His eyes dimmed. “But that sweet, adorable woman isn’t you?”
“I’ve already given everything to someone else,” she told him without prevarication.
“We’re talking about Bran, right?” When she nodded, he sighed. “Well, I hope he deserves you.” He flashed her his dimples again. “But if you ever decide he doesn’t, you know where to find me.”
Maddy hesitated a second before going with her gut and throwing her arms around his neck to hug him tight.
“Thank you,” she whispered, closing her eyes. Then a sound in the doorway had her blinking.
There he was. The one. Her one.
Or at least he was for one wonderful, awful night…
* * *
9:52 a.m.…
Red.
That was the color of Bran’s world. The instant he saw Maddy in another man’s arms, the monster inside him roared to life, and it always viewed things in shades of crimson. It urged him to run over, yank Maddy away, and flatten Rick the Prick with a haymaker to the mouth. Just pow! Then, once Rick was down and out, the monster wanted to stomp on his remains.
“Bran!” Maddy pushed out of Rick’s arms. Through sheer force of will, Bran beat his dark side back and made sure his expression was blank as he watched Maddy scurry toward him. “Are they finished questionin’ you? Did they tell you if they’ve found the fishin’ trawler? Have they gone to secure the yacht and bring in…” She trailed off and gulped before finishing with, “the bodies?”
Bran didn’t answer her immediately, instead glancing over at Rick. Something in his face must’ve revealed what he was feeling, because Rick cleared his throat and pushed up from the table.
“I need a warm-up,” the young park ranger said, indicating his Styrofoam cup as he sidled by Bran. Bran waited until Rick disappeared down the hall before stepping fully into the room.
“They haven’t located the trawler yet,” he told Maddy, trying not to drown in the disappointment that filled her liquid-mercury eyes. “But they have planes in the air searching. And they’ve put the word out.”
She blew out a breath. “Well, I guess…I guess that’s somethin’.”
Something. But not everything. They both knew this wouldn’t be over until every last one of the men involved had been brought to justice.
And on the topic of the men involved…
“They ran the prints on the two bodies we brought with us from Garden Key,” he told her. “Both men were Army.” No surprise there. “Both in the gun-for-hire business with their former CO, a guy named Rory Gellman. From what the suits told me, Rory and Tony went to school together.”
“My daddy always says it’s all about who you know,” Maddy said with a disgusted twist of her lips that momentarily distracted Bran with the urge to kiss the expression away.
He had to look at the file cabinet standing in the corner to beat back the impulse. After a second, he managed, “Now, about the yacht…”
The tone of his voice must have told her the news he was poised to impart wasn’t good, because she placed a hand on his forearm. Despite the fact that her fingers were icy cold, a hot streak of awareness shot through him. “What is it?” she asked.
And he wished he could save her from this final calamity, the last nightmare, but he respected her too much, loved her too much, to withhold the truth.
“It was burned, Maddy.” She gasped. And when her lips trembled, he almost looked away again. But he forced himself to hold her horrified gaze. “All that’s left are a few bits of charred debris. The Coasties are gonna try some recovery dives later this afternoon, but…” He shook his head, not needing to go on. Not needing to tell her they’d probably never find the remains of her uncle, and her family would be left with nothing and no one to bury.
Maddy nodded her understanding, fresh tears pooling in her eyes. Tears she blinked back and refused to let fall.
So damned brave. So strong. So…everything.
For a second there while he’d been giving his statement to the feds, he’d allowed himself to think that maybe he could make it work with Maddy. That maybe there was a chance for them. A chance for him. That maybe he wasn’t so much like his father after all.
And then he’d walked into the room to see her with Rick…
You were wrong, Mom. You were so wrong when you said I only got the good in you both.
Maddy searched his face. “Bran, I—”
But before she could finish her thought, the girls filed into the room. They were followed by one of the agents. Maddy stepped away from Bran to give hugs and ask the girls how they were doing. When her hand slipped from his arm, it felt like a vital part of him went with it.
