Between Love and Duty

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “I’m taking my son home now,” Hector announced.

  Jane smiled, but injected steel into her voice. “I’d better do that, Señor Ortez. Tito, why don’t you say good-night now?”

  Hector’s nostrils flared. “I can’t drive my own son home?”

  “Your visitation is supervised. You understand that.”

  “I’m a good father. I don’t deserve to be embarrassed in front of my son.”

  She sympathized. This whole process must be humiliating for a man of any pride, but at the same time the arrogance in his stance and voice made her wary. They were still in the first week. Did he understand what he risked if he chose to be uncooperative?

  “If all goes well, it’s not for long,” she reminded him, very conscious of Duncan across the table. He sat utterly still, but she knew without touching him that every muscle in his body was rigid.

  Hector said some uncomplimentary things in Spanish, but finally left Tito with Jane and Duncan and stomped out, his displeasure evident in his body language. Tito waited, head hanging low, while Jane got a box and put the leftover pizza in it.

  She offered it to Tito. “Why don’t you take it home. The last thing I need is leftovers.”

  His head came up and she saw that she’d offended him. “It’s not my pizza.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t have bothered with the box, then. I don’t want to take it home. Duncan, do you?”

  He shook his head. “I’m having both lunch and dinner out tomorrow. Tito, are you sure you don’t want it?”

  Tito hesitated, suspicious, but finally grabbed the box. “If nobody else wants it. Yolanda and Mateo might like some.”

  Jane knew they were his small niece and nephew. She couldn’t remember the baby’s name, if she’d ever heard it.

  “Good,” she said with a big smile, and laid a hand on Tito’s shoulder as they walked out, Duncan silent beside them. Somehow she wasn’t surprised when he accompanied them to her car, waiting until Tito had gotten in and she’d opened her door.

  “Nicely done,” he murmured in her ear, so close she felt the warmth of his breath and heard him more as a vibration than actual voice.

  “Good night, Duncan,” she said firmly.

  He bent to look into her car. “When’s our next visit?”

  Tito shrugged. “Papa said he would call.”

  “Okay. Let me know if you want to shoot some baskets in the meantime.”

  Tito nodded but didn’t say anything. Duncan didn’t allow himself to show disappointment or hurt, but she was very sure that he felt both.

  “All right, Tito,” he said in a voice that astonished her with its gentleness. “Good night.” He nodded at Jane, waited until she’d gotten in and closed her door, then walked away.

  JANE’S WEEK GOT EVEN MORE stressful as the court date for another case she’d taken on neared. It was a far more contentious custody dispute with both parents and one set of grandparents all using the children as a battleground. If she’d known she would be handling the supervised visitation for Tito, she wouldn’t have done both, but it was too late now. The fact that she was so busy was her only excuse for not wondering sooner why Hector and Tito hadn’t scheduled another outing.

  Duncan’s call triggered her alarm.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded in his usual charming style.

  She injected an excess of sugar into her voice. “Why, hello, Captain MacLachlan. How nice to hear from you.”

  “Jane…” It was a clear warning.

  Did the man have friends? Date? Or could he be charming when he chose? Jane grimaced. She was never likely to find out since he obviously had no interest whatsoever in anything but butting heads with her. And she ought to be amending, Thank God.

  “I haven’t heard a peep from Hector,” she said.

  “It’s been four days.”

  Her gaze flew to the calendar that hung beside her desk in the small office at Dance Dreams. “I’ll check and let you know.”

  After she’d ended the call, she considered whether to try to reach Hector or whether she should stop by Lupe’s and potentially talk to Tito instead—or first. Or better yet, both. She’d be closing the store in fifteen minutes. Today, if she remembered right, was one of Lupe’s nights off. It was likely, therefore, that Hector would be joining his family for dinner.

  Stop by, she decided. Surprise them.

  Or waste half an hour on the one-and-only evening she’d had all week without an interview scheduled for the other case for which she stood as Guardian ad Litem.

  Still.

  She was nearing Lupe’s apartment house when she spotted Hector and Tito walking toward it. Tito was dribbling a basketball and they were talking. Feeling a headache coming on, Jane drove a circuitous route so that they didn’t see her and parked around the corner. Then she hustled into the vestibule of the front door and waited, arms crossed, toe tapping in irritation.

  They all but bumped into her. Worry flared on Tito’s face, anger on his father’s.

  “What are you doing here?” Hector asked.

  “Tito,” she said calmly, “please go up to your sister’s apartment. Your father and I need to talk.”

  Tito looked anxiously at Hector, then nodded and hurried inside. Jane didn’t say a word until she heard his footsteps on the stairs. Then she said, “You’ve violated the conditions of your visitation with your son. I could go to the judge right now and tell him I think you shouldn’t be allowed to see Tito at all.”

