Operation Unleashed

by Justine Davis

  But Alyssa was smiling at him.

  He felt the strongest urge to call this all off. To go back, to try and hang on to the mood of the last week. It had been, on the surface, the life he’d dreamed of with her. And if they could hold on to that, maybe he could work on the rest, maybe someday she might actually look at him the way she’d once looked at Doug.

  He tried to scoff himself out of that silly idea, but it clung stubbornly to the edges of his consciousness. But now he knew he had to decide, and decide now. For so long he’d wanted her to see the truth, wanted her to see the real man—or rather, boy—his brother had been. And on that day he’d realized he loved her, he knew he’d wanted her to see Doug differently in the hope that she would then be free to see him differently.

  But now he wondered if it would be worth it. How would she react if he destroyed that rose-colored image she had?

  If he let this go on, and Foxworth somehow found the answers and proved him right, what would he be left with?

  Chapter 8

  Drew was glad things had slowed down as winter approached. Usually he fretted about the downturn as construction slowed, especially since he kept paying his crew to stay on, but this time he was glad of it. And if having him around more irritated Alyssa she didn’t show it. She simply said the more time he spent with Luke, assuring him he was loved and needed, the better.

  Personally, he thought the best thing they could do for Luke now was present a united—not loving, that was too much to ask—and calm front. Like the home front he’d had, his parents love for each other had never been in doubt, and he’d turned out okay.

  Then again, they’d raised Doug in the same atmosphere.

  But they’d also spoiled him more, after his rocky start. And once he’d learned to use his innate charm to manipulate adults, it was all over.

  The call from Foxworth came in just after they’d dropped Luke off at school. Part of that united front, they’d both hugged him and waited until he was inside the long, low, northwest-style building. Alyssa had sighed as she wondered aloud how long before being hugged by his mother in public would be unacceptable. Then the call had come, and they quickly scuttled the plans they’d had to go shopping to replace Alyssa’s computer, which had been acting up lately, and headed for the unmarked, green building.

  It had only been three days since they’d been here. He hadn’t expected anything new so quickly, despite Hayley’s assurances. They were the best at what they did, she’d said, and apparently she was right. Even if he still wasn’t exactly sure what all it was they did. He was sure of why, though, after the story they’d heard, and that kind of motivation was hard to disagree with.

  When they arrived, Cutter was outside and raced up to meet them. He greeted them both with a bump of wet nose, then looked toward the car.

  “Sorry, buddy, Luke’s at school,” Drew said with a laugh at the dog.

  Cutter whuffed softly, sounding dejected, as if he’d understood perfectly his new playmate wasn’t coming. Alyssa smiled and patted his head.

  “Maybe next time,” she said.

  Cutter then turned and trotted toward the building. They followed. At the door he rose up on his hind legs and batted at a metal square on the wall. A handicapped door activator, Drew realized as the door swung open, and couldn’t help grinning at the clever dog.

  The moment the door was open Cutter trumpeted out a bark that sounded for all the world like an announcement.

  “Not quite a doorbell, but effective,” Drew said.

  Alyssa laughed, which pleased him a lot more than it probably should have. But then, she usually did. It was only that one sore spot that was ever a problem, as far as he was concerned.

  Of course, Alyssa could have an entirely different viewpoint. He’d always expected that one day she’d want out of their arrangement. They’d talked about that, before they’d gone through with it. They’d left open the option that if either of them found someone else, they’d be free to go. He’d made her promise she wouldn’t sneak, but would tell him honestly. She’d cringed at that one, but said nothing. Probably felt she had no right to, after sneaking off with Doug.

  But she’d changed, grown so much in the last three years, sooner or later she was going to get tired of being tied to a man she didn’t love, a man who reminded her in the worst possible way of the man she had loved. It was why he kept his feelings buried, as deep as he could. Because telling her how he felt would more than likely hasten that day.

  Buried might not be enough, he thought as they walked through the door Cutter had opened for them. He might just need to pour cement over them, too.

  They came into the downstairs living area that had so surprised them the first time they were here. It had been like walking into a warm, welcoming living room, a leather couch, a couple of chairs arranged around a coffee table on a thick, cushy-looking area rug. They were all facing a gas fireplace that was turned on, warming the room visually as well as temperature-wise. He’d admired the efficient arrangement of the small kitchen along the back wall, and the way the island separated it from the rest of the space.

  Hayley was already there, with a laptop open before her on the heavy coffee table. Cutter trotted over to her, sat, and leaned into her. “Ah, there you are.”

  “Is he your official greeter?” Alyssa asked with a smile.

  Hayley laughed as she stood up. “One of the many tasks he’s taken on, yes.”

  “Pretty smart trick, with the door,” Drew said.

  “Quinn put it in mostly for him. He’s a clever boy,” Hayley said, scratching a spot just behind the dog’s right ear. The sigh of pleasure was almost human, and Drew found himself grinning again.

  “Good morning.” Quinn’s voice came from the back as he came down the stairs, a plain manila folder in his hand. “Cutter rounded you up, I see.”

