“You have a point. I wasn’t in on that part of the planning.”
“So you aren’t the one to blame. Good to know.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Right.”
“And the great thing is, hair grows. You can outlive any mistake.”
Her eyes darted to his arm. “Unlike ink.”
“I’ve heard you can undo ink, not that I have any intention of it.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Like a motherfucker.” He grinned at her.
“Why’d you do it?”
“What? Get the ink?”
“Yes.”
Brandon sighed. “It’s a story for another time.” He smiled over at her. “Maybe someday.” He put his foot on the brake and slowed even further. “And here we are.”
There were three other cars in the parking lot. Because the day was so dark and the lights were so bright, Brandon could see inside the building and appraise the risk before they ever got out of the car. Instead of parking close to the front, he parked as close to the back door as possible, which meant it was also mostly hidden by the big garbage containers.
“It’s garbage bag time,” he said. When she was finished readying her plastic cover, he said, “The back door is probably locked. We can try it or run for the front.”
“Back door,” she said decisively and without hesitation.
Brandon smiled. She was a risk taker. Like him.
“On three. One. Two. Three.”
They slammed the car doors and ran for the rear door. It was locked. Over the rain, he heard Cami giggle about the fact that they couldn’t get in.
Once inside, the assistant manager welcomed them.
“Thanks,” said Brand. “We’ll take that booth in the back. The one right over there by the kitchen.”
The manager nodded and handed them two menus, smiling.
“Sit where you want.”
When Brandon took the side of the booth against the back wall, he was satisfied that he could see everything; the parking lot, the entire eatery, and part of the kitchen. Cami sat facing him, which meant she was facing away from everybody else. It wasn’t as safe as a bunker, but it was as safe as breakfast was going to be on a Thursday morning near the Kentucky state line.
By the time they got their menus open the waitress was there with setups and coffee cups.
“You kids look half drowned. You want coffee?”
“Yes, please,” Cami smiled up at her.
“Yeah. Thanks,” Brandon said.
“Cream?”
“None for me. She’ll have enough for both of us though.” He didn’t look up from his menu when he said it.
The waitress laughed and looked at Cami. “I like a little coffee with my cream, too, hon.”
In a few seconds she was back with a cream pitcher and a coffee carafe. As soon as she filled the cups with steaming hot java Cami put both hands around her mug to warm them up.
“Hmmm,” she said. “Now if I was only dry and warm and had a chance at a decent meal.”
Brandon flipped his menu.
“This food is better than decent. It’s available.” He paused before adding, “Now.”
“You make a good argument.” She opened her menu and started to look around.
When the waitress came back, Brandon said, “I’ll have the steak and eggs with hashbrowns, sunny side up, medium on the steak. Instead of toast bring me a grilled cheese sandwich cut in half.”
She nodded and looked at Cami.
“Two scrambled eggs with tomatoes. Do you have wheat toast?”
“Yes, darlin’. We may be country folk, but we got wheat toast.”
Cami wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Um, can I have that, please? No butter?”
The waitress laughed, shook her head, and took the menus as she left.
“I think you made an impression on her,” Brandon said.
Cami sighed. “I didn’t mean any offense, but there was no mention of wheat bread on the menu.”
Brand laughed. “You care what she thinks of you, don’t you?”
Cami’s eyebrows drew down into a frown. “Are you implying that’s a flag wave for low self-esteem?”
He shook his head as he scanned the parking lot for new arrivals. It seemed people with good sense stayed home on days when rain was pelting in sheets.
“No. I’m not saying that.”
“I feel like I’ll never be dry again.”
“We’ll find a place to stop for the night before it gets dark again.”
She smiled slightly. “It’s my turn to drive.”
“I didn’t agree to letting you drive.”
“It’s not safe for you to take on all the tension.”
“How do I even know that you know how to drive? How many road trips have you taken?”
“I haven’t taken any road trips before, per se, but I drive back and forth between the city and Weston. And that’s a lot harder than what you’ve been doing out here in the…”
The waitress arrived with armloads of food just as Cami was about to make some disparaging remark about rural life.
After setting down all the food, she said, “Be right back with that grilled cheese.”
“Looks good. Thanks,” said Brandon.
“What’s your last name?” Cami asked out of the blue.
“Why do you want to know?”
She shrugged. “You know mine.”
“It’s better if you don’t know mine.”
“Why’s that? Because you’re a secret ninja black ops spook who will fade into the wind after this job is over?”
Brandon stared at her for all of five seconds before breaking into full-on laughter that took her aback and pleased her at the same time. Real laughter was a good look on him.
“Yes. You have me dead to rights.”
“So maybe Brandon isn’t your real name.”
“Maybe not. Okay. You can drive for a while. Do you always have sliced tomatoes with your eggs?”
“I wouldn’t say always, but it’s a good pairing. Why?”
