by Cait London
Clyde scowled into his reflection. “Pete Jones really shouldn’t have asked for more money.”
Pleasure rippled through Clyde as he remembered Pete’s surprised expression as he died. Clyde liked power and control, and that moment had been ultimate—Pete begging for his life.
They’d found the body and Clyde was ready for them. It wouldn’t do to move too fast, because that would take away the pleasure, the anticipation, and he wanted their fears to grow, devouring them as his once had—before he’d discovered who he really was—Clyde.
Lauren was only the first to pay the bill Madrid owed him, and he was getting really good…
FOUR
Roman slid the Harley-Davidson near the sidewalk and kicked the stand down. The well-tuned FXRS’s Low Rider motor died smoothly. He removed his helmet and scanned Maloney Street. The old garage had a padlock and chain, the boards were weathered and unpainted, the window broken.
He smiled briefly and wondered how many windows he’d broken in deserted buildings, a kid showing off his pitching arm with a rock. He removed his mirrored sunglasses and squinted against the morning sun. The street’s pavement was cracked, blue-gray and still cool enough for a rabbit to hop across and into the brush of an empty lot. It was only the last week of June, and by mid-July, the pavement would be hot enough to burn the hand.
His cruise down Main Street proved it was the same as eighteen years ago—flower-basket clean and perfect. But behind that perfection lay the weaknesses, lusts, and darknesses of those who lived there. Just opening their stores, people still noted a newcomer, pausing on the sidewalks and slanting curious looks at him. A few “road apples”—horse manure—were smashed flat. He’d recognized a few of the store owners’ names, all people glad to get rid of the Warrens.
Awash with memories of the night his father had died horribly, Roman leaned against the Harley. He hadn’t helped Mitchell pull Fred to safety. Maybe he wanted Fred to die. Maybe he wanted to be free of the hard work and the go-nowhere promises, of Fred’s bitterness and taunts.
Roman had tried to become “someone.” As a professional racecar driver, he’d wrapped himself in fast cars, fast times, and faster women.
On the run through life, he didn’t have to think about bitter times—or how he stood back, not helping Mitchell with Fred.
Mocking himself, Roman decided that the hot-shot, know-it-all teenager hadn’t really gone so far. He had everything he owned in the bag strapped to the Harley, a bum knee from a racing wreck, the twinges of a hangover from the night with the last woman—whoever she was—and no money in the bank. He’d lived fast and ended back where he’d started.
He bent to knead the aching knee that would never be perfect again, not quick enough for racing. There on Maloney Street, visions of racing wins, of champagne and beautiful, exciting women, cruised around him. Darkness followed the brilliance, the agony of the wreck, rolling over and over, the pain.
Roman lived with the bitter realization that he would never again be top dog, that he could settle for the racing pit, a mechanic’s job or nothing…and just as suddenly as it had come, his fame was gone, along with friends and money.
He might never have come back—except Mitchell was here and staying, apparently. With a body discovered a week ago in the ranch’s garage, Mitchell was likely to have the old suspicions rise around him.
After leaving Madrid, they’d argued bitterly about Roman finishing high school and “straightening up.” But he wasn’t letting Mitchell take the place of Fred’s parenting. Roman had finished high school because he’d wanted to, and through the years, as men, they had come to an easy relationship.
Roman smiled briefly, coldly. There was just enough stubbornness in the warrens to stay put amid the town that had never liked them.
Whatever troubled Mitchell enough to bring him back to this godforsaken town, Roman wasn’t letting his brother face Madrid alone—especially not with the murdered man raising old bitterness.
He shrugged lightly. He had nowhere else to go. He’d come full circle. A few miles back on the highway, a big sturdy road sign looked like a way to end it all.
But Mitchell might need him, and Roman would be there.
He listened briefly to the sound of poorly tuned motorcycles pulling closer to him, stopping, and he slid on his sunglasses. The tough kid with sideburns and tattoos had insolence written all over him. Roman knew the look—he’d worn it as a teenager. He also recognized the slit-eyed appraisal of his bike, gauging how much the machine would bring when sold.
