Between Love and Duty (20 page)

“Has Conall ever, uh, had a long-term girlfriend?”

“What?” Niall said again, but his expression had become wary.

“Have either of you?”

His brother’s fingers drummed on the table. “No.” There was a small silence. “Women, yes. Long-term, no.” He frowned. “I don’t think. Conall hasn’t said, anyway.”

“Do you think you ever will?”

“God, no!”

So I’m not alone.
Weirdly, Duncan was appalled. He’d rescued his brothers, and yet they were as screwed up as he was.

Really? You’re surprised?

This was the most personal they’d gotten in probably fifteen years. Which was pathetic. Here was Duncan, filled with anxiety, and Niall twitching like a kid undergoing the inquisition.

Duncan swore and sank down on the chair he’d pulled out.

Niall cocked his head, an expression of sheer amazement on his face. “You’ve fallen for her. Jane.”

“I swore I never would.”

“But you did,” said Niall, irritatingly persistant.

“I can’t go anywhere with it. I can’t…”

“Let her in?”

His jaw hurt. There went the enamel on his teeth. “Trust her. I can’t…trust anyone.”

They stared at each other, two men who knew each other too well, and yet not at all.

“You were an adult when Mom left.”

Duncan let out a huff of almost humor. “Eighteen? An adult?”

Niall gave his head a shake, rubbed a hand over his face. “I didn’t think…”

“What?”

“About you.” He came close to a laugh, too. “Man, does that sound self-centered. It is, isn’t it? Oh, shit, who am I kidding? I was. I just, uh, thought…”

“That I was the tyrant and you were the victim?”

“Something like that,” his brother mumbled.

“You
still
think that?” Duncan asked in disbelief.

“No. I don’t think about the time after Mom left any more than I can help. Do you?”

“No,” Duncan admitted.

They sat in silence for a long time.

Why have we never talked about this?

Because they were men? Because Duncan didn’t talk about feelings? Didn’t admit to having any? Crap. He had no idea.

He groaned. “I didn’t mean to start this. But I…”

“Don’t know what you’re doing. Yeah, you said that.” One corner of Niall’s mouth twitched. “Maybe a night or two with her would cure you.”

“Maybe.” He’d been trying to tell himself that. But… “I don’t think so. I’m afraid I’d only get in deeper.”

“And you can’t walk away. Not now.”

“No. What if this psycho actually comes after her?”

Niall did not rush to reassure him. “We have a seemingly limited pool of suspects.”

“Probably. Maybe. Did she talk about
every
case she’s worked? What if this is about something else entirely?”

“Unlikely.” But Niall’s fingers were beating a rhythm on the table again. His one nervous habit. “‘Bitch, you think you can do anything you want’ sounds a lot like somebody didn’t like her butting in. Unless she makes a habit of interfering…?”

“Didn’t you ask?” Duncan said with quick anger.

“More or less. She said no.”

Neither spoke for a minute, maybe two. Finally Niall said, in a strange voice, “You’re trusting me with Jane, right? I mean, with her…well-being.”

Was he? The concept was unexpected. Duncan’s eyebrows knit.

When he didn’t say anything, Niall gave his patented, humorless laugh. “Or not.”

Still disconcerted by the whole idea, Duncan found himself slowly admitting, “Yeah, I guess I am. You’re…a hell of a cop.”

“And your brother.”

They looked at each other cautiously.

“Yeah. And my brother.”

What was Niall suggesting? That Duncan
could
trust him? Or that he already did, and hadn’t noticed?

“What’s your worst memory of me?” He hadn’t known he was going to ask until the question was out, lying there like a defective cherry bomb.

Niall’s body coiled as if he wanted to leap away from it. Duncan could almost see it vibrating on the table
.
From Niall’s expression, he did, too.

Finally he let out an expletive. “That’s a hell of a thing to ask.”

“Forget it. Forget I asked.” Once more filled with foreboding and restless energy, Duncan pushed back the chair and stood.

“No.” His brother moved his shoulders as if to force them to relax. His expression had morphed into something strange. “Funny, I thought choosing one worst memory would be harder than it is.”

Duncan clenched his jaw, one way of bracing himself.

