She felt close to her father right now, vicariously sharing a grief with him she didn’t entirely feel on her own. “He was kind of like the black sheep, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah.” The word came out with a heavy sigh.
It was a term she’d silently applied to herself more than once. “You know,” she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper, “there are times when I’m still afraid that I’m going to wind up just like him.”
Andrew looked at her sharply. “Oh, no, not you, Rayne. He was the black sheep, or maybe just a gray one,” he amended. “You were the rebel. Still are in your own way.”
The look he gave her seemed to penetrate down to her very soul. It was all she could do to keep from flinching. She withdrew her arm, shoving her hands into her pockets again.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Look at me as if you had X-ray vision and could see clear through to my bones.”
To lighten the moment, she pretended to shiver. But the effect of her father’s steady gaze was no less real. The way he could look at any of them would easily elicit a confession to some slight wrongdoing when they were growing up. She used to imagine that her father could force confessions from hardened felons just by giving them
that
look.
“It’s not your bones that tell me what you’re like, Rayne,” Andrew told her gently, “it’s more of a case of memory.”
“Memory?” She felt a familiar story coming on. As much as she’d bristled over hearing stories when she was younger, she’d come to welcome them now. They were a comfort to her and a way of bonding with her father.
“Your mother was just like you,” he recalled fondly. “Always bent on doing her own thing. Always had to find her own way to the right conclusion.”
This was nothing she hadn’t heard before. As was the note of bittersweet sorrow in her father’s voice. For a second she was tempted to put her arms around him and hug tightly. But there was still a small portion of her that resisted.
“You miss her a lot, don’t you?”
He sighed and nodded. “More than words can say, Rayne. More than words can say. I miss them both a lot.” He looked down at the tombstone. “The difference being is that I know Mike’s gone.”
She shut her eyes, knowing what was coming. It was a path she walked herself more times than she cared to think, but to hold on to irrational hope wasn’t healthy. He was the only parent she had left and as much as she declared herself to be full grown and independent, she didn’t want to lose him.
“Dad—”
He laughed softly to himself. “You’re going to tell me not to start again. But I’m not. I’m just maintaining the same steady course I always have over all these years.” He looked at her, debating. Then he made his decision. She needed something to make her a believer again. And maybe he needed someone else to believe besides himself. “I haven’t told the others, but I found your mother’s wallet.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded. “What? When?”
He fell into police mode, giving her the highlights. “A little more than a month ago. Just before Thanksgiving. Homeless man had it in his shopping cart. He was dead, so he couldn’t be questioned. I don’t know where he found it and the lab couldn’t get any readable prints off it, but it was your mother’s.” He saw the doubt returning to Rayne’s eyes. “It had her license and pictures of all of you in it. She had that in her purse on the day she left the house.
“I went to see that homeless man in the morgue. He didn’t look like any deep-sea diver to me, which meant that he found the wallet on dry land.”
“Which means what?” Rayne asked. “That she was mugged? That her purse washed up on shore?” She took hold of her father’s shoulders, desperately wanting to get through to him. This was killing both of them by inches. “Dad, just because you found her wallet doesn’t mean that you’re going to find her, or that she’s even—”
He cut her off sharply. “It means exactly that, Rayne. She is alive and we’re going to find her. It’s as simple as that.”
He made her want to scream. “Dad, you have to move on with your life.”
“I
have
moved on.” He struggled not to raise his voice. He’d moved on from one day to the next, accumulating fifteen years. Getting things done. “I’m not sitting in any closet, or staring out the window for days on end. I’ve raised five kids, had a hand in raising a couple more and even now make sure that everyone’s fed, warm and thriving to the best of my ability.”
He looked down into her eyes, fighting to keep his voice from cracking. “But don’t ask me to stop believing that someday I’m going to see her, see your mother walking toward me. Because the day I stop believing in that is the day I stop breathing. She was my life, Rayne, my every breath. My mistake was in not letting her know that.”
A smile played along her lips. “You don’t make mistakes, remember?” And then, breaking down, Rayne embraced him. “God, Dad, I hope that someday someone loves me just half as much as you love Mom.”
For a moment he held her to him, just as he had when she was small. A lot of time had gone between then and now. “They will, Rayne, they will. Or I’ll personally fillet them.”
