Operation Homecoming

by Justine Davis

  She realized then she’d never thought of this aspect of his wandering, that no matter how low-key it was it still took money. How had he survived, let alone accumulated enough to buy a suit she’d guess even off the rack wasn’t cheap?

  “Where did you go when you first left?” she asked.

  For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then, as if it had been no struggle at all, he said easily, “Wyoming. Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Climbed a lot of that. Then Denver. Climbed Pike’s Peak. Then to South Dakota. Mount Rushmore. Didn’t climb that.”

  She smiled in spite of herself. And something niggled at the edge of her memory, something she couldn’t quite pin down. “And then?”

  “Banff. The Black Hills. Niagara Falls. The coast of Maine. The Florida Keys. The Alamo.”

  Amy’s breath caught as it finally hit her.

  “Your father’s list.”

  He glanced at her, then looked back at the road ahead. Or rather the car, since they’d slowed to a turtle’s pace. It was plastered with bumper stickers and decals for various causes, a couple of which were amusingly contradictory.

  “You were doing his bucket list,” she said.

  She remembered so well that night when, around the Cole dinner table, the conversation had turned to what they wanted to do before they died. The kids—Hayley, Walker and she herself, thankful as ever that they included her as if she were one of them—thought the idea of a bucket list something only old people thought about, but the idea of all the things to do had intrigued them enough to participate. And it was his father who’d had the grandest, longest list of all the places he’d wanted to visit, all the iconic things he wanted to see.

  And then he’d been killed before he could do any of it.

  But his son had apparently decided to do it for him.

  “Hayley knows this?”

  “I told her, eventually. When she was old enough to really understand.”

  “She was fourteen when you left. Wasn’t that old enough?”

  He sighed. “Probably. But I didn’t get it myself, not yet. Not until I got to Mount Rushmore did I realize what I was really doing. I thought I was just trying to get away from all the reminders.”

  “And going everyplace he wanted to go didn’t remind you?”

  He chuckled at that ruefully. “Of course it did. But I was eighteen. I still thought I could run away from the pain.”

  That memory came back to her again. “Hayley and I talked the other day about whether it was worse to lose a parent you deeply loved, or to never have had one at all. She thought never having one was worse. I thought having one and losing them would be a million times worse.”

  “So each of you thought the other had it worse.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think that says more about you two and how much you care about each other than it does about the original question.”

  She stared at him, impossibly moved by his words. He kept his eyes on the stop-and-go traffic ahead, allowing her the chance to study him. He looked like any successful businessman—or lawyer—who would be at home in this crazed, upscale environment. There were still traces of the boy, but the line of his jaw and the corded tendons of his neck, the taut muscles of arms and size and power of his hands, it was all uncompromisingly adult male.

  And somehow it made this realization of why he’d left, that he’d been a boy setting out to fulfill his dead father’s dreams, impossibly poignant.

  “Why didn’t Hayley tell me? Did you ask her not to?”

  “No.” He glanced at her again. “Maybe she did tell you. Maybe you just didn’t want to hear it.”

  She opened her mouth to deny that, then stopped. She had been so crushed, and so very, very young. And by the time he’d told his sister, she herself had been finally getting over his abrupt departure.

  “I think,” she said slowly, “she may not have told me because she didn’t want me to fall for you all over again.”

  That drew her more than a glance. “Are you saying you would have?”

  “If I’d known what you were doing?” She sighed. “Probably. It is rather appealing. Romantic. Emotional. All those things teenage girls find so hard to resist.”

  They’d come to a complete stop, sitting behind a large truck that blocked any view of the lane ahead. He turned slightly then to look at her head-on.

  “But that doesn’t make up for the rest, does it.”

  It wasn’t a question, which told her he already knew the answer. “Do you really think your father would believe you fulfilling his own dreams was more important than being there for your family, when they needed you so much?”

  To his credit, he didn’t hesitate. “No. Nothing was more important than that to him.” He turned back, and she wondered if he was using the still-unmoving traffic as an excuse to no longer hold her gaze. “But there were a couple of things just as important to him.”

  “Such as?”

  “His duty. As a cop, and an American.”

  It sounded a bit high-flown, but she had to acknowledge the truth of his words. Christopher Cole had been a dedicated police officer who loved his country and took the job very seriously, and gave each of the two parts of “protect and serve” full weight. Wasn’t she herself proof of that?

  If he had not, her own life would likely have been a very different—and grim—thing.

  But something in Walker’s voice, some undertone that seemed both tense and weary at the same time, coalesced with all her theories about where he’d been and what he’d been doing in those missing years, and she knew that answer had more levels than she might ever know.

  What she did know was that she didn’t, couldn’t, hate him anymore. In fact, were she honest with herself, she’d have to admit she was as drawn to him as she’d ever been.

  * * *

  Amy glanced at the bedside clock once more, despite promising herself she wouldn’t. She sighed, seeing it was nearly dawn. She hadn’t imagined that it was getting lighter in the room. How could she be so tired her head hurt, yet be unable to fall asleep? If only her brain had an off switch, she thought. But then she’d be tempted to never turn it back on. Besides, how could you turn a switch if your brain was off?