“The plane is fueled and ready to taxi,” the agent said. “And I think these girls are as anxious to see their parents as their parents are anxious to see them. So whenever you’re ready, Miss Powers.”
Maddy turned back to Bran. “I…have to go.”
“I know.” If he gritted his jaw any harder, he’d likely break a bone. “Me too. I have a flight waiting to take me to Virginia.”
Her brows formed a delicate vee. “What’s in Virginia?”
“The family of one of the Coasties,” he told her, sick to his stomach at what lay in store for him upon landing, nauseous too from the thought of walking away from Maddy for the last time. It’s for the best. You know it’s for the best. “I made a promise. Now I have to see it through.”
“Oh, Bran,” she said, not needing him to elaborate. She was a smart cookie. She could guess what his mission must be. “I wish I could go with you.”
He didn’t say anything to that. What could he say?
For a couple of seconds she searched his eyes, looking for something she obviously didn’t find. Then she went up on tiptoe and wrapped her arms around his neck.
He tried to just stand there and take it. Tried to make himself give her a friendly pat on the back. But in the end, he couldn’t manage it and crushed her to him, burying his nose near her temple.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for comin’ for me. Thank you for savin’ me. For savin’ all of us.”
He couldn’t speak around the lump in his throat.
Maddy pushed out of his arms, and he had to fist his hands to keep from reaching for her and pulling her back. “So I guess…” She blew out a breath, watching him with wide, knowing eyes. “I guess I’ll…email you then?”
When he nodded, a painful look of resignation tightened her features. If he’d still been armed, he would have capped his own ass for hurting her. For disappointing her.
“Okay then,” she said and turned to the teens. “Let’s go home, shall we, ladies?”
The agent led the girls from the room, but before Maddy could go, Bran found his voice and blurted, “Hey, Maddy?”
She glanced back at him. Even windblown and red-eyed and wearing grubby clothes, she was still so beautiful it hurt to look at her. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry for…” For your uncle. For all the bad shit you had to go through tonight. For not being the kinda man worthy of a woman like you. He wanted to spit out the words but they stuck in his throat, choking him. So he simply ended with, “For everything.”
She searched his eyes for what felt like an eternity. Then she nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry too.”
Chapter 27
Two weeks later…
“Any news on the trawler and the missing mercenaries?” Alex asked Bran as she grabbed a chair and scooted it next to his. “Have the feds found them?”
Bran was sitting at the rickety computer desk pushed into the corner of the ramshackle Wayfarer Island beach house. As usual, all the windows in the house were open to allow the sea breeze to trickle inside. Outside, the sound of voices was joined by the crooning twang of Jimmy Buffet drifting through the speakers of the old battery-powered b
oom box. Jimmy was singing about being a pirate two hundred years too late, and occasionally someone outside would join in with Jimmy’s lament.
Ahhhh, home, Alex thought, crunching on a strawberry-flavored Pop-Tart.
“It’s my turn at the laptop,” Bran snarled, protectively hunching his shoulders toward the glowing screen.
She made a face. “I know it’s your turn. But I saw you had the CNN website open, and I thought maybe there was something about—”
“They found the trawler scuttled off the coast of Mexico, but Rory Gellman is still missing,” Bran said, scrolling up to the top of the article. The headline read: Former Army Ranger at Large after Blundering Attempt to Ransom Oil Heiress.
For the last two weeks, the details of what had happened on Garden Key had been the top news stories. Alex was grateful that Wayfarer Island was so remote or there likely would have been more reporters camped outside their door looking for exclusive interviews. As it was, after the initial story broke, a single ship had anchored beyond the reef. But every time the reporters tried to load up in a dinghy to reach the beach, one of the Deep Six crew motored into the lagoon, shotgun in hand, and informed them the island was private property and wasn’t very welcoming to trespassers.
