The ultimate test of courage

No emotional connection means zero risk of being hurt. DEA agent Conall MacLachlan has learned that the hard way. And it’s been the key to his survival. So why is his latest assignment getting to him? Could be that he’s back in the town he rejected years ago. But he suspects the real reason is Lia Woods.

He’s instantly and powerfully attracted to Lia—something that’s never happened to him. And running a surveillance operation from her house has them too close—he can’t catch his breath. Between her and her foster kids, Conall feels the domestic ties tighten…yet it’s not so bad. He just needs to be brave enough to take what Lia offers.

“Ready to go in?”

Conall rose to his feet in a smooth motion and held out a hand.

Touching him might be…risky. Still, Lia reached out and let his hand close around hers.

And knew immediately that she’d been right.

His warm clasp felt better than almost anything she could remember. Strong, safe…and yet not safe.

With a gentle tug, he boosted her to her feet. They ended up no more than a foot apart. Her breath caught in her throat. Neither of them moved. He didn’t release her. She wanted, quite desperately, for him to pull her closer, until her body bumped up against his. She wanted him to kiss her.

And she knew letting that happen would be stupid. He was here only for a little while, and she suffered enough every time a child left her. She couldn’t bear anything else temporary in her life.

Yet the temptation...

Dear Reader,

I find myself feeling a little sad at introducing Conall MacLachlan to you, because it means saying goodbye. I don’t know when I’ve been as drawn to my characters as I was writing this trilogy. I fell in love with each brother. Their shared childhood meant they all had major issues, but not the same ones. Conall was the youngest, the most vulnerable, when his family dissolved and the big brother he’d adored sacrificed all to keep the boys together—but in doing so became a tyrant.

In his head, Conall knows that his brother saved him; at twelve, Conall was angry, constantly in fights, drinking alcohol, even going so far as stealing a car. He was in trouble because neither of his parents cared enough to stop him. Duncan did care—but Conall grew to hate his brother’s rules, his brother’s rigidity…his brother. When The Call of Bravery opens, Conall hasn’t been home in over ten years. He’d never intended to come home, but his job brings him back. And now everything he remembered, everything he believed, gets shaken up and settles in a different way.

Of course, a woman has something to do with that. No surprise that Conall has vowed never to have a family—not when his memories are so terrible. I figured he needed to confront his worst fears in a big way, so I made him move in with a beautiful, generous, compassionate woman who has a houseful of foster children—including two recently orphaned boys who remind Conall of himself.

Oh, I loved shaking up this man who believed himself invulnerable and who turns out to be the most vulnerable of the three MacLachlan brothers! Wow. Making the hero of my next book measure up is going to be a real challenge.

Good reading!

Janice Kay Johnson

The Call of Bravery

Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author of more than sixty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson writes Harlequin Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel, Snowbound, won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an

active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.

Books by Janice Kay Johnson

HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

1454—SNOWBOUND

1489—THE MAN BEHIND THE COP

1558—SOMEONE LIKE HER

1602—A MOTHER’S SECRET

1620—MATCH MADE IN COURT

1644—CHARLOTTE’S HOMECOMING*

1650—THROUGH THE SHERIFF’S EYES*

1674—THE BABY AGENDA

1692—BONE DEEP

1710—FINDING HER DAD

1736—ALL THAT REMAINS

1758—BETWEEN LOVE AND DUTY**

1764—FROM FATHER TO SON**

HARLEQUIN ANTHOLOGY

A MOTHER’S LOVE

“Daughter of the Bride”

SIGNATURE SELECT SAGA

DEAD WRONG

*The Russell Twins

**A Brother’s Word

Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

CONALL MACLACHLAN SLUMPED on the bathroom floor, his back against the tub, a wet washcloth pressed to his face. One eye had already swollen shut, and the other lid barely opened. His nose wouldn’t quit gushing blood. He could taste it in his throat, and thinking about it, he lunged forward barely in time to retch into the toilet. Afterward he stumbled to his feet to rinse his mouth out and then brush his teeth. Neither helped much when blood kept pumping from his nose and running down his upper lip.

He wet then wrung out the washcloth again and lifted it to his face. His hand paused briefly as he caught a glimpse of his face with the swelling, bruising, a puffed lip, two black eyes that were going to be hideous, blood…and tears.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t! He was nine years old, way too old to weep like a little girl. But he felt…he felt… A sob tore its way free and he crumpled again, pressing the cold cloth to his face to stifle blood and tears both.

He’d been beaten up before. He was a shrimp for his age, and hated it. When other boys shouldered him aside or knocked him down for the fun of it, he hit back. Every time, he knew he’d lose, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. He was so full of rage, even he didn’t understand it.

And it wasn’t fair that he was small. His brothers weren’t; Duncan at fifteen didn’t have a man’s muscles, but he had a man’s height. He had to be six feet tall. And Niall wasn’t far behind at twelve. Their mother always said he was growing like a weed. She’d sigh, because usually she was noticing that his jeans were too short. But then her gaze would stray to Conall, the runt of the litter, who wasn’t growing like a weed. Sometimes she looked…he didn’t quite know, and wasn’t sure he wanted to identify her expression. It was too much like she couldn’t figure out where he’d come from. As if he’d followed Niall home one day like an abandoned puppy and moved in without her noticing, until recently, that he was always there.

It was getting worse, too. Not that long ago, she would have yelled at him when she saw him like this, but she also would have hustled him upstairs, cleaned him up and gotten him a bag of frozen peas or corn for his face.

Today when he’d stumbled in the door and Mom saw him, she said, “Not again. What is wrong with you?”

When he fled toward the stairs, he saw his father step out of the kitchen. What was Dad doing home this early? Had he lost his job? Or quit? The surprise on his face changed to disgust, and Con knew what he was thinking.

What’s wrong with you?

He didn’t know what was wrong with him, why he couldn’t be like Duncan, who was smart and athletic. Nobody would be stupid enough even to try to beat him up. Not Duncan. Anyway, Conall’s big brother didn’t get in trouble. He was too controlled, too focused on what he wanted.

And Niall…well, Niall did screw up. He used to be a good boy, too, until Dad got out of prison and things weren’t the same. But even so, he was also the star forward of the middle school soccer team and the basketball team. Dad liked Niall because he played the bagpipe like Dad. In fact, he was better than Dad, Con privately thought, maybe because, like Duncan, Niall had that ability to focus so intensely, he shut the world out.

Niall had Duncan, too. They were friends. When Mom and Dad started yelling, they often disappeared together. Con would look out his bedroom window and see them walking down the sidewalk to the school, one or the other dribbling a basketball. They didn’t seem to remember he was here.

Like they’d waste time teaching him, the runt, to play basketball. Not that long ago, Dad had said, “Usually a boy can start playing the bagpipe by the time he’s nine or ten, but you won’t be able to.” He’d snorted and turned away.

The nosebleed had finally stopped. Conall washed his face again, and decided he really needed ice. He could hardly see at all.

He’d made it most of the way downstairs when he heard Dad yell, “Why are you blaming me? You’re supposed to be raising the damn kids, aren’t you? If that pathetic excuse for a boy is anyone’s fault, he’s yours.”

Conall froze, steps from the bottom.

“Mine?” Mom screamed. “You know I never wanted him. You’re the one who insisted we have another kid. God knows why, when you can’t be bothered doing any real parenting. Conall wouldn’t be such a mess if you did.”

“What am I supposed to do with him? Teach him how to be a man?” Dad laughed as if the idea was unbelievably stupid. That laugh sank into the very marrow of Conall’s bones, becoming part of him. “He doesn’t have it in him.” His voice became ugly. “Is he even mine, Laura? Because I sure as hell don’t see myself in him.”

This time Mom’s scream was wordless. There was a metallic crash as if she’d thrown something like a pan. Ceramic splintered. Dad bellowed in fury; there was another crash and then a thud, the screams and yells continuing.

Conall whimpered. Feeling the way with his foot, he retreated up a step, then another. Please don’t let them hear me. Please don’t let one of them come out of the kitchen.

When terrible weeping replaced his mother’s screams, he turned and fled, stumbling, falling, banging his shins but scrambling up the stairs. He raced into his room and shut the door. Quietly, so carefully.

I sure as hell don’t see myself in him.

I’m glad, Con thought fiercely. I wish he wasn’t my father.

You know I never wanted him.

He wished she wasn’t his mother, either.

Conall cried again, and was ashamed. The snot he wiped away with the back of his hand was mixed with blood, and he didn’t care.

Sometime in the next couple of hours, all his rage and bewilderment and hurt hardened until his emotions felt petrified, like a slice of smooth stone he had on his desk that had once been wood. At first the sensation was uncomfortable, but that wasn’t surprising, was it? Think how compressed the wood must have been to become stone. All moisture squeezed out. After a while, the glossy, hard surface in his chest felt okay, and he could replay what he’d heard his parents say without feeling anything in particular.