  He leaned toward her, his face flushed. “I’m allowed to have dinner with my children.”

  “You heard and understood Judge Lehman. You cannot spend time with Tito unless either I or Lupe are with you.” She looked around ostentatiously. “Where is Lupe?”

  “We went out only for a few minutes while she cooked.”

  “This isn’t the first time, is it?”

  His furious stare gave her his answer.

  “Señor Ortez, I will be calling Judge Lehman tomorrow. I’m going to give you one more chance to comply with the order. However, you can no longer visit Tito at your daughter’s apartment.”

  He slammed a fist against the wall to one side. Jane couldn’t help jumping.

  “Hijo de puta. This isn’t right! I would never hurt one of my children. I’ve done nothing to deserve to be treated like some kind of monster!”

  “Please don’t swear at me.” Doing her best not to let him see that she was beginning to be frightened, Jane said, “If you love your son, you’ll cooperate for one month. That’s little enough to ask. If you can’t do that, tell me now.”

  They stared at each other, his eyes dilated and red suffusing his face. His lips were drawn away from his teeth and he was breathing hard.

  Jane held herself still, refusing to let him see that she was quaking inside.

  He said finally, “I have no choice, do I? But I see now that you want to take my son away from me. Perhaps you want to give him to that policeman who was spending so much time with Tito. These visits—” he spat to one side “—they’re nothing but a front, are they? So if I say later, I wasn’t treated fairly, you can say, see? He had his chance. But it’s a lie. Now I know.”

  “No,” she said. “I promise you, Hector. Your future with your son is in your hands. If Tito doesn’t come to live with you it will be your fault, because you didn’t follow through with the judge’s requirements. You can make this hard or you can make it easy. You can be smart. Why not be smart, Hector?”

  He rocked on his heels. “Am I permitted to go upstairs and tell my family why I can’t eat dinner at their table?”

  She didn’t dare back down at all. “I’ll tell them.”

  With a vicious curse—in Spanish, thank God—he punched the wall again and swung away. A minute later, Jane heard the cough and uneven roar from Hector’s pickup, and then it accelerated past on the street.

  She leaned against the wall for a minute and let herself shake.

  “Well, that was fun,”
she said out loud. “To answer your question, Captain MacLachlan, this is what I do for fun.”

  DUNCAN WAITED UNTIL SEVEN and, when he still hadn’t heard from her, called Jane’s cell phone. When she answered, he said, “Well?”

  “Has anybody ever told you your conversational skills stink?”

  “You’ve hinted as much.” He frowned. There had been something in her voice. Only tiredness, or had something happened to upset her? “So?”

  She sighed. “About what you probably expect. Lupe couldn’t say no to her own father. I caught Hector taking Tito out to shoot baskets without supervision.”

  Duncan swore. “Are you going to do anything about it, or did you issue a gentle warning?”

  “Do I really give the impression of being such a pushover?”

  She sounded offended enough, he was taken aback. No, he thought, Jane Brooks was anything but a pushover.

  He’d been silent long enough she didn’t wait for an answer.

  “I’ve told Hector he can no longer see Tito at Lupe’s apartment. No family dinners. He will see his son only under my direct supervision. Does that satisfy you, Captain?”

  He didn’t know. The same indefinable something was in her voice.

  “How did he take it?”

  “Not well,” she admitted.

  Duncan tensed. “He didn’t lay a hand on you?”

  “No. Nothing like that. Only said some bad words, complained we have no intention of really letting him have custody of his son and stormed away.”

  Duncan’s doorbell rang. Frowning, he went to answer it. To Jane, he said, “I should have gone with you.”

  He was flinging the front door open to find his brother on the porch when Jane said, “Get real. That would have made everything way worse. He suspects you want to steal his son from him.” After a brief pause, she said, “With reason.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he snapped.

  Waiting with his hands shoved in the pockets of his leather jacket, Niall raised his eyebrows and grinned. Duncan glared at him and briefly covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “What do you want?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jane asked, sounding incensed.

  “I wasn’t talking to you. My brother’s decided to drop in on me.” With a grimace, he stepped to the side and let Niall in. He closed the door and started for the kitchen. “Jane, you know I can’t have Tito. So what’s this ‘with reason’?”

  “You love Tito. That makes you a threat to Hector. An understandable one.”

  “It’s bad that I’m spending time with the boy?” he asked incredulously.

  “No. Of course not. I didn’t mean that. Only that I can see why Hector is afraid.”

  Aware of his brother watching him, Duncan pinched the bridge of his nose and momentarily closed his eyes. “I don’t love him,” he muttered.

  “Are you sure?” Her voice had softened. “Sometimes we can’t help ourselves.” After a momentary silence, she added more briskly, “It doesn’t matter, anyway. Hector needs to concentrate on his own behavior. His relationship with his son. That’s what he doesn’t quite get.”