He was rewarded with her laugh. Andrew stepped back, glancing over his shoulder. He saw three men walking in their direction.
“Okay, dry those tears, here come your brothers and Patrick.”
Straightening, she wiped away the telltale signs of rebellious tears before turning around to face the approaching threesome.
She tossed her head, her hair bobbing about her face like golden springs. “You’re late,” she declared with no small amount of glee.
It earned her a shove from Clay.
“There’ll be no fighting at the grave site,” Andrew informed them.
“Yes, Dad,” Clay and Rayne dutifully chorused before they grinned at one another.
Chapter 3
I
t was a room that reeked of desperation and despair. Furnished only with two chairs squared off on either side of a scarred metal rectangular table, its gray walls—the hue of an old buffalo nickel—provided the only color within the small area. There were no windows, only a single door. A door with a guard standing on the other side.
Cole watched as his younger brother was brought in. Clad in a faded orange jumpsuit, Eric rubbed his wrists the moment the required handcuffs were removed.
He looked bad, Cole thought. A mere shadow of the laughing, carefree boy he’d once known.
Anger welled within his chest. Anger at his parents who should have stopped this years before it happened. Anger at Eric for choosing the path of least resistance, for squandering his life and allowing himself to be devaluated this way.
Cole had pulled strings to see his brother inside this room. Ordinarily the room was used only by lawyers for consultations with their jailed clients. Anyone else was required to meet with prisoners in a communal area with a soundproof length of glass separating them and words echoing through a phone line.
He knew Eric. Eric had trouble dealing with restrictions. The very thought of bars around him fed his claustrophobia.
It surprised him to see how old Eric looked. He’d left a boy behind. The person standing uncertainly before him was a hollowed out man.
They’d always been worlds apart, he and Eric. He’d been born old. Eric, he’d thought, was destined to be eternally young. His brother was more childish than childlike, but it had had its appeal, especially among the kinds of women Eric gravitated toward.
For Kathy Fallon, the appeal had apparently worn thin. Cole knew without being told that Kathy’s leaving had been difficult for Eric to accept. His brother was accustomed to people liking him, seeking him out for a good time. Eric always had an endless supply of money and loved parties.
There was no party for Eric here.
There might not be one for a very long time if all the wheels he was trying to put into motion ground to a halt, Cole thought.
The expression on Eric’s face was equal parts surprise and relief when he looked at him.
Cole pulled his own chair out and nodded toward the other chair, indicating that Eric do the same. The metal legs scraped along the floor. Eric fell limply into his chair. His eyes looked eager as they fastened themselves to Cole’s face.
“You came.”
“You’re my brother,” Cole replied simply, hiding the fact that a wealth of emotions, too many to count, were tangling up inside of him.
It had been that way ever since Eric’s lawyer had called to tell him that Eric had been arrested and was asking for him. He’d booked the next flight out of New York and spent most of the time on the phone, planning, gathering what information he could. By the time he’d landed late last night, Cole had had as much of a handle on things as he could.
Long ago, he’d learned to rely first and foremost on himself.
Eric’s knuckles were almost white as he clenched his hands into impotent fists in front of him on the cold table. “I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t do it.”
His brother’s voice was almost quivering as he begged to be believed. Cole shook his head. “I’m not the one you have to convince.”
Eric’s eyes widened. The brown orbs were badly bloodshot, a testimony to the recreational drugs that had found their way into his system. He was in withdrawal and it was taking a toll on him.
“Then you believe me?”
Cole knew his brother was many things, many of them unflattering, to say the least. But a murderer wasn’t numbered among them. He’d known that even as he’d listened to the lawyer’s recitation of the police report. “Why do you look so surprised?”
“Because everyone thinks I did it.” Eric’s voice nearly cracked with hopelessness. “Mother and Dad think I’m guilty.”
Cole hadn’t been by to see his parents yet. He was putting off a visit until it became absolutely necessary, or until he had the stomach for it. Other than giving their seed, neither Lyle nor Denise Garrison had ever been parents in any real sense of the word.
He didn’t have to see them to know how they felt about all this. If there was any doubt in his mind, the fact that neither had put up bail for Eric was proof enough.
“They only think you’re guilty of bringing shame to the almighty Garrison name.” An ironic smile twisted his mouth. “Something great-great-granddad beat you to in his youth, but they don’t want to acknowledge that.” The fact that the family money had been accrued by a robber baron was never spoken of. Cole took a deep breath, bracing himself. “So, what happened?”