He did stiffen when he heard footsteps on the stairs and his bedroom door opened. By this time he couldn’t open his eyes at all. If Mom pretended to care now, he didn’t know what he’d do.

But it was Duncan who swore, and said, “Have you put ice on your eyes?”

Conall shook his head.

“I’ll get you some.”

Duncan’s footsteps retreated. Eventually he came back with a bag of frozen vegetables and a washcloth to wrap it in. He said, “There’s a lot of blood in the bathroom,” and Con shrugged.

“Nose,” he mumbled, and grabbed for the bag as it slipped.

“Don’t suppose you want to tell me what it was about.”

He shook his head.

“Did Dad do this to you?” Duncan’s voice had changed a while back to sounding almost like a man’s. Now it was so hard, so unforgiving, that change was complete. “Or Mom?”

“No,” Con whispered, wincing when he realized one of his teeth was loose. He wriggled it with his tongue.

“I saw the kitchen.”

“They were fighting. This was a couple of guys.”

Duncan sighed. His weight compressed the edge of the bed as he sat. “You know, you can run away instead of getting into it every time.”

Conall shook his head.

“Sometimes it’s better to be smart than brave.”

He got it, he really did. But…there wasn’t much to him. Pride was about it. If he ran, he wouldn’t even have that. He wasn’t like his big brother.

He told himself he didn’t care, and almost believed it.

Conall shrugged again. Duncan tried to talk to him for a bit, then finally gave up and went away.

Alone again, Con realized that today, for the first time, not caring was easy.

CHAPTER ONE

DOMINGO GARCIA STAGGERED toward the storefront and artistically fell against the large window, which shivered from the blow but didn’t break. He slid to a sitting position on the sidewalk.

Crouching on a concrete staircase dropping to a basement apartment not thirty feet away, Conall MacLachlan watched with admiration. Garcia played a homeless guy like no one else; Conall didn’t even want to know what he’d rolled in to make him stink like that. The sacky army fatigue jacket did a great job of hiding a bulletproof vest.

As they’d hoped, the steel door to the storefront slammed open. Two big men appeared, one with a snarling Rottweiler on a leash, the other using his body to prop open the door.

Clutching his bottle of cheap wine in a brown paper bag, Garcia peered blearily at them. “Hey, dudes.” He pretended to look alarmed. “Your dog won’t bite me, will he?”

The handler laughed and told Garcia in obscene terms that yes, indeed, the Rottweiler would rip him to shreds if he didn’t move on.

Garcia whimpered and got to his hands and knees, coincidentally a few feet closer to the door and the dog’s frothing muzzle. Then he demonstrated his one true talent. Everyone had to have one. Garcia’s was handier than most, however, for a special agent with the United States Drug Enforcement Agency. He could puke at will, assuming he’d primed his stomach in advance. Conall had sat with him an hour ago while he consumed two huge burritos in green sauce at a little Mexican joint a few blocks away.

Now, with sound effects and spectacular retching, he brought them back up. Vomit spattered the dog handler’s shoes and pant legs; even the Rottweiler backed up in alarm. Garcia managed to drop the wine bottle and shatter it, adding to the mess and stench. The other guy swore. All their attention was on the stinking pool of vomit and the seemingly drunken homeless man crawling on the sidewalk. The dog whined and scrabbled backward toward the door.

Conall murmured into his transmitter, “Now,” and moved, coming in fast while Johnny Harris did the same from the other direction. At the same time Garcia sprang to his feet, his Sig Pro pistol in his hand.

“Drop your weapons! This is a police raid. Drop them now!”

Conall slammed the doorkeeper to the sidewalk and went in first, low and fast. Garcia leaped over the dog and was on his heels. Reinforcements sprang from a van parked halfway down the block and within seconds were on the two guards, dragging them away from the window glass in case of flying bullets before cuffing them.

The interior was poorly lit, the window having been covered with butcher paper, the bare overhead bulb maybe forty watts. Two men burst from a rear hallway, firing as they came. Conall took one out with his Glock while Garcia brought down the other. They kicked weapons away and plunged down the hall. The back of the store was the drug distribution facility; the guys packaging coke were already wild-eyed at the spray of bullets and had their hands up before Conall went through the door.

Garcia and Harris checked out the bathroom and office while Conall kept his gun on the pathetic trio in front of him. Within moments, other agents arrived to cuff and arrest.

It was all over but the cleanup. Conall’s experienced eye weighed and measured the packets of cocaine, leaving him disappointed. They wouldn’t be taking anywhere near as much off the street as they’d hoped. Either this operation was more small-time than they’d realized, or a shipment was due and their timing had sucked.

That was life, he thought philosophically, holstering his weapon.

And I’m bored out of my frigging skull.

As he all too often seemed to be these days.

* * *

LIA WOODS SAT on the middle cushion of the sofa, a boy perched stiffly to each side of her, and watched Transformers. She’d seen bits and pieces of it before; Walker and Brendan were addicted. This was the first time she’d sat down with the intention of watching beginning to end.

In her opinion, the movies were too violent for the boys at eight and ten, especially as traumatized as they were. But their mother had given them both the first two Transformers movies on DVD, and Lia couldn’t criticize Mom, even by implication. Not when she’d died only three days ago.

Besides, she could see the appeal of the movies to the boys. Chaos erupts, and regular, nerdy guy seizes control and ultimately triumphs. The fantasy must be huge for two boys who’d now lost both parents, who had no idea what would happen to them. For them, it was a fantasy worth clinging to.

The sound of a car engine outside made her frown. People didn’t drop in on her unexpectedly. Her farmhouse on ten acres was reached by a dead-end gravel road she shared with five other houses. Only one was past hers. There were new neighbors there, renters, Lia thought. She hadn’t tried to get to know them. She’d as soon keep her distance from all her neighbors, and was glad the men she’d seen coming and going weren’t friendly.

Or nosy.

This car, though, had definitely turned in her driveway. She touched each of the boys reassuringly and murmured, “I’d better go see who’s here.”

Walker turned his head enough to gaze blankly at her before looking back at the TV; Brendan kept staring as if she hadn’t spoken.

Lia left them in the living room and paused at the foot of the stairs, listening. Quiet. Arturo and Julia must still be asleep. Thirteen-year-old Sorrel was most likely lying on her bed listening to her iPod, or prowling the internet on Lia’s laptop. Maybe harmless, maybe not, but Lia couldn’t watch her 24/7. She could and would check later to see what websites Sorrel had visited.

Outside, a car door slammed. She opened the front door and had a freezing moment of panic. The dark sedan, shiny except for a thin coat of dust from her road, was clearly government issue, as was the man walking toward her, wearing a suit, white shirt and tie. If he was from Immigration, she was screwed. There was no time to hide Arturo and Julia.

He paused at the foot of the stairs. “Ms. Woods?”

“Yes.” She stepped onto the porch and drew the door mostly closed behind her. “What can I do for you?”

He was a large man, in his late forties or early fifties at a guess, with a receding hairline and the beginning of a paunch. “I’m with the United States Drug Enforcement Agency. I’d like to talk to you.”

Lia knew she was gaping. “To me?”

He smiled. “You’re not under suspicion, I promise you. I’m hoping that you can help us.”

“Help you.” She must sound like an idiot, but…wow. She’d never even smoked marijuana. Excessive drinking had been a way bigger problem in her high school than drug use. Her crowd in college hadn’t been into drugs, either. Was there any chance he was lying and really with Immigration after all?

“May I explain?” he said.

She blinked. “Yes, sure. Why don’t you— Actually, let’s stay out here on the porch. Give me a moment to check on the kids.”

He remained politely outside while she dashed in, peeked at Walker and Brendan, then tore upstairs to Sorrel’s room. The teenager was indeed using the laptop.

“There’s a government type here I have to talk to,” Lia said. “Will you listen for the little ones and take care of them if they wake up?”

“I guess so.” Sorrel wrinkled her nose. “Unless Arturo’s diaper is gross. I don’t want to do gross.”

“They should keep sleeping for another hour. But just in case. Okay?”

She shrugged, her attention returning to the monitor. “Okay.”

The teenager didn’t know that two-year-old Arturo and eight-month-old Julia were in this country—and being harbored by Lia—illegally; Lia made sure her legitimate foster children never had a clue. Kids came and went here. There was no reason any of them would question why one social worker brought some of them to her door and a different one the others.

Then Lia bounded downstairs and went out on the front porch, closing the door behind her this time. The man turned to face her.

He held out his badge. “I’m Special Agent Wes Phillips.”

She scrutinized the badge, as if she’d know a fake if she saw it, nodded and said, “Please, sit down.”

He gingerly settled into one of the pair of Adirondack chairs. She took the other one.

“I’d invite you in, but I’m a foster parent and have kids napping. Plus, I thought maybe you’d rather we weren’t overheard.”

