“What was your role there?”
She smiled somewhat sheepishly. “I worked in the base commissary.”
She was a glorified store clerk.
David looked through her file, noting that she never saw combat. But that wasn’t necessarily a requirement of this job. She had the training that all other Marines received. The fact that she didn’t go to Afghanistan like Alexander, Ingram, Knox, and Elliott didn’t necessarily mean anything.
“We recently had a case in which one of our operatives was shot and two other men were wounded. One fatally,” Kipling said. “How would you have responded to such a situation?”
“I would have made sure I wasn’t the operative shot,” she said almost sarcastically.
“And how would you have prevented it?”
She shrugged. “I would have done my job properly.”
“What about being shot suggests the operative was not doing his job properly?” David asked.
“He was shot.”
David glanced at Kipling. Kipling made a movement that was just a hint of a shrug. But David didn’t like the attitude, didn’t like the lack of experience, and didn’t like the implication that Elliott had done anything wrong. Maybe he shouldn’t have walked into an ambush, but he couldn’t have known. And there was nothing about this woman that assured David she would have known in his place.
“Thank you, Ms. Franklin.”
David stood, closing her file as he did. She seemed slightly confused since the interview had only just begun. She looked at Kipling, but he stood, too.
Once she was gone, David threw himself into a chair and opened Nolan Everett’s file.
“If this guy doesn’t have his head on straight…”
“You’re being too picky.”
“I’m trying to pick someone who won’t get my people killed. Or our clients.” He glanced at Kipling. “Did you see the press we got after Juan Alvarez’s death? They made us out to be the villains—even though that man was a mobster. Like we were the ones running drugs and guns across the border!”
“That’s because we’re discreet. We don’t tell our clients’ business even when it looks bad on us. That’ll just get us more business when clients realize that.”
“Maybe.”
David ran his fingers through his hair, his thoughts a million miles away. Ricki was still feeling poorly. The doctor had ordered a round of tests, and they were supposed to be back later today. He was worried. The last thing he wanted right now was for his wife to face some health crisis while he was distracted with Gray Wolf business. She kept assuring him that it was nothing, that Bailey was still having morning sickness, too. The two women, his wife and Ingram’s wife, were roughly at the same point in their pregnancies. But Bailey didn’t look half as anemic as Ricki was beginning to look. And he knew she was scared. As much as she tried to assure him, he could see it on her face.
Annie knocked on the door and stuck her head in.
“Mr. Everett is here.”
David watched him walk in, impressed by his military presence. He walked as if he was still in the service, his spine straight, his chest pushed out. And he still had the Marine haircut, buzzed in the back and just slightly longer on the top. He looked to be about twenty, but his file said he was closer to twenty-seven. Tall, slender, and fit, he was the poster boy for the Marines.
David wondered why he’d chosen to leave the service just over six months ago. His file mentioned an insurgent attack in Afghanistan, but didn’t give many details. The last thing David wanted was a man haunted by his past, but this man was his last option.
“You served in Afghanistan?”
Nolan inclined his head, his eyes flicking to Kipling. “You did too, did you not, sir?”
Kipling glanced at David. “I did.”
“I read about the fight you and Sergeant Ash Grayson saw over there. Quite a firestorm, sir.”
“It was,” Kipling said, glancing at David, clearly impressed.
David was, too. This man had done his research. That had to count for something.
***
“We hired the boy.”
Ricki watched David move around the bed, curiosity brightening her eyes. “Yeah? What was wrong with the girl?”
“Everyone keeps telling me that military experience counts for something. Nolan Everett had far more experience than the girl.”
“Sexism.”
“No, just reality.”
David stretched out on the bed beside his wife. “Did the doctor call?”
She nodded. “He said they need to do more tests.”
David shook his head. “How many tests do they need to do? Either you have something we need to worry about or you don’t.”
“Relax, babe,” she said, sliding her hand over his arm. “The baby’s fine. I’m fine. They’ll figure it out.”
He kissed her cheek lightly. He hoped they did. And soon. He couldn’t stand this hurry up and wait stuff.
Chapter 25
Brooks
I walked around the restaurant, running my fingers over the stainless steel counters and the state of the art stove. I honestly couldn’t believe this was happening. When the lawyer said that this was mine, I wanted to punch him in the arm for making such a bad joke. It took a while for it to truly set in. Juan had left both his restaurants to me.
The lawyer seemed apologetic, especially when he got to the part when he announced that all of Juan’s other assets, his money and his real estate holdings, went to his father. But I was shocked that I was in the will at all. It wasn’t like Juan owed me anything, and it wasn’t like he’d ever gone out of his way before to give me anything.
I now owned two of the most successful restaurants in all of Austin.
There was a knock on the front door. I went and pulled the door open, smiling as Elliott stepped into the dining room.
“Why are we meeting here?” he asked.
I sort of spun around, waving my hands over the whole room. “This is mine.”
