LITMIR.BIZ

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Jeth, him and a rip-roaring drunk to the destruction they too often saw on the job, they’d all been there, including Jonah and their brilliant oldest sister, Mabel, who hated boredom, dabbled in herbs and did investigative work for the state’s forensics crime lab when she wasn’t needed elsewhere. Including Jeth’s glowing-with-new-pregnancy wife, Allyn—now teaching marine paleontology for the University of Arizona in the field at her grant-approved study site not far from Havasu Falls—and Guy’s nearing-delivery pregnant wife, Hazel. Even his youngest brother, Jonah, the newest addition to the Levoie law enforcement legacy, was present. The only one of his siblings who was missing was the youngest, Marcy, killed on this date several years ago during a kidnapping gone wrong on Jeth’s watch. It had taken them all a long time to get over that one, Jeth especially, and then only with Allyn’s help.

      Russ knew Marcy’s murder at age ten was part and parcel of what ruled him now where his life on the job was concerned, this annual drunk he and his peace officer brothers went on “in memory” of both their baby sister and the piece of his soul Russ had lost on this same date thirteen years ago when he’d burst into Maddie’s trailer and seen for the first time what her father and brother had been doing to her for years.

      Life was not always as easy as it seemed in a small town, especially for a cop whose best friend was both abuse victim and whore. Suspicion followed one like gossip, and these annual nights out with his brothers were a lifeline he needed to keep him sane, grounded—and also, sometimes, to keep him from thinking too much.

      Thank God they’d left Guy and Hazel’s adolescent daughter, Emily, and Jeth and Allyn’s almost-four-year-old son, Sasha, at home. If they’d brought the kids, too…

      It would be one thing if he envied his brothers the love they’d found or their subsequent happiness, but he didn’t. No, his envy was far more complicated than that.

      What he envied was their contentment.

      With a snort of self-derision, Russ gave the wall a final swipe and returned the rag and spray to the kitchen. The blinking red light on the counter caught his eye. He punched the button to listen to his messages. A reminder about a meeting in Gallup scheduled for the following morning. A suspiciously timed call from his mother telling him she hadn’t heard from him in too long. A circumspectly inquiring message from Jeth and a follow-up one from Guy, neither of whom had missed the tension vibrating through him by the time he’d left the restaurant.

      And finally a voice almost too deep and husky to be feminine, though it was: Maddie. His best friend since as long as he could remember, his first adolescent crush, his prom date—and the child-girl-woman he’d spent most of his life trying to rescue and protect from more horrors than he cared to remember.

      Maddie Thorn, who’d been abused unmercifully by her father, before he had finally attempted to kill her that night thirteen years ago…

      “Russ?”

      She sounded edgy, as though she looked over her shoulder while she spoke. Not at all the way she’d sounded three weeks ago when he’d let her know that her father was going to be released from prison early because the psychologists and psychiatrists who’d been working with him thought he was rehabilitated enough—medicated enough—to walk about in polite society again despite his track record as being, well, not.

      Russ, who’d seen the man over the years, listened to his rambling assertions on having found religion and wanting to set things right with his daughter, had told Maddie that Charlie might be looking for her. Maddie, truly and completely happy for the first time in her life and with other things on her mind, had more or less blown him off.

      And now here she was, exactly as he’d known—as he’d felt, with that strange extra sense with which he’d been gifted, with what his brothers called his spider sense—she’d be.

      “God, Russ, where are you? I need to see you. You were right about him. He found me. He said you—” She broke off suddenly. He heard her breathing, raggedly. Afraid. “No,” she whispered, though not directly into the phone. “Oh God, no. He can’t have. He couldn’t—no.” Then a deep, steadying breath and more strongly, firmly, “No!” And into the phone again, “I have to go. But God, Russ, please. Be there. Please.”

      The receiver on the other end of the line clattered into place hard, and Russ’s machine beeped once and announced, “End of messages.”

      Russ could only stare at the message light for a moment. He’d come in not quite thinking about her, his heart on Janina—the woman he’d wanted across almost every single hot cup of coffee she’d served him for the past thirteen years—and the current Maddie-involved reasons he’d yet to act on his longings for her.

      And here Maddie was calling him.

      Needing help again.

      Palms flat on the counter to hold himself erect, he gave her call for help some thought. Whispered “screw it” to the cupboards because he knew there was no way he’d ever walk away from Maddie, no matter what happened.

      Maddie had been a different person when they were younger, a messed-up abuse case beyond what even he’d realized at that time. And he’d been the only friend, only person, to see her, know her and love her for who she was.

      And now she’d gotten herself together and found Jess, the life partner who made her happy and…

      Now this.

      All of this.

      Her father out of prison and looking for…something. Revenge, maybe. Reconciliation, he’d said, but Russ didn’t believe that for an instant. The cop’s gut in him crawled, remembering Charlie’s eyes. The man in him, the friend, simply unhooked the chain that held his temper and withdrew any pretext of masking the savage within the trappings of civilization should Charlie get too close, legally released from prison or not.

      Russ rubbed his hands hard across his eyes. He didn’t know what he was going to do. Because as well as he understood Maddie, as good as he was at working with wounded females, he was no damn good at emotions, or at figuring them out. Not his own, and not women’s. Particularly not while Maddie needed rescuing by him yet again, and Janina—who constantly tortured his dreams—seemed to him about as obtainable as the moon.

      Always had been, truth be known.

      Emotions. Geez-oh-Pete. God save him from female best friends, who pulled themselves out of hell by their toenails when offered the slimmest of chances, feminine soul mates with nerves of steel and hearts of gold and courage as raw as anything he’d ever seen—yeah, Janina thought he didn’t know about her shadowing him that night thirteen years ago, right? Wrong!—and freaking, obfuscating emotions.

      With an oath, Russ turned his back on the kitchen and headed for the small room at the back of the trailer that should have been his bedroom but was now where he kept his silversmithing and lapidary equipment. He opened the heavy safe he kept there, withdrew the envelope he’d placed inside six months prior and emptied its contents into his hand. It was a sort of Guinevere-style ring he’d designed in platinum with a single large not-quite-square piece of green Baltic amber canted diamondwise in the center and offset by a small but exquisitely cut and flawless diamond at each of the amber’s points. The wedding ring lay heavy in his palm, spoke to him of plans and cowardice, a life lived in faux courage.

      Oh, he could take down bad guys, face bullets, walk into domestic quarrels, go through fire with the best of ’em—hell, he’d even had enough chutzpah, damn it, to make her a ring—but put him in front of Janina and say anything remotely having to do with a you and me—a we—and ha! It came out sounding like, “I’ll have today’s special and coffee.”

      Dating was simply beyond his limited verbal capabilities.

      Russ started to drop the ring back into its envelope, putting Janina away for another time once again in favor of seeing what he could do to help Maddie, always Maddie. Suddenly he felt the hair on his neck stand up and stopped, hand poised.

      Even before the knock came low on his screen door he knew Maddie was there.

      Nerves

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