“I’d definitely rather not be overheard by children.” He hesitated. “This is actually a matter that concerns your neighbors to the south.”

Her first reaction was relief. It was hard to make herself think, to orient herself. The south? “That nice place? Someone new is in it. I’m afraid I haven’t even met them.”

“Have you noticed them coming and going?”

“An occasional car. Either there are several men living there, or else whoever is renting the place has lots of friends.”

He nodded. “We have reason to believe the house is being used by members of a drug distribution network.”

“You’re not talking about methamphetamine, are you?” she asked in alarm. “Are they making it there? Can’t it be really volatile? Are my kids in danger?”

“No, no. We’re frankly not sure what’s up in that house, but don’t believe meth is involved.”

Wariness returning, Lia straightened her spine. “How is it you think I can help you?”

“I came out to determine whether the house can be viewed from yours.” He had his back to it currently, although from here woods blocked all but the rooftop and a corner of the enormous garage. “We’d like to place it under surveillance. Yours is the only building within visual range. What we’d like is to, er, rent your house from you for a period of time.”

“A period of time.”

“It may be weeks to several months.”

She didn’t even have to think about it. “No.”

“I’m sure we could provide you with—”

“No. This is my home. I’m currently caring for five traumatized children. Two of them lost their mother to leukemia this week. One is a teenager prone to acting out. This is their home, too, the only security they have right now. I will not uproot them.”

Plainly, he didn’t like that. “You don’t mind that your nearest neighbors may be dealing drugs?”

“Of course I mind. But what you’re asking is impossible.”

He studied her. “This is a large house.”

Oh, damn. “Yes, it is,” she said cautiously.

He seemed to ponder. “Perhaps it would work best if your neighbors see life continuing as usual here.”

She waited.

“Do you use your attic?”

She’d known that was coming. After a hesitation, Lia admitted, “No. It’s pretty bare-bones up there, though.”

“Would you consider allowing two agents from the DEA to conduct a stakeout from your attic?”

She queried what that meant; he explained. Assuming there actually was an adequate view from upstairs, they would use advanced surveillance equipment to watch the nearby home from the attic windows. The agents could sleep up there as well. He did concede that they’d need to use a bathroom if one wasn’t available in the attic.

“There isn’t,” she said flatly.

“It would also, er, be convenient if you could be persuaded to provide them with meals. We’d give you reimbursement for groceries and an additional stipend, of course.”

The entire time he talked, Lia thought furiously. Would the DEA have any reason to investigate which children had legitimately been placed in her home? Perhaps Arturo and Julia could be moved. They were short-term anyway; she didn’t expect to have them for more than a week or two. Their mother had been swept up in a raid on a tulip bulb farm here in the county and immediately deported. Supposedly a family member would be coming for them if the mother couldn’t make her way back quickly.

Lia might look more suspicious if she refused than if she agreed. And she did hate the idea of something like cocaine or heroin being sold from her next-door neighbor’s house. The whole idea was surreal; she might have expected it in New York City, but not in rural Washington State.

But…weeks or months?

“Would these agents be…respectful?” she asked slowly. “I’m a single woman, and I currently have a thirteen-year-old girl living here.”

Phillips’s smile held the knowledge that he was about to get what he wanted. “I guarantee you have nothing to fear from our agents.”

Oh, yes, she did, but she couldn’t say that. Lia sighed and stood. “Then let me show you the attic and you can see if it’s suitable. Please try not to wake the children.”

She felt nothing but apprehension as she led the way upstairs, shaking her head slightly at Sorrel’s startled look when they passed her open bedroom door. At worst, the resident government agents would discover that she regularly harbored illegal immigrants. At best…well, having two strange men—or maybe a man and a woman?—living in her house, sharing one of only two antiquated bathrooms, expecting to be fed, would be a horrible inconvenience. Never-ending houseguests she hadn’t exactly invited in the first place.

But…how could she say no?

She couldn’t. And that’s what, in the end, it came down to, wasn’t it?

* * *

CONALL COULD NOT BELIEVE he was here, driving through the town of Stimson where he’d grown up. Out of the twenty-one domestic divisions of the DEA, the Seattle division, covering Washington, Oregon and Idaho, was the only one he would have balked at being assigned to. When he left home, he’d never intended to come back.

He hadn’t even come home for his brother Niall’s wedding. The pang of guilt was unavoidable; he knew Niall had wanted him to be there. He might even have made it if he hadn’t gotten shot two weeks before the wedding. Yeah, he’d been out of the hospital and could have come anyway, but recuperation seemed like a good excuse.

A good excuse for him, that is, not his brother. He hadn’t told Niall about his near-death experience. In their every-few-months phone conversations, Conall tended to keep talk about his job light, even though Niall was a cop and would probably be able to handle the grimmer aspects of what Conall did. Maybe.

His fingers tightened rhythmically on the steering wheel as his attention was arrested by an obviously official, handsome brick building. Oh, damn. That was the new public safety building right there, housing the police station and city government. It was linked to the equally new courthouse by a glass-enclosed walkway.

The knowledge that Niall and Con’s big brother Duncan might be in there right this minute unsettled him more than he wanted to admit. God. Was he going to have to see Duncan?

He knew the answer. Yes. This was his operation. He had an obligation to liaise with local law enforcement. Which meant newly appointed Police Chief Duncan MacLachlan.

The sense of unreality swept over Conall again. Was God playing a nasty prank on him?

He’d tried to say no to this assignment. The suits upstairs didn’t like the word. Yes, they understood that he’d applied for a position with FAST—the Foreign-Deployed Advisory and Support Teams—that were interjected where needed abroad. The decision would not be made immediately. Even if he was chosen, the transfer could wait.

Somebody, somewhere, had noticed that he was, apparently, the only agent within the entire DEA from this particular corner of Washington State. Con had no idea why the fact that he’d gone to high school here was considered to be an advantage. He wouldn’t be conducting some kind of deep cover investigation that required him to have to act like a local. Good God, he’d fail if that was the object; he didn’t recognize half the businesses he was passing on the main street of the modest-size county seat.

The man who had ridden for the most part quietly in the passenger seat beside Conall said now, “Do you have family here?”

Conall wanted to lie, but knew he wouldn’t get away with it. “Yes,” he said shortly. “Two brothers. One is the police chief.”

Jeff Henderson looked thoughtfully at him. “Handy.”

Conall grunted.

He didn’t know Henderson, had never worked with him, but hadn’t learned anything bad about him, either, when he asked around. Henderson had been dragged in from the El Paso division. Apparently Seattle was currently conducting some major, named operation that had everyone excited and left them understaffed when something new cropped up.

“We’re not stopping?”

Oh, crap, Conall thought. They should. Or he should have set up a meet.

“No. I’ll call Duncan. I don’t want word to get around that a couple of DEA agents are in town.”

Henderson nodded, apparently satisfied. “You know your way?”

“Yeah.” He was a little startled to realize how clearly he remembered every byway in the county.

The town proper fell behind them, although they didn’t leave the city limits, which had been drawn by an optimist. Or maybe, he discovered, a realist after all since they passed several major new housing developments and an elementary school that hadn’t been here in his day.

They did shortly find themselves on a typical country road, however, with a yellow strip down the middle and no shoulders to separate road from ditches. Homes were on acreage now; animals grazed behind barbed wire or board fences with peeling paint. The countryside was pretty, though, the grass lush, maples and alders bright with spring greenery, a scattering of wildflowers adding cheer to the roadside. Deciduous trees gave way to forests of Douglas fir and cedar in the foothills, above which glimpses of white-peaked Cascade Mountains could be seen.

Henderson kept his thoughts to himself, although he eyed the scenery with interest. Conall found himself reluctantly wondering about his temporary partner. Normally he tried not to get personal, but this was the kind of job that would have them spending long hours together. They’d get to know each other one way or another.

“You married?” he finally asked.

Henderson glanced at him. “Yeah. I have two kids, four and six. You?”

“No. No wife, no kids.” God forbid.

“You know this house is stuffed full of kids.”

That snapped Conall’s attention from the road ahead. “What?”

“You didn’t know?”

He frowned. “I got pulled in at the last minute. All I was told was that the home-owner is willing to let us use the attic and will feed us.”

“She runs a foster home. Records show she currently has three kids, but I guess from what she told Phillips, she has another two on a real short-term basis.”

“Five children?”

“That’s the word.”

Conall groaned. “Does the attic door have a lock?”

“If not, we may want to install one,” Henderson said, faint amusement in his voice.

“If we have to deal with kids, you’re the specialist.”

“Okay.” He leaned forward. “Is that the street?”

It was. Conall slowed and put on the turn signal, even though he hadn’t passed another car in the past five minutes.

The road was gravel and made perilous by potholes. Conall drove at the pace of a crawl. The shocks were none too good on this aging Chevy Suburban, borrowed from the fleet of seized vehicles kept for occasions when agents wanted to be inconspicuous. Conall had been assured that, belying the appearance of dents and a few pockets of rust, there was plenty of power under the hood if he needed it.

