by Layla Reyne
“Expect not.” She lowered herself into the guest chair, prim and proper, like a good little lawyer. Who could kill him with her dainty, bare hands. “Do you love him?”
The question knocked him for another loop. So hard he didn’t hesitate to answer with the truth. “Yes.”
“He loves you too.”
Brax bit back his gasp.
“Talks about you all the time,” she carried on, oblivious to the earthquakes she’d triggered. “You’re practically family, so I need to make sure this is going to work.”
He let out a long slow breath and adjusted in his chair. “Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because he was afraid to lose you. After Mom and Dad died, Holt withdrew more and more each day. He was a shell of the big brother I loved when he left for the army.” A flash of remembered pain streaked across her sharp features. She definitely favored Hawes more than Holt, but that lost look was the same one Brax had seen on Holt’s face before. It was gone the next instant, her trial lawyer’s mask back in place. She scooted forward in her chair. “You gave him back to us, to himself. It was touch and go there when he first got home, but you were his lifeline. Every Tuesday, then more frequently, a little more life was pumped back into him, enough to carry him through another week. He couldn’t lose that—lose you—too.”
“He could never lose me. I promised—”
“What did you promise, Assistant Chief Kane?”
He suddenly felt like he was being cross-examined and had been caught in a lie. He dodged. “I don’t remember introducing myself.”
She smirked. “I picked out the name plate, though the title’s wrong.
“Inside joke.”
“That’s what Holt said. Now, answer the question.”
Against his better judgment, Brax liked her. Liked her even more for being there on her brother’s behalf, Holt’s best interest at heart. This visit wasn’t about the family business; it was about protecting Holt. That he understood. “I promised to always protect him.”
“Good.” She brushed her hands down her skirt and stood. “This will work then.”
“How’s that exactly?”
She paused with her hand on the doorknob and glanced over her shoulder. “There’s a reason Holt’s on digital.”
The chief’s words came back to him. “You’re keeping him clean.”
“As clean as we can.”
“Why?”
Helena’s features softened into a genuine smile, fondness melting the smirking mask. “Because he’s the best of us.”
Chapter Eight
Nine Months Ago
Holt had lied to him—again and again—with escalating and frightening frequency. Lies that had put lives and jobs, including his own, in jeopardy. Brax didn’t know how to feel about that. Anger, betrayal, hurt, fear. Fucking hell, the fear. Not the same sort that had caused him to muscle his way onto a special ops team, that had left him no choice but to cover Holt from fire and yank him into his arms and under a bed as the world crashed down around them. In those instances, Brax had had a choice, a modicum of control, even if his heart had dictated his actions.
This fear was different. It had started five years ago when Helena Madigan had strolled into his office and planted the seed. Had hit its first major growth spurt the night Isabelle Costa—no, Special Agent Isabella Constantine—had been killed. Had bloomed beautiful, delicate flowers the day eight months ago when the little girl bundled in Brax’s arms—his goddaughter, Lily—was born. Had grown like a fucking fantasy beanstalk the past week and a half as everything in his life, everyone and everything he loved—Holt, Lily, the unlikely family he’d found, his job—were compromised.
He’d promised to always protect Holt, a promise that had extended to the Madigans and especially to Lily, Holt and Amelia’s daughter, but how could Brax keep his promises when he didn’t have all the facts? Granted if he had, he would have had no choice but to arrest his family. He understood, but he didn’t like it. Didn’t like having no fucking control over the situation, and the fear that lack of control brought was unlike anything he’d ever felt.
And when this latest chaos was over, what next? The present situation was untenable. He couldn’t live like this, always half in the dark where his loved ones were concerned. But what was the alternative? How did this ever work? How did this fear, this life, not become a giant eucalyptus tree, layers peeling and ever changing on the outside, rotting from the inside, never knowing when it might fall and obliterate him? How did he keep his promise?