The other kid was the follower, trying to emulate the tough guy, a cigarette pack rolled high into his short sleeve.
The girl was all spiky dyed black hair and hard black makeup, unmatched dangling earrings, blue fingernail polish, tight red top and tighter jeans; she wore silver toe rings and black sandals.
Roman kicked a piece of crumbling sidewalk with his scuffed biker boot. Did he feel guilty about not helping, not answering Fred’s cries for help in the burning house?
Maybe. He definitely felt guilty about Mitchell’s bad burns and his pain.
Sliding from the past, Fred’s terrified cries careened into the bright afternoon sunlight and died in the hot, dry air as Roman forced them away.
“The name is Jace. What’s up, man?” the tough kid asked, with a threatening edge to his tone that said he didn’t like being ignored. The hard-looking girl with knowing eyes looked Mitchell up and down, appraising his faded “Sturgis Is for Real Bikers” T-shirt, black jeans, and biker boots even as she draped an arm around the kid. Roman knew that look; women liked him and he liked them. Women and motors, he thought, they both hummed to his touch, and it still wasn’t enough to fill the hole inside him.
“Not much.”
“Nice bike.”
“Thanks.” It was all he had left—that, and a Lamborghini stashed in a friend’s garage because he couldn’t afford to pay insurance and upkeep on it.
“You want to race? Maybe bet a little? How about it?” the kid asked slyly.
Roman automatically noted the kid’s bike leaking oil on the pavement; it probably needed new gaskets and the boy’s pants were wearing a fair amount of the sprayed oil. He shook his head and swung onto his bike, revving the motor and swinging out onto the street to circle back to Mitchell’s house.
“I thought you’d come,” Mitchell said quietly as he opened the door to his brother. Roman seemed to appear whenever he thought Mitchell might need him. The ties were there, if not expressed. They’d struggled through a childhood and teenage years together. “How’s the knee?”
Roman’s shaggy hair and scruffy look matched his road miles. But he bore that hard Warren look, the brown wavy hair and amber eyes, and the attitude that said he wasn’t taking any more knocks from anyone. Mitchell noted the lack of Roman’s watch and ring, both given to him for winning races.
“It’s cooler here than Las Vegas. LV isn’t my kind of town anyway, but I thought the dry heat might heal up my knee. Nothing is going to,” Roman replied with a shrug, but his narrowed eyes watched Mitchell closely, gauging him for trouble.
“Just to soothe your mind, I don’t have a terminal disease,” Mitchell said easily. Daytona and Indianapolis were really Roman’s kind of towns, where racing flowed through the veins of the pit-men, the champions, and the bars. But Mitchell knew that his brother was too shamed and aching every time he heard the racing motors rev, the flag go down; Roman couldn’t settle for being a top pit-man.
Roman shoved the leather bag into Mitchell’s chest, a little less than gently, but that was the brothers’ way. “I wasn’t worried about you. I just came to live off you for a while. You always were an easy touch.”
“Uh-huh. Sure. Come in.”
As Mitchell led the way through the house, Roman took in the ladder and paint supplies, the big cardboard boxes of washer and dryer, the rolls of linoleum, an array of new power and hand tools spread across the kitchen counter.
Mitchell
dropped the bag onto the floor of a bedroom they had just passed. “You’ll need a bed. I’m short on furniture until the floors are covered. And I’m not picking up after you, or doing your laundry. I did enough of that when we were young.”
“Man, we weren’t ever young,” Roman stated flatly and opened the screen door out into the overgrown rose garden. Then there was the silence as he turned to Mitchell, that quiet assessing stare.
But he didn’t ask what Mitchell sought, what he needed, why he was back in Madrid, a town that had never wanted their family. Roman turned on the faucet and placed his head under it, then caught the towel Mitchell threw at him. He glanced at the new light fixture on the floor, waiting to be installed, then took the beer Mitchell handed him. “What’s the deal here? Who trashed this house?”