A small grunt escaped Henderson when the right front wheel descended with a clunk into a particularly deep crater. “Why the hell isn’t this road paved?”

“It’s private. Only five houses on it.” Conall had counted the mailboxes out at the corner. “Too expensive to pave, even if the residents could all agree to share the cost.”

“The least they could do is fill the damn holes.”

Conall didn’t bother to explain what a headache it could be for residents to coordinate on even such a relatively modest project. A couple of the households might be short on bucks; the home-owners closest to the county road might not feel their share should be equal. Probably the only vehicles that used the road belonged to home-owners or visitors; kids would have to catch the school bus out at the main road, and obviously the post office had declined to deliver off the pavement. Probably even garbage cans had to be hauled out to the main road for pickup.

Which gave him the idea that, once he knew what day was garbage pickup, he’d wander out here and investigate the neighbor’s cans. If they were smart, they wouldn’t be careless enough to dump anything but kitchen garbage and the like in their cans, but you never knew. Crooks were often stupid, a fact for which law enforcement personnel gave frequent thanks.

Last driveway on the right, his directions had said. No house number was displayed at the head of the driveway he turned down. Scruffy woods initially screened the house from view; alders, vine maples, a scattering of larger firs and cedars, scraggly blackberries and lower growing salal. At least there were no potholes here, instead a pair of beaten earth tracks separated by a grassy hump.

They came out of the woods to see fenced pasture and, ahead, a white-painted farmhouse that probably dated to the 1920s or 1930s. Red and white beef cattle grazed the pasture on one side of the driveway, while on the other side a fat, shaggy Shetland pony and a sway-backed horse of well-used vintage lifted their heads from the grass to gaze with mild interest at the passing Suburban.

As they neared, Conall could see that the house had two full stories with a dormered attic to boot. Several of the wood-framed, small-paned, sash windows on the first floor boasted window boxes filled with bright pink and fuchsia geraniums. The wide, covered front porch with a railing looked welcoming.

The one outbuilding, probably a barn in its past, apparently served now as garage. The double doors stood open and he could see what he thought was a Subaru station wagon in the shadowy interior.

The setup was good, he reflected; they’d been lucky to find a neighbor willing to cooperate with a surveillance team, and even luckier given that this one and only suitable house happened to have an unused attic that offered a perfect vantage point. Still, he studied the facade nervously, half expecting children to swarm out like killer bees from a hive. God, he hoped there wouldn’t be babies squalling all night. Although babies might be preferable to kids of an age to be curious.

No one, adult or child, swarmed out. Or even peered. Lace curtains didn’t twitch.

“This woman expecting us?” Conall asked.

“So I’m told.” Henderson glanced at his watch. “It’s nap time.”

“Is that like the eye of the hurricane?”

His partner’s raw-boned face split into a grin. “That’s one way to describe it.”

They parked beside the barn and pulled out a duffel bag each before starting across the yard to the house. They could come back later for their equipment.

Walking across the lawn, Conall realized he felt no sense of anticipation whatsoever. Okay, this might not be the most exciting operation ever; surveillance gigs never were. Even so, he used to feel at least mildly stirred at the beginning of any new challenge. Lately…

He shook off the momentary brood. He liked action, not sitting in the middle of a cow pasture watching grass grow. No wonder he wasn’t worked up about this particular assignment.

Somehow he hadn’t convinced himself. Boredom wasn’t the whole problem. His dissatisfaction had other causes. He just hadn’t nailed them down yet.

There was no doorbell. Henderson rapped lightly instead. Conall thought he heard a TV on somewhere inside. They waited, finally hearing the sound of someone approaching.

The door opened and a woman stood there. Behind her was a girl—maybe a teenager?—but Conall was only peripherally aware of her. He couldn’t tear his gaze from the woman.

He hadn’t come into this situation with any expectation, so he didn’t know why he was so startled. Then he barely stopped himself from grimacing. Of course he knew why; what he hadn’t expected was to find himself sexually riveted by their reluctant hostess.

She was average height, maybe five foot five or six. Slender but strong, her curves subtle but present. Her feet were bare, her jeans fit snugly over narrow hips and fabulous legs. Her yield-sign yellow T-shirt fit even better, displaying a narrow rib cage and high, apple-size breasts to perfection.

Her face…well, damn, she was beautiful. Stunning. High, winged eyebrows, a model’s cheekbones, a luscious mouth and small straight nose. Her eyes were an unusual mix of brown and green. The colors were deep and rich, not like the typical hazel. And her thick, wavy hair was midnight-black and hung loose to her waist.

God help him, he wanted to grab her, carry her upstairs and find a bedroom. And they hadn’t even said hello.

Man. This wasn’t a good start to what promised to be a lengthy stay. Conall had the wry thought that the stay might be considerably shortened if she noticed he was aroused.

And maybe that would be a good thing. Right this minute, Conall couldn’t imagine living in close proximity to her without breaking down at some point and coming on to her.

Way to lose his job.

His jaw flexed. For God’s sake, if he was that desperate, he’d look for a woman while he was in town. Any woman but this one. Get laid.

He realized how long the silence had stretched. Conall cleared his throat. “Special Agent Conall MacLachlan from the DEA. This is Jeff Henderson. I believe you were expecting us.”

CHAPTER TWO

HENDERSON HAD BEEN gaping, too, but he managed to snap out of it and offer his hand. They shook. Conall offered his badge instead of his hand. He didn’t dare touch her.

She examined it briefly, then glanced at their duffel bags. “That’s all you have?”

“We have more stuff in the car. We thought we’d find out where we’re to set up first.”

She looked past them to the gray Suburban. “At least you don’t have one of those government cars. That would have given you away in a heartbeat.”

Jeff’s face relaxed into a smile. “True enough, ma’am.”

“No ma’am.” She moved back to let them in. “I’m not old enough to be a ma’am. Call me Lia.”

Lia Woods. That was her name. Was Lia Hispanic? Only partly, he thought, given the delicious pale cream of her skin where it wasn’t tanned, as her face and forearms were. And her eyes were a remarkable color.

“Lia,” he said politely.

“This is Sorrel,” she said, “my foster daughter.”

The girl was pretty, in an unfinished way. Skinny but also buxom. She had her arms crossed over her breasts as if she was trying to hide them. Blond hair was pixy-short, her eyes blue and bottomless, her mouth pouty. Blushing, she mumbled, “Hello,” but Conall had the impression she hadn’t decided how she felt about their presence.

They stood in a foyer from which a staircase rose to the second floor. The television was on in a room to his right. He could see the flickering screen from here. To the left seemed to be a dining room; a high chair was visible at one end of a long table.

Lia crossed her arms, looking from one to the other of them. “You understand that I have a number of foster children.”

“Yes.”

Both nodded.

“The two little ones are currently asleep. Chances are you won’t see much of them. Julia is a baby, and Arturo a toddler.” She pronounced Julia the Spanish way.

They both nodded again. Sorrel watched them without expression.

“Let me take you on a quick tour and introduce you to the other kids.” Lia led the way into the living room, where two boys sat on the sofa watching TV.

The room was set up to be kid-friendly, the furniture big, comfortable, sturdy. The coffee table had rounded corners. Bookcases protected their contents with paneled doors on the bottom and glass-fronted ones on top. Some baby paraphernalia sat around, but Conall didn’t see much in the way of toys. Did she let the kids watch television all day?

“Walker,” she said in a gentle voice. “Brendan. Would you please pause your movie?”

One of them fumbled for the remote. Then they both gazed at the men. They had to be the two saddest looking kids he’d ever seen. Grief and hopelessness clung to them like the scent of tobacco on a smoker. Their eyes held…nothing. Not even interest.

They were trying damned hard to shut down all emotional content. He recognized the process, having gone through it. He didn’t know whether to wish them well with it, or hope someone, or something, intervened.

His child specialist was staring at them with something akin to horror and was being useless. Somebody had to say something.

Apparently, that would be him. “Walker. Brendan. My name is Conall. This is Jeff.”

After a significant pause, one of the boys recalled his manners enough to say, “Hi.”

“I know we’ll be seeing you around,” Conall said awkwardly.

The same boy nodded. He was the older of the two, Con realized, although they looked so much alike they had to be brothers.

Lia guided the two men out of the living room. Behind them the movie resumed.

She hustled them through the dining room and showed them the kitchen.

“I serve the kids three meals a day and can include you in any or all of those,” she told them. “If you’d rather make your own breakfasts or lunches, just let me know in advance and help yourself to anything you can find.”

She didn’t say whether those meals would be sugary cereals and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Right this minute, Conall didn’t care. He kept his voice low. “What’s with the boys?”

Her glance was cool. “Their mother died five days ago. She had adult-onset leukemia. Six weeks ago, she was healthy. She went downhill really fast.”