  “Quite? Understatement.”

  “I was blunt. I can be.”

  Suddenly he was smiling, something he hadn’t felt like doing all day. “I won’t argue with that.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Some of her spirit had returned. “I’ll call when I hear from Hector. Okay?”

  “Okay.” The smile hadn’t lasted long. Duncan found he was frowning. “Jane? Be careful.”

  “I will. But Hector’s not like that. All he was doing today was venting.”

  Duncan ended the call feeling uneasy. Whatever she said to the contrary, he was betting Hector Ortez had scared her today. She should be scared when she confronted a pissed-off guy who’d barely gotten out of prison for having killed someone. Hector wasn’t a big man, not a lot taller than Jane, but he outweighed her by fifty pounds or more, and a whole lot of muscle.

  Better yet, she shouldn’t be confronting someone like that.

  It had been daylight, he reminded himself. It sounded as if she’d met Hector at Lupe’s apartment house, which meant there had been other people around. And sharp as Jane could be, he’d also seen her exude warmth. Hector had seemed initially to like her.

  She was probably right. Sober, Hector wasn’t stupid enough to act out his rage.

  Perturbed, Duncan realized he wasn’t as reassured as he’d like to be. It was a good thing that he’d be there most of the time to deflect Hector’s anger. She wouldn’t like knowing he felt protective—he wasn’t sure he liked knowing that he did—but there it was.

  “This about the kid you’ve been hanging out with?” Niall asked. He’d peeled off his leather bomber jacket and gone to the refrigerator. He emerged with two beers in his hand.

  Duncan took one. “How do you know I’ve been hanging out with a kid?”

  Niall shrugged. “People talk.”

  “Goddamn it. What are they saying?”

  “Not much. That there’s a kid. Somebody thought you might have signed up for Big Brothers.” Niall didn’t smile. “I found that…unlikely.”

  Duncan studied Niall, three years younger than him. They weren’t what you’d call close. They spoke. Occasionally one of them stopped by the other’s house for a beer or they sat side by side on stools at the bar one block from the police station. Niall was on the force, too, a detective in major crimes. People were aware they were related, but they didn’t have much to do with each other on the job, even though Duncan was, several rungs up the ladder, Niall’s boss. He was still frequently bemused by the knowledge that his little brother, with a juvenile record as long as his arm, had become a cop. A good one, too. Probably because of his experience on the other side of the fence.

  They were of a similar height and build, but Niall had their father’s red hair. Auburn, in his case. He’d had freckles as a boy that were no longer visible. His gray eyes were often as cool as Duncan’s.

  “The kid’s name is Tito Ortez. He broke into the house one night.” Duncan told his brother the story, including recent events.

  To his surprise, Niall said, “I remember the killing.” He took a long swallow of beer. “I was close to an arrest on the guy who died. A real scumbag. Meant all that time I’d spent building a case was wasted. Down the tubes. On the other hand—” his quick grin flashed “—I didn’t have to testify in court.”

  Duncan could identify with that. “Ortez claimed self-defense.”

  Niall waggled the hand that wasn’t holding a beer. Sign language for “Could have been, but maybe not.” That had been Duncan’s conclusion, too. After catching glimpses of the anger Hector barely kept in check, Duncan was leaning more toward “maybe not.”

  “This Jane,” Niall said, watching his brother.

  “This Jane nothing. She’s a pain in the ass.”

  “You smiled.”

  “I’ve been known to.”

  “On historic occasions.” When Duncan said nothing, Niall let it go. “Conall called.”

  Duncan swallowed some beer, careful not to show any reaction. “Did he.”

  “He’s involved in bringing down a drug cartel in Baja. Says he’s getting a great tan.”

  The youngest MacLachlan brother, Conall, had always been hot-blooded and reckless. After their mother walked out of their lives, Niall had surrendered to Duncan’s authority after a good scare—administered by Duncan. Conall, in contrast, had fought long and hard. He hated Duncan to this day. But so what? Duncan hadn’t been trying to win his brothers’ unstinting love and devotion. He’d been determined to save them from their father’s path, and he had. Ironically, Conall, too, had become a cop, although in his case with the Drug Enforcement Agency. He surfaced from undercover occasionally to stay in touch with Niall.

  Duncan wondered sometimes if he’d even recognize Conall if they came face-to-face.

  Niall finished his beer and crushed the can. H
e let it fly and pumped his fist when it dropped unerringly into the recycling container. Duncan had a flash of memory: the two of them out shooting baskets at the school, dusk making it hard to see, but both of them reluctant to stop. They’d never talked much, only played. Communicated with body checks, high fives, grunts and laughs. Time on the court had been the best they’d spent together.

  He’d been trying to re-create it with Tito, Duncan realized with a minor shock. Okay, he’d known in one way that he was, in a deliberate sense, but not that there had been an emotional component for him.