“Cami, it’s pouring,” I said, unhappy.
“I’m aware,” she said, kissing at me before heading out the door.
Dad brought down the dominoes from the shelf, and we made small talk. He asked me a few of the same questions he’d asked me earlier, and I began to wonder if he’d been forgetful all along and I was just noticing it, or if his memory was getting worse. He had a doctor’s appointment that Friday. I’d bring it up then.
My cell phone buzzed. I pressed the receiver against my ear. “Hey, cunt puddle!”
“They just keep getting better,” Thomas said on the other end of the line, unimpressed.
“Christ on a bicycle, Trenton,” Dad fumed, nodding toward Olive.
I winked at him. Shocking him with my insults had become a sport.
“How are Mom and baby?” I asked.
“We’re headed home,” Thomas replied. “I think … I think we’re going to head that way earlier than expected.”
“Everything okay?” I asked, noting that Dad’s interest was piqued. I waved him away, assuring him nothing was wrong.
“Yeah … yeah. Have you heard from Trav?” Thomas asked.
“No. Why?”
Thomas had been an enigma since I could remember, and the questions only multiplied when he became an adult.
Dad was staring at me, both patiently and impatiently waiting for an explanation. I held up my finger.
“Just curious.”
“You’re going to put a newborn on a plane? I knew you were brave, big brother, but hell.”
“We thought Dad might like to meet her.”
“He would. Dad would love to meet …” My mind drew a blank.
“Stella,” Olive whispered.
“Stella!” I repeated. “Dad would love to meet Stella.” Dad popped me on the back of my head. “Ow! What’d I say?”
“So we’ll be in tomorrow,” Thomas said, ignoring the circus on the other end of the line.
“Tomorrow?” I said, looking at Dad. “That quick, huh?”
“Yeah. Tell Dad not to worry. We’ll get the room ready when we get there.”
“Cami has been keeping the guest room ready. She knew you’d be over some time with the baby. She even got a pack ‘n whatever.”
“She purchased a Pack ‘n Play for Stella? Really?” Thomas asked. “That was nice of her. How is sh … that was nice of her.”
“Yeah,” I said, suddenly feeling awkward. “We’ll see you tomorrow, I guess.”
“Tell Dad I love him,” Thomas said.
“Will do, shit pouch.”
Thomas hung up, and I shot Dad a wide grin. The two lines between his eyes deepened.
“I should have spanked you more,” Dad said.
“Yes, you should have.” I looked down at the dominoes. “Well? They’re not going to shuffle themselves.”
I settled on a dining chair, the golden brown leather making fart noises under my jeans. Even though I’d moved out, Camille and I visited Dad at least once a day, usually more. Travis visited when he wasn’t traveling for work. I glanced up at the shelf that ran just below the ceiling, filled with dusty poker memorabilia and signed pictures of our favorite players. A few cobwebs had formed. I need to get up there and dust. Don’t want the old man falling and breaking a hip.
“Cami didn’t say anything about the test today,” Dad said, moving the dominoes around in a circle on the table.
“Yeah,” I said, staring at the white rectangular tiles as they slowly circulated around, under Dad’s hands, moving in and out of the pack. “It’s a monthly thing now. I think she’s tired of talking about it.”
“Understandable,” Dad said. He gave a side-glance to Olive, and I knew he was choosing his next words carefully. “Have you been to the doc?”
“Gross,” Olive said, disgusted despite his efforts. She wasn’t a little girl anymore.
“Not yet. I think she’s afraid to hear it’s something permanent. Honestly, so am I. At least now, we have hope.”
“There’s still hope. Even the worst circumstances have a silver lining. Life isn’t linear, son. Each choice we make or every influence branches off the line we’re currently on, and at the end of that branch is another branch. It’s just a series of blank slates, even after a disaster.”
I peeked up at him. “Is that how you felt after Mom died?”
Olive let out a tiny gasp.
Dad tensed, waiting a moment before speaking. “A while after Mom died. I think we all know I didn’t do much of anything right after.”