“They don’t have other family?” Jeff asked.

“No. The boys barely remember their father, who abandoned them a long time ago. If there are grandparents or other relatives on that side, no one knows anything about them. The boys’ mother grew up in foster care.”

“So now they will, too.” Conall wasn’t naive; in his line of work, he didn’t deal much with kids, but sometimes there were ones living in houses where he made busts. He’d undoubtedly been responsible for sending some into foster care himself. He’d never had to live with any of those children before, though.

“Yes,” she said. “Unless they’re fortunate enough to be adopted.”

He didn’t have to read her tone to know how unlikely that was, especially with the boys as withdrawn as they were. And being a pair besides. Or would they end up separated? That was an idea that he instinctively rebelled against.

He and Henderson both were quiet as she showed them a home office on the ground floor, and opened the door to a large bathroom and, at the back of the house, a glassed-in porch that was now a laundry slash mud room.

“You can do your own laundry, or toss your clothes in the hamper and I’ll add them to any loads I put in.”

They nodded acknowledgement.

Upstairs was another bathroom and bedrooms. Hers, one with a closed door that was apparently where the little kids slept, a room shared by the boys, and a smaller one that was obviously the teenager’s. It was little larger than a walk-in closet; maybe originally intended to be a sewing room or nursery?

“Sorrel understands that the attic is off-limits,” Lia said, her tone pleasant but steel underlying it. The teenager looked sulky but ducked into her bedroom as Lia led the way to the door at the end of the hall. Like all the others in the house, it had an old-fashioned brass knob. It also had an ancient keyed lock with no key in it.

Behind it was a staircase steep enough Conall wouldn’t have wanted to navigate it after a few beers. Lia’s hips swayed seductively at his eye level as she preceded him up.

Don’t look.

He couldn’t not.

It was a relief to have her stand aside at the top, where a huge open space was poorly lit by only four, smallish dormer windows. The dormers would allow them to stand upright in front of the windows, but the men especially would have to duck their heads in much of the rest of the space.

“Yesterday I washed those windows on the inside.” Lia sounded apologetic. “I can’t even get my hose to squirt that high on the outside.”

The two light fixtures up here didn’t do much to illuminate the attic, especially around the edges where the ceiling sloped sharply down. As in many old houses, it was cluttered with unwanted pieces of furniture, piles of cardboard boxes filled with who knew what, more modern plastic tubs stacked closer to the top of the staircase, and a few oddities and antiques. A naked female clothing mannequin with a bald head stared vacuously at them. Conall saw an old treadle sewing machine cheek by jowl with a gigantic plastic duck.

Lia’s gaze had followed his. “I think the duck rode on a Fourth of July float every year until my uncle died.”

“The mannequin?”

“My aunt owned a small clothing store in town.” She looked around as if she hadn’t thought about the contents of the attic in ages. “I don’t actually know what’s up here. Someday I should go through it all, but I always seem to be too busy.”

“The animals out there yours?” Jeff was peering out one of the windows.

“The horse and the pony are. They’re fun for the kids. I rent the other pasture out. Keeps it from growing up in blackberries.”

Conall found himself curious about her and wanting to ask questions, but none of them had anything to do with the job. Had she inherited the house? Why did she foster kids instead of having her own? Why wasn’t a woman who looked like that married?

Focus, he told himself. Lia Woods wasn’t the point here. Her neighbors were.

He walked to the second of the two windows looking to the south and saw immediately that they had a bird’s-eye view of the target. Except for the film on the outside of the glass, it couldn’t be better.

“Do these open?” he asked.

“I have no idea.”

From the reluctance of the latch to give way, he could tell no one had tried in years. He muttered a swear word or two under his breath, scraped the latch open and heaved upward at the sash window. It groaned, shuddered and rose two inches before jolting to a stop.

“Hell.”

“Is this not going to work for you guys?” Lia sounded hopeful. And why shouldn’t she? She’d probably rather they got in their Suburban and drove away never to be seen again.

“We’ll loosen it up,” Conall said. He saw that Henderson was using his muscle to work on the other south-facing window. They’d need the damn things open, if only to get some air flow up here. Not surprisingly, the attic was stuffy and warm, and that was on a cloudy day with the temp reading sixty-nine when they passed a bank in town. If this op dragged on long, with spring edging into summer, it could turn hellish up here.

He was starting to turn away from the window when movement caught his eye. “Damn,” he muttered, and Henderson joined him. Oh, yeah, the neighbors definitely had a dog.

“You know those folks have a Doberman?” he asked.

Lia hurried over, catching a glimpse before the dog trotted around the corner of the other house. “No.” She sounded worried. “Maybe they put up an invisible fence of some kind. I haven’t seen it in the pasture. If I do, I’ll have to talk to them—” She looked fiercely at the two men. “I’ll have to do something if that animal scares my horses or attacks them.”

“Let’s worry about that if it happens,” Conall said.

She didn’t look happy, but finally reverted to tour guide, pointing out the bed she’d set up in the far corner. She had the polite thing down pat, and he imagined her giving much the same spiel to newly arrived foster kids. Except she’d probably offer it to them with more warmth than he was hearing. No, she wasn’t thrilled about their presence, the subtext was there. “I set it up yesterday and put fresh sheets on it. I gather that you won’t be sleeping at the same time?”

Conall said, “No.”

She nodded. “If it gets uncomfortable up here, there’s a twin bed in the room Julia and Arturo are in right now. I don’t expect them to be with me over a week. You can have that room once they’re gone.”

Right across the hall from hers. Conall imagined sleeping that near to her. Oh, yeah, that would be restful. He shot a narrow-eyed glance at Henderson to see if he was thinking the same, but he was looking around the attic with curiosity. Beyond his initial reaction, he hadn’t registered a lot of awareness of her. Conall’s shoulders relaxed slightly, which had him frowning. Another surprise; he hadn’t liked the idea that his partner might be slavering over her.

Like I am?

She was a sexy woman. So what? He’d had plenty of sexy women before. Getting them seemed to be one of his talents. Maybe it was the appeal of a man who didn’t really give a damn one way or the other. If a woman who attracted him made it plain she wasn’t available or interested, he shrugged and moved on. There were plenty of fish in the sea. Conall didn’t remember ever feeling anything approaching jealousy.

Lia might have a boyfriend or fiancé. He wondered if Phillips had thought to ask. A regular visitor here could threaten their anonymity. If that regular visitor was a man who felt possessive of her, he wouldn’t like their presence.

Conall wouldn’t like his, and definitely didn’t like the idea of a man having the right to go into her bedroom with her and shut the door.

“Do you have regular visitors? Family? Friends? Boyfriend?” His tone was abrupt.

Her chin edged up slightly and he saw a flare of irritation in those richly colored eyes. “Are you wondering how I’ll explain you?”

“Something like that.”

“These people next door are strangers. None of my friends have anything to do with them.”

“Are you so sure? Chances are they shop for groceries locally, pay their utility bills in town, wander the aisles in the hardware store, pump gas at the Arco or Shell station, stand in line to buy stamps at the post office. All they have to do is overhear a snatch of gossip. Maybe a word of concern about Lia, stuck with those feds doing a surveillance.”

She stared at him mulishly, but he could also tell that what he’d said had registered.

“What we need is zero gossip. No one can know we’re here.” He hesitated. “Our first and biggest problem is the kids. I presume they’re still in school.”

“The boys have been out the past two weeks. We’re close enough to the end of the school year, I think I’ll keep them home. You saw them. They’re not ready to go back.”

Good. Great. That left them with a teenage girl who would like nothing better than to have a dramatic story to share about the two federal agents spying on the neighbors from her foster mom’s attic.

“Sorrel…” Lia hesitated.

“Can you guarantee she’ll keep her mouth shut?”

She glared at him. “Maybe your advance guy should have nixed my household.”

Conall said bluntly, “He probably would have, if there’d been any other options at all.”

Her fingers flexed into fists, then relaxed. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Can you keep her home from school?”

“I have my teaching certificate. I can home-school the boys, but I’m not certified for secondary education.” She looked past him toward the mannequin. He could tell she was thinking. “I don’t actually think she’ll be a problem. Sorrel came to me only a month ago. She hasn’t made friends yet. She claims no one will even talk to her.”

He remembered middle school and high school all too well. “All the more reason for her to be delighted by an attention-grabbing story.”

Frustration showed on her face. “What do you suggest?”

“I’ll talk to her.” Seeing the way her expression changed, he corrected himself. “We’ll talk to her.”

“All right.” She looked from him to Henderson and back. “Is there anything else you need from me right now?”

“Maybe a key to the front door? Although we won’t be coming and going much. We don’t want to draw any attention.”

“I have extra keys.”

“You didn’t answer my question about visitors.”

Annoyance flared in her eyes again. “I gather I’m supposed to curtail all social life.”

