And he needed to find Zita and Lucia, that was the most impor—
“So can you come over and get the girls?”
He blinked. “What?”
“I’m really sorry, but I have to leave as soon as possible.”
“You have the twins?” he asked, feeling a little slow on the uptake.
“Yes. I watch them now and then. I enjoy having little ones to take care of again for a while.” She smiled again. “My husband’s with them now, so they’re all right, but he’s hopeless with babies beyond keeping them from getting hurt.”
“I’m afraid so am I,” he admitted. Hopeless, meet helpless. What the hell am I going to do?
“Oh, you can’t be that bad. Otherwise Dom wouldn’t have told me to call you if anything happened and I couldn’t reach them.”
And again he felt a little slow. Shock, maybe? “He told you to...call me?”
She nodded. “He said you were the reliable one in the family.”
He almost laughed. Except he wasn’t sure there was any laughter left in him.
A few minutes later, he was staring down at two impossibly small humans, sleeping snuggled up to each other in a single crib.
“They’re doing so well for being born early,” Mrs. Nelson was saying. “They’ll be caught up soon. They’re so cute.”
She kept talking, but Dante had tuned out. Because one of the babies had opened her eyes and looked at him. And smiled. It gave him an odd, melting feeling inside.
It was followed by an icy chill.
She didn’t know that her short life had just changed forever.
“Well, now there’s a sight fit for a horror movie.”
Dante didn’t get angry at Carson Gage’s comment as he walked into the Red Ridge PD building. In fact, he almost welcomed it; everybody else wanted to pour out sympathy he didn’t want. But then Gage had lost his own brother, a brother he hadn’t been close with, to the Groom Killer, so if anyone knew about walking in these shoes, it was Gage.
Besides, the detective was right. What else would you call a guy with eyes the color of an overripe tomato, hair that had yet to see even his fingers run through it, a jaw that was more stubbled than usual, and under his jacket with the unit logo, a T-shirt he thought he’d probably pulled on backward in his bleary-eyed haste this morning?
The fact that this character out of a horror flick was also lugging two baby carriers, occupied, only made it all scarier. To him, anyway.
“Longest night of my freaking life,” he muttered to Gage.
“I can see that.” And Gage was looking at the twins warily. They stared back, wide-eyed and uncertain. “Uh...what are you going to do with them?”
“Hell if I know,” Dante muttered.
One of the girls made a string of sounds that—purely coincidentally, he was sure—had the same cadence and number of syllables of his muttering. He groaned inwardly but made a mental note to watch his language. He had no idea when babies started to talk, but he didn’t want their first words to be swear words they’d picked up from their uncle.
He stared down at the two innocent faces. He had no idea when babies started to talk. He had no idea when they started to walk.
He had no idea, period.
Not to mention that the twins had gone through most of the bottles Mrs. Nelson had provided, and he had no idea what to do when the food ran out.
His desk phone rang. Since it was practically behind her head, Lucia gave a start. Her face scrunched up in the expression he’d learned during that long night meant she was about to erupt into a screeching wail. Quickly he reached into the bag Mrs. Nelson had sweetly packed for him and pulled out a bright pink stuffed rabbit. The moment Lucia saw it, her expression changed. The wail became a coo. And after a moment she moved a tiny hand toward the toy.
Breathing again, Dante tucked it in beside her and answered his phone. “Mancuso.”
“Hey, Dante, it’s Frank.” Dante cradled the phone between ear and shoulder as Frank Lanelli, the day-watch dispatcher, spoke. “I’ve got a caller on the main PD line asking for you by name, but with everything—I’m really sorry, by the way—I thought I’d check with you before I put him through.”
“Thanks,” he said, meaning it, and appreciating the businesslike approach. “Who is it?”
“Name’s Fisk. He’s a lawyer.”
Dante frowned. Rarely did a lawyer’s call mean good news for a cop. “Any idea what he wants?”
“Maybe,” Lanelli said, and for the first time Dante heard hesitancy in the efficient man’s voice. Frank had been with the department for decades and was the solid linchpin that kept things moving, keeping more in his head at one time than Dante would have thought possible.
“Hit me,” Dante said with a sigh.
“He says he’s your brother’s lawyer.”
“Damn.” His eyes flicked to the twins as soon as the word slipped out. But Lucia seemed happy with her rabbit, and Zita was merely watching him with apparent interest. “All right, put him through.”
While he waited a freight train of possibilities barreled through his mind. Criminal lawyer? Was there some case pending? Was his brother a suspect in something? Had Dominic been arrested and he just hadn’t heard about it yet? Oh, God, had they been fleeing a scene when the shooter had hit them? They had been careful about where they did their thing; Agostina had always said you didn’t dirty your own pool.
But you never minded dirtying someone else’s, did you? You always—
The click of the call going live cut off his fruitless thoughts.
“Mancuso,” he said again.
There was a brief pause before the caller spoke. Startled by the name? That he was still using it, despite the connotations his brother had hung on it? Believe me, I’ve thought more than once about changing it. But he’d chosen to keep the name. Both as a reminder of growing up dirt-poor and wanting, and maybe, in some crazy way, thinking he could clean it up a little.
“This is James Fisk,” the caller said. “I’ve just gotten word about your brother. My condolences.”
“Thanks,” Dante said shortly. If the guy was really Dominic’s lawyer, he probably already knew he and his brother weren’t close. And he didn’t have time to waste on words he didn’t want to hear anyway. “What did you need?”
“It’s more what you need.” Dante nearly smiled at that. He’d lived most of his life in a determined effort never to need a lawyer. So far he’d succeeded. “I have your brother’s will.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t know if he told you—”
“He didn’t.” Whatever it was, Dominic hadn’t told him. Because he never did. And Dante was happier with it that way, because it let him hang on to the tiny bit of brotherly feeling he still had.
“Well. Then. Everything