Because of a Boy

by Anna DeStefano

  “I think you’re exactly what she needs. Maybe you can help her work through why she spends whatever time she’s not in the pediatric wing volunteering at that homeless shelter, putting herself on the line for even more strangers. I never could.”

  Martin started toward the door. He was grateful for Robert’s input, but he wasn’t having this conversation.

  He’d made Katie feel like their parents’ problems, his inability to accept them, had been her fault. She’d already been drowning in guilt. He could see that now, looking back at her growing compulsion to exhaust herself helping anyone who’d let her.

  Because their mother never would.

  “Staying away from you is eating her up.” Livingston beat Martin to the door—like that was difficult. He opened it, then stood to the side so Martin could pass. “She’s still trying to protect you, and she thinks distance from her is what you need. But it’s messing Kate up, having you this close and not seeing you. Whatever happened between the two of you in the past—”

  “Is the past.”

  “Not if you can’t bring yourselves to trust anyone, not even each another. You’re not the only one living with a warped perspective of life, Officer.”

  Martin made it as far as the hall before he turned around. Robert was right. Some perspectives you had to face head-on.

  “I’m not an officer anymore,” he said as he limped away. “And I’m not what Katie needs to make sense out of her life.”

  “FULL HOUSE.” Neal spread his cards in front of him. “Kings over queens.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Curt Jenkins threw down his hand. He looked from his jacks-over-aces full house to Neal’s cards. “You’re the luckiest bastard I’ve ever met, man.”

  Stephen, who’d folded, congratulated himself for losing only his ante. The bidding for this hand had escalated until the majority of both the other men’s chips were in play. Their weekly Thursday-night poker match at Neal’s place was winding down. About time. Focusing on the cards tonight—focusing on anything all day—had been impossible.

  Ever since Kate had stormed away from the diner.

  Neal’s grin softened the dark edges of his features. “Don’t mess with a man looking at a week-long vacation with his bride.”

  Before roughly a year ago, Neal would never have considered taking a vacation, let alone a wife. But his father’s terminal illness had not only reunited father and son after years of estrangement, but had also driven Neal back to the arms of the childhood sweetheart who’d still owned his soul. Then last summer, he’d married Jennifer Gardner.

  The couple and Jenn’s daughter, Mandy, split their time between his family home in small-town Rivermist and the new midtown-Atlanta condo Neal had purchased to replace the one-room rattrap he’d lived in since he’d left prison. Jenn was arriving sometime tomorrow. And next week Neal and his “girls” were heading for Disney World, where he would be reveling in a cartoon wonderland with the family he’d been so sure he hadn’t wanted.

  Stephen gathered the cards and shuffled as his boss raked chips across the dining room table. “He’s downright unbeatable tonight. Good thing we’re only playing for who buys the beer at O’Connel’s.”

  “I’m only buying domestic.” Jenkins played with his anemic stack of chips as Stephen dealt. “You can forget about that imported shit you swill like water, Creighton.”

  The phone rang.

  “I’m out.” Neal barely glanced at his cards before tossing them down. He checked his watch and grunted. “Bed time. Finish him off,” he said to Stephen as he headed for the kitchen phone, “so I can try some of that Irish ale you keep going on and on about.”

  Curt scowled as he threw the last of his chips into the center of the table.

  Stephen matched his bid and dealt Jenkins the two cards he asked for. Stephen discarded two as well, then replaced them from the deck, and tried not to mourn the damage he could have done to Neal’s windfall with the three aces he held in his hand.

  “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you’re as crafty as the dark angel in there.” Curt downed the last of the beer he’d swiped from Neal’s fridge, then tipped the neck of the bottle toward Stephen. “You’re more dangerous than he is with that mama’s boy smile of yours. No one sees you coming until you’re already on top of them. At least Cain’s vibe lets a man know to keep an eye on the nearest exit.”