“What?”
“Juan left me his restaurants.”
Elliott stared at me. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I were. I mean…what do I know about running restaurants? I mean, I wanted to own my own, but I always thought it would be a small place, a diner, where we served simple food. This…this is Romero’s! This is one of the hottest spots in town!”
“You’ll do a wonderful job,” he said, coming up behind me, his hands moving over my belly.
“Do you think so?”
“You’re a brilliant chef. And you’ve got a whole staff in place who can help you with whatever else you need to know.”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts about it, babe. You’ll be great.”
I loved that he had confidence in me that I didn’t have in myself. I moved into him and rested my head against his chest. He ran his hand slowly down my back, his fingers lingering on the open back of my shirt.
“What else did the lawyers have to say?”
“All his assets go to his father. But he also left me my clothing and the contents of my suite. And he set up a trust fund for Jimmy so that he can stay in the institute for the foreseeable future.”
“I guess he wasn’t such a bad guy after all.”
“He was…complicated.”
We stood there silently for a few minutes. Then I pulled away and took Elliott’s hand.
“Let me show you around.”
We walked through the dining room, into the small bar, and then into the back into the kitchen where I began my career. I felt at home there in a way I wasn’t sure I’d feel anywhere else. I’d stopped by Maximus on my way here, but it didn’t feel the same.
“I got an offer for both restaurants.”
“Already?”
“The lawyer presented two offers to me after he told me that I owned them. Said that I could sell them together or separately. And if I didn’t like those offers, he would be happy to find more offers
.”
“Did he just decide you didn’t want them?”
“He doesn’t know me. He probably assumed I was a pampered housewife who would be offended that he didn’t leave me more.”
“Maybe.”
“I think I might sell Maximus, concentrate just on this place.”
“It’s your choice.”
“I could sell Maximus and buy a house. I could do everything Juan had promised me I’d be able to do when our marriage ended.”
“That’s true.”
“Or I could keep them. Run them with a partner.”
“And who would that be?”
“You?”
Elliott laughed like he thought I was joking. “I don’t know anything about restaurants.”
“We could learn together.”
He turned to me, his eyes moving almost affectionately over my face. “Are you asking me to go into business with you?”
“I’m asking you to help me make this choice. To be a part of my life.”
“You don’t have to ask that.”
He moved into me and touched my face with soul-ripping kindness. But there was this reluctance in his eyes that worried me. It’d been there since the night Juan died, since everything was said and done. It made me feel like not everything had been said and not everything was done.
“Elliott, am I pushing you too hard? I mean, I’ve been staying at your place. Maybe it’s too soon…”
“It’s not.”
“I just, I feel like you’ve been slowly pulling away from me.”
“I don’t think we could get any closer,” he said, sliding his hand over my back again, this time slipping his fingers under the cutout in the back, his fingers on my flesh.
“I just…at risk of making things worse, I just want you to know that I’m falling in love with you and I have no intention of going anywhere. I want to see where this goes. I want to be with you to whatever extent you want to be together. I want you.”
He was standing too close for me to see his face, but his hands were still moving over my body, so I knew he hadn’t shut down yet. But he wasn’t exactly jumping to welcome me into his world, either.
“I know you were hurt by what your mom and your sister did. I swear I’ll never cheat on you.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
He pushed my head back so he could look me in the eye. “I know that. I doubted it at first, but I know it now.”
“Then what? What’s holding you back?”
He kissed the tip of my nose to keep from having to look me in the eye for a moment. But then he sighed and said, “I know it’s stupid. But…”
“What?”
“He was your husband. And you cried when he died.”
“Not because—”
“No, wait. It’s not that you cried. I understand. He was a part of your life. You were a part of his. I wouldn’t be able to look you in the eye if you hadn’t cried, to be honest. But it just…there was this thing between the two of you. It might not have been romantic and it might not have been traditional, but you were his wife. He had the right to call you that, and it bothers me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” He lifted me up and sat me on the edge of a stainless steel prep table. He stepped back slightly and looked me in the eye. “It’s me. I have this hang up. I…every time I look at you, I hear him calling you his wife. I see him falling after I fired my gun. I…” He stopped, stepping back from me, pacing a little. “I was the one who shot him. It was my bullets that killed him.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I know. And I feel like I took this thing away from you before you had a chance to really understand how you felt about it.”
“You didn’t.”
“I killed your husband.”
I snagged his shirt and pulled him back to me. “Do you know I never used that word in reference to Juan? Do you know that word never felt comfortable on my tongue?”
“Brooks—”
“He never felt like my husband. He was the man who paid for my brother’s care, the man whose home I lived in. He was the man whose secrets were going to save me some day. And he was the man who lost his temper and hit me from time to time. But he was also the man who taught me so much in the kitchen, taught me things that I never thought I could do. And he gave me an opportunity that will change my life and my brother’s life and maybe yours, too.” I touched his face. “But he wasn’t my husband.”