He was untethered, adrift, pushed around in dark waters by forces he couldn’t see. Which Holt had kept from him. Same as he’d kept from him whatever they were up to this morning. Holt had shown up on his doorstep with Lily asleep in her carrier and her diaper bag stuffed full. He looked a wreck, still cut up over his own grandmother’s betrayal, a treason in which his wife had played a starring role. Brax had pulled him inside and into his arms and caught Holt’s tears on his shoulder. But that was all the time he’d had with Holt before a text from Hawes called Holt into action. Before fear settled heavy on Brax’s shoulders once more.
Did he still love Holt Madigan? Yes. Did he trust Holt Madigan? Not completely. Would he still do anything to protect him? Yes, and there was the fucking rub.
An hour passed, Brax circling his apartment, Lily in his arms, waiting for a call from the station to tell him about the latest tragedy involving his family. But it was a knock on the door—not the station ringtone—that interrupted him.
He was surprised when he opened the door to the woman dressed in boots, designer jeans, a knit top, and a blazer, her dark curls piled on top of her head. She was an unexpected visitor. But as Brax recalled his other interactions with Melissa Cruz over the past five years, her appearance now, in the middle of a shitstorm, made perfect sense. She was the eyes and ears of this town. Had been since she was the FBI Special Agent in Charge and was even more so now that she was a free agent.
But on whose behalf was she there? The Madigans had somehow stayed off the FBI’s radar, which he suspected Cruz had something to do with. But she’d married into the Talley family a few years back, and they were tied to both law enforcement and shipping. And she was a bounty hunter. Fear settled even heavier. Down to his bones. Had an arrest warrant been issued? Or had someone taken an unofficial bounty out on his family? Only one way to find out.
“Cruz.” He opened the door for her to enter. “What can I do for you?”
“I didn’t come here for help. I came here to help you.” She strolled past him and sauntered down the long narrow hallway to the living area at the back of his condo. She made herself at home at his dining table and pulled out the chair next to her. “Come have a seat, Chief.”
Less is more. Let her lead.
He drew Lily’s pop up crib closer to the table and settled her inside, making sure she was cozy and nestled in, still snoozing peacefully, before he took a seat.
Cruz leaned back, looking around him and into the crib. “You think she’s going to be less trouble than this current generation of Madigans?”
A laugh escaped him, and with it, some of the tension he’d bottled up. “Oh, I’m pretty sure that’s not gonna be the case. She’s spoiled rotten.”
“Danny and Aidan are the same way with their niblings, especially Katie. And that one has a US attorney wrapped around her finger too.”
Tension rushed back in at the mention of the prosecutor. He was good. Fair, but good. And had a reputation in the military, as a SEAL and then JAG officer, that had crossed branch lines.
A hand landed on his back. “Breathe, Kane. Just breathe. I’m here to help. I won’t let anything happen to them either.”
And fuck did he need that—an outside ally and a break—and fuck if he didn’t miss his other closest friend, Marsh, who’d gone off the grid after his retirement last year, their online chess game left open for months.
He propped his elbows on the wood table and buried his
face in his hands. “I’m so tired, Cruz. So fucking tired of being afraid and so fucking tired of being kept in the dark.”
“Not to mention just tired.” She gave his back one last pat, then stood. She circled the table and crib, snagged the kettle off the stove, and filled it with water. “It’s been a rough couple of weeks.” Returning the kettle to the burner, she got that boiling, then dumped the old coffee grounds out of his French press and heaped in fresh ones. “It’s about to get rougher.”
“The showdown with Rose,” he surmised.
“You’re read in?”
“I know their grandmother was behind the coup to overthrow Hawes. I saw the video of Rose and Amelia plotting. But that’s all I know.”
“I’ll tell you what else I know, and we’ll sort it out.” The kettle began to whistle, and she flipped it off before Lily roused. “I’ve got some experience with this whole straddling the line routine.”
“No offense, Cruz, but you ended up out of the law as a result.”
“None taken,” she said with a smirk. She poured the piping hot water over the fresh coffee grounds. “My priorities shifted. I put my family and my heart ahead of the job. I don’t regret it.” She grabbed two mugs out of the drying rack and placed them on the table with the brewing press. “You’ve been juggling the same for a while now. Longer than I think most realize, and I suspect your priorities are shifting.”