Shoulders that were far less broad than Cole’s rose and fell haplessly beneath the orange jumpsuit. “The police arrested me.”
“Before then.”
The expression on Eric’s face was tortured as he tried to remember. “I was at a party. I think.” Frustration ate away at the thin veneer of his confidence. “I don’t know, I passed out.”
“At the party?”
Eric looked as if he was taxing his brain. “No, alone I think. There was this girl—but she wasn’t there when I came to,” he concluded helplessly.
“Where did you come to?” Cole enunciated each word slowly. In a way, he thought, he was dealing with a child, a child that was too frightened to think. Whenever Eric became afraid, he made less and less sense. He remembered that from their childhood.
Eric screwed his face up as he tried to think. “At my place.”
So far, Eric’s story didn’t sound promising. The lawyer, an old family friend with tepid water in his veins, had warned him off the record that the facts looked pretty damning.
“Did you see Kathy anytime that evening?” When Eric didn’t answer, Cole leaned forward across the table. “Did you?”
Like a child caught doing something he knew he shouldn’t, Eric hung his head and stared down at his hands. “Before I went to the party.” Then his head jerked up. “But she was alive when I left her. She was screaming at me.”
“That’s because you weren’t supposed to come around anymore,” Cole reminded him. “She’d gotten a restraining order against you.” It had happened less than two months ago, after Kathy had broken it off with his brother. Quinn, the detective he’d hired, had told him that Eric hadn’t been able to reconcile himself with the fact that they weren’t together anymore.
“I didn’t think she meant it.” An urgency rose in his voice as he tried to make Cole understand. “This is the first woman I ever really cared about. I loved her, Cole. And then just like that, she said it was over.” Color flooded his cheeks. “It couldn’t have been over. I didn’t want it to be over. Why did she have to call in the police?”
“You were stalking her, Eric.” Quinn had been very thorough in his summary, faxing him the details rather than wasting time with a phone call.
“I wasn’t stalking her, I was trying to win her back. I don’t have any practice with that,” Eric lamented. “I never wanted anyone back before.” He hit his chest with his outstretched hand, the reality of it all not making any sense to him. “This was me, Cole, everybody likes me.”
Eric honestly believed that, Cole thought. In some ways, his brother was still very much an innocent, not realizing that what most people gravitated toward was Eric’s money, not his company.
“Not everybody, Eric,” he said quietly.
A storm cloud filtered over his face. “You mean, Mother and Dad?”
Cole truly doubted either of his parents liked anyone, not even themselves. But that wasn’t the issue here. “No, I was thinking about the person who’s trying to frame you.”
The simple statement hit Eric with the force of an exploding bomb. “You think that’s it? Somebody’s trying to frame me?”
Eric’s fingerprints had been found all over Kathy’s apartment. More damning was the ring that had been found in Eric’s apartment. The ring with Kathy’s blood on it. An impression of it had been left on her face where he’d hit her. Something else Quinn told him that Eric didn’t recall. His brother’s memory of the night in question was filled with more holes than a package of Swiss cheese and he’d claimed to have given Kathy the ring because she’d admired it weeks ago.
“Well, it’s either that, or you did it.” He saw Eric drag his hand erratically through his hair. Nerves? Fear? Was he wrong?
Had
his brother killed the woman in a fit of jealousy? He felt clear down to his bones that Eric wasn’t capable of something like that, but maybe he was letting the past color his vision. “Eric, is there something you want to tell me?”
Eric covered his face with his hands. “I don’t remember.” When he looked up, panic lit his eyes. “Cole, I don’t remember. I get these…” He licked his lips, as if they were too dry to produce the words he was looking for. “Blackouts the doctor calls them…”
Cole never took his eyes off his brother’s face, trying to read every movement, every nuance. Looking for answers to questions that hadn’t been formed yet. “You’ve been to the doctor about this?”
Eric’s head bobbed up and down. “Last May. Dad insisted.”
Cole frowned. So there was someone to testify in a court of law that Eric had periods where he blacked out, where he didn’t remember what he did. Cole felt as if he was staring down into an abyss.
“Cole, is it bad?”
