A slightly raised eyebrow told him he hadn’t distracted Zach from his slip. But it didn’t matter—wasn’t he here to spill his guts?
“Bran!” Tess had popped out of the kitchen and, smiling, came toward the two men. She rose on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek, something she’d taken to doing lately. No, not lately—since her wedding day. She’d apparently decided Bran was her brother-in-law, so by God she’d treat him like family whether he liked it or not.
The odd thing was, he did like it, even if he hadn’t said so. He liked Tess. She was a gutsy woman. He liked that she was making his brother happy. Their screwed up childhoods had left Zach determined never to marry or have a family, a resolve that crashed and burned when he couldn’t run from Tess. Keeping her safe had meant keeping her close.
“If this is a bad time...”
She frowned. “Don’t be silly. Do you want a beer?”
“Uh...thanks. Sure.”
“Zach?”
“Yeah, I’ll take one, too.”
They got comfortable in the living room, which was one of the first rooms they had finished remodeling. The day Bran came to help replace the roof, the wood floors in the whole house were worn, and there had been holes in the walls in here. Zach had applied a thin coat of plaster over the new wallboard, and now they were a creamy white while the hardwood floor gleamed. The star on the Christmas tree in front of the window almost touched the ceiling.
This house looked like a home now. Disquieted, Bran realized it had come to feel more like home to him than his own apartment did. He had dinner here at least a couple times a week, and often spent one of his days off helping Zach work on the place.
Tess reappeared with two bottles of a dark German beer, smiled and said, “I’ll leave you two to talk.”
“No, you can hear this unless there’s something you want to get back to,” he heard himself say.
“Of course I want to hear.” She plopped down on the sofa next to Zach, who wrapped an arm around her.
At first sight, anyone would have been able to tell the two men were brothers. Both were an inch or two above six feet, athletic. Zach’s features were cleaner cut, making him handsome and Bran...not. At least in his opinion. Zach had dark hair, Bran a deep auburn darkened from the carrot-red he’d been born with. Both had blue eyes the same color as their mother’s, a fact that disconcerted Bran when he thought about it. He’d turned his back on her a lot of years ago and still wasn’t happy to have been forced to accept her in his life. Again, because of Zach.
Tess was a cross between sex goddess and girl-next-door with her scattering of freckles. She was tall enough to have modeled, had thick, glossy, maple-brown hair and green-gold eyes. Bran wasn’t oblivious to her sexual appeal, but hadn’t been slammed with it at first sight the way his brother was. Good thing, as it turned out.
Now Lina, she’d hit him hard. If he’d had her number, he’d have called her within twenty-four hours. Truth was, he hadn’t so much as touched another woman since the night with Lina. He had convinced himself it was because of Paige and the last-minute cancellation of their wedding, but he knew better now. He hadn’t been able to get Lina out of his head.
Nobody said a word. Their expectant expressions spoke for them.
He groaned and tugged at his hair, which was more characteristic of Zach than him. Getting started wasn’t easy. “The night before my wedding—what should have been my wedding—I got drunk.”
Zach nodded, even though he, like Bran, wasn’t much of a drinker.
“I should have gone home, but I didn’t. I went to a tavern, and I met a woman. We spent the night together, but I didn’t know anything but her first name. When I got out of the shower in the morning, she had taken off.”
“With your wallet?” his brother, the cop, asked.
“No. She hadn’t touched anything. I made some attempt to find her, but with only a first name, I struck out.” He hesitated, suddenly wishing he hadn’t invited Tess to sit in on this confession. “I didn’t use a condom.”
“Oh, dear,” she said.
He grimaced. “The one solid witness to today’s bank robbery? It’s her. Lina. Lina Jurick. And she’s six months pregnant.”
Zach swore.
“She didn’t know how to find you, either?”
That was Tess, optimistic about human nature.
“She knew,” he said grimly. “Turns out, I’d had the damn wedding invitation with me. While I was in the shower, she saw it. That’s why she took off.”
“O-oh,” Tess breathed.
“She swears she was going to tell me before the baby was born. It’s a girl,” he added. “What it comes down to is, I’m going to be a father.”
“Shouldn’t you insist on some testing?” his brother asked. “To be sure you are the father?”
Bran shook his head, sure at least about this much. “Lina isn’t like that. She teaches at the middle school. She’s a thoroughly nice woman.”
“Pretty?”
“Beautiful.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “My head is spinning.”
“How much did she see today?” Zach asked.
Bran told them about the robbery and about his own initial fear that the killer might know Lina. “Doesn’t sound likely, though,” he concluded. “She says he has one of those faces. Not ugly, not handsome. Not memorable. His head was shaved, and she isn’t sure if he was partially bald or what. She thinks he might have had an earring but didn’t see any tattoos. The feds will be sitting down with her in the morning, and the sketch artist as soon as we can line it up.”
“But tomorrow is Christmas Eve.”
“Yeah, that complicates things.”
“So, back to Lina,” his brother said. “What’s your plan?”