“But what jumps to mind first is you coming to pick me up at juvie. Telling me Dad had been put away for ten years, that Mom was gone,
kaput.
It was only us, and I was answerable to you now. Things were going to be different. I’d toe the line or else. I was going to class, getting my grades up, mowing the lawn…” He laughed at that point. “What did I know, being fried because you were ordering me to take responsibility for the lawn.” He shook his head. “You threatened me, and I could tell you meant it. Mom never did.”

“I know.”

“I told myself it was BS, of course. You wouldn’t wreck my car so I couldn’t drive it if I got out of line. So what, you were bigger than me? You couldn’t really
force
me to do everything you told me to do.”

But he could. He had. He’d been his brothers’ worst nightmare.

They were both quiet for a while. Duncan itched to pace again, but didn’t, only stood there gripping the back of that chair.

“I imagine you can figure out what some of my other worst memories are,” Niall said dryly.

Yeah, that wasn’t hard. He’d actually been surprised that one of their explosive encounters hadn’t made the grade as Number One Worst.

“You going to ask me what my best memory is?” Niall asked unexpectedly.

“I…didn’t plan to. I wasn’t sure there would be one. But okay. What’s your best memory of me, the tyrant?”

“This is leaving aside some of the early good stuff. When you taught me to pitch, and spent hours every night catching for me. Helped me get that heap of crap I called a car running.”

Duncan nodded. He had a lump in his throat. It felt like mumps. He’d never had mumps.

“My best memory… No, I have two. But the first one is you coming to pick me up at juvie.”

“What?”

“Yeah.” Niall’s fingers played a quick tune. “Strange, huh? But see, here’s the thing. You came. I knew, I always knew, you didn’t have to. You’d been dying to leave for college. I was…jealous, because you were so close.”

Now totally unable to speak, Duncan could only nod.

“I told myself I didn’t believe all that crap you were threatening, but I’m pretty sure that deep inside I did. And what it meant was, you weren’t leaving. I didn’t want to believe every word you said, but I did, too. Because it meant…I could trust you. You were digging in, for me and Conall.”

A sound ripped its way out of Duncan’s throat. Raw, inarticulate, pure emotion.

Niall’s eyes shied from his face. It was a minute before he said, “The other time I remember was college graduation. Not high school. That time you looked happy, but I figured it for relief. One of us was out of your hair. No longer your responsibility.” His mouth twisted into something resembling a smile. “And then you wrote me the first check for tuition. Anyway—fast-forward four years. Graduation day, me getting my diploma with honors. I looked over, and saw you crying.” This grin wasn’t twisted—it was broad, and affectionate. “Yeah, I saw you. It blew me away. My big brother crying because he was proud of me. That was, um…” He cleared his throat. “I think maybe that was the moment I knew I wanted to, uh, follow in your footsteps.” He gestured hastily. “Becoming a cop, I mean.”

Assuming responsibility for other people. Trying your damnedest to rescue them.

Shit.
Duncan was suddenly afraid he was about to cry again. This—what Niall had said—was a gift.
It was all worth it,
he thought giddily.

Feeling out of control, clumsy, he shoved away from the chair and stumbled back into his antsy circuit of the too-small room. While his back was to his brother, he gave his cheeks a quick swipe and was dismayed to feel moisture. God. He
had
cried.

Niall wasn’t looking at him when he turned that way again. He sat with his head bent, one hand beneath the table, the other open on it. His whole pose was relaxed, pensive, but from this angle Duncan could see the hand on his thigh, not quite out of sight. It was fisted tight.

“Thank you,” Duncan said hoarsely.

Niall’s head came up. There was alarm in his eyes, but also… A glitter of emotion to match what Duncan felt. They stared at each other, leery, embarrassed, but also without the barriers Duncan had barely known were there. It was as if a door had been unbolted, flung wide-open. He felt a weight in his chest.

My brother.
For the first time in forever, those two words didn’t mean “my responsibility.” Or “my burden.” They meant… Dazed, he shook his head. He wasn’t entirely sure. Except that his brother was someone he could trust, who maybe—certainly—had mixed feelings about him, but who was also conscious of that bond. Who would cover his back without hesitation, as he would Niall’s.