  Taking this ridiculous train of thought as conclusive evidence that she had slipped from merely tired into insane, she rolled over, turning her back to the clock, and set about thinking of something else, anything else.

  No, not Walker. Don’t think about him. He’s even more unsettling than learning her boss was likely a criminal. And he’d been right, the fact that he’d left his life, his family—including her—for what could even been considered a laudable reason, a tribute to his father, didn’t make up for the fact that he hadn’t been there when he was desperately needed. And yet that she was even thinking it only told her she was already in trouble. They’d spent too much time together; she was weakening, in serious danger of falling for him all over again. He was just so damned...unexpected. Not the ogre her anger had made of him, not at all. He was still Walker, and she was still...

  No. No, she was not going down that rabbit hole again.

  Cutter, she thought suddenly. Yes, that was safe. She’d think about the dog, with his happy grin and that uncanny way he had of sensing people’s feelings and expressing his own. He...

  Almost on the thought she heard the faint click of toenails on the tile floor of the bathroom between her room and Hayley and Quinn’s. The door on her side inched open, and moments later the dog was there, his chin resting on the edge of the bed as he looked at her.

  Stared at her, more like. She lifted her head to look at him, could see the faint gleam of his eyes even in the darkened room. And she couldn’t deny his stare was pretty intense.

  “Do you read thoughts now, dog?” she asked in a
whisper. “Did you hear me thinking about you?”

  He inched a little closer. Instinctively, she reached out and stroked his head. Then again. And, that quickly, her inner turmoil seemed to ebb a little. Hayley had told her Cutter had a knack—one of many—for soothing troubled souls, even aching bodies. She’d doubted that, too.

  Now she wasn’t so sure.

  “Did you want up?” she asked.

  On the last word, the dog jumped neatly up onto the bed, barely disturbing it despite his weight. He lay down beside her, his chin now resting on her shoulder. She put her head back down, smiling in spite of herself. She’d never been allowed a pet—and had been afraid one wouldn’t survive her father’s capriciousness—so this was a new treat to her. She shifted so she could reach that spot behind his right ear that he seemed to love to have scratched. And something about the action, or the dog himself, slowed her racing mind down another notch.

  She could sleep now, she thought with no small amount of wonder. It was almost here; she could feel it. She closed her eyes.

  “Thank you,” she whispered to Cutter. She let it come, her weary eyes anticipating the relief, her body the warmth, her heart and mind the respite. The daytime business tried to intrude, but she was drifting now, sweetly numbed, nothing could...

  Amy jolted upright, the covers falling away. Because in the instant before sleep had claimed her, that last moment when she felt almost like she was floating, an image had glided through her mind.

  A man, coming out of a shop with a cup of coffee, walking down the sidewalk toward a flashy black car.

  Dante Soren. The cold, arrogant, drug dealer. Murderer. Looking so very different. So very...normal. Ordinary. Holding a cup of coffee from a shop so busy they had to scrawl names on the cups. Had scrawled a name on his.

  Theo.

  Chapter 23

  The proximity of others had made quiet necessary, and somehow that heightened their always passionate lovemaking, as if what they couldn’t express in sound channeled into the physical, making it even more intense.

  “There’s something to be said for having to stay quiet,” Hayley had whispered as she lay collapsed atop her husband in the faint light of dawn.

  “Speak for yourself,” Quinn had muttered, shoving away the pillow he’d used to muffle his cry of her name as this woman he loved to the ends of the earth had driven him to near-madness. “I think I breathed in a feather.”

  “And I think I nearly bit through my lip,” she admitted.

  “Want me to kiss it and make it better?”

  “You’re liable to end up with another feather.”

  He grinned at her. “Worth it.”

  For a long time they had just lain there in silence, savoring the warmth, the closeness. Until Cutter, on the floor beside them, stirred, rose and padded over to the bathroom.

  The door had apparently not been latched, because he nosed it open just enough for his lean body to slip through. They’d heard him walk across the tiled floor, and then the faint creak of the door into the other bedroom.

  “He went to Amy,” Hayley whispered finally when he didn’t come back.

  “I think she was pretty upset today,” Quinn whispered, as well, now that both doors were open. “He probably sensed that.”

  “Or he’s bored with us,” Hayley teased, “because we’re always doing this.”

  “Tough,” Quinn said. “That’s not going to change.”

  “I certainly hope not.”

  More silence, easy, comfortable, necessary.

  “I hope he’s able to help her sleep,” Hayley murmured, sounding close to slipping away herself.

  “He has the knack.” He hesitated, knowing this might destroy the mood, feeling the need, anyway. “Your brother has nightmares.”

  “I know. I’ve heard him.” He’d done it now, he thought. She was wide-awake again. “He’s changed. More than I would have expected, even after all this time.” She lifted her head to look at him. “You trusted him with Amy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you changing your mind about him?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. He still hurt you badly.”