I touched his arm, and the tiles stopped spinning. “You did exactly what you could. If I lost Cami …” I trailed off, the thought making me feel sick to my stomach. “I’m not sure how you survived it, Dad, much less got yourself together to raise five boys. And you did, you know. You got yourself together. You are a great dad.”
Dad cleared his throat, and the tiles began turning again. He paused just long enough to wipe a tear from beneath his glasses. “Well, I’m glad. You deserve it. You’re a great son.”
I patted his shoulder, and then we picked our bones from the boneyard and set them on their sides, facing away from each other. I had a shit hand.
“Really, Dad? Really?”
“Oh, quit your whining and play,” he said. He tried to sound stern, but his small grin betrayed him. “Wanna play, Olive?”
Olive shook her head. “No thank you, Papa,” she said, returning her attention to her phone.
“She’s probably playing dominoes on that thing,” Dad teased.
“Poker,” Olive snapped back.
Dad smiled.
I turned to look up at our last family portrait, taken just before Mom found out she was sick. Travis was barely three. “Do you still miss her? I mean … like before?”
“Every day,” he said without hesitation.
“Remember when she used to do the tickle monster?” I asked.
The corners of Dad’s mouth turned up, and then his body began to shake with uncontrollable chuckles. “It was ridiculous. She wasn’t sure if she was an alien or a gorilla.”
“She was both,” I said.
“Chasing all five of you around the house, hunched over like a primate and making her hands into alien suction cups.”
“Then she’d catch us and eat our armpits.”
“Now, that’s love. You boys smelled like rotting carcasses on a good day.”
I laughed out loud. “It was the one time we could jump on the furniture and not get our asses beat.”
Dad scoffed. “She didn’t have to spank you. The look was enough.”
“Oh,” I said, remembering. “The look.” I shivered.
“Yeah. She made it look easy, but she had to put a healthy amount of fear into you first. She knew you were all going to be bigger than her one day.”
“Am I?” I asked. “Bigger than she was?”
“She was a bitty thing. Abby’s size. Maybe not even that tall.”
“Where did Travis’s gigantism come from, then? You and Uncle Jack are bloated chipmunks.”
Dad howled. His belly bobbled, making the table jiggle. My dominoes fell over, and I spat out a laugh, too, unable to hold it in. Olive covered her mouth, her shoulders shaking. Just as I began setting the dominoes back onto their edges, a car pulled into the drive. The gravel in the driveway crunched under a set of tires, and the engine shut off. A minute later, someone knocked on the door.
“I’ll get it,” Olive said, pushing her chair back.
“Oops,” I said, standing. “Cami’s back. Better help her with the groceries.”
“Atta boy,” Dad said with a nod and a wink.
I walked into the hall and froze. Olive was holding open the door, staring at me with a pale, worried expression. Behind her on the porch were two men in suits and soggy trench coats.
“Dad?” I called to the dining room.
“Actually,” one of the men said. “Are you Trenton Maddox?”
I swallowed. �
��Yeah?” Before either of them could speak, all the blood rushed from my face. I stumbled back. “Dad?” I called, this time frantic.
Dad put his hand on my shoulder. “What’s this?”
“Mr. Maddox,” one of the men said, nodding. “I’m Agent Blevins.”
“Agent?” I asked.
He continued. “We came with some unfortunate news.”
I lost my balance, falling with my back flat against the paneled wall. I slid down slowly. Olive went down with me, grabbing both my hands and bracing us for an alternate, painful reality. She held tight, anchoring me to the present, the moment in time just before everything would fall apart. I’d known in the pit of my stomach not to let Camille drive in the rain. I’d been feeling off for several days, knowing something bad was looming. “Don’t fucking say it,” I groaned.
Dad slowly kneeled at my side, placing his hand on my knee. “Now, hold on. Let’s hear what they have to say.” He looked up. “Is she okay?”
The agents didn’t answer, so I looked up, too. They had the same expression as Olive. My head fell forward. An explosion boiled inside me.