Wheels had been grinding in his head since he’d set eyes on her at the pharmacy. “Spend time with her,” he heard himself say. “Unless I don’t like her, I’ll marry her.” He shrugged. “Why not? I intended to marry. I want a family. With her, I already have one.”
Amusement glinted in Zach’s eyes, but Tess gaped at him.
“Just like that?” She sounded outraged. “No special fondness required? If that’s not a recipe for disaster!”
“Why would it be?” he countered. “I liked her when we talked. And we did talk quite a bit that night. We’re attracted. We’re having a baby together. Not so many years ago, that alone would have guaranteed a wedding.”
“But it doesn’t anymore. Bran, what if you fall in love with someone else? What if she does?”
He’d kill the son of a bitch, that was what. Bran blinked at the violence of his reaction to the idea. No, he decided, there was nothing surprising about it. She was carrying his baby. She was his, even if she didn’t know it yet. He didn’t share, and when he made a commitment, by God he kept it, and he expected the same of her.
“I’m closing in on forty,” he said. “It’s not happening.”
“So you were drunk that night,” Zach said thoughtfully, rather than asking how old Lina was. “What about her?”
Suddenly wary, Bran asked, “And that matters how?”
“She was at a tavern on her own, maybe getting plastered. Either that wasn’t so unusual for her, which makes me think you should ask some more questions before she puts your name on that birth certificate, or it was unusual for her, in which case you have to ask yourself what was going on that had her there.”
He stared at his brother, who was right. He should have asked himself exactly that. Why hadn’t he? Because she seemed so nice? What kind of idiot was he?
After a minute, he nodded. “Okay.”
“Does she have family in town?” Tess asked.
“No. Doesn’t sound like she’s going anywhere, either.”
Her forehead crinkled. “
She won’t be by herself for Christmas, will she?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I didn’t get a straight answer.” He hesitated. “The loan officer Lina saw killed? Maya Lee was her best friend.”
A gasp escaped Tess, who pressed a hand to her mouth. Even Zach looked disturbed.
“She was there because they were supposed to have lunch together. In no time, it’s going to occur to her that, if she’d suggested an earlier time, her friend would be alive. Or she’ll come up with some other reason to start blaming herself. I told her she’s going to have nightmares,” Bran said. “I didn’t like leaving her, but I didn’t have a lot of choices.”
“Do you think she’d join us tomorrow night?” Tess asked immediately, with the generosity he’d come to expect of her.
“Your dad will be here.” Not, thank God, his mother, who had plans with her current husband—number five—and stepkids. Bran would have preferred never to see her again, but he had been polite at Zach’s wedding. He wasn’t looking forward to the next time he had to be polite to her.
“So?”
“I don’t know, Tess. I’ll...think about it. She may not want to.”
“She’s going to be the mother of your daughter, no matter what. That makes her family, in a way.”
“I told her that, but I don’t think she’s quite over finding out why I was there getting plastered that night. She was offended to think I was supposed to get married the next morning. I think she figures she was some sort of stand-in.”
His brother’s eyebrows rose. “Wasn’t she?”
Bran scowled. “No.”
His brother smiled. “You being mad and depressed didn’t have anything to do with you taking a woman you didn’t know to bed.”
“I wasn’t depressed.” He didn’t deny the mad part. “I had no intention of picking up a woman. All I wanted was a few drinks. She and I hit it off. That didn’t have anything to do with the damn wedding.”
Zach’s smile widened. “Then bring her tomorrow. Let us meet her.”
He sighed and took the first swallow of his beer. “I’ll try.”
Zach asked about Mrs. Greaver and Bran’s appointment to see her this afternoon. He had, at least, thought to call her instead of being a no-show. She’d sounded the tiniest bit relieved.
“If you’re tied up with this bank robbery, I can get in touch with her,” Zach offered. “Or has the FBI taken over the whole show?”
“Actually, these two haven’t been bad to work with. They seem to want to collaborate.”
His brother grinned. “You mean, they need minions to do their bidding, don’t they?”
Despite his mood, Bran grunted a laugh. “Probably.”
Not until he left half an hour later did he wonder if he hadn’t stopped by to see Zach and Tess because he was hoping they’d suggest he bring Lina. Something about that small tree with only a few presents under it in Lina’s apartment had saddened Bran, damn it, even though he wasn’t big on holidays himself. This year, he hadn’t bothered to decorate because he wouldn’t be spending Christmas Eve or Day at his own place. Last year, he’d been stuck joining Paige’s family. The year before, he ignored the holiday. This year was different. He had family again.
Discovering he was being driven by impulses lurking in his subconscious didn’t make him happy. He used his head; he didn’t make decisions because of emotions.
And, sure, he’d surprised himself with the announcement that he was going to marry Lina, but the decision itself was entirely rational. It disturbed him a little that his equally rational decision to marry Paige had blown up in his face the way it did, but he was grateful now it had. Lina was a better choice. He’d have stuck to the commitment he made to Paige, but the truth was, he’d been finding he didn’t much like her as the wedding neared.
When she called it off, he’d been mad as hell. He’d never imagined himself in love with her, so it had been his pride that took the hit. Driving through the dark streets on the way back to his lonely apartment tonight, he admitted to himself for the first time that she had made the right choice for both of them. She wanted more than he could give. What he’d never seen before was that he had wanted more than she had to give, too.
