LITMIR.BIZ

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is the last picture taken of my brother before he was killed.”

      “I’m sorry,” Dan apologized. “Jealousy is one of my less attractive traits. I could make you a list of some of my more positive ones.”

      She couldn’t help but smile, relieved that with Bruce gone, some of the tension she’d been feeling had dissipated.

      “For example,” he said, perching on the corner of her desk. “I always put the cap back on the toothpaste. And I grew up with three sisters, so I learned early on to put the toilet seat down. Have you made up your mind yet, about Vail?”

      They weren’t quite at the toothpaste-and-toilet-seat stage of a relationship yet—just a couple casual dates—but she could see herself with him. Dan had asked her to co-chaperone a class ski trip in Vail over the Thanksgiving weekend. He owned a cabin there and took his senior class skiing every year.

      “Sure, why not?” The kids would be their chaperones as much as they’d be theirs. She saluted him with the cup in her hand. Taking a sip, Mitzi mulled over the need for honesty in a new relationship. She decided on full disclosure in this case. “He was my Marine,” she confessed. “I mean, we were engaged. But that’s all in the past.”

      “Okay…” Dan glanced at the snapshot, then back at her. “Just let me know when you’re ready to Photoshop him out of the picture.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got a class to teach.”

      “Danny,” Mitzi called as he reached the door. “See you tonight?”

      “Of course.” Without hesitation he stepped back in to give her a quick kiss before heading out again.

      Relieved, Mitzi sank to her seat. Wrapping her hands around the warm paper cup, she stared out the glass front at the slushy, snow-covered street and hoped she hadn’t sounded desperate.

      Dan had been stopping by on his way to school every morning for weeks. He’d flirted his way to a first date. Then last night she’d taken him to the Broadway Bar & Bowl, where he’d met her father and where she’d laughed for the first time in a long time.

      She was ready to date again.

      Dan felt safe.

      Why did Calhoun have to show up now? And why did she feel this sudden urgency to prove she’d moved on?

      Had she moved on?

      Just let me know when you’re ready to Photoshop him out of the picture.

      It had been taken in Kuwait, on one of those rare occasions when the three of them had been in the same place at the same time.

      Her brother, Fred Jr.—Freddie to his friends—had joined the Navy right out of high school. Bruce had been born to be a Marine. After joining the Corps, he’d been one of a select group of eighty-six Marines, including five Navy hospital corpsmen serving with the Marine Corps, to train with and integrate into the Navy SEAL teams.

      She’d become a rescue swimmer because she couldn’t follow them into the SEAL program. But her job gave her an all-access pass into their world.

      The guys had just flown in from an op. She had an arm around each of them. Laughing.

      Freddie to her right, Bruce to her left and on her left ring finger a sparkling-new diamond ring she was showing off for the camera.

      She’d just completed a SAR, search and rescue drill, and earned some well-deserved shore leave when Bruce had hopped out of that helo in the background and walked straight up to her. Without a word they’d kissed and wound up in a dark corner of a military hangar.

      Half dressed.

      Her back against the wall. Him inside her.

      Afterward he’d produced a ring from out of nowhere. She’d socked him in the arm. A gal didn’t want to be proposed to while zipping up her flight suit after a quickie.

      He’d followed her outside. Got down on bended knee, in front of no less than a hundred witnesses.

      “It’s about damn time.” Freddie had been the first to congratulate them. He’d handed his camera phone to someone and the three of them posed for that picture. Later she and Bruce headed to Dubai for three days and two nights of R & R to celebrate.

      Those were the last happy days of her life.

      She couldn’t just Photoshop Bruce out of the picture without also erasing every memory, good and bad, she was ever going to have of her brother. But Freddie had been the glue that held the three of them together.

      Without him something was missing.

      CHAPTER TWO

      IT WAS A GOOD THING he really didn’t need a haircut. There weren’t that many good old-fashioned barber shops around anymore, unless you knew where to look. The one he remembered was long gone.

      Bruce stood on the corner of Broadway and Hampden, trying to reorient himself by reading the marquee above the Army & Navy Surplus Store. The sign boasted of David Spade buying a jean jacket for a recent Saturday Night Live appearance. There was a time when nothing in this town changed except that sign.

      Now it all looked different.

      Broadway for a few blocks in either direction made up the main drag. One-and two-story turn-of-the-century brick buildings fought for attention among the ongoing revitalization of the area. To the north was Denver and to the south, the tech centers and sprawling suburbs. Both threatened to swallow Englewood whole.

      “You Mitzi’s Marine?”

      Bruce realized he’d been standing, lost in his thoughts, in the middle of the sidewalk, and he started to move closer to the intersection.

      “Hey, I’m talking to you,” a wheelchair-bound man insisted, wheeling after him. “You hear me? Or that grenade take out your hearing, too?”

      “I heard you,” Bruce answered, not bothering to hide his irritation. He didn’t make eye contact, either. He’d spotted the beggar from across the street.

      “Hallelujah—he’s not deaf, just a dumb-ass Marine. Knock on wood.”

      Bruce sidestepped the wheelie’s attempt to knock on his prosthetic leg. Which was not made of wood.

      “I knew you was a gimp a mile down the road,” the old-timer boasted.

      Bruce bristled at the use of the term gimp. He took pride in being able to walk without a limp. Stairs used to give him away. But with the aid of modern technology and practice—months and months of practice—he’d perfected his stride. As an above-the-knee amputee, he’d had to relearn to walk using his hips to propel himself forward, rather than his legs.

      “Pride goeth before a fall, spitshine,” the old-timer said. “Least, that’s what they tell me down at the Salvation Army.”

      The light on the corner flashed Walk and Bruce hurried across the street, with the wheelie keeping pace. “Spare change for a fellow Marine down on his luck?”

      If he’d been wearing a different uniform, Bruce had no doubt the old-timer would have been Army, Navy, Air Force or whatever branch of service suited his purpose.

      Marines did not beg on street corners. At least not those with a shred of self-respect.

      “You know that homeless-vet act went out with the seventies.”

      “Been on these streets since Nam,” the so-called vet insisted.

      “I don’t doubt it,” Bruce said, picking up his pace.

      “You think you’re better than me, son? You and me, we ain’t so different.”

      Bruce stopped in his tracks. “First of all, I’m not your son,” he said, turning on the old man. But that meant he had to look at him, really look at him.

      Greasy shoulder-length comb-over. A patch over his right eye.

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