“Good old Billy Howard. He married Lauren. She’s dead, a drive-by, and he took off.”
“I read a rehash about her death in the newspaper article last week—thought I’d check up on the old town after you moved here. Too bad. Nice girl.” Roman browsed through the new refrigerator, selected bread, lunch meat, and cheese, and began building a sandwich. Leaning against the counter, he watched Mitchell heft the light fixture and begin up the ladder. “You need me, don’t you? Admit it. You’re looking for cheap labor and you found that body just to bring me back to this hick town.”
Mitchell dismissed Roman’s tease, and came down the ladder. “You may have enough problems without mine.”
Roman neatly sliced a tomato, a quick one-slash that said he’d spent time cooking for himself, and plopped it on the sandwich. “What’s that?”
Mitchell sipped on the beer he’d opened and handed the news to him straight, because the brothers didn’t dance around the truth. “Shelly Craig has a daughter. A seventeen-year-old named Dani, and Shelly has never married. According to gossip, no one knows who the father is. Shelly’s folks kicked her out and she raised the girl by herself. She’s had a hard time of it, cleaning houses and ironing. Shelly is paying the bills for her mother in the rest home, and Mrs. Craig won’t claim the girl. The old man died years ago, but he was even worse.”
He watched Roman frown slightly and methodically place aside the sandwich on a paper towel. On a drunken binge long ago, Roman had mourned taking the virginity of a nice girl in Madrid. The time line coincided with Shelly’s daughter’s birth. That could just make Mitchell an uncle, and uncles were supposed to be responsible. If the girl needed help, he would give it.
Roman studied the linoleum that Mitchell had started peeling away. He was quiet, his hand running across his chest as if soothing an ache there. “You’re going to need help here, with this house. I might stay a while.”
“Then you’d better get used to a few things. One is that I don’t care for anyone to know my business, other than that I’m retired. It might come out, but I’m not spreading it around. Two, someone put that bullet through Pete Jones’s skull, so there is an ongoing investigation. Three, they still don’t like us.”
“So what else is new?”
“Those are Lauren’s things in the back room. I told Uma Thornton that they could stay. She’s still pretty broken up—so are Shelly and Pearl.”
“They were always close, the four of them.” But Roman’s tone said his mind wasn’t on Lauren’s death, or the murder of Jones. He was thinking about Shelly and her daughter, his mind flying back through the years to that night—and the possibility that he might be a father.
“Take it easy, Roman,” Mitchell advised slowly, understanding that Roman was torn by the past and his emotions now. He could be impulsive, passionate, emotional—and he was bitter about the shattered knee and lost fame. In truth, Mitchell didn’t know what Roman might do—they were men now, with too much time apart. “She’s built a good life.”
“Always trying to protect the vulnerable, right, Mitchell?” Roman asked softly, and Mitchell took comfort from the half-smile. “So do you want help with that light fixture or not?”
He looked like a warrior fighting the brambles of Lauren’s old garden, the cat high on an oak limb watching him. Mitchell Warren was clearly at war, the weeds and trimmed brush piled high in the back of his pickup.
Coming back from her morning run, Uma stopped, stunned by how he moved through the rose bushes, careless of his bare chest and the thorns in his bare hands. He battled through shadows and rising dawn, a powerful surge of muscle and strength. Curious as to what he fought—himself, or the garden—she moved through the overgrown shrubs between their houses, on the stones placed just so. She wondered what could bring such savagery, what he sought and what he battled. Clearly the garden was a battlefield, the bushes cut to nubs, a pile of rubble waist high. Roses in full bloom splashed across the stark, leafless stalks. Broadleaf lilies-of-the-valley, past their blooming, had been trampled. Lemon balm and mint, torn from their rambling beds, scented the air, and a coffee cup was perched upside-down on a garden fairy statue’s head. “Good morning, Mitchell.”