  She sighed. “Yes. But...”

  “He’s still your brother. And there’s more to him than I expected. I’m starting to think there might really be a good reason he can’t or won’t tell us.”

  Hayley shifted, snuggling deeper into his arms.

  “This will sound crazy, but in a way he’s reminding me of...” She trailed off with a grimace. Obviously, what she was thinking seemed too crazy to put into words.

  “Rafe?” Quinn suggested.

  Hayley sighed. “Yes. You see it, too?”

  “I see shadows,” he admitted. “No idea what kind. Rafe is...”

  “A hero. I know. And those shadows he lives with are the price he pays for it. But Walker... I don’t know.”

  “He’s obviously determined to have some kind of relationship with you, because he’s still here even though he hasn’t exactly gotten a warm welcome.”

  “You mean because Amy verbally eviscerated him and you put him on the ground?”

  Quinn grimaced. “He nearly returned that favor. And I haven’t been surprised like that in a long time. I wonder where he...”

  He broke off at the faint sound of Cutter’s nails on the tile floor of the bathroom again.

  “Time for a session with Laney’s nail grinder,” Hayley said as the dog slipped back into the room. “I should have...”

  She stopped as a light tap came on the door to the bathroom.

  “Hayley?”

  They were sprawled diagonally across the bed, naked, covers long ago kicked aside. Hayley grabbed hastily at the sheet while Quinn righted the pillows.

  “Amy, are you all right?” Hayley asked when the essentials were covered.

  “I’m sorry, but Cutter, he practically dragged me over here.”

  Quinn and Hayley exchanged a glance. “Hmm,” Quinn murmured, then nodded.

  “Come on in,” Hayley said. “What is it?”

  If Amy guessed from the tangled state of the bed what they’d been doing, it didn’t show. She seemed far too unsettled to care anyway.

  “I...remembered something,” she said.

  “What?” Hayley prompted when she stopped.

  “When I saw Soren coming out of the coffee shop next to the mailbox place...he was carrying a cup of coffee.”

  Quinn lifted a brow at her when she stopped again. Waited.

  “There was a name written on it, you know, how they do when they’re busy?”

  Quinn drew back slightly. Amy looked up then, meeting his gaze.

  “It was Theo.”

  “Well, well,” Quinn said.

  “I thought it was just a coincidence that he was there. That it was some sort of... I don’t know, alter ego, since he looked so different. If it hadn’t been for the car, I might not even have recognized him. But I know it was him.”

  “So the guy on the receiving end of this laundered cash is the drug dealer your boss got off on multiple murder charges?”

  Amy nodded, looking miserable.

  “And he’s using an alias the police don’t seem to know about,” Hayley said. “There was no ‘Theo’ or ‘Marquis’ on the list Brett’s friend gave us.”

  “A clean one, perhaps?” Quinn mused. “Maybe he looked so different because it really is an alter ego.”

  “The drug trafficker hiding in plain sight as normal citizen?” Amy shivered visibly.

  “Best camouflage sometimes,” Quinn said.

  “Now what?” Amy asked, sounding more distressed than she had in a while.

  “Now we plan,” Quinn said.

  “Good thing w
e’ve got the weekend to do it,” Hayley said brightly. “Amy, you want to put the coffee on, and we’ll get started?”

  Quinn saw his wife’s tone calm her friend as surely as if she’d steadied her with a touch. Women, he thought, were amazing. And his wife was the most amazing of all.

  Chapter 24

  Walker watched her from the couch as she prepared the coffeemaker and started it. She looked sleepy still, in an endearing sort of way. She was wearing a different T-shirt and snug leggings, and when his first thought was how easy it would be to peel them off those long legs, his body woke up fiercely.

  She reached up to shove back the tangle of her hair, messing it even more. The just-out-of-bed look only nudged his response up a level, and he realized if he was smart, he wouldn’t be standing up himself for a couple of minutes. Somehow he doubted Amy would appreciate his physical condition just now. Just now, he didn’t appreciate it himself, since there was less than zero chance it was going to get eased in his choice of ways.

  She yawned widely. It inspired an answering one he couldn’t stop, and she heard him.

  “You’re up early,” he said when she looked over. “Really early for a Saturday.”

  “Yes. Sorry.”

  He sat up in a tangle of blanket and the sweatpants he’d been sleeping in. The sweats were loose, but not loose enough to hide what just looking at her had done to him. He kept the blanket over him.

  “Wasn’t a complaint. Been awake for a while.”

  “Nightmares again?”

  “I think they call them something else when you’re not asleep,” he said ruefully. And awake he’d been, since long before dawn had started to lighten the sky. “Mind just won’t stop.”

  “I call it anxiety chaos.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Anxiety chaos. It’s when you’re worrying about a lot of different things and your brain refuses to settle on one and deal with it, but keeps bouncing around from one to the other like a billiard ball.”

  He laughed. “Yes, that. Exactly that.”

  She smiled. And it was ridiculous, he told himself, how much just that warmed him.