina and Haven up to speed. The challenge in his eyes brought out the anger in me, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to deck him for his lack of sympathy or thank him.
Remember your purpose.
“Eli and I were raised by a master manipulator,” I said, looking at Xavier and no one else. His ice blue gaze fixed on mine dispassionately, but I knew he took in every detail. “My father was a grifter his whole life. I learned the art from him,” I said, with a mirthless chuckle. “And so did my brother. When Eli was in high school, he decided he’d turn his life around. Be a do-gooder. Make amends for the lies and crimes we’d committed as kids.” Haven stiffened to my left, but I wouldn’t look at her. I could still feel her pulse under my fingertips, her flesh against mine. “Eli became a prison guard, and he was a damn good one. Upstanding. Honest. Trustworthy.”
Everything I wasn’t.
“Then I got news that there’d been a prison riot, and he’d been accidentally killed.”
Xavier nodded, and I took another sip of my drink as his eyes held mine. “Until January, I never suspected it was anything but an accidental death, because my brother didn’t get involved in shit that would’ve made him a target.”
“Well, according to Max, that’s wrong.” We all turned to Haven, who was now looking at me. She stammered a bit under the attention but plowed on.
Good girl.
“He still did nothing to deserve it, except try to get justice for a man who claimed to be innocent. I don’t know Luis, I’ve never even spoken to him, but Max is convinced Luis is telling the truth about being innocent. Eli was trying to right a wrong.”
Xavier crossed his arms on his chest. “Seems we need information about Luis.”
Walker cleared his throat. “Yeah, man, that’s where I come in,” he said, as if reminding Xavier of his existence. “I ran Luis’s name and got a million hits. It’s all here in the open, every detail of his arrest and trial. Everywhere. Dozens of articles that say the same things. Almost too much information, if you know what I mean.”
“No,” Sabrina said curtly. “I don’t know what you mean. Let’s hear it.”
“A surplus of information could indicate someone wanted others to draw conclusions,” Haven filled in, then she looked at Walker to confirm this.
“Si, mamita,” he said, with an approving grin. My hand curled into a fist without my approval. The bastard would not flirt with her right in front of me. I took another sip of my drink, pushing hard to maintain my cool.
“There are a dozen newspaper articles defaming him when he was arrested and jailed. A little bit of an overkill for a man they say was the son of a storekeeper, no? He wasn’t a power player—no money, no connections. He had a variety of minimum wage jobs but kept his nose clean. According to what I see here, he grew up on government assistance, free lunch at school, raised by a single mother when her husband passed on, and on his twenty-first birthday he was arrested for the rape of Carmen Bianchi.”
Murmurs went up around us.
“Bianchi. Son of a bitch,” Anson muttered. “The Bianchi family owned Silver.”
Walker looked at Haven. “Silver was the bar where Anson’s mother worked before she was killed,” he explained. “Directly before her death, we have reason to believe she was attempting to blackmail one of her bosses, and we can’t prove it, but we believe the Bianchis might have been involved in her death. And we also believe that the Bianchi family is directly tied to Sabrina’s father’s death and Max’s imprisonment, as well.” I could tell he wanted to say more, but needed to know if he
could trust her, so he stopped there. He didn’t tell her that all of us had shared losses that were somehow connected, and that we’d only just begun putting the pieces together.
Xavier made a low sound of disapproval, and I knew he didn’t want to share more than necessary, not now. We’d get what we needed from Haven and help her out, because it was the next course of action we had to take in our own investigation as well. But we had to stay focused on what was at hand. Hell, I’d been exposed enough tonight. For once, I was on the same page as Xavier.
“Right,” I interjected. “So Luis was arrested for raping Carmen Bianchi.”
“The Bianchis are trying to make a name for themselves in organized crime,” Haven said, her eyes widening. “I know of the Bianchi family, and that must be the connection that made Max believe you guys could help him. What else did you find on Luis?”
Walker flicked from one browser to the next. “No one in the media tried to clear his name, and there was no conflicting evidence. Usually in cases like this we have those who think he’s innocent and those who think he isn’t. This is nothing but an inflated volume of articles pointing to his guilt. There’s a lot of articles here, but it’s all the same information.”
“A smear campaign, then,” Haven concluded, and Walker nodded grimly.
“Except for this. An article on his parish website regarding a candlelight vigil Saint Marco’s held the night of his arrest, and comment after comment on the article that say he was framed. But they were deleted from the website and stamped out in the public records.”
Haven’s brows drew together. “And yet you have access to them how?”
“The less you know about that the better, Ms. Wright,” Xavier interrupted. “For now, let’s focus on what we know.”
Haven sat up straight, and as I watched her stunningly beautiful eyes focus on Xavier, my gut clenched. I wanted to get her alone. Away from the rest of them. I had no claim on her and yet my instinct said otherwise. My grip tightened on the glass on my hand, as I watched her address him.