“It would be helpful if you could conduct your social life elsewhere.” He was going for law enforcement formal, but had a bad feeling he was coming off sounding like an ass instead.

Yep. Her expression morphed into active dislike. “Consider it done.” With that, she turned and left them alone in the attic.

“Way to get the lady on our side,” Henderson remarked mildly.

Conall gave him a cold look and said, “Let’s get the rest of our crap.”

* * *

DUNCAN MACLACHLAN sat behind his desk and tried to concentrate on the document open on his computer. The Vehicle Impoundment and Inventory Procedure did not qualify as riveting reading, but he’d made it his mission to review and potentially revise all the department procedures and policies, from Field Training to Case Tracking. None had been reworked in at least ten years, and police work had changed, if only because of technological and scientific advances.

He kept thinking that if he hung on for another hour, he could take an early lunch with Jane and Fiona. He’d promised to bring takeout from the Snow Goose Deli to Jane’s store, Dance Dreams. Owning her own business meant his wife could take their now five-and-a-half-month-old daughter to work with her. They wouldn’t have to think about looking into preschools for at least another year.

Duncan realized he was smiling fatuously at the framed photo of his wife and daughter that sat on his desk. There were times he still didn’t understand how it had happened to him—falling in love, getting married, starting a family. He’d never intended to do any of those things. And here he was, still crazy about his wife, and head over heels in love with their daughter, a cherub with her uncle Niall’s red hair.

Damn, he thought, and focused his eyes again on the computer monitor.

When an officer impounds a vehicle, the officer shall complete the Vehicle Impound Report indicating the reason for impoundment in the narrative portion at the bottom of the form.

Did they absolutely have to use the word impound three times in one sentence?

Clarity, he reminded himself, was the goal, not elegant writing.

His phone rang, and feeling embarrassingly grateful for the interruption he grabbed it.

“MacLachlan.”

His administrative assistant cleared his throat. “Chief, you have a caller who says his name is, er, MacLachlan. Conall.”

Duncan’s youngest brother hadn’t spoken to him in over ten years. And he was calling now?

“Put him through,” he said brusquely. What could have happened that would have motivated his angry brother to be willing to talk to him? When he heard the click of the call being transferred, he said, “Conall, is it really you?”

“Yeah, it’s really me.” Startlingly, his voice hadn’t changed at all. It sounded a lot like Niall’s, maybe a little huskier.

“Damn.”

“That’s friendly.”

“You’ve caught me by surprise.”

“Yeah, I imagine I have.” There was a momentary pause. “I’m actually calling on official business. Believe it or not, I’m here in Stimson pursuing an investigation. I’m going to be conducting a surveillance within your city limits.”

Duncan stiffened. “Are you.”

“That’s the plan.”

“Do you have a warrant?”

“If I had a warrant, I’d go in and toss the place. What I have is permission from a home-owner to use her premises to watch her neighbor’s house until we see something interesting enough to justify that warrant.”

“Why is this the first I’m hearing about it?”

“I don’t know,” his brother said. “I got pulled in late. I’ve been working out of the Miami Division.”

“So Niall said.”

“I’m currently on loan to Seattle. They’ve got something big going and needed extra manpower.”

“Are you already here?” he asked.

“Yeah. Flew into Seattle last night.”

“Does Niall know?”

“He’s next on my list. I figured I owed you a courtesy call first.”

Because he was police chief, not because they were brothers. That stung, although it shouldn’t have after years of estrangement.

“All right,” Duncan said. “Do you plan to come by the office to give me the details?”

“I’d rather not. I’m trying to fly below the radar.” Conall was quiet for a moment. “I’m hoping we can meet somewhere that looks unofficial.”

“You can come by the house.” The words were out before he could recall them. “You know I’m not in the old place.”

“I did know that. You sent me a check for part of the proceeds when you sold it.”

He had. Duncan had insisted on splitting what he made on their parents’ house, little though it was after the mortgage was paid out. Still, it was the closest thing any of them had to an inheritance from their worthless parents.

“You can meet my wife.”

“I meant to come to Niall’s wedding.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

This silence was a long one, and heavy with everything that hadn’t been said in the past decade. Or perhaps that was in his imagination.

“I was wounded,” Conall said finally.

Duncan’s reaction was visceral. It had been his greatest fear that one of these days he’d get a call from some higher-up at the DEA letting him know that they were very sorry, but his brother Conall had been killed in the line of duty. Niall was the one who talked to Conall from time to time, and he’d admitted he sometimes thought their youngest brother had a death wish. At the very least, he was a cold-blooded son of a bitch who lived for the adrenaline rush risk-taking gave him. Duncan wondered how much else he was capable of feeling.

If that wasn’t a chilling thought.

“You didn’t tell Niall.”

“I didn’t want to worry him. Especially right before his wedding.” Conall laughed. “Both of you married. Blows me away.”

“You know I have a baby daughter now.”

“You sent me a birth announcement.”

“Thanks for the congratulation.”

“Did you expect one?” His brother’s voice hardened.

“No.” Shit. He bent his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Maybe hoped.” His own voice had come out rougher. “Whether you know it or not, I’ve missed you.”

It was so long before Conall responded, Duncan thought he’d lost him. No, I lost him twenty years ago, when I had to rein him in. Become the father he didn’t want.

“You think I don’t know what you did for us?” Tension threaded every word. “Of course I do. That doesn’t mean I have to like you.”

God. Damn. Duncan hadn’t hurt like this in a long time, not since he’d almost lost Jane before he could even tell her he loved her. He had to swallow before he could say with relative calm, “No, it doesn’t.”

“Oh, hell.” Conall sounded ragged. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

“It’s okay.”

“Listen, I have to talk to you about this investigation. Can we keep it to that?”

“Sure. Do you want to have coffee somewhere? Or shall we meet up on a deserted road?” he added dryly.

“No. It would look best if I do come to your house. Gives me an excuse to be in town.”

That ticked Duncan off some. Good to know he was worth something to this brother he’d raised from age twelve on.

“Fine.” He gave Conall his address. “Jane and I don’t go out much. I’m home by six most nights.”

“I’ll make it this evening.”

“Fine,” he said again, and hung up the phone.

He sat there for a long time, unable to decide how he felt about Conall’s call. Or maybe what he couldn’t decide was which emotion was paramount. Anger? Hurt? Resentment? Or the astonished gratitude that might even have been happiness, because he’d heard Conall’s voice again. He was going to see him.

Tonight.

He looked at the computer monitor and realized there was no way in hell he could concentrate on impoundment procedures now.

What he was going to do was take an extra early lunch and go spend time with his wife and baby girl.

* * *

CALLING NIALL WAS ANTICLIMACTIC. Conall almost didn’t, almost put it off until tomorrow. But he didn’t want his middle brother to hear from Duncan that he was in town. He and Niall had been…friends, maybe, for too long. Niall was the only family Conall had accepted after he left home. It was bad enough that Niall had cooled toward him since his wedding last fall. The one Conall had failed to show for.

He didn’t have to identify himself. Niall listened in silence to his brief explanation of his presence in Stimson.

“You’re in town” was said in disbelief.

“Weird but true.” He was actually sitting outside on Lia’s porch, on an Adirondack chair painted a glossy, cherry red.

“Does Duncan know?”

“Yes.”

Niall made a sound that might have been a laugh, might have been a grunt. “You planning to meet with him face-to-face?”

“I’m going by his place tonight. If anybody hears I’m in town, they need to think it’s to see the two of you. There can’t be any talk about this operation.”

“You’ll meet Jane.”

“Yeah.” Conall made himself say it. “I want to meet your Rowan, too.”

“I haven’t told you she’s pregnant. We, uh, didn’t want our kids too far apart in age.”

Our kids. He must be talking about Rowan’s two. And a baby. Another little MacLachlan. This was getting surreal, Conall thought. His brothers had gone and turned into average joes. How had that happened?

“I’m glad for you,” he made himself say, “if that’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want.”

No hesitation. The coolness was still there, too, the one he’d heard ever since he called to apologize for ducking out on the wedding. He’d told himself Niall wouldn’t give a damn if he wasn’t there, but Conall knew even then he’d lied to himself. He hadn’t ever been the one who’d made the effort to stay in touch, although Niall and he had gotten close after their father went to prison and their mother walked out on them. After Duncan sacrificed too damn much for them and turned into a tyrant. No, Niall was the one who had made the calls in the first few years. Who’d flown to wherever Conall was a few times. The one who seemed to need the connection.

Sitting here on the porch, gazing sightlessly at the old barn and the pasture and woods that lay beyond it, Conall had an uncomfortable insight.

He’d needed that connection, too. Maybe needed it more than did Niall, who had held on to a relationship with Duncan. Conall hadn’t admitted it to himself, but he’d been grateful every time he heard his brother’s voice.

He had somebody. One person who cared.

And he hadn’t realized how much he cared.