  “That he did,” Alyssa said.

  “Maybe we should get Luke a dog,” Drew mused aloud.

  “Yes,” Alyssa agreed instantly. “I didn’t realize until I saw them together how much he’d love one.”

  “I know just who you should talk to,” Hayley said. “Laney Adams. She’s the girlfriend of one of our guys, and she runs the grooming shop here in town. She knows all the dog folks around.”

  “I think we should adopt one, though,” Drew said. “Help a homeless one.”

  Alyssa glanced at him, her expression unreadable. At least, to him. But oddly, he saw something change in Hayley’s expression, as if she somehow knew exactly what Alyssa was thinking.

  Women.

  “Perfect,” Hayley said. “Laney donates groomings to the local Humane Society, prettying up the shelter dogs so they have a better chance. She knows a lot of folks there. And the dogs. She’d know which ones might be really good for Luke.”

  “I like her already,” Alyssa said.

  “Of course, Cutter found Laney her own dog,” Quinn put in.

  “What?”

  “She’d been thinking about a dog for the shop, as a greeter, as you called it. And she made the mistake—or the right call—of discussing it in front of Cutter. A week later he brought Teague a tired, scared, skinny and very dirty pup who’d obviously been lost for a long time.”

  “Teague is...?”

  “Teague Johnson. Works for us.”

  “Her boyfriend?”

  Hayley nodded. “So now Murphy has a good home and a job.”

  “Wait,” Drew said. “Back up here a minute. You’re saying Cutter understood that discussion?”

  Quinn smiled, his expression one of a man who’d been down this road, and remembered how ridiculous it seemed. “You have a better explanation?”

  “You’re assuming cause and effect, here,” Drew said.

  “Post hoc, ergo propter hoc?” Quinn said.

/>   “Exactly.”

  Hayley looked at Alyssa and winked. “I love it when he talks Latin.”

  Alyssa sighed. “I have no idea what that even means.”

  “After this, therefore because of this, literally,” Drew said. “It’s a logical fallacy. The assumption that because something happens after something else, it happened because of that something else.”

  “Glad you got something out of that college education,” Alyssa said, her tone so sour it was almost bitter. Drew winced.

  “I’ve told you more than once you could go back to school if you wanted to. We’d manage.” He knew one of the regrets she had about running off with Doug was tossing away the scholarship she’d earned.

  “I know you have. But I made my choices, I have to live with them.”

  “But you don’t have to keep on punishing yourself for them,” Drew said gently. “Life’s done that enough already.”

  “I’m sorry.” The look she gave him then washed away the sting he’d felt at her jab. One thing about Alyssa, if she apologized, she meant it. She glanced at Hayley and Quinn. “And sorry we always seem to air our private problems in front of you.”

  Hayley waved off her words. “Part of our charm, people feel comfortable.”

  Quinn, who seemed a bit more uncomfortable about it all, cleared his throat in a wordless reminder of why they were here. Hayley picked up on it instantly.

  “I thought we’d sit down here by the fire, since it’s a cold, damp morning,” she said.

  “It’s nice,” Alyssa said. She’d taken a seat on the couch. Drew hesitated, then sat beside her, but not too close. She didn’t react, so he guessed it was all right. And acknowledged briefly how tired he was of guessing with her.

  “It’s a lot nicer than when I was living here,” Quinn said with a grin.

  “You were living here?” Alyssa looked around.

  “Before I met Hayley, yes.”

  “Met?” Hayley said with an arched brow.

  “Okay, kidnapped.”

  Drew gave her a startled look. Hayley laughed. “It’s a long story. Alyssa can tell you, if you want, I gave her the short version. But now let’s get onto your situation.”

  Alyssa, Drew realized suddenly, was very calm about this. Given that Foxworth had agreed to dig into the truth about Doug, he would have expected her to be a little more nervous. Maybe he’d been wrong thinking she might have accepted the possibility that he was right about his brother. It surely wouldn’t be the first time he’d misinterpreted her. The last three years had been a major learning curve.

  Quinn set the folder down on the table.

  “Drew, I assume you know about your brother’s juvenile record.”

  “Yes. You were able to get that?”

  Quinn nodded. “Rules change after a death. Assault, arson, car theft...quite a résumé before he even hit sixteen.”

  “But that’s not right,” Alyssa exclaimed. “He never assaulted anyone, that was just a misunderstanding. He might have bullied that kid a little, but that was all. And it wasn’t arson, that was just a silly prank that went wrong. And the car thing, that was just joyriding.”

  Drew stared at her. “What?”

  “He told me all about those things. How it all got blown out of proportion.”

  “Lyss, he went to juvie. For six months. If it had just been joyriding, and if not for the arson, he would have gotten probation or something.”

  She shook her head. “He told me the truth about it all. It was just the judge didn’t believe him.”

  “It was that the facts proved otherwise,” Drew snapped.

  He felt a sinking sensation somewhere low and gut-deep. He got up almost convulsively, and walked over toward the fireplace, staring down into the flames. He had an odd sensation of muscles twitching, demanding he move more.