I kissed his chin lightly, his throat, running my tongue slowly down over his Adam’s apple. “He never made me feel the way you do. He never made me feel like anything was possible. But you do. You feel more like my husband than he ever did.”
Elliott stepped closer to me, pulling on my hips so that my thighs enveloped him.
“I want my future to be about you, Elliott. I want my life to be a part of yours.”
“And what if I screw up? What if I do something to hurt you? What if—?”
“I don’t really care for what ifs. If I’d known what was going to happen to my family when I was a little girl, I never would have left the house. But I’m here and I’m healthy and I’m ready to move into this next phase of my life. I’m not going to paralyze myself with what ifs.” I slid my fingers into the short hair on the back of his head. “I can’t make promises. I can’t definitively say I’ll never cheat on you or that I’ll never leave you. But you can’t say that either, and I accept that. Can’t you accept it?”
“I want to.”
“You have to take a leap of faith. That’s what life’s all about.”
He nodded, his mouth sliding over mine. There was such heat in his touch that I wasn’t surprised when he tugged at the bottom of my blouse, pulling it up over my head or when he pushed the hem of my skirt up over my thighs. I welcomed him inside of me; I welcomed his touch; I was glad for it. I would have gladly given up both restaurants right then, the trust fund for Jimmy, and all the clothes in the world if it meant having this touch every moment of every day for the rest of my life.
“I love you,” he whispered roughly against my ear. “I think I loved you from the moment I saw you.”
And that…if everything I’d been through in my life and everything he’d been through in his life had been the price for this moment, for those words…it was worth it.
Chapter 26
Kipling
I drove my new SUV up to the courthouse, still not used to the large vehicle, but proud of what it represented. When David Grayson first called me and asked me to consult on his business, I was far from impressed. I wasn’t looking for work and didn’t really care if I had a job. I was too obsessed with going over every word of the confession my wife and daughter’s killer had made, trying to piece it all together, trying to figure out what their final moments were like. I wanted to know everything they went through; I wanted to know every agonizing second. And then I was going to find a way to make that man suffer twice what they went through.
But then Ash talked me into meeting his brother and I found myself drawn out of the darkness that had become my life. And I found myself caring about something other than revenge for the first time in a very long time. Those people at Gray Wolf were becoming something to me that I couldn’t even put into words. Not quite family, but quickly approaching it.
Elliott had come up to me a few days after the events at Juan Alvarez’s house and thanked me for doing what was essentially my job. I’d been thanks for my actions in combat before, but it never felt like that. It felt like I still had a purpose in this life. I’d been convinced with Jesse and Grace’s deaths that my purpose had evaporated. That I was just taking up space in this world until I could exact my revenge. But now? I was beginning to see that maybe I was meant for a little more than that.
But there was still this darkness to deal with, still this drive for revenge pushing me forward.
I walked toward the courthouse, reporters jumping out of the bushes
to toss questions at me.
Would I be coming to all of Mickey Connors’ appeals hearings? Would I continue with my threat to bring a wrongful death suit against him? Would I hold up pictures of my wife and daughter as I had done at previous court appearances?
They were stupid questions. I pushed through the crowd, making my way to the metal detectors that would effectively hold the crowd back.
I saw her before I was even halfway down the hall. Harley Connors. She was Mickey’s sister, the only person in his family who believed him innocent. Mickey was a loser from the beginning. She had a juvenile record that was a mile long and then several robbery arrests as an adult that had seen him spend five years in prison. He was actually on probation for the last offense when they picked him up for breaking into a house down the street from mine a week after Jesse and Grace were killed. It was then that he made his confession.
There was no doubt in my mind that Mickey Connors was responsible for this darkness I’ve been thrust into. I couldn’t understand how she couldn’t see that.
“Mr. McKay,” she said respectfully as I passed her.
“Ms. Connors.”
“They’re going to test the DNA again. I don’t know if you’ve heard.”
I turned and faced her, struck once again by the incredible differences in their appearances. Mickey was dark and Irish, a tall kid with black hair and dark eyes, a sort of crushing bend to his shoulders that made you want to feel sorry for him until he looked you in the eye and you could see the psychosis there, the insanity that made it impossible for him to be a responsible human being. But her? She had hair that was a cross between brown and red, a sort of mahogany that was so rich in color that I sometimes couldn’t take my eyes from it. And she had green eyes that were pure and clear, like the green waters of a deep pool of water. Her skin was like porcelain, and she had this petite little nose that seemed to point upward, making her wide cheeks seem dainty, somehow.
She was beautiful. But she was also the sister of the man who ruined my life.
“They can test the DNA as often as they like, but it will continue to come back inconclusive.” I moved closer to her, glancing down the hall at her brother’s lawyers. “He plead guilty. He confessed. I don’t know why you and those lawyers waste your time with all these appeals.”
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