  Most everyone in Atlanta’s legal community had referred to Neal as Dark Angel a time or two, though not to his face. When Stephen had hooked up with the center a few years back, he’d been seen as something of a white knight. But he’d been fighting for underdogs a hell of a lot longer than his boss, and he could be twice as mean when one of his clients was threatened.

  All Stephen’s life his parents had used their money to please themselves, blissfully ignorant of the needs of others who lived right under their noses. Stephen hadn’t been able to stomach it, not even as a kid. His crusade to make sure his childhood playmate—the son of the Ecuadorian housekeeper who’d all but raised Stephen—received the same opportunities as he did hadn’t been embraced with either open arms or open minds. But once his parents realized he was serious about not going to boarding school unless Frank Benetiz did—once they realized they cared less about the added expense than they did about getting both Stephen and Frank out of their hair—it had been a done deal.

  Stephen’s first victory at the bargaining table had left him with a taste for more. He wanted to see more good things come into his friend’s life, and into the lives of others he’d learned how to help in law school. Strangers he felt he knew better than he ever had his own parents.

  Of course, tonight was a different kind of victory. “Never sit down with a player,” he warned his friend with a wink as he laid down his hand, “unless you’re prepared to get played.”

  Curt cursed again. “You’re full of it, you know that?”

  “Yeah.” Stephen pulled the last of the man’s chips onto his pile. “We all have our special talents.”

  Yeah, he was cocky and enjoyed more than his share of luck—in both cards and the law. But that enabled him to protect clients until they could stand on their own. He made impossible situations work, then bowed out before he started to care too much about the lives behind the legal briefs.

  Something he’d had no problem doing before Manny Digarro, and then Kate Rhodes, had wandered into his office.

  He studied his bankrupted friend.

  “Are you sure there’s no way the department can pursue the Digarros?” he asked. “You and your buddies maybe could do something off the record.”

  “I’ll let you know if I hear anything underground,” Jenkins offered. “But according to my captain, any official investigation is off-limits. Someone pretty high up wants the case dropped.”

  “Who?”

  “Beats me, but it doesn’t sound local. Eventually, someone’s bound to come asking what I know. That should tell us more….”

  “But?”

  “Have you and Neal considered talking to the INS?”

  “What does the INS have to do with any of this?” Stephen busied himself stacking chips.

  Curt grimaced. “They were at the hospital yesterday after you and that nurse left. The abuse complaint popped up on their radar. Cooperating with them isn’t the best idea I’ve ever heard, but it sounds like you’re running out of options.”

  “Uh—why would I help the INS hunt the Digarros?”

  “The boy needs medical care, right?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “I’m just saying there are worse things than sending an illegal family back to wherever they came from.”

  Stephen inhaled. “Yeah, except I’ve got this feeling…. There’s more to Manny running than just immigration. Why else would someone have called you off the investigation?”

  His attention shifted to the downtown skyline outside the floor-to-ceiling window—an urban view that had inspired Neal’s wife to choose the
high-rise condo over all the others they’d seen. Jenn liked having wide-open space to stare at when she had something on her mind.

  Stephen stood and crossed to the window. He could appreciate her point, as he fell into the darkness relieved only by the moon and the pinpoints of light tracing the various buildings rising toward it. There should be stars out there, she’d said the first time he’d visited. And there were. You just couldn’t see them in town—just as Stephen couldn’t yet see what was behind the Digarros’ disappearance.

  He turned back to his friend. That morning’s conversation with Kate had been on his mind all day—and not just because the gorgeous woman had earned even more of his respect by having the guts to tell him off.

  “You’ve taught at the academy, right?” he asked Curt.

  “I’m a field training officer. Why?”

  “You know anything about a new guy they’ve just brought in, up from somewhere in South Georgia?”

  “Martin Rhodes? Yeah. I hear he was on long-term disability back home, apparently going nuts doing nothing. Didn’t want a desk job where he used to work, so he took over teaching defensive tactics up here. One hell of a bruiser, even though he’s still limping around on a crutch. Seems like a nice enough guy.”