“Like fucking quicksand.”
“The same decision freight train is headed your way, and I’ll help you through that too when the time comes. But for now, let’s make sure the right Madigans win.” She reached a hand into the crib, lightly running her fingers over Lily’s auburn fuzz. “For her sake and ours.”
Lily’s brown eyes blinked open, the same warm brown color as her father’s, and Brax offered his pinky for her to curl her tiny fingers around. Yes, the danger and fear had grown, but so had the love, his heart more full—more at risk—than ever. One battle at a time. He’d sort out the rest if—when—they survived the current threat.
“Will you help me, Chief?” Cruz said. “Help them and her?”
He was scared to death, for Lily, for Holt, for his family and himself, but there was only one answer to the question. “Yes.”
II
Holt
Chapter Nine
Present
Three things happened at once.
The doorbell rang, Lily woke up, and Holt knocked his elbow against the leftover tub of concrete paint next to him. He tossed aside the grout gun and shot out a hand, catching the lip of the container with his index finger, only a drop escaping onto the freshly finished floor.
“One minute!” he shouted up the stairs. He grabbed a scraper and smoothed out the runaway paint, not wanting it to dry unevenly. He’d used a hard-to-find, hard-to-apply, nonslip finish. Safer for Lily. He didn’t want an errant blip in the coating to trip his seventeen-month-old daughter as she toddled through the door.
Assuming they ever moved in. He tossed the scraper into the supply bucket. That was a decision for another day.
“Da-Da!” came another call from upstairs, right as the doorbell rang again.
“I’m coming!” he called to both.
He stood, flicked off the baby monitor, and grabbed a shop rag. He wiped his hands as he took the stairs two at a time to the entry foyer of the split-level house. Through the textured sidelight window, a seventies relic that still needed to be replaced, he glimpsed the shape of a petite woman with long blond hair, dressed in all black, a helmet in hand at her side.
He opened the door for his sister. “Thanks for waking Lily.” Not waiting, he continued up the stairs to the main level, swinging open the baby gate at the top.
Helena trailed through the house behind him. “It’s not her normal nap time.”
In the middle of the remodeled living room, Lily stood in her portable crib, holding herself up by the siderail. “Da-Da!” She threw her arms into the air so excitedly she started toppling backward. “Yes!” she shouted her new favorite word.
“Whoa there, baby girl.” Holt snatched her up and into his arms, giving her a toss for good laughing measure.
She giggled and squealed, a happy toddler. Even happier when her brown eyes landed on her aunt. She leaped from Holt’s arms to Helena’s. “Na-Na!”
“I’m not old enough to be your Na-Na… stinker!” Helena wrinkled her nose and pointed at Lily’s diaper. “What time did your daddy have you up this morning anyway?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Holt said as they worked in tandem to change Lily’s diaper on the black leather sofa from Hawes’s old condo. “Figured I’d come out and get some work done. We played a little when we first got here.” He gestured at the scattered toys in the far corner of the room. “Then I fed her, and she napped. I was finishing up the floor downstairs.”
“Where’s your phone?” Helena asked.
He patted his pockets. Empty. “Shit. I must have left it in the car.”
“That’s why you need a coffee machine up in here.” She finished buttoning Lily’s onesie while Holt bagged the dirty diaper. “Brain fuel.”
“Caffeine detox.”
“Since when?”
He shot her the bird. “Why are you here on a Monday morning and not at work?” If Helena wasn’t out of town on an op, she usually spent weekdays at MCS headquarters, her law office, or in court. Occasionally, she’d hang out at her girlfriend’s auto garage, but Celia more often than not cried “distraction” and chased Helena away. This morning, however, she’d left the city to hunt him down at the fixer-upper he’d bought and was renovating in Pacifica. A prickle of unease tickled his fingertips. “Something’s wrong.”
“You could say that.” She dug her phone out of her pocket, and after a couple quick taps, handed it to him.
His fingers seized, almost dropping the phone. “What the fuck is this?” Or maybe he should throw it. The newspaper headline was that incomprehensible. And that anger inducing.