After seven days, the reporters had given up and sailed away.
“Gives me the willies knowing he’s still out there,” Alex said, shivering and taking another bite of Pop-Tart. A crumb fell to the floor. Meat, who’d learned to follow her around because she was usually eating and sometimes—okay, more often than not—made a mess of it, lunged at the morsel like his life depended on it. Lapping it up, he sat back on his haunches, panting and offering her a doggy grin.
“You’re welcome,” she told him, ruffling his ears and the fat row of wrinkles that made up his neck.
“Those things give him gas, you know,” Bran said, looking at Meat askance like the Pop-Tart had already begun to ferment in the dog’s belly.
“Everything gives him gas,” she corrected, taking another healthy bite and continuing to scratch Meat until she found the spot. The one that made his back leg bicycle like crazy.
“True,” Bran admitted, clearly unmoved by Meat’s hilarious antics. The man has become a total sourpuss. “So why don’t you and Sir Stinks-a-Lot scram and let me finish what I was doing. I prefer my air to remain unfouled.”
“I’m not sure that’s a real word,” she informed him while licking at the strawberry icing.
“If it’s not, it should be,” he insisted, shooting her a long-suffering look. “Now beat it. Both of you.”
“So you can write a private email to Maddy?” She wiggled her eyebrows, trying to tease a smile out of him. She wasn’t sure she’d seen one on his face since that awful night. And she missed it. “Do you guys have email sex? If so, how does that work exactly? Sort of like sexting, I assume, but—”
“Alex,” he gritted between clenched teeth, “I’m warning you.”
“Yeah, sure.” She waved him off. “So what else is new?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
“That you’ve been stomping around here barking at everyone for the past two weeks.”
“Have not.”
“Yes, Benji,” she assured him, “you have. So why don’t you just admit you love her, you want her, and you’re miserable without her? Why don’t you go get her and make yourself happy, which, in turn, will make all our lives that much easier?”
He snorted. “That sounded so altruistic.”
“Hey,” she said in affront. “If I don’t look out for number one, who will? And stop avoiding the subject.” She skewered him with a hard look, refusing to let him get off track. Yeah, I’m on to you. “Why don’t you go tell Maddy how you feel?”
“It’s more complicated than that.” Instead of the grin she’d hoped to coax, he scowled so hard she was afraid his face might break.
“So you admit you love her!” She pointed a victorious finger at him.
His scowl deepened. She looked for a crack in his face. Nope. Not yet.
“Look,” she said, “I know you have some sort of damage when it comes to your father.”
He blinked and looked like he was ready to murder someone. The whole thing with him and his dad was a minefield. A tinderbox. An emotional Syria. But somebody needed to jump into the bloody fray and talk some sense into him. Never one to run from conflict, Alex figured that someone might as well be her. Besides, she’d grown to love Bran like a brother, and she hated that he was hurting.
“Don’t worry,” she was quick to tell him. “No one has been telling tales out of school. I don’t know the specifics. And I don’t have to know. Because I know you.”
His jaw was sawing back and forth, but he didn’t say anything.
Hanging out with Mason too much, obviously.
She sighed and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “You are a good and decent man, Brando Pallidino. Everything else, all that stuff in your past, it’s just dirt in your eye. Blink it away.”
“You’re awfully young to have all the answers,” he said, tapping his fingers impatiently on the desk.
“What can I say?” She spread her arms wide. Meat followed the movement of the Pop-Tart in her hand like a hawk follows a mouse in the grass. “I am the oracle. All knowledge starts and ends with me.”
He harrumphed.
“And now you’re starting to sound like Mason,” she accused.
She knew her mistake the instant his dark eyes glinted. When he said, “On the subject of Mason,” she groaned. “You still got the hots for him?”
The hots? Sure. If by hots he meant she couldn’t stop thinking about Mason every hour of every day. Unfortunately, Mason had taken to treating her like the bubonic plague, running in the opposite direction every time she got near him. Which only encouraged her impish side, making her seize every opportunity to seek him out.
