All a Man Is

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “He’s my son. I can’t dismiss him so easily.”

  Alec made himself smile, if crookedly. Half rising, he bent forward and kissed her cheek, restraining himself with an effort from nuzzling in for more. Standing and looking down at her, he said, “You know I don’t mean it, either. I didn’t enjoy walking away from him tonight.”

  Her eyes shimmered and he greatly feared she was battling tears. “I know, Alec. Someday he will, too.”

  “Maybe.” He backed up, bumped the coffee table and stepped sideways. “I’ll call you in the morning as soon as I’ve talked to him.”

  She stood, too. “Do I... Do we need a lawyer?”

  Her faint emphasis on we smoothed out some of the rough spots in his mood.

  “No. We let the judge slap his hand and, I hope, scare him a little. And we let him know that we’re always there for him when he really needs us, but we won’t be saving him from trouble he brought on himself anymore. If he’s old enough to commit the crime—”

  “He’s old enough to do the time?” she finished, with a weak attempt at humor.

  “Something like that.”

  “I think you’re right. And Matt does love you, you know.”

  “He’s confused, that’s all.” He didn’t dare let himself kiss her again. Or hold her, however lost and vulnerable she appeared right now, arms wrapped around herself. He had to leave while he still could. “Good night, Julia.”

  Somehow he got himself out the front door and waited until he heard her lock it behind him. Then he scanned the yards and street in each direction, searching for any hint of movement, any wrongness. It was late enough now that most people had gone to bed. He heard a dog barking in the distance, saw the flicker of light around drapes and window blinds that told him some people were still watching TV. The window next door that he knew was Sophie’s was dark. Didn’t mean the girls were asleep, but Andrea was trying to move them that way.

  He crossed the short distance between Julia’s door and his own and let himself in. Once inside, he stood in the small living room, looking at nothing, unable to take the simple steps required to get ready for bed.

  I kissed her. She kissed me back.

  The sweetest kiss of his life. The one he’d waited for the longest. He wanted it to be that simple. They were both single, free and clear. Alec didn’t even think his brother would mind, if he could know. He’d want his family taken care of.

  But Julia was right that a relationship between them wasn’t simple. In fact, it would be complicated as hell. They did have to think about other people. Deal with memories.

  Alec was willing to do all that. A ragged sound escaped him, close to a laugh but not quite. All that? He would do anything, overcome any obstacle, to make Julia his.

  Julia and her kids.

  She obviously didn’t understand when he told her that what happened was up to her, but he’d meant it. And discovered now how much he hated having no control over her decision.

  Eventually he took a shower, bracing his hands on the wall and holding his head under the beat of water as he tried not to remember Matt’s face when he realized Uncle Alec wasn’t going to rescue him. Remembering instead the crack of gunfire, the moment when he’d plastered Matt to the ground and known this boy might have been the target. My fault. The feel of Julia’s hands on his body, the dazed wonder in her eyes when he lifted his head and looked down at her.

  Hell of a day, he thought, aroused, uneasy and, yeah, still exultant. No wonder sleep was elusive.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MATT WOULDN’T SO MUCH as meet Julia’s eyes when she went to pick him up.

  First thing that morning, she’d dropped the girls at the big park by the river where the Parks Department was having a track-and-field day. Julia helped them sign up for the events they wanted to participate in, gave them money to buy lunch at the concession stand and made them promise, cross their hearts and hope to die, that they would not wander away from the group. She spoke to a couple of mothers and a Parks Department employee, all of whom promised to keep an eye on Liana and Sophie.

  Then she went home to wait.

  It was midmorning before Alec called to say that Matt was being released. As mad as she was at her son, Julia raced out of the house so quickly she realized she’d forgotten her purse and had to go back for it.

  At juvenile hall, she had to sign some papers, after which a uniformed guard went to fetch him. Maybe this wasn’t jail, but it felt like it. The guards were expressionless, leaving her feeling judged.

  And why not? If her son’s anger and pain weren’t her fault, who was to blame?

  She sat in a plastic chair, waiting, her eyes on the door through which the guard had disappeared. It was heavy, closing with the solidity of an air lock. The upper glass inset had wire mesh embedded, making it unbreakable. When the door swung open finally, Julia leaped to her feet, her heart hurting at the sight of Matt, head hanging, grubby clothes the same he’d worn yesterday when he set out for the hike with Alec. The guard’s beefy hand rested on Matt’s shoulder. Gently, she thought, but it probably didn’t feel that way to a boy who’d been arrested yesterday.

  She wanted to hold out her arms, but he just stood there, stiff and waiting, still looking at the floor. “Let’s go home,” she said instead.

  He shuffled beside her, not once meeting her eyes. As she unlocked the car, she said, “We need to talk, but let’s wait until we get home.”

  He maintained his stubborn, stony silence.

  If only Alec were here, too.

  At the duplex, Matt tried to bolt for his bedroom.

  Tough love, she reminded herself. Don’t make Alec the bad guy.