This unexpected homecoming, he thought, was going to be a bitch.

CHAPTER THREE

LAST NIGHT LIA had come upstairs, knocked briskly and then set two covered plates on the floor along with a couple of cold beers. “Dinner,” she’d said then left. If she’d been a waitress, she wouldn’t get much in the way of tips with that attitude.

This morning Jeff had gone downstairs and come back reporting that she made damn good waffles. By the time Conall got down to the kitchen, it was apparently closed. He found cereal in the cupboard and called it good, eating a solitary meal in the dining room.

They’d fended for themselves for lunch.

Tonight, he didn’t want to show up at Duncan’s anywhere around dinnertime; he hadn’t been invited and wasn’t sure he’d have accepted if he had been. So when Henderson said, “I had a decent breakfast and you didn’t. Why don’t you go down and eat with them?” he nodded.

“I’ll bring something up if Lia doesn’t.”

He left Henderson scanning the neighboring property with a scope that had both night-vision and digital filming capability. So far, nothing had happened over there. Literally nothing. No one had so much as stepped outside, although someone had to be letting the dogs—turned out there were a pair of Dobermans—in and out, or was at least feeding them. Tomorrow Conall planned to do some prowling. He wanted to see the back of the property, too.

This view was ideal, but unfortunately the neighbors were keeping their blinds drawn. Shadows occasionally passed in front of the windows. Any vehicles were hidden in the triple car attached garage, which had a single window covered inside with what looked like a heavy tarp.

The dogs definitely complicated things. He or Henderson could have slipped a few listening devices beside windows or on the porch if they could have gotten close enough. Somehow he suspected the Dobies wouldn’t prove to be tail-wagging friendly.

You wanted a challenge, he reminded himself. Consider yourself lucky.

Conall went downstairs to find Sorrel setting the table. A baby had already been placed in the high chair. The little girl had spiky black hair and eyes almost as dark. Her cheeks were fat and she grinned at him with no inhibitions at all, banging a spoon hard on the tray in emphasis. He retreated hastily, going to the kitchen where Lia stood over the stove, from which really good smells emitted. She glanced at him, expression shuttered.

“Are you eating with us?”

“If that’s okay.”

“Is Jeff coming down, too?”

Jeff. Good friends now, were they?

“No. With rare exceptions, one of us will be at that window all the time.”

She took a tray of big rolls out of the oven. Hunger pangs hit Conall and he had to swallow.

“Sorrel,” she called, “set a place for Conall, please.”

So he was on a first-name basis with her, too. Ridiculously, he was pleased.

The answer floated back. “Okay.”

“Here.” Lia had dumped the rolls in a huge basket and thrust it at him. “Will you put these on the table?”

Without checking to see whether he obeyed, she disappeared toward the living room. A couple of minutes later, she steered the two boys ahead of her into the dining room and set the toddler she’d carried on her hip onto a plastic booster seat at one place.

“What’s for dinner?” one of the boys asked. Brendan, Conall thought.

“Sloppy joes.” Her eyes cut to Conall. “Nothing fancy.”

“It smells amazing,” he said honestly.

Her expression didn’t soften. She finished bringing the food to the table, including a bowl of peas. “Picked an hour ago,” she informed everyone.

Conall waited and sat at the same time she did, feeling some alien need to display good manners. She—or maybe it was Sorrel—had placed him at the opposite end of the table from Lia. Mother and father, children ranged between them.

He couldn’t remember sitting down to a family dinner like this since he was… Good Lord, maybe seven or eight. Before one of Dad’s prison terms. After that, nothing was ever the same. One thing he did know, though, was that conversation should be flying and the kids more animated than these.

Baby Julia was the only cheerful one, banging and chattering unintelligibly. Little Arturo, chubby, too, focused entirely on his food and didn’t say a word. Neither did either of the older boys at first. Sorrel watched Conall surreptitiously, blushing when his gaze caught hers a couple of times.

They passed around the food—those homemade rolls straight out of the oven, sloppy joe sauce to go over them, and peas. He’d forgotten how good peas fresh from the garden could be.

Lia presided over the meal with grace and warmth, refusing to let the kids stay entirely closed off. Brendan, it turned out, was the older one. She got him talking about the Transformers movie and why the theme appealed to him. Conall was pretty sure he’d never considered that movies had themes when he was that age.

“Do you like it?” the boy asked him shyly.

“Yeah, actually I enjoyed all three of the movies,” Conall admitted. “Not that they’re—”

Lia shook her head, her gaze fierce.

“Uh, they’re fun,” he said. “You like ’em, too, Walker? Or do you watch what Brendan says you have to watch?”

The younger boy looked confused. After a minute he said softly, “I don’t care what we watch.”

Oh, geez. “I had—have—two older brothers. I pretended I liked whatever they liked because I wanted to hang around with them.”

It was the first time Walker had actually seemed to see him. “I like to hang around with Bren.”

“He seems like he’s pretty good to you.” Conall found himself speaking gently.

The boy nodded.

“We’re brothers,” Brendan said.

“I can tell. You look alike.” He hesitated. “Lia told me about your mom. I’m sorry.”

They both ducked their heads. Walker blinked furiously. Oh, hell. He’d probably blown it. Why hadn’t he kept his mouth shut?

And then he opened it again. “When I was twelve, I lost my parents.” A fireball of alarm exploded in his chest. What in God’s name was he doing? But something on those two boys’ faces when they looked up drove him on. He cleared his throat. “They didn’t die. My dad went to prison and my mother decided she didn’t want the responsibility of kids anymore. She packed up and left.”

There was an appalled silence. Conall didn’t let himself see the expression on Lia’s face.

“She left?” Brendan whispered. “On purpose?”

“Yeah. I’m guessing you know your mom would have done anything in the world not to leave you.”

He could see in their eyes that it was true.

If he’d been into greeting card moments, he would have gone on and said, You’re lucky because you’ll be able to remember your whole lives how much your mother loved you. Fortunately, he wasn’t, and he didn’t.

But they understood anyway. After a moment they both nodded.

It was Sorrel who asked, “How come your dad got put in prison?”

“He sold illegal drugs.”

“My friend Rochelle’s does sometimes, too. At least, she thinks so. She hasn’t seen him in a long time.”

“I haven’t seen mine since I was twelve.”

“Is he still in prison?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Did you have to go to a foster home, like us?”

Conall looked around the table. They were all staring at him except Arturo, who kept eating, messy but getting the job done. Julia beamed at Conall, her four teeth cute accents in that broad smile. The other kids had expressions that said, Are you one of us?

He shook his head. “I told you I have two brothers. My oldest had turned eighteen. Mom and Dad let him keep the house. He got a job and took care of my other brother and me.” He was getting a lump in his throat. Man, this was stupid, but right this minute he couldn’t help seeing the past in a different light. Yes, he knew he’d been lucky to have Duncan, but seeing the faces of these kids brought it into sharp focus.

He would have gone to a foster home if Duncan hadn’t given up his dream of going off to college, Conall knew. Or his stay would have been short. He’d been too big a screw-up, as young as he was. He’d already stolen a car and gotten caught. He’d gotten so drunk a couple of times, he’d blacked out. He’d smoked marijuana, tried cocaine. He’d have ended up in a group home if he’d gotten his act together at all, in lockup if he hadn’t.

Dad and me.

He didn’t like acknowledging it, but he owed Duncan big-time. Not the mood Conall wanted to be in for this reunion.

“What kind of job did he get?” Brendan asked.

Conall blinked. “Ah…construction. He’d been doing it summers anyway. He managed to get his college degree, too, mostly with evening classes. Duncan was really motivated.” He heard how sardonic that sounded. My brother who could move mountains.

“Duncan?” Lia said sharply. Her eyes were wide and astonished. “I should have realized.”

“Realized?” he said warily.

“Your brother is the police chief.”

“He’s a cop?” Sorrel exclaimed.

“Yeah, he’s a cop.” Didn’t she realize he was, too? “So is my other brother, Niall. He’s a detective with the police force here in town.” Conall could feel how crooked his smile was. Ah, the ironies of life. “Our dad was in and out of prison, and all three of us went into law enforcement.”

The teenager stared at him with open astonishment. “But…”

“We don’t have to follow in our parents’ footsteps, Sorrel,” Lia said. “I think that’s what Conall is telling you.”

Actually, it wasn’t, but he didn’t argue. What had he been trying to tell her? He should know, but didn’t. Truth was, he’d stumbled into law enforcement, not chosen it as Duncan had. Conall had looked for something exciting, out of the ordinary. What he’d found suited him perfectly. He was good at undercover work because he was a hell of an actor. Always had been. The job didn’t require him to make emotional connections; in fact, his ability to feel nothing was useful. Going deep for months at a time was hard if you identified too closely with your role. If you started caring about the people you were there to bring down. That wasn’t a problem he’d ever had.