“Look,” she said. “The man’s got that whole I-paint-pictures-and-own-a-cute-flatulent-dog thing going for him. It’s like girl porn.”
Bran snorted.
“And on that note,” she told him, “I’m out.” She’d said what she wanted to say, planted the seeds. It was up to Bran to let them grow.
Pushing to a stand, she tossed the last bite of Pop-Tart to Meat. The dog caught it expertly and swallowed it without chewing. A familiar squeak-squeak sounded from the rusty hinges on the screen door when she opened it. But before stepping over the threshold, she turned back and imparted one final thought. “You know, in the end it’s the love we withhold that we regret the most.”
When he simply blinked at her, she stepped out onto the porch and let the screen door slam shut behind her.
Now, where is Mason?
It’d been a couple of hours since the last time she’d tortured him…
* * *
“She’s right, you know.”
Bran turned to find LT leaning against the doorway leading to the kitchen, bare-chested, beer in hand, freshly showered after a day spent doing search dives in an effort to locate more artifacts from the Santa Cristina. “Who?”
“Alex,” LT said. “She’s right about all of it. About your past bein’ nothin’ but grit in your eye. About the thing we regret bein’ the love we withhold.”
Bran felt a muscle in his cheek twitch. “Does no one on this island believe in privacy?” He pushed back in his chair and glowered at LT. “How long were you standing there listening to our conversation?”
“Long enough to hear you not deny lovin’ Maddy.”
What is that I’m feeling? Impatience? Exasperation? Anger? He couldn’t tell for sure. The only one he could pinpoint with any certainty was heartbreak. The last two weeks had felt like two years.
Maddy had kept up her end of the bargain, going on like nothing had happened between them.
Like nothing had changed between them. Her emails were just as funny and poignant and openhearted as ever. As alternately light and serious as they’d always been. Funny clips one day and mournful ruminations about her uncle the next. You know, just like always, she was being his…friend.
Except now it wasn’t enough. Not when he knew what it was to have more. To have everything.
“So what if I love her?” he snarled. “It doesn’t change who I am.”
“And who is that?” LT casually took a sip of his beer. His calm only increased Bran’s agitation.
“My father’s son,” he said. “You’ve seen me on the battlefield. You know what I’m like. You’ve seen the thing that lives inside me.”
LT didn’t say anything for a while, simply stood there drinking his damn beer. Then he finally spoke. “See, now, what confounds me is that you think you’re the only one of us who has a dark, vicious side. That you’re the only one of us who gets that look in his eyes when that side takes over. But we all have it, man. We all get it. Those dark, vicious sides of us are what kept us alive all those years. The difference between us and you is that we appreciate ours and you’re afraid of yours.”
“I’m not afraid—”
“Yes,” LT stressed, “you are. That’s why you always turn it off so quickly. Why, the instant the danger or whatever is over, you flip that switch inside yourself and start in with the jokes. You think you have to beat it back or it’ll take over. But it won’t, Bran. Don’t you know by now you can handle it?”
It sounded so good. It sounded so easy. And he wanted to believe it. “My father couldn’t handle it.”
“Yeah, well, you may be your father’s son. But you are not your father.”
“You shoulda seen how jealous I was of that young stud park ranger every time he looked at Maddy,” he snarled, remembering the red in his vision, the violence in his heart. Terrified of both. “When he touched her, I wanted to rip his arms off and beat him with ’em.”
LT snorted. “Join the club, man. When Olivia and I are in Key West and heads turn in her direction, I’m hard-pressed not to go on a murderin’ spree. Feelin’ possessive and protective and damn near nuclear about the woman you love is natural. Not actin’ on all those feelings is what separates the men from the monsters. And you, my friend, are a man.”
Devil and the Deep (The Deep Six) Page 29