A sack fell and glass broke. “Oh, my God!”
“Cami!” Olive cried, releasing my hands.
I stared at her in disbelief, scrambling to my knees just before throwing my arms around her waist. Dad breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Is he okay?” Camille asked. She pulled away from me to look me over. “What happened?”
Olive stood and held on to Dad.
“I thought you … they …” I trailed off, still unable to complete a coherent sentence.
“You thought I what?” Camille asked, grabbing each side of my face. She looked at Dad and Olive.
“He thought they were here to inform us you’d …” Dad peered at the agents. “What in the Sam Hill are you here for, then? What’s the unfortunate news?”
The agents glanced at each other, finally understanding my reaction. “We’re so sorry, sir. We’ve come to inform you about your brother. Agent Lindy requested the news be brought straight to you.”
“Agent Lindy?” I asked. “You mean Liis? What about my brother?”
Dad’s eyebrows pulled in. “Trenton … call the twins home. Do it now.”
CHAPTER FIVE
TRAVIS
ABBY WAS STANDING AT A WINDOW near the front door of our French Provincial home, peeking out from behind the gray sheer curtains she’d picked five years before to replace the old ones she’d picked three years before that. So much more than just the curtains had changed in the last eleven years. Weddings, births, deaths, milestones, and truths.
We’d rejoiced in the birth of our twins and mourned Toto’s death. He was the twins’ personal bodyguard, following them everywhere and sleeping on the rug between first, their cribs and then, their toddler beds. The hair around his eyes began to gray, and then it was becoming harder for him to keep up. His was the second funeral I’d ever attended. We buried him in our backyard, the Bradford pear his headstone.
Just a few months before, on our eleventh anniversary, Abby had confessed to knowing I worked for the FBI. Swollen with our third child, she’d handed me a manila envelope full of dates, times, and other pertinent information between her father, Mick, and Benny, the mafia boss I’d just shot in the face for threatening my family.
Abby’s SUV usually sat parked in front of my silver Dodge truck, but it was notably missing, and my wife wasn’t happy about it. We’d traded in the Camry years ago for the black Toyota 4Runner Abby drove to her teaching job. She’d always been good at numbers, and she’d begun teaching the math lab for sixth grade almost right after graduation.
College seemed like a week ago. Instead of dorms and apartments, we had a mortgage against a two-story, four-bedroom home and two car payments. The Harley had been sold to a good home before the twins arrived. Life had happened when I wasn’t looking, and suddenly, we were adults making decisions instead of living with someone else’s.
Abby put a hand on her round middle, rocking back and forth to relieve some of the aching in her pelvis. “It’s going to rain.”
“Looks like it.”
“You just washed the truck.”
“I’ll take yours.” I smirked.
She glared at me. “Mine is totaled.”
I pressed my lips together, trying to suppress a smile. My shoulder burned from where a bullet had grazed me and drove through my seat, and my head was pounding from slamming into a tree on the side of the highway. I’d just begun to heal from the beating I’d taken beneath the streets of Vegas by Benny’s men, and now, I had a fresh black eye and a one-inch vertical cut through my left eyebrow. I just happened to be driving Abby’s SUV to pick up some ice cream, being a model husband while also using that time to get an update on Thomas from Val. The Carlisis thought I was in California, so they went there first, but Val said it was only a matter of time before they arrived in Eakins. That was when the first bullets shattered the passenger side window.
Abby was pissed, but she chose to be angry about the truck because she couldn’t be mad about the situation. Anger was easier than fear. Even after I’d already eliminated the threat, I wanted to empty my clip into every single one of them when I saw the photos in the vehicle that had run me off the road. They had pictures of my wife, my kids, my nieces and nephews, my brothers and their wives. Even Shepley, America, their sons, and my aunt and uncle. They were planning to wipe out the Maddox family.
They chose the wrong family.
“They’ll replace it,” I said, trying to mask my growing anger.
“They can’t replace you,” she said, turning with her arms crossed and resting on her belly. “Are you going?”