He rolled a shoulder and stretched his neck as if to say he didn’t care and couldn’t figure out why he’d asked.
The waitress saved him from answering by returning with his grilled cheese.
“Do you always have steak, eggs, and a grilled cheese sandwich?” She laughed.
He smiled as he took a bite that equaled a quarter of the sandwich. When he was finished chewing, he took a drink of coffee before answering.
“No. I saw the grilled cheese on the menu. I wanted that and the steak and eggs.”
“So you’re a thinker outside the box.”
“I hope so. I’m kind of surprised that we haven’t visited the restrooms yet. I was thinking we have to check out every toilet between here and Austin.”
“That’s my goal. Don’t worry. I’ll have a travel guide report before we leave this fine establishment.”
“Hmmm. Be sure you have a nice crisp folded bill to leave the attendant.”
Cami laughed.
“I really wish there was an attendant just so it would shock that smug look off your face.”
True to her word, when they were finished, she asked the waitress where to find the ‘ladies’ room’.
“Back up to the front and take a right.”
“I assume you’re coming,” Cami said to Brandon as she slid out of the booth. “I know the drill by now.”
“Right behind you, Rose.”
When Brandon opened the door to the women’s room, he found that there were two stalls. Bending to peer underneath, he saw that one was occupied.
“You’ll have to wait,” he said.
“Why?”
“Somebody’s in there.”
“I’m sure it’s a woman.”
“Not up for discussion.”
“For Christ’s sake.” She slumped against the wall in a huff that looked like a teenage protest.
; It was intended to be a little rebellion, but Brandon thought it was kind of cute. He was also glad to see that the soon-to-be ex-husband hadn’t completely broken her spirit. She was damaged, but not cowed.
When the woman who’d been in the restroom left, Brandon waved an okay for Cami to go in. As usual he was waiting and watching the door like the second coming would emerge, which she thought was kind of appealing. In its own way.
“Get your garbage bag,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know it was possible, but it might be raining harder.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Judge for yourself.” He nodded toward the glass front.
“You promise we’ll stop before dark?”
“If we can find a place that looks safe.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Tennessee
Cami got behind the steering wheel and fumbled to get the wet garbage bag off her. Brandon reached over to help. When he pulled it away, they were face to face and experiencing a connection neither of them was prepared for. He pulled his eyes away as he threw the garbage bag in the rear floorboard. He came back up with a pack of cotton hand towels. He reached toward her face with one of them. She took it, smiled gratefully, and rubbed it over her face and hair.
“I’m not sure the bag is doing any good. I’m wet through and through.”
“I’m wishing I wasn’t wearing jeans. I think they’re starting to chafe.”
“Ouch.” She chuckled. “We could find a place to stop right now. Pull over. Get warm and dry. Watch TV.”
“Nice try. Shut up and drive.”
“Stop being so bossy. You work for me.”
“No, Rose. I work for your daddy.”
She waved a hand in the air as she backed out. “Whatever.”
They continued southwest on the state highway. When visibility was as much as twenty feet they crawled along at twenty mph. At times the downpour was so hard they were forced to pull over and wait. The storm created a cocoon of intimacy as they sat side by side, both a little uncomfortable with the nearness of the other, each silently wondering if the attraction was one-sided. Cami telling herself that she couldn’t possibly get involved with somebody whose background was so drastically different. They had nothing in common. Brandon telling himself that she was a means of earning cred in the club. Nothing more.
To break up the silence and create a distraction from the air that was feeling heavier in the SUV, Brandon said, “You’ve got a story to finish. You were saying that you told your father you’d meet him for lunch just to get rid of him.”
“Wow. You’ve got a good memory.”
“I know. So pick up where you left off.”
She took a deep breath. “I was going to make a list for the housekeeper, but every pen I kept in the kitchen drawer had gone dry. I’d spent ten minutes drawing inkless swirls on paper. I went to Trey’s study to borrow a pen and found one in the top drawer where you’d expect it to be. Trey is kind of anal about neatness.”
Brand couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought she might have been clenching her jaw when she said that last sentence.
“I was almost to the door when something made me turn around. I can’t explain it. I know it’s going to sound like one of those crazy ESP things. Call it woman’s intuition. But I had the feeling I should look through his drawers. The bottom drawer was locked.
“So I called downstairs to the doorman, Tony. I told him that I had accidentally locked my desk drawer and asked if he knew anybody who could open it. Right away. For cash. Without mentioning to my husband that I’d lost the key.
“Tony is agreeable and bright and, although he certainly never said so, I got the impression, call it woman’s intuition, that he wasn’t crazy about Trey.
“He said he might know somebody like that and said he’d call me back shortly. And he did. There was a guy there within the hour. I wasn’t too worried about being discovered breaking into Trey’s desk because he never came home during the day and, whenever I had visible bruises, the housekeeper got a week off.