Something was happening inside him, and it didn’t feel good. His chest felt compressed as he tried to figure out what it was he did want, beyond wife and kids. Home.
He didn’t have an answer.
* * *
THE PAIR OF FBI agents came to Lina’s apartment. Never having met a real, live FBI agent, she felt intimidated as she let them in. One was a woman, which helped her relax. Probably in her forties, the first thing she asked was when Lina was due. The man, way younger, appeared increasingly uncomfortable as the two women discussed pregnancy and childbirth.
He finally growled, “Can we get on with it?”
His partner grinned. “Scared you, did we?”
They did get down to business, making Lina repeat everything she’d already told Bran and then some. They asked some good questions. She was able to make what she thought was a pretty accurate estimate of height for the robber who had shot Maya. She remembered that mud had splattered the tires and bottom of the doors and sides of the cargo van, something she didn’t think she’d told Bran.
“It looked recent,” she said, thinking it out. “I mean, it was dry, or mostly dry anyway, but if they’d driven for hours I’d have thought more of it would have fallen off. You know? It had to have been from the day before, when it rained.”
“It might have rained here, but it didn’t in Seattle,” Agent Novinski, the woman, said flatly. She took out her phone and did a search. “Or in Tacoma.”
“Ruts and holes on a dirt road can stay muddy for quite a while, though,” Lina pointed out.
“That’s true,” Novinski agreed, but Lina could tell she wasn’t satisfied.
They wanted a better description of both the men than she could give them. No, she had no idea what color the second man’s eyes were. He had been looking at Mr. Floyd, not toward her. Wiry, short for a man. She was sure the hand that held the gun was encased in the kind of thin glove doctors and nurses wore.
They were even more dissatisfied when she couldn’t be sure what color eyes the guy who’d shot Maya had.
“But you say he stared right at you,” the male agent said.
“Yes, but you know how thick the glass is, and I was looking through it at an angle. Plus, I’d just seen my best friend get shot.” She glared at both of them. “It was horrible. Do you know what happens when somebody gets shot in the head?”
Clearly they did. Special Agent Novinski, the woman, had the grace to appear regretful.
“I was beyond shocked, and terrified, too. I can still see his face and the way he looked at me, but I didn’t think, oh, he has blue eyes.”
Naturally, at that moment she pictured Bran Murphy’s eyes, a vivid blue. She wished, quite passionately, that he was here. He wouldn’t let these two badger her.
“My best guess is hazel or light brown. You know, kind of in between.” She frowned. “I don’t think he had really dark hair, either. Even shaved, his head would have looked different if he did. His jaw would have been darker, too. He was definitely Caucasian.” She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “I looked at him for a total of maybe ten seconds. This is the best I can do.”
Eventually they gave up and departed, leaving her feeling drained. Lunch might help, she thought, but didn’t move. Even making a sandwich seemed like a herculean effort. She wished suddenly, selfishly, that she had gone home for Christmas. Maya would still be dead, but her death wouldn’t be so brutally real. Lina wouldn’t be the only person who could potentially identify one of the men who’d robbed at least three banks.
And, oh, yeah, she’d still be in deep avoidance about telling
Bran he was going to be a father.
Her phone rang. His name came up. For some reason, she didn’t hesitate to answer the call.
“Are they done with you?” he asked.
Stung, she said, “Hi. Yes, I’m fine this morning. Thank you for asking.”
There was a short silence. “Are you really fine?” he asked, in a different voice.
“No.” She closed her eyes. “I mean, yes, I’m okay.”
“Have they come and gone?”
“Yes. I don’t think I satisfied them, but I can’t see through walls and ski masks, so they were bound to be disappointed.”
“They were hopeful.” Was that a smile in his voice? “Can I bring you lunch?”
Her stomach came to attention. “What kind of lunch?”
“I was thinking pizza, but if you’d rather I could stop for deli sandwiches.”
In the interests of not gaining too much weight, Lina tried not to indulge often, but pizza sounded like exactly what she needed right now. “I would love pizza,” she admitted. “Can you make mine half veggie?”
“You don’t eat meat?”
“I just want to know I’m eating something healthy along with all the fat, okay?”
She heard a rusty sound that might be a chuckle. “Good thinking. Give me half an hour.”
And he was gone.
* * *
“I DON’T LIKE the sound of that,” he said flatly.
“Of mud?” Lina seemed bemused. “Why?”
He had set down his slice of pizza, wiped off his fingers and quickly checked his phone, to find that the last rain in south King County or Pierce County had been eight days earlier.
“Because it suggests they were staying up here for at least the previous day. They wouldn’t have picked up mud on the highway or in town.” The bank was actually outside the city limits because of recent growth the Clear Creek council members hadn’t been farsighted enough to anticipate, to their current frustration over lost tax dollars. A good percent of homes in the rural county were on dirt or gravel roads that developed potholes and ruts. Very few homes on acreage had paved driveways, either.
Harlequin Superromance May 2016 Box Set Page 6