“Story broke a couple hours ago.” Helena lifted Lily and settled her on a hip. “We got a heads-up, but no one could reach you.”
He reread the headline: Police Chief Implicated in Bribery Scandal.
Below it were two pictures. The first was Brax’s professional headshot from SFPD’s website—uniform, badge, cap, awkward smile. The second picture was fuzzier, but even in plainclothes, Brax was unmistakable. Tall and lean like a pine tree with broad shoulders and long legs, his brown hair clipped short and his nose and chin sharp. Not as sharp as Holt’s siblings’ but cut enough that Holt had always drawn the contrast to his own more rounded features. But it was the tattoo on Brax’s right forearm that was a dead giveaway. The inked pattern—a tribute to his mother—was exposed by his rolled-up shirt sleeves and visible just above the hand Brax had extended to the other man in the picture, unidentified, who was holding out a stack of bills.
Two fingers to the screen, Holt spread them to zoom in. Didn’t help. “Can we get a cleaner shot?”
“Jax is working on it.”
“That’s not one of our people, is it?” He didn’t think so, but Helena had been recruiting, and she and Hawes had more day-to-day contact with the operatives than he did.
She cocked a hip, the one with Lily on it, and his daughter giggled at Helena’s death glare. She wasn’t old enough to fear it yet. “One, what the fu”—Holt shot her a look—“dge would we need to pay Brax for? Two, our operatives know better than to approach him directly.” She flicked a finger between them. “You, me, Hawes, and Chris are the points of contact.”
“And three, Brax wouldn’t take a bribe.”
“It’s been a rough year for him, and he’s been pushing us away. How sure are you?”
She wasn’t wrong on either count. Between their grandmother’s failed coup last summer, and the drive-by shooting at Celia’s garage this past winter, their family had made life tough on Brax. Add to that a busy end of year that had kept the chief working around
the clock at the station, missing their first holiday together in six years.
The second one with Lily, who’d been asking for her “Ba-Ba”—the second “name” she’d learned—and used more and more insistently.
Holt’s confusion and rising panic over the growing distance had gotten the better of him at Hawes and Chris’s wedding. Helena hadn’t mentioned his blowup with Brax, but it had to be on her mind as it was frequently on Holt’s. It was half the reason he’d made so much progress on the house. He hadn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in months. He couldn’t get the look on Brax’s face that day out of his head—a potent, devastating cocktail of frustration, betrayal, fear, and loneliness—and his even more devastating words, “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.” His voice had been weary, resigned, and Holt’s heart had withered on the spot.
All he’d wanted to do was help his friend, understand what was going on with him, return all the favors Brax had ever done for him, and fix whatever needed fixing—he had the tools now—and Brax wouldn’t let him. Because Brax no longer trusted him? Or because Holt and his family were the problem? Had the professional conflicts finally become insurmountable? A part of Holt had always feared the day would come when he asked too much of Brax, but Holt didn’t think that was all it was. This weird, awful tension between them had landed about the same time Chris, a former ATF agent, had hurled a verbal grenade into his and Brax’s path last summer.
“Because if she hurt you, Holt would either fall apart or kill her himself.”
One sentence, one uttered truth that Holt hadn’t denied then and still couldn’t deny now. Said aloud, it had felt like one of those earthquakes that periodically jolted San Francisco. Not the big rolling ones like Loma Prieta, but the sharp quick hits that were like a pile driver ramming the earth’s surface from underneath.
The tremor had knocked Holt off-balance, but he’d recovered. Brax, though, seemed to have been permanently shifted. Holt had tried to ask about that too at the wedding, but Brax had cut him off. Because Holt wouldn’t like the answer? Was he losing his closest friend and Lily’s godfather? After a year when Holt had already lost so much, he couldn’t lose Brax too. Couldn’t lose the connection that had been a pillar of his life for over a decade. Outside of Lily and his siblings, Brax was the most important person in his life. The person who’d saved him, figuratively and literally, those last few years in the army, and after too, making sure he had the support to handle his PTSD once he’d discharged. Who had still, despite whatever was going on with them, answered Holt’s late-night phone call last month when the nightmares woke him.