“I think I’m in love with her,” he said, and Niall only nodded.

“I noticed.”

Duncan hesitated, gave a nod of his own and left.

He still didn’t know what he was doing with Jane. But he thought he was closer. Which scared the crap out of him, but not having the right to stay close to Jane and keep her safe…

He groaned and got behind the wheel of his 4Runner. He felt so strange. As if he’d been frozen, and now with one gentle but strategic tap he had shattered into hundreds, thousands of pieces. Some were melting. He didn’t understand any of it.

How was it that what he once would have seen as duty, as burden, wasn’t? That now it was something he craved?

The kiss?

Partly. It had contributed, yes. But whatever this was had started the first time he saw her, when she knocked at his door and he opened it. The cracks in the ice had spread when she stood up to him. When she shamed him that day at the beach. When she let him see some of her own hidden hurt.

Yesterday, driving away from her house and leaving her alone, that was the tap that had broken his ice. He wondered if she could melt it entirely.

If the creep stalking her actually got to her… His hands convulsed on the steering wheel. It would not be a failed responsibility. Or not
only
a failed responsibility.

It would be a new Ice Age.

CHAPTER TWELVE

TITO SAT IN THE HALF-EMPTY movie theater watching the action on the screen without pleasure.
Pretending
to watch. Last time they saw a movie, he had glanced over his shoulder once or twice, trying to pick out Duncan and Jane from the other dark figures nearby and failing. But he hadn’t seen them, not knowing they weren’t there, and had forgotten them altogether.

This afternoon, he could see them without even turning his head. They sat right across the aisle. Papa had snarled something under his breath when they chose their seats, so close. It had made Tito’s skin prickle. He wished his father wouldn’t be…so angry. He didn’t like him when he was that way.

For a while, Duncan and Jane had shared a small popcorn that rested on his knee. After a shake of her head, he’d set it down on the floor to one side. Not long ago, he had laid his arm over her seat, behind her shoulders. Tito couldn’t tell where his hand was—dangling in air? Curled around her upper arm?—and he didn’t know why he cared. So what if Duncan liked Jane? If he was here not for Tito’s sake, but for hers?
I have Papa.

But Tito was having one of his mixed-up days when he wished he didn’t. Papa’s mood had been dark, which made him snarl at Jane and glare at Duncan. Everything about him made Tito feel itchy, like he wanted to squirm in his seat until he was as far from the man beside him—his father—as he could get. Papa stank, as if he should have showered this morning. Tito didn’t like the way he looked, from the stubby squareness of his hands to the grease on his chin he hadn’t wiped off after today’s burger and fries. He was so short, so
squat.
Tito stared unhappily at the movie screen, wondering if
he
would look like that. He wanted to be like Duncan instead, tall and lean, with that long-legged stride and watchful way of turning his head. Duncan had…had dignity.
La dignidad. Sí.
Staring blindly, Tito examined the concept. Maybe Papa had lost his in prison, or had never had much to start with… Tito didn’t know.

This tug-of-war inside him was making him feel sick to his stomach.
La familia
was most important. He knew that. He was lucky that his father was willing to do anything to
be
his father. Think of Raul, how worthless he was.

But Tito’s whole body wanted to strain toward Duncan, right there across the aisle. And yet he was ashamed of himself, because he was supposed to love his own father.
Why don’t I?

He stole a glance at his father, whose hand was buried deep in the extra-large popcorn tub, and whose face glistened even more now.

Tito shivered, and looked away.

“I’M GOING TO CHECK IN AT the store,” Jane said, almost patiently, “and then I’m having dinner with friends.”

Tito waited at her side, his dark eyes moving from her face to Duncan’s. Hector had already driven away, his truck giving a throaty belch of black smoke and shuddering as it joined the line of cars leaving the theater parking lot. Duncan had walked Jane and Tito to her car and now gripped the top of her door, keeping her from shutting it. He stared forbiddingly down at her.

“You’ll be going home in the dark.”