“To meet Liis when she lands?”
“You should. She’ll need to see your black eye and the cut on your eyebrow, to see the danger is real and has extended to the rest of the family,” Abby said.
“I can’t leave you here alone, Pidge.” I sighed. “I didn’t realize how much we’d used Lena until she left.”
Abby shot me a knowing grin. “You miss her, don’t you? She’s the little sister you never had.”
I smiled but didn’t answer. Abby already knew that I did. Lena was a tiny thing, shorter than Abby. She was an exotic beauty, as deadly as she was stunning, handpicked by the Bureau to protect our children before they were born. Because my undercover position was atypical in that Benny knew who I was, where I lived, and that I had a family, the Bureau took extra precautions. Lena quickly fit in and was a huge help to a new mother with twin infants, especially when I was gone. She was like a little sister to Abby and me, and she loved to gang up on me with Abby. Like an aunt to the kids, she accompanied them to parks, nature walks, playing cars and Barbies, and teaching them Portuguese and Italian. She even taught them how to defend themselves, which we learned wasn’t the best idea for Jessica. I should’ve known no daughter of mine would be afraid to use her new knowledge if someone picked on her brother at school.
Eighteen months ago, Agent John Wren replaced Lena. Suddenly reassigned, we didn’t know where she was going, just that she was nervous as she packed her things and was devastated that she didn’t have time to say goodbye to the children.
“I’m not alone,” Abby said, snapping me to the present. She gestured over her shoulder to the window.
I didn’t need visual confirmation to know that Agent Wren was outside in a black car, along with two more agents in undisclosed locations. Now that we knew our entire family was a target, we had to be vigilant. The Carlisis weren’t known for their patience; they typically attacked at the smallest sign of weakness.
Lena’s sudden departure deeply affected the children. James began experiencing nightmares, and Jessica was depressed for months. Abby insisted we not put James and Jessica through that kind of anguish again, so the Bureau sent an agent we thought the kids wouldn’t become attached to. The twins were old enough that it was unnecessary for our new security to be handpi
cked because of his rapport with children; rather, he was chosen for the fact he was classified as hyper lethal. To date, Wren was the only agent I’d met with that classification.
“I still feel bad that he has to sit outside in this heat,” Abby said.
“His car is air conditioned, and you were right. The kids were getting attached … and so was he.”
As aloof as Wren was, the kids had grown on him. We were just as surprised as he was the first time Jessica nearly knocked him over with a hug. They beamed every day when they saw him sitting outside their school, and as each day passed, their acceptance of and love for him broke down his walls. As it turned out, that only made Wren more determined to keep them alive, a positive side-effect none of us saw coming. Abby wasn’t happy about their growing attachment, though, so the rules changed. He had to keep his distance, and for a second time, the kids were heartbroken.
Abby nodded and turned away from the window, walking over to join me. She looked down at her stomach. “What do you think about Sutton?”
“You’re talking names now? Sutton for a boy?” I asked, trying to keep my expression neutral. Pregnancy made my wife even more unpredictable than usual, but I just rolled with it. Pointing it out just made her cranky.
Abby’s gray eyes brightened, relishing in the truth I couldn’t hide. “You don’t like it? I know it doesn’t start with a J like the twins, and that’s kind of the Maddox thing, but …”
My nose wrinkled. “It’s not a Maddox thing.”
“Taylor’s are Hollis and Hadley,” she said. “Shepley’s: Ezra, Eli, Emerson. The T’s? Diane and Deana? James and Jack? You’re really going to deny it?”
“It’s a regional thing.”
“Your mom and aunt grew up in Oklahoma.”
“See?” I said. “Regional.”
Abby pressed her fingers into her back, waddling to the couch. She negotiated the space and her body, keeping the right balance as she lowered herself to the cushions. “Get this thing out of me,” she groaned.
“Definitely not naming him this thing,” I teased.
“Well,” she began, breathing heavily. “We’re going to have to name him something.”
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