Of course it was only par for the course that she stubbed her big toe and had to hobble around to get ready for work. She couldn’t wait to find out what else this wonderful day had in store for her.
3
THERE WERE BLASTED story-twisting, scandal-hungry reporters hiding out everywhere. When Connor went home to his D.C. apartment, they sprung from behind the bushes, camera lights blinding him, microphones hitting him in the chin. When he checked in at work, they were in the hall outside his office; he’d even found one hiding in one of the men’s room stalls. He grimaced. Not that there was much reason for him to go to work nowadays. He’d been suspended with pay the instant Melissa Robbins’s body had been found…and he’d been named as suspect number one.
Two days and it hadn’t sunk in yet. He was good at his job. Damn good. He’d never done one single thing in his entire career to cast him in a suspicious light. He prided himself on being the one they called in for special ops, and carefully cultivated his reputation for getting the job done. He’d never lost a witness. It was only natural then that he’d fully expected his boss to stand behind him.
Not exactly the way things had gone down. Before he could get two words in, old Newton had asked for his badge and his firearm and told him he was on indefinite suspension until the outcome of the case was decided.
Politics. He knew the drill. The higher-ups in the department had to distance themselves, or at least appear like they were distancing themselves, from him in order to cover their asses. Not merely because of potential lawsuits from the victim’s family. But because Washington bigwigs loved to throw their weight around when it came to high-profile cases like this one. The perfect PR opportunity to make it look like they were doing something for the constituents back home. Unfortunately, their power plays ultimately hurt the ones least responsible for the trouble. Men like his boss, Newton.
Men like him.
He hadn’t been able to get a full accounting of exactly what implausible evidence linked him to Robbins’s murder. But sources did tell him that an arrest was probably imminent. It was his job to make sure that arrest never took place.
Tightening his hands on the steering wheel of his silver SUV, Connor pulled up into the gravel drive of the McCoy place in Manchester, Virginia. Pops’s car wasn’t there. Good. And at this time of the morning, Liz and Mitch would be busy in the ranch office. Even better. His mind had been so busy whizzing through all the details of his predicament in the past two days, he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. It wasn’t until he’d accidentally poured salt into his coffee instead of sugar at a D.C. diner that morning that he realized he needed a few hours to himself to get some major shut-eye. And the old McCoy house was just the place to do that.
He distractedly eyed the pen that paralleled the parking area. Kelli’s mutt, Kojak, was sitting inside with Mitch’s behemoth Goliath.
Clutching the keys to the McCoy place, and to his car, he climbed out then crossed over to the pen and crouched down. Kojak ignored him, but Goliath ambled over and stuck his wet nose through the fence. He absently stroked him. “What is it, boy? Feeling a little put out?”
Could he ever relate to that feeling. For the past thirty-six hours, he’d launched an all out attack to find out why he was under suspicion for Melissa Robbins’s murder. He’d come up with little more than nothing. He’d finally had to admit he needed access to inside info. Needed to find out exactly what the U.S. attorney’s office had on him before he could go any further.
Goliath nudged his other hand, causing him to lose his grip on his keys. Grimacing, he bent down to pick them up, then stood up slowly as Goliath sprinted away from the fence.
Giving the quiet grounds a once-over, Connor turned from the dog, then he walked toward the house and let himself in. The door was open, which wasn’t surprising. The crime rate in Manchester was basically nil. And what criminals might be lurking about certainly wouldn’t think of coming all the way out here.
He stepped into the kitchen. The telltale acrid smell of something having been burned permeated the room. He was growing used to that. It was the utter silence of the place he found unsettling. In his overtired state, he found it all too easy to imagine Jake sitting in his room studying the latest in international law; Marc camped out in front of the television, soaking in whatever happened to be playing that time of the day; Mitch repairing something or other upstairs; David tossing a baseball against the side of the house, the clunk, clunk each time the ball made contact irritating yet reassuring.
David….
It was impossible to believe the kid was married. Married, for cripe’s sake.
What was he talking about? He couldn’t believe he was the only one of the five of them unmarried.
He climbed the steps two at a time, then crossed the second-floor hall to the room that had always been his, even after moving out and getting his own apartment in D.C. over a decade earlier. He started pulling off his shirt even as he opened the door. At least the reporters hadn’t found out about this place yet. He could use it as home base until he figured out just how, exactly, he’d ended up in the mess he was in. And who had set him up to take a fall he hadn’t earned.
He drew to an abrupt stop in the middle of his room. Only a quick, startled glance told him it was no longer his room. He backed up into the hall, looked around, then stared at the door that still held the words he’d carved when he was ten. “Private. Keep Out.” He peered back inside.
It was his room, all right. Only it wasn’t. A wood, spindle cradle sat in the middle, stuffed full of tiny, brightly colored toy animals. A rocking chair was angled where his twin bed used to be. And someone had painted the walls white and decorated them with…was that Winnie the Pooh?
He grimaced. Where were all his sports posters? The collection of football cards he’d kept piled up in the corner? The photograph of his mother he kept on a nightstand that was no longer there?
“Aw, hell.” He realized that while he’d visited in the past three months, he’d never actually gone up to his old room. His new sisters-in-law must have turned it into a nursery for his nephew while he wasn’t looking, to use whenever Marc and Mel came for visits. Which was too often for his liking.
Connor scratched his head. Shouldn’t someone have asked him before doing something so drastic? And what about the other rooms? Why hadn’t they chosen one of those?
He strode down the hall, throwing open doors as he went. Pops’s room looked the same. So did Marc’s. Jake had added a double bed to his, and his old twin now sported a pink, frilly spread, more likely than not compliments of Lili, but it was still the same. Mitch’s was hardly recognizable now that his wife, Liz, had moved in, but there was no mistaking that it was still his room.
His was the only one they had screwed with.
He rubbed his hand over his numb face, feeling ridiculously like he’d woken up that morning to find he’d been evicted from his life.
He backtracked to Marc’s room, stalked to the bed, then sank down on the new mattress, curious as to why Marc and Mel hadn’t traded the twin for a double, or why they hadn’t put the damn crib in here—but he wasn’t up to dealing with the answer right now. He tossed his shirt to the corner, kicked his boots off, then stretched out, staring at the ceiling without seeing it, his feet dangling from the end of the too-short bed.
Almost immediately an image of Bronte O’Brien filled his mind.
Figured. The first free moment he had to himself and a woman intruded.
He supposed he should be used to it by now, given all the females that had taken over the McCoy place, but this was different, somehow. Bronte was different.
He closed his eyes and crossed his arms over them. Oh, he’d had