Unease snaked up her spine. “I left inside and outside lights on. I won’t be late. I should be home by seven-thirty or eight. The last thing that happened…” Oh, Lord, Tito was listening. She didn’t want Tito to know about the rabbit. “That was in the morning.” She didn’t want to admit she’d rather not spend the whole evening at home alone.

Duncan had a few more things to say about her carelessness where her personal safety was concerned, then at last, scowling, closed her door while she was still midword arguing.

Jerk.

“What did you mean, ‘the last thing’?” Tito asked anxiously.

“Oh. Um. It was like the broken windshield, only less destructive.”
Except to the rabbit, who was dead.
“Somebody seems to be playing mean tricks on me.”

“They didn’t break a window at your house?”

“No. Whoever it was left me a, well, a message on my doormat.” She summoned a smile for his benefit. “Nothing you need to worry about, Tito. Don’t kids play practical jokes on each other that aren’t always funny?”

His face twitched as if a few electrical impulses had gone astray, and he ducked his head but finally bobbed it. “Yes.” He was quiet until she had made the turn out onto the main road.

Tito might not have noticed that Duncan’s black SUV loomed directly behind them. By chance? Jane almost snorted at that.

“You don’t know who’s doing it?” The words burst from the boy, betraying an intensity and anxiety that made her turn her head and study his face briefly before she once again had to pay attention to the road.

Tito
couldn’t be responsible for the things that had happened…? Relief flooded her on the heels of that foolishness. Of course not. She’d picked him up and driven him to McDonald’s the night her windshield was smashed. He’d been with her every minute. And the rabbit… How would he have gotten away from his sister’s scrutiny on a school morning, across town and then home or to school with no bloodstains to betray him? Besides, she liked Tito. She couldn’t imagine him doing
that
to some poor animal.

But was he smart enough to wonder about his father? Had he, too, thought about the fact that Hector had arrived late to McDonald’s and come in soaking wet? It hadn’t occurred to Tito then, Jane thought; he’d gone off to the movie happily with Hector. But later, especially if Hector expressed some anger at Jane for the way she insulted his honor, his ability to care for his family.... It was possible.

She changed the subject and chattered away about school and Lupe and his two nieces and nephew until she dropped him off.

Jane hadn’t told Duncan she was driving all the way to Bellingham for dinner with her friends. Austin taught psychology at Western Washington University and his wife, Susan, worked with United Way. Austin had been Jane’s friend from college; they’d dated a couple of times, given that up as a lost cause and settled for being good friends. Susan and she had become even better friends.

Over dinner, she told them about the dead rabbit on her doorstep and all the rest, although she kept her tone light.
Icky,
it implied,
but I’m not scared.

Before her eyes, Austin clicked into professional mode. “Jane, you took Psychology in college. This kind of stalker can be exceedingly dangerous.”

“Surely not a stalker,” she objected. “It’s not like I have a
relationship
with this…person. Whoever he is obviously doesn’t imagine that I’m his in any romantic sense.”

Austin was shaking his head. “This guy—and shakes are good it
is
a man—is obsessed with you. Doesn’t have to be romantic. The obsession is the meaningful part.”

The scary part, too, it seemed. Austin had quite a lot to say about stalkers. She began, with exasperation, to think he was as bad as Duncan. Susan wasn’t much help, since she worked with a woman who’d been stalked and terrorized by an ex-boyfriend.

Wasn’t dinner with friends supposed to be relaxing?

By the time she said good-night, Jane didn’t feel very relaxed at all. At this time of evening, I-5 was surprisingly lonely heading south. In this twisty, mountainous, wooded stretch, the freeway shrank to two lanes each, north and southbound. Dusk turned into dark as she drove. Her tension, subdued for most of the day, crept out of hiding and tightened her, muscle by muscle. By the time she left the freeway for the even-darker, even-lonelier drive east toward Stimson, she felt as if she hadn’t worked out in months and had foolishly tried to make up for the lack. She was knotted, taut, heading toward will-I-be-able-to-get-out-of-bed-tomorrow stiffness.

Pulling into her own driveway, watching her garage door lift silently, she realized she was scared.

Would she be less scared if she’d come straight home at five-thirty and spent the evening, as she had the last two, trying to avoid casting any shadow as she passed windows, afraid to turn on the TV for fear she wouldn’t hear breaking glass or the clunk of a door lock being breached?