  “Matt,” she said sharply. “Stop.”

  He did, with his back to her. She couldn’t help noticing how shaggy his hair was, curling on his neck. How skinny that neck was. She had to take it on faith that he would grow into a man’s body as impressive as his dad’s or Alec’s.

  “Have you had breakfast?”

  He mumbled something.

  “You may go take a shower and change into clean clothes. Then come to the kitchen. Understand?”

  His shoulders hunched, which she chose to take as acquiescence. He trudged toward his room.

  He must have been at least a little chastened, because not long after the shower shut off, he did appear in the kitchen, wearing a pair of the excessively baggy pants and an equally sacky shirt she hated. He looked at her at last, but so expressionlessly it gave her a chill.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  His mouth lifted in the faintest of sneers.

  Tough love.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’m having lunch. You don’t have to. Sit. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  She made a sandwich she wasn’t sure she could choke down, but carried it and a soda to the table, where she chose the seat directly across from him.

  “Did Uncle Alec talk to you this morning?”

  His thin shoulders lifted in a sulky shrug.

  “Answer my question,” she snapped, a little shocked at how hard she could sound.

  His eyes lifted momentarily to hers, and Julia saw that he was surprised, too.

  “Yeah.”

  “All right.” She didn’t touch either her drink or sandwich, only looked at her son. “I don’t know if I’m telling you the same thing he did or not, but here goes.”

  Matt cast her another wary look. She rejoiced in it because his usual defiance and hate had been tempered, even as she grieved the necessity of making her oldest child afraid of her.

  “Things will be different around here from now on. You can hate me if you want. I can’t stop you. But you will do what I tell you to do. You are thirteen years old. I’m your mother, and this is your home, whether you like
it or not. You’re on restriction for the foreseeable future. There will be no more disappearing. If we do something as a family, you’ll participate and you’ll be pleasant. You won’t talk to me the way you have been. You were caught red-handed stealing from that store. You’ll be going to court, and you will be convicted. You deserve to be convicted. I’m only sorry I didn’t let it happen sooner. I should have told Mr. Santana to call the police instead of going and picking you up myself. In future, the consequences of your behavior will be all yours to bear. Do you understand?”

  He plucked at the woven place mat with his fingers and didn’t answer.

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes!” he yelled, dark eyes flashing.

  “Fine.” She nodded with outward serenity. “You may go to your room. You may not go anywhere else. Is that clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can still make you a sandwich if you’re hungry.”

  “I’m not.”

  Julia didn’t believe him, but let him go. Her own stomach was churning and she was repelled by the mere sight of the food on the plate in front of her.

  If he hadn’t hated her before, he would now.

  But what else could I do?

  What if he went out the window again? Did they look for him? Report him as a runaway? Wait until he was arrested again and hope he was sentenced to serve time? It was horrible to be encouraged because he looked scared. She wanted to believe Matt wouldn’t push them just to find out what they would do.

  She sat there long enough, her stomach finally settled and she was able to eat half the sandwich. She wrapped the other half and put it in the refrigerator.

  When her phone rang, she leaped for it and fumbled to answer when she saw that Alec was the caller.

  “Hey,” he said, sounding so gentle her knees wobbled and she sank to the chair. “How did it go?”

  “We had a come-to-Jesus talk. He’s now sulking in his bedroom. Probably starving, but he’s too proud to admit he’s hungry.”

  Alec chuckled. “He and I had one of those talks, too. Mostly one-sided.”

  “Ours was, too.” Already she felt better. “Although—” she lowered her voice and glanced toward Matt’s closed bedroom door “—I started wondering what we’d do if he did take off again.”

  “You get the impression he will?”

  She frowned. “Um...maybe not right away. I do think he’s frightened.”

  “Good,” Alec said heartlessly. “That’s a step in the right direction. Aside from anything else, I hope he stays that way until I get answers on the shooting.”

  She felt a strange, disorienting blip, like when the DVD player was acting up and the image on the screen momentarily broke up then re-formed. Oh, dear God—had she actually, in all the other stress since, forgotten that someone might have tried to kill Matt?

  “How will you ever find out?” she asked.

  “I’m on my way to talk to Eugene Brock again. I called and told him to have his campaign manager there, as well. I expect them to open a serious investigation.”

  “Did those deputies even canvass the campers up at the lake to find out if they saw anything?”

  “Yeah, and I talked to some of the people myself. Apparently nobody saw anyone with a rifle. Unless the shooter was one of them, it almost had to be the driver of the pickup or SUV that took off right after it happened. The silver one, or maybe it was white,” he said drily. “Our witnesses were useless.”

  It was a moment before she could say anything. “I’m scared, Alec.” She didn’t say, I’m just as scared that someone is trying to kill you.

  “I know,” he said in that same tender voice. “There’s something else, too.” Now he sounded...unsettled. “But it’ll have to wait. Nothing urgent, I promise. I’m here at the sheriff’s department. We can talk tonight, okay?”