“So Tony’s guy was into the desk drawer within a minute. He waited while I had a look around and then put it back the way he found it. I gave him a hundred bucks cash and let him out.”
She slowed down because the rain was surging.
“What was in the drawer?” Brand asked.
“A will. My will. And it was signed. I mean… not by me. But it was a perfect copy of my signature.”
“A forgery?”
“Yes.”
“Massachusetts is not a community property state.”
She shook her head.
“No. The only way for him to automatically inherit everything that’s mine would be for me to will it to him. And I really, really don’t want this to come off like bragging, but my inheritance would be enough to tempt somebody who was greedy, without conscience or principle. I’m an only child and the family has been doing okay for a couple of generations.”
“And by okay you mean top one percent of top one percent.”
“Yes. That’s what I mean. And that wasn’t all he planned.”
“Go on.”
“I opened his laptop and pulled up search history. He’d been researching ways to commit suicide. Judging by the number of articles he’d read on the subject, he was most fascinated by the deadly combination of tequila and acetaminophen.”
“He was going to have you sign a will leaving everything to him and then you were going to accidentally mix painkillers with tequila.”
“Yeah. I was probably going to accidentally do that while he was at work because I was so distraught about walking into doors and falling down.”
After a few minutes of silence, Brand pressed for more. “What did you do?”
“I grabbed a few things that had sentimental value and threw them into a bag. Along with the will. And more or less ran out of there. On the way down in the elevator I called my dad and told him to come pick me up. I waited downstairs because I knew one thing and that was that I never wanted to be alone with Trey again.
“You can imagine what my dad’s reaction was when he saw me. I was afraid he was going to go after Trey himself.”
“If I had a daughter, that’s what I’d do. I think that’s what most men would do.”
“Well, I begged him not to. Not because I didn’t think Trey deserved a taste of what I’d experienced, but because Trey’s the sort who would press charges and then my family would be involved in a scandal. That kind of thing is bad for business and there are thousands of families who are counting on a paycheck that originates with my dad.”
She sounded like she took the weight of that responsibility seriously. Brandon knew exactly what she was talking about. Few people ever had the chance to find out that it could be a burden to know that a lot of people were depending on you to make good decisions and practically predict the future. Accurately.
“I stayed at home, in Weston, while divorce proceedings were started. It felt good to be in the bedroom where I grew up. Comforting. Safe. You know? Scratch that. Of course you don’t know. I can’t see a guy like you ever feeling like a victim.”
Brandon mulled that over as they inched along. It was true. He couldn’t say that he’d ever felt victimized. In that respect he’d had a good life. For that matter, he’d had a good life in all respects, his only regret being that he hadn’t grown up with his father and brother.
He cleared his throat.
“I can’t put myself in your place, but I can understand why it would feel good to be back home.”
“You can?”
“Yeah. I, ah, didn’t know I had a father or a brother until…” He stopped like he was calculating, “about ten months ago.”
“That sounds like a story.”
“Right now we’re talking about you. So go on.”
“After he was served, I was ready to get on with my life. I’d never gotten around to selling my condo. So I moved back in. My plan was to look for another job while
I was waiting for the divorce to come through.
“Then he started calling, saying he knew he’d made some mistakes. He wanted another chance. He hadn’t talked to me like that since our wedding day.”
“Talked to you like what?”
“Nice.” They rode in silence for a few minutes before she said, “Maybe it would have worked if I still loved him, but I didn’t. I changed my phone number and that’s when his strategy got more intense. He started sending missives by courier.”
Brandon lifted an eyebrow and smirked a little.
“Missives? That’s a word I haven’t heard much since the seventeenth century.”
“Right. I mean letters.”
“What did they say?”
“That if I didn’t come back, where I belonged, there would be consequences. He didn’t say what. Just left it to my imagination. But since I’d already suspected he was going to try to kill me for money, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what he had in mind. I don’t know why he didn’t give it up once the plan was out in the open.”
“If anything happened to you after you reported your suspicions to your father, the police would be at his door within minutes.”
“Yes, but haven’t you noticed that people with serious money never go to jail? Evidence disappears. Juries are compromised. Things happen behind closed doors. Under the table. In the shadows.”
After a minute of silence, Brandon looked out the passenger window and simply said, “Yeah.”
“It took a while for me to accept that he was capable of murdering me, but…” She paused. “He said things that scared me.”
“It seems to me that the only thing he’s holding over your head is a possible copy of a forged will, assuming that you took the original. Depending on how much he spent, the forgery might be good enough to stand up in court. So the way to invalidate that is to create a new will that postdates that one, have it witnessed by two reliable third parties and notarized, file it with the court, and put him on notice. In other words, render his motive impotent.”
Cami looked back and forth between Brandon and the road several times before saying, “That seems… perfectly reasonable. And flawlessly logical.”
The Biker's Brother (Sons of Sanctuary MC Book 2) Page 6