Monday the security system was to be installed.
Only tonight and one more night. Thank God.

The garage was bare of anything that didn’t belong. After pressing the button on the remote, she watched in the rearview mirror as the door closed in its torturously slow way. Nobody had slipped inside. She relaxed marginally. Safe, so far.

She sat there for an embarrassing length of time, reluctant to get out of her locked car. If only Duncan was here to walk through the house with her. She thought she could survive being alone again, if only he were here now.

Well, he wasn’t. And she wasn’t about to call and beg him to come.

Finally she got out, purse clutched in one hand, her pepper spray in the other. She closed the car door behind her as quietly as she could—
as if someone in the house wouldn’t have heard the garage door opening and closing,
a voice in her head mocked. The house was truly silent when she let herself in. The hum of the refrigerator turning itself on made her jump. She walked through the downstairs, leaving her purse on a table and picking up the fireplace poker. Two weapons now: poker and pepper spray. She’d read somewhere that pepper spray could madden an attacker instead of stopping him.
No, no. Please don’t let that be true.

Not until she’d flung open closet doors and verified that they were empty did she begin to relax. She didn’t quite have the nerve to throw open the front door to see if anything was on the porch.

It was still early to go to bed.
But…I have to look up there. Can’t sit down and read, or make myself a cup of tea, until I’ve checked under beds. Under my piles of shoes.
That was supposed to make her smile, and didn’t.
Until I know for sure that I’m alone.

She was less frightened, though, as she started upstairs. Honestly, why would somebody lie in wait for her there instead of downstairs? Right behind the door she had to open to come in from the garage, for example?

Her house was really a story and a half. Upstairs consisted only of a guest bedroom, her bedroom and a bathroom. Guest bedroom first—like the downstairs, it was clearly untouched. She made sure her back wasn’t to the door to the hall when she stooped to look under the bed and quietly slid open the closet door. Bathroom, then; she could see through clear glass into the shower, thank goodness. No Alfred Hitchcock scene here.

Jane did wish she’d left her bedroom door completely ajar and not open only a few inches, the way it was. Why she’d half closed it that morning, she couldn’t imagine.

For some reason her heart had once again begun to beat harder, faster. She’d shut the bedroom door last night when she went to bed and braced a chair however uselessly under the knob. But when she went downstairs, come morning? She’d set aside the chair, pulled the door open and… She couldn’t remember.

The hand holding the iron fireplace poker high was shaking. So was the one clutching the spray, the hand she used to nudge the door open.

The first thing she saw was the shards of her chair. Then her bed, the bright matelassé coverlet slashed into ribbons. The vicious, ugly words written in blood on the wall above the bed.

Her scream gurgled in her throat as she backed away so fast she bounced off the wall on the other side of the hall.

DUNCAN KEPT HER ON THE LINE as he drove with screaming siren and flashing lights through dark residential streets. Right before he tore out of his house he’d used his landline to call Niall, who would approach Jane’s from the other direction. Maybe a patrol unit would already be there; Duncan didn’t know.

“Keep talking,” he said urgently into the phone. “Let me know you’re all right.”

“I am.” Shuddering breath. “I don’t think anyone’s here, Duncan. He would have come out of the bedroom, wouldn’t he?”

Yeah. Of course he would have. Duncan didn’t say,
I wonder how long he waited for you.
Because this creep hadn’t had any way of knowing Jane had plans this evening, had he?

Red dripping, still wet… Probably paint, she had concluded earlier. Like before. But he’d been able to hear the doubt in her voice. This paint was…thicker, she said, and he’d have sworn he heard her teeth chatter, too.

The house was a beacon again tonight, lit top to bottom. Duncan slammed to a stop in her driveway, cut the siren but left the lights flashing and ran for her front door. She opened it before he got there. He took the steps in two strides and Jane leaped into his arms. She was shaking, or he was. Probably both.

He heard a siren and chose to wait there, on the front porch, for his brother.

Niall drove up right beside Duncan’s SUV. He took the time to turn off lights and siren before crossing the short distance to her front door almost as precipitously.