He laughed out loud. My dad the drug dealer. And Mom—who planned to go sit in the front row at his sentencing hearing to make some big fake showing of how Dad is a great family man—is pissed because her son was smoking a joint.
Except… Wow. Mom yelled a lot, but she came and got him anyway when the police called. Only, this time she hadn’t.
Tomorrow, he told himself, pretending the anxiety balled in a greasy lump in his belly was really his stomach rebelling against the crappy food. Mom was trying to scare him, and he was mad at himself that it was working. Some.
A guy down the row started yelling and pounding on the wall. Footsteps echoed in the corridor as a guard went to see what was happening. Eventually, the yelling escalated and there were grunts and thumps. Niall didn’t pay that much attention. There were fights in here all the time, or guys flipped out because they were addicts going cold or they were afraid their mommies would be mad or who knew.
My mom will be mad.
So?
He rolled over to face the wall, knowing lights-out would come anytime. Someone would come and get him tomorrow for sure. All that talk about sending him to a juvenile lockup was bull. For one joint? Yeah, right. They were only trying to scare him, too.
Not working.
NIALL WAS EATING BREAKFAST when a guard called his name. He took another bite to show he wasn’t in any hurry then lazily swung his legs over the bench seat—screwed to the ground so it couldn’t be used as a weapon—and sauntered toward the impatiently waiting guard.
He was ushered to one of the small visitor rooms. It was about damn time she got here. He’d be a good little boy until she got him out, and then he’d tell her what he really thought. Niall was forming the words in his head when he saw who was sitting in one of the two chairs at the small table.
Duncan. Niall’s eighteen-year-old brother, who had graduated from high school in May and was to leave for college in six weeks. A few times, Niall had thought that Duncan was already gone in every way that mattered. Spirit, heart, dreams. Only his body was left to catch up.
But now Duncan sat looking at him, his face so somber Niall felt a weird hitch of fear.
“Where’s Mom?” he demanded.
“She’s…gone.”
Behind them, the guard left and closed the door, although he stood outside where he could watch them through the window.
Niall dropped into the other chair. “What do you mean, gone?”
“Dad got ten years.”
Niall whispered an expletive.
“Yesterday, Mom said she’s done. When I got home from work, she was already packed. She waited only long enough to talk to me. She said she can’t do anything for you or Conall.” Conall was the youngest MacLachlan brother, only twelve to Niall’s fifteen. Con was already a major screwup.
“Gone.” Niall couldn’t look away from Duncan’s eyes, the same shade of gray as his own. “But…we’re her kids. You mean… She can’t just ditch us.” His voice had been rising. At the end it cracked.
Duncan had the strangest expression on his face. What he said was a flat “She did.”
Panic swelled in him until he could hardly breathe.
Mommy? Daddy? I didn’t mean it!
If he didn’t have a parent to come and get him, he would get locked up for a couple of months, maybe. And then sent to a group home. And Conall, he’d go to a foster home. Except he was so angry, he’d get in trouble right away and then nobody would want him. Niall could imagine him running away, ending up a street kid.
Niall clutched his stomach and bent forward until he was bowed over the table. “How could she do that?”
“I don’t know. I think she’s been leaving for a long time. She hasn’t even tried with Conall.”
Niall nodded. He’d wanted her to get mad because he had gotten thrown into juvie again, but the truth was, Mom hadn’t bothered in a long time. Lately, when he was in trouble all she would do was look at him with this blank expression, as if… As if she was already gone. He hadn’t known how to identify that expression, but now he did. It was just like Duncan’s. Both of them were so out of there, they hadn’t waited until their official departure dates.
Niall struggled to speak. To sound as if this didn’t matter. He didn’t realize that he was rocking himself until he bumped the table with his belly. Holding himself still, he said, “So…what? You came to give me the official notification?”
“I came to take you home.”
Dazed, Niall looked up. For the first time he noticed that Duncan looked older. Harder.
“What?”
His brother repeated, “I’m here to get you.”
“They’re releasing me to you?” Niall’s head swiveled and he stared at the guard through the window, as if that would tell him anything.
“Yes. Here’s the thing, though.” Duncan paused, then snapped, “Look at me.”
Niall straightened in the chair to stare in disbelief at the stranger his brother had become.
“Things are going to be different from now on. I won’t put up with any of the shit Mom and Dad did. Most of your friends are history. You won’t drink, you won’t do drugs, you won’t party. You will get your grades up to a minimum B average. You’ll mow the lawn, wash dishes, cook your fair share of meals. When I tell you to do something, you will do it. Do you hear me?”
His brother’s face held no compassion, no kindness, no regret. Only implacable determination.
Niall’s lips formed the word, “Yes.”
“If you defy me in any way, I will become your worst nightmare. Do you understand that?”
Niall nodded. He understood something wonderful and terrible at the same time. Duncan had given up his chance to leave for college. He’d given up everything, because his brothers needed him.
Niall understood something else, too. In making the decision not to abandon them, this big brother of his had changed. The frighteningly intense focus that had made Duncan valedictorian of his class and star athlete all while holding jobs and saving money for the future that had meant everything to him, that focus would now be turned on Conall and Niall. He would demand of them what he’d always demanded of himself. Perfection.
I can’t do it.
Duncan’s eyes had acquired a film of ice, like a winter pond. There was no love in them, only resignation and resolution so cold Niall had to repress a shiver.
He thought, I’m going to hate him, and then, with agony and shock, This is love. Hard as bedrock. The real deal.
The kind neither of their parents had ever given them.
CHAPTER ONE
MAYBE IF I WENT BACK to bed and started over.
Detective Niall MacLachlan looked down at the dead body sprawled on the kitchen floor and knew that no do-over was possible.
The body was not a murder victim. It was the corporeal shell of his landlady.
He attempted no resuscitation. He knew dead when he saw dead. Rigor mortis had set in. The old lady must have gotten up during the night. Niall knew she hadn’t been sleeping well. Heartburn, she’d told him, but she kept nitroglycerin at hand.
This wasn’t what you’d call a tragedy. Enid Cooper had turned eighty-eight in April. She’d lost two inches in height from crumbling