  “Yes, okay.” Nothing urgent, but he hadn’t sounded happy about whatever it was he thought she needed to hear. “Dinner?” she asked.

  “I’ll be there.”

  That had to be good enough. But now she’d piled on a new worry—something else. Just what she needed.

  But she had to block out all her worries, tell Matt where she was going and head back over to the park to watch over the girls.

  * * *

  ALEC LEFT THE SHERIFF’S department no more satisfied than he’d been the last time he’d come here, and just as uneasy. Neither Brock nor the campaign manager, a small-time professional who’d last handled the campaign of a state senator from this side of the mountains, seemed like good liars. The manager, a middle-aged guy named Carl Rumsey, had looked especially horrified at Alec’s barely veiled accusations. Alec had introduced the possibility that the sheriff’s department had some bad apples in it, one of whom had taken the potshot at him.

  “You know if he wins, Colin McAllister is going to be taking a hard look at the integrity of every single officer in this department, just as we’ve been doing in Angel Butte. Gives some of those officers plenty of motive for trying to derail his campaign any way they can.” He’d stood up, giving them a cool look. “I can’t say I was real impressed with the diligence of the two deputies who responded to the report of the shooting, either.”

  Brock’s face flushed purple, but he didn’t defend their conduct, either.

  Alec hadn’t been at the police station five minutes when Colin appeared in his office. He didn’t bother with a hello. “You weren’t planning to tell me that somebody followed through on those phone threats?”

  Alec tugged to loosen his tie. “I was going to tell you.”

  His captain listened to a description of events, including Alec’s fear that the shots had been aimed at Matt and not him at all. Alec also shared the impressions he’d gained when talking to Sheriff Brock and Carl Rumsey.

  “You’re convinced they didn’t know anything.”

  “Reluctantly, I am.”

  Colin grunted, understanding him. “There’s nothing uglier than a law-enforcement officer willing to kill an innocent to cover his own ass.”

  “You’ve already run across one who was willing to.”

  Lieutenant Duane Brewer had headed the major-crimes division and had, Alec gathered, been a mentor to Colin. Brewer had been minutes away from killing Colin’s wife, Nell, when Colin took him down.

  “He was hiding more than minor corruption,” Colin pointed out. Which was true enough; in fact, it had turned out that, behind the persona of a dedicated cop, Brewer had hidden the hideous reality that he was a pedophile and serial killer.

  Alec leaned back in his desk chair, watching Colin pace. “What about Ronald Floyd? A deputy district attorney who murdered twice to protect his reputation and that nice little second income he was enjoying. And was ready to kill again.”

  Floyd was dead, shot by two responding officers, but he’d left a mess. Alec had no doubt the current district attorney would have liked to bury Floyd’s crimes as deep as his body, but the fact that he’d shot the mayor of Angel Butte and been trying to kill Colin’s sister made national headlines. There was no keeping any of it quiet. Noah Chandler was still pissed about the story making People magazine.

  Colin scowled at him. “You’ve made your point.”

  “I don’t like it any better than you do.”

  Colin’s expression changed. “Heard about your nephew, too.”

  Alec grunted. “He was out to embarrass me.”

  “He’s the reason you took this job.” At Alec’s grimace, Colin continued, “You said he’s rebellious.”

  “He took his father’s death hard.”

  They both knew that explanation was inadequate. Colin didn’t comment, though, only nodded.

  “I don’t have any problem with it if you want to back off on your support for me,” he said abruptl
y. “You can’t risk the kids.”

  “Even Julia doesn’t want me to do that.”

  The other man stared at him. “You’re not thinking,” he said after a minute. “No election is worth risking their lives.”

  “It’s...not that simple.” Alec nodded at a chair facing the desk. “Sit down for a minute.”

  Colin eyed him, then complied.

  “If this is really about Brock’s reelection campaign, what happens if I back down? Will that knock you down far enough you won’t be able to climb back up, given how far away the election is? People in Angel Butte are getting to know me, but they don’t vote for the sheriff. Outside the city limits, how many voters know who I am or care? Why is my endorsement so important?”

  “You’re suggesting if these tactics work, they’ll try them again.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Alec said. “If they aren’t already.”

  Colin was shaking his head. “Nobody has scrambled yet to withdraw their support.”

  “So maybe I’m the test case. After me...what about those county councilmen who’ve come out in favor of you? Don’t they have wives and children, too? Noah’s got Cait to worry about. What’s his name—the head of the local bar association—he’d be on the list. We could go on. Where would it end?”

  “With Eugene Brock sweeping to victory,” Colin concluded grimly.

  “Who better than me to take a stand?”

  “I’m the one who should be taking it.”

  “By removing yourself from the race? You know none of the other candidates has a prayer. Are you going to give this bastard what he wants?”

  “Crap!” Colin finally said explosively.

  They stared at each other, two strong men who didn’t like admitting there were no good options. Alec felt sure he wasn’t the only control freak in this room. Most cops leaned that way, especially ones who rose to running the show.