  Nice enough to be persuaded to stick his neck out helping his sister hunt down a sick kid?

  Didn’t Neal keep saying Stephen should use more of what was at his disposal, and not track down every lead himself?

  “How hard would it be for a small-town sheriff’s department to look into something like an illegal immigrant’s history?” Stephen’s gaze returned to the blackness beyond the tops of the buildings. “I need something that tells me what the Digarros’ next move might be.”

  Curt’s hands were tied. Even if they weren’t, with the INS poking around, it wouldn’t hurt for Stephen to take his questions someplace farther away. And if Kate and her brother had once been as close as he suspected…

  “It’s the new millennium,” Jenkins replied. “Smaller departments have pretty much the same search capabilities as anyone else. You’d need someone who knows the locals and was motivated enough to contact them for you. You really think this Rhodes guy would do that?”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  “You might earn yourself a bit of lead time. But whoever wants the Digarro investigation dropped is bound to flag whatever search is done.”

  “And wouldn’t that be a shame.”

  Then maybe they’d come looking for Stephen, instead of the other way around.

  Stephen liked his cases wrapped up neat and tidy. This one wasn’t even close. If the INS wasn’t the only federal agency on the Digarros’ tail, he needed to know who the other players were.

  Kate might not be on best terms with her brother, but Stephen would bet tonight’s bar tab that if her brother knew how important Dillon Digarro was to her, he’d find a way to help.

  The problem was, Stephen’s only viable route to the man was through a woman who didn’t want anything to do with him.

  “GOD DAMN IT!” Martin Rhodes roared, as he fell ass-backward into the tub. Flailing for a hold on the shower curtain, he felt his right leg twist beneath him.

  The curtain rings popped, one after another, the plastic zipping off its rod and wrapping around him as he fell. He landed, hard, and pain shot outward from his hip. His head smacked the built-in soap dish. Pinpricks of light burst behind his eyes.

  You need rails on the wall to help you get in and out of your shower, Carmen Lender, his physical therapist, had insisted. Your balance is still compromised.

  And probably would be permanently, she’d stopped short of saying, but he’d seen the truth in her expression. He might never again be able to do something as simple as taking a shower without some form of assistance.

  “God damn it!” he yelled again as he thumped his head against the tile, inflicting more pain on his throbbing skull.

  A quick swipe of his hand behind his ear, where his head had struck the soap dish, produced a smear of crimson. Not a lot of blood. No need for stitches. Not that there seemed to be much chance of him de-bathtubbing and dragging himself to the hospital. And no way in hell was he calling paramedics to yank him back to his feet.

  He looked down at himself, sprawled, naked. Twisted up in the moldy shower curtain. All because he couldn’t stand on his own two feet any better than he’d been able to six months ago, when the “improvement” in his mobility had plateaued.

  Plateau, hell!

  His recovery was over.

  Acceptance sank in. He needed the aids he’d been putting off having installed—having installed, when he’d always done his own home improvement before. Even harder to swallow, he needed someone to help him up off his ass before he froze to death. And there was only one person Martin could stand to call when he was this far down—literally. Someone he’d always been able to trust with the truth, even when the truth had been so awful, he’d blamed her for all of it.

  The person he’d moved less than ten miles away from when he’d transferred to Atlanta, whose cell number he still had memorized. And she’d gotten his new number, too, somehow.

  And what had he done when Katie had called him for a favor? He’d turned his back on her again.

  It’s messing Kate up, having you this close, and not seeing you….

  Martin pushed himself forward, grimacing when his hip wanted nothing to do with grappling for his discarded pants and the cell phone he’d left in one of the pockets. He managed to topple over one of Lissa’s ferns, which thrived in the bathroom’s steam and the florescent lighting.

  But once he had the phone, all he did was stare at it. How could he do this to his sister? Once she walked back into his apartment, how would either of them escape without being hurt even more?