Cole folded his hands in front of him. “I won’t lie to you, Eric, it’s not good.”
Eric bit down on his lower lip to keep from whimpering. A tiny bit of noise escaped anyway. “Then I’m screwed?”
“No,” Cole said firmly, “you’re not.” If his brother was innocent, he was going to prove it. Even if he had to resort to the proverbial movement of heaven and earth to do it.
Eric grasped his hand between both of his. Eric’s hands were clammy. “You’re going to get me out?”
Cole gave one of Eric’s hands a squeeze, trying to infuse a little courage into his brother. “I sure as hell am going to try.”
Eric’s eyes shone with a sudden onset of tears. “You’re the only one, you know, the only one who cares what happens to me. You always were.”
Any minute, Eric was going to go to pieces. He knew all the signs. Like the time there’d been a locker search and the principal had found a nickel bag of marijuana in Eric’s locker. The only way to save his brother was to say that he’d been the one to leave it in Eric’s locker. But this was a great deal more serious than a three-week suspension.
“Don’t fall apart on me, Eric. I need you to focus, to keep it together. Try to remember what happened that night, what you did and, more important, who saw you do it. Work with Holland, he might be a friend of Mother’s and Dad’s, but he’s also one of the best lawyers around.” Cole saw that none of this was getting through to Eric. He looked like a frightened rabbit. “I’m going to see what I can come up with on my end.”
Eric brightened. “You’re my only hope, Cole.”
Truer words were never spoken,
Cole thought, leaving the rest unformed even in his mind. “We’ll get through this, Eric. We always have before.”
As Cole rose, his brother suddenly leaped to his feet. Coming around the table, Eric threw his arms around him and embraced him.
Cole had never been a demonstrative man by nature. He’d been through too much, seen too much at home to leave the door to his emotions unlocked. It was the only way he had managed to survive. But this was his brother and he loved Eric beyond any rhyme or reason.
After a beat Cole closed his arms around his younger brother and gave him what he knew Eric needed most at this moment. He needed to have someone love him.
For a long moment Cole did nothing, said nothing, only hugged him.
“I’m scared, Cole,” Eric sobbed against his shoulder.
He knew that. Knew, too, that he was scared for him. But that was something he wasn’t about to admit out loud. Eric needed to think that his older brother was a rock. Confident. Unafraid.
So he perpetuated the illusion. As he always did. “Hey, it’ll make for a good story once it’s behind you. And it’s going to be behind you,” he promised with conviction. Eric pulled his head back and Cole saw a hint of a shaky smile forming. “It’ll give you something to impress people with.”
Ever since Eric’d been in elementary school, his brother had been a weaver of stories, colorful stories that drew the listener in and bonded him with the teller. It was his one gift.
Eric nodded, fighting more sobs. “Yeah,” he mumbled, trying to muster up feeling, “a good story.”
Crossing to the door, Cole knocked once. The next moment, it was being opened and the same guard that had accompanied Eric into the room stepped inside. He was holding handcuffs.
“I’ll be back soon,” Cole promised. He fought a sinking feeling as he saw Eric being handcuffed again. Unable to watch, Cole walked quickly out of the room.
Rayne pulled up the hand brake on her secondhand Honda. It’d been a gift from her father when she’d graduated from the police academy, coming to her with more than forty thousand miles on it. She intended to keep it until it was pronounced dead by Joe, the mechanic they all used.
The lot behind the restaurant was crowded and it had taken her two passes before she’d found a spot to park. Getting out and locking the door, she wasn’t completely sure what she was doing here.
She supposed, as she made her way to the large red entrance doors, that it was curiosity that brought her. That, and the fact that she felt as if she were taking a dare. She wasn’t the kind to back away from a challenge. Ever. And there’d been a challenge in Cole Garrison’s deep blue eyes.
The cold and noise of the outside world faded the instant she crossed the threshold. A soft, subdued murmur of voices greeted her as did a petite Asian hostess dressed in what Rayne took to be authentic Chinese garb. The menu the woman held in her hand was almost half as large as she was.
“Table for one?”
“No, I’m supposed to be meeting someone.”
Rayne looked past the woman’s shoulder and scanned the subtly lit room. She spotted Cole sitting in a corner booth located just beyond an incredibly large fish tank. An array of lights broke through the water, shining on a variety of saltwater fish.