  He wanted to run. He realized it with a little shock, he who faced up to life and difficulties. He didn’t run. At least he never had. But he wanted to now, and he hated the feeling. He rested an arm on the wood mantelpiece, as if that would anchor him in place. And after a moment his muscles gave up the demand. As if fighting the urge had weakened him, he let his head drop to rest on his forearm. He did feel weak. Tired. Disheartened.

  He felt something brush his leg, looked down to see Cutter, who had been quietly snoozing on the rug. The dog nuzzled his other hand, rubbed his head against his knee as if he’d somehow sensed Drew’s inner turmoil.

  Maybe they were right, he thought rather numbly, and the dog really did read minds.

  Now if you could just change minds, he silently told the animal staring up at him. Instinctively he reached to pet the dog’s head. And felt oddly better for it. It seemed to ease the roiling in his stomach, at least, even if it did nothing to solve the problem.

  Except for moments of weakness, they’d stuck to the agreement not to discuss Doug. But one of the results was that he’d never realized until this moment just how little she knew of the real man his brother was. He’d thought she just refused to admit it, but now he saw that she honestly believed the falsified version of his life Doug had given her.

  He heard Quinn talking quietly to Alyssa. He couldn’t quite hear the words, didn’t care. Hayley rose and came to stand beside him.

  “Let’s take Cutter for a little walk,” she suggested, her voice low enough not to interrupt whatever Quinn was telling Alyssa.

  He shook his head. He’d beaten the urge to run, he wasn’t going to do it now.

  “Please.” She was already pulling the hood of her sweater up over her hair. “Quinn’s very, very good at laying out facts for people. Give him a chance to get through to her.”

  The implication that they saw the facts themselves, saw the truth about his brother, made him feel a little less hopeless. Still he hesitated to leave, even for a few minutes, in the midst of this. A second later he felt a nudge behind his knees. Cutter, he realized, had gone behind him and added his own urging to Hayley’s persuasive power.

  He gave in then, grabbed up his own jacket. The moment they stepped outside into the clearing Luke had been playing in he felt better, despite the light rain that was falling.

  “I’m sorry, Drew,” Hayley said. “You just have to remember how young she was.”

  “I know how young she was. I met her for the first time after I came home from college. She was sixteen then. And I knew by the way she acted that Doug had her snowed. A year later she ran off with him.”

  “At seventeen, the romantic image of a bad boy with a heart of gold is almost irresistible to some girls.” She glanced back toward the building. “And very hard to let go of.” And then she looked at him, her green eyes warm, sympathetic. “Even if they have a real heart of gold right in front of them.”

  Her words drained even more of the tension out of him. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them to look at her.

  “Quinn is a lucky man,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said with a quick smile. “But then, I’m a lucky woman.”

  Drew smiled back, feeling somehow better. He rubbed at the back of his neck. Tension always seemed to settle there, and now that it had eased slightly, the muscles were tired.

  “I’ve been trying to figure her out for three years now. She’s far from stupid, so I never got why she was so loyal to Doug, after he got her into so much trouble and then abandoned her when she needed him most.”

  “She never saw the real Doug,” Hayley said.

  “I should have known. I’d seen him do it with our folks, and others, put up this facade, this carefully constructed image that was all they ever saw.”

  “And that’s all she ever knew of the man who fathered her son.”

  “So it seems. I guess I just never thought he’d do it with the girl he supposedly loved.
”

  “Which says as much about you as it does about him,” Hayley said with a warm smile that made him think yet again that Quinn Foxworth was a very lucky man.

  Chapter 9

  Alyssa stared at the records spread out before her. The papers alone she could dismiss, they were, after all, just one person’s interpretation of what happened. And cops, Doug had often told her, wrote things that proved their case, not always the truth. She’d wondered why they picked him to harass, but it had only been a brief thought, quickly forgotten when Doug launched into her favorite subject—the wonderful life they were going to have once they were free of all this and away from his parents and hers.

  They had to wait until he was twenty-one, he’d said, because then he’d come into a small inheritance left by his grandmother. His stick-in-the mud brother had used his to help fund college, but he wasn’t about to throw his away like that. He was going to get out there and live, not spend hours in some musty hall reading about other people’s lives.

  She’d only found out later that Drew hadn’t wanted to go to college at all, he’d wanted to stay here and work in the business. But his grandfather had pushed for college, and Drew respected the man. So he’d made a deal with his grandfather, that he’d go to college, as long as he could come straight back when he was done. And true to his intent, he did just that. He’d graduated with honors, but was on his way home the very next day.

  While she and Doug were still playing out their teen romance back here. She would have left with him before that, willingly. Sixteen was the age of consent in Washington, she told him, he wouldn’t get in trouble, even if he was four years older than she. She loved him, madly, she told him.

  Madly.

  She’d come to accept that she hadn’t seen things as clearly as her seventeen-year-old self had thought. It had been a long process of ruefully admitting she’d been more than a little foolish.