  Especially Katie.

  Maybe freezing his ass off wasn’t the worst way to spend the night, after all.

  “God damn it to hell!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “I’LL FINISH CLEANING UP.” Kate tied an apron on and turned to tackle the sinkful of dirty dishes.

  Even though the shelter used paper products to serve meals, the pots and pans and utensils used to prepare the night’s feast had stacked up. So had the list of people who hadn’t seen or heard from the Digarros.

  Calls were still coming in from everyone she’d spoken to, but nothing promising. Manny hadn’t been around for days, and no one had seen a sick little boy in an electric green cast.

  She’d even asked those she recognized in tonight’s food line. The January temperatures dropped to close to freezing after dark, and since most shelters had a maximum number of nights a person could keep a bed, regulars rotated from one place to another like clockwork. Kate was bound to run across someone who’d seen the Digarros.

  “You sure you want to finish all this yourself?” Randall Montgomery looked ready to drop, but he didn’t want Kate to have to single-handedly tackle the night’s cleanup disaster. “You look like you’re running on empty.”

  “Yeah?” she snickered. She turned on the industrial sink’s tap and added dish soap while the water warmed. “Well, you spent the day dashing into flames and protecting people from a three-alarm fire…. You win!”

  Randall was a lieutenant in one of Atlanta’s fire-and-rescue departments. He’d been on duty that morning, during the downtown apartment blaze every news station in town had broken into scheduled programming to cover. He’d still been in uniform and covered in soot when he’d shown up to help with the shelter’s dinner rush. But instead of complaining, he’d grabbed a quick shower, thrown on clothes from the boxes of donations the center made available to everyone and spent the past three hours cooking grilled cheese and heating monstrous cans of tomato soup for total strangers.

  “They’re not going to show, you know.” He grabbed a wire brush and began scouring the stove’s cook top. “Not here. Manny’s got better sense than that.”

  Better sense than to trust Kate
.

  She took the brush away, her glare daring Randall to argue. “Get. I’m staying to clean up, not to stalk a homeless family.”

  Actually, she was doing both. But she was not about to let a dead-on-his-feet firefighter sacrifice his sleep to babysit her.

  “Go home,” she insisted. She’d figure out her next move on her own. Somehow, she’d find something, some clue she could follow up on tomorrow.

  “You’ve been on edge all night,” Randall pressed. “I hate leaving you like this “

  “I’m fine.” She shoved her hands into the soapy water. “Get some sleep. You’ve had an exhausting, superhero day.”

  He chuckled on his way to grab his gear from the storeroom. “Just make sure someone walks you out when you’re done.”

  The Midtown Shelter was, for hundreds of homeless, an oasis of safety and warmth in the midst of a cold city, but it was also located in the heart of one of the edgier neighborhoods in town. That was kind of the point. Midtown was where community services did the most good.

  “I’ll walk you out,” a familiar voice said. Its husky timber tickled her frazzled nerves, like sensual fingers she wanted to feel everywhere.

  The soup pot she’d been scrubbing slipped from her grasp and clunked into the sink, splashing a flood of water in its wake. Her apron fortunately took the brunt of the spill, but she instinctively crossed her arms over her soaked front as she turned.

  She glanced at the clock hanging over the doorway above Stephen Creighton’s head.

  “It’s late,” she mumbled.

  Mumbling was preferable to Damn, you look hot!

  And Stephen did. Even hotter in jeans and a pullover than he’d been in his ruinously expensive suit that morning.

  “Let me help you finish things up.” He grabbed a spare apron from the counter and pulled it over his head, then took up where Randall had left off at the stove. “You look ready to drop.”

  Just what every woman wanted to hear from the sexiest guy she’d ever pitched a fit in front of.

  “Is it just me?” Her gaze trailed down what looked like designer jeans, artfully frayed at the hem, to the high-priced sneakers covering the man’s feet. “Or is this not your usual Thursday evening hot spot?”