Then she knew—he fought himself. That fierce “don’t come near me” look, the bloody scratch across his unshaven cheek and more on his shoulders, all said he was wrapped in something far worse than trimming an overgrown backyard garden. Sweat gleamed on his shoulders and plastered his hair to his head and his eyes were as dark as the mood he wore.
He bristled nicely, Uma decided as she stood in the shade, smiling at him, waiting to see what he would do next, now that his kingdom had been invaded. Odd, that she should be so curious about him, fascinated by the raw power and the emotion driving it. Mitchell hurled the pruning shears he’d been using point first into the rich ground.
He came back from whatever fury he fought and the air stood still as he slowly took in her sweaty tank top and shorts and legs and running shoes. Through the bed of lavender, over the tarragon and lemon balm, the impact of Mitchell’s raw sexual energy hit her. It quivered in the rose of Sharon bush, and danced along the spiderwebs heavy with dew. Deep and slow and husky, his voice snared her.
“I remember you standing just like that on the playground, watching everyone like you were fitting all the pieces together—so solemn, as if you cared about everyone and knew something they didn’t…. I’m hauling the brush out to the ranch. Want to come with me?”
When she hesitated, thinking of all the reasons she shouldn’t, Mitchell braced a hand against the wall beside her head and leaned down to whisper, “Afraid?”
He was too close and too big and too—Uma sucked in air and pressed back against the wall. She could almost feel the damp texture of his skin, the heat pouring from him, the raw sexual need. Was she afraid? Not of him, only of whatever lurked within her that she didn’t want to release—had never released.
Mitchell was watching her reactions closely and she looked away to his hand, wide and open near her head. “You probably got that temper from your mother’s Irish blood. She fought, too, though in a gentler way. Those thorns in your hands really should be removed.”
He blinked and frowned and considered his hand, turning it palm upright to reveal the rose thorns embedded there. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Let me take them out.”
“I can manage, and my mother has nothing to do with me. She gave up that right.”
“Is everything going to be a fight with you? Can’t one neighbor help another?” she asked, half-teasing, half-serious.
“What do you know, and what do you want?” he returned softly, easing a tendril back from her face. His finger lifted her chin, those dark eyes prowling on her face, too close and seeing too much.
What did she want? Peace and safety and harmony, and none of them were in his eyes.
In the kitchen, while Mitchell was retrieving the antiseptic and cotton, she felt Lauren calling to her, that warm brush of air, almost like a hug. Uma leaned against the counter and noted the expensive black leather briefcase, the letters opened beside it. At a glance, one letterhead stood out—“Mr. Mitchell Warren, Vice President of Sales
, Corporate Office, Rogers Building and Supply.”
She recognized the company name—Rogers Building and Supply was a major national warehouse chain, where customers could find everything from building needs to gardening supplies.
A printout beside it said “Position terminated amiably by employee” and showed that Mitchell had transferred stock and funds from his company retirement fund into personal investments. The total took Uma’s breath away, and yet he appeared to have little, other than his pickup and the family property he had purchased.
When Mitchell returned, wearing a shirt, he glanced at the briefcase and shoved the letters aside. His silence said he suspected she’d seen the correspondence.
She felt Mitchell watching her as she bent her head to tend those big broad torn hands, easing out the thorns with a needle, dabbing antiseptic on the scratches. His breath was warm upon her cheek and she sensed his study of her. “You really should wear leather gloves and be more careful. But then, you know that, don’t you? You were in a mood this morning and taking it out on poor Lauren’s garden, just ripping and tearing because you felt like it.”
He snorted at that, dismissing her.
Finished, she studied the hard craggy face, the bloody scratch on his cheekbone and dabbed the cotton ball with antiseptic on it. He rared back, glaring a “don’t touch me” at her, and without thinking, Uma reached for that rich shaggy hair and held it tight in her fingers.
His eyes narrowed, flashing at her, yet he let her hold him as she continued to cleanse the scratches. “You like that, don’t you? Having your way? Running things?” he asked darkly.
She screwed the lid back onto the tube, forming her words carefully. “Maybe I do, when someone like you doesn’t know what’s good for him. These could get infected.”