He hadn’t set out to do battle with all drug dealers because they symbolized his father. He wasn’t aiming for atonement. The idea was ridiculous. You had to care, if only in a negative way, to draw in a face on the paper target at the shooting range that you intended to pump full of bullet holes. Conall didn’t do that. His paper targets stayed faceless.

He was aware, though, of some tension he didn’t understand. He was frowning, he realized. Probably because thinking about either of his parents always made him edgy.

Then don’t.

Easier when he was far, far away from his not-so-beloved hometown.

He tuned in to discover that the others were talking, sounding more normal than they had earlier. Lia laughed at something Sorrel said, and he found himself staring. The sound was unexpectedly throaty and…honest. Most people tried to rein themselves in when they laughed. They didn’t surrender to the moment. Her head fell back and she shook with it. Amusement seemed to light her from within. His body tightened in automatic reaction and he made himself look away.

She was still smiling when she scanned the faces at the table. “Blueberry cobbler, anyone?”

Conall almost groaned. He’d intended to take off, but…homemade cobbler? “With ice cream?” he asked hopefully.

She laughed again, the first genuinely warm look she’d ever aimed directly at him. “Vanilla.”

“Then wow. Yes for me.”

Chortling nonsense sounds, Julia whacked her spoon on the tray. She was already a mess, sloppy joe sauce smeared on her fat cheeks. He could only imagine what blueberries would do to her.

Turned out Lia was smarter than that. The baby only got ice cream, her brother ice cream with a few berries stirred in. They both seemed satisfied. Everyone else ate with gusto and enthusiasm, even Walker and Brendan. It was hard to be depressed when every bite you put in your mouth was bliss on the spoon. This, he thought, was Lia’s talent. Or one of them, anyway. The ability to soothe and inspire and heal by the food she put on the table.

And with her smiles, too, unbelievably gentle for all the kids, a little different for Sorrel, as if with the tilt of her lips she was implying something conspiratorial: we girls are in this together. Her smiles for him were considerably more cautious, conventional. Conall didn’t blame her. She should be cautious around him.

He scraped his bowl clean and resisted the temptation to lick it even cleaner, then grinned. “That was the best thing I’ve eaten since I can remember. Thank you.”

Unless it was his imagination, a tiny bit of color touched her cheeks. “You’re welcome.”

“If I may be excused, I’m off to see my brother.”

“Duncan?” Walker asked.

“Yeah. Duncan.”

“Oh.” The boy ducked his head. When everyone waited, he asked, “Will he ever come see you here?”

“Ah…probably not.” Definitely, hell no, not.

The boy’s shoulders seemed to sag slightly. “Oh. Okay.”

Conall was still asking himself what that was about when he stuck his head upstairs to tell Henderson he was going, then walked out to the Suburban. What would Walker think if Conall told him that, after all his big brother had done for him, he hadn’t spoken to him in years? No mystery there—the kid wouldn’t understand.

Conall didn’t totally understand.

Brooding, he hit the first pothole out on the gravel road too fast, and thought for a minute he’d broken an axle and maybe a tooth.

Goddamn it, concentrate. This was a job. He hadn’t come home to muck around in the past.

Duncan, he discovered, had a pretty fancy place. Nothing cookie-cutter about it—angles and planes and shingled siding, very Northwest. Spectacular garden, too. The wife’s influence, maybe?

Conall didn’t suffer from nerves, but he felt a few twinges after he rang the doorbell. He rotated his shoulders to reduce the tension there was no reason to feel.

Even so, when the door opened he was balanced on the balls of his feet as if anticipating an attack. Ready for the worst, but making sure his body language looked relaxed. Acting.

When he saw the man in the opening, Conall thought, Damn. He would have known Duncan anywhere, but he’d changed, too. Aged. Well, of course he’d aged, but Conall was shocked to see that he had threads of silver in his dark hair. Not many, but a gathering at each temple. Of course, he was heading toward forty now.

In fact, he was close to the age of their father when they’d last seen him. And…the same age Mom had been? Was it possible?

The craggy face that looked more like Conall’s own than he was comfortable acknowledging was almost as expressionless as he remembered. But…not quite. He’d loosened up in some indefinable way.

“Conall.” He stepped back. “Come in.”

Conall dipped his head and walked in. He followed his brother past the living room to the kitchen, where a woman closed the dishwasher then turned to study him.

“Another MacLachlan,” she said with a small laugh. “Nobody could mistake you.”

He stiffened at that, but only said, “You must be Jane.”

“Yes. I’ll leave you two to talk, but I wanted to meet you.” She smiled and came to him, her hand outstretched. “Hello, Conall.”

She was a beauty. Not like Lia, but definitely classy. She moved like a dancer, toes slightly turned out, had a mass of glossy brown hair bundled carelessly at her nape, and deep blue eyes that were friendly but also watchful.

Suddenly amused, Conall suspected that if Duncan hadn’t been present, she’d have issued dire warnings. Hurt my husband and you’re dead meat. Strangely, he was pleased. She loved his big tough brother, who was a lucky son of a bitch.

Conall took her hand, but instead of shaking it he drew her to him and kissed her cheek. “It’s a pleasure, Jane.”

She eyed his deliberately charming smile with suspicion as she withdrew, heightening his amusement. Yeah, she might even be a match for Duncan. Go figure.

She excused herself, leaving the two men alone.

“Have you eaten?” Duncan asked.

“Yes.”

“Coffee?”

“Thanks.” He sat on one of the breakfast bar stools and rested his elbows on the counter. “Nice place.”

Duncan nodded.

“Baby asleep?”

“Yeah, she just went down for the night.”

“There’s a baby at the place I’m staying.” He didn’t know why he’d said that. “Eight months, I think. Happy little thing.”

“Fiona isn’t quite that.”

He knew exactly how old Duncan’s daughter was. He’d looked at the baby announcement in amazement when it arrived, and later the one photo Duncan sent. Until today, Duncan never commented on the fact that he didn’t hear back from Conall. Into the vacuum he kept sending a very occasional letter, things like the wedding invitation and then the birth announcement, sometimes a Christmas card. Conall had never figured out why he bothered.

Now…he thought maybe they were a trail of bread crumbs, offering a way home. The idea unsettled him, maybe because here he was.

Not home. Not anymore.

It hadn’t been in a long time. The trouble was, he didn’t exactly have a home. He’d never made one.

Didn’t want one.

“I’d like to see her.” Strangely, he realized he really did. See what MacLachlan blood wrought in the next generation.

“How long are you going to be around?”

“I don’t know. It depends on what we find. Or don’t find.”

Duncan inclined his head. He brought two mugs of coffee to the bar and sat, too, a couple of stools away from Conall. “So tell me about it.”

They talked then, both professionals, Conall expressing some of his irritation with the vagueness of the information he’d been given. “You know anything about the people in that house?” he asked.

His brother shook his head. “No. The owner does something in the oil business. He worked up at the refinery in Anacortes, but I hear he got transferred to Texas, and couldn’t sell the house as quick as he needed to. Real estate is slow right now.”

Real estate was slow right now everywhere.

“So he and his wife are renting the place out for now. It can’t be cheap, that’s a big house.”

“You actually know it,” Conall said slowly.

Duncan’s eyes, razor sharp, met his. “I’ve driven or walked every street in my city.”

“You didn’t herniate a disk driving that one?”

Duncan grinned. “A few potholes? Are you such a city boy now you can’t deal with ’em?”

“These damn things have to be a foot deep. I’d kick in some bucks to the cause of filling them, except I don’t want Lia to have to go knocking on her neighbors’ doors right now.”

“Lia?” His brother frowned. “Lia Woods? That’s who you’re staying with?”

“That’s her.”

“Foster kids?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Huh.” Duncan became pensive.

“What? You know her?” He set down his cup hard enough to splash. “You had a thing with her?”

That earned him a startled look. “God, no. I’ve never met the woman. At least, I don’t think I have. No, I heard something.” He hesitated. “Probably nothing I should repeat.”

Conall snorted. “Hell, no, you’re not doing that. You think I can’t be close-mouthed?”

“I don’t want you, as a federal agent, to feel like you have to do something about it.”

About…what? He sifted through the possibilities. Lia wouldn’t still be licensed if this had anything to do with the children in her care. Say, an accident, or alleged abuse, or…

“She’s got more kids than we were told she had.”

Duncan’s gaze, steady, met his. “Hispanic?”

“Yeah.” Conall laughed. “Oh, man. They’re illegals.”

“I, uh, heard a rumor and made the decision not to check it out. Most of the time we don’t get involved in immigration issues. I don’t want anyone to be afraid to talk to us because they think we’ll get them deported.”

Conall nodded. Maybe that was why Arturo hadn’t spoken at all at the dinner table. If he was Spanish-speaking, he probably hadn’t understood a word anyone said.

“I assume the county or whoever licenses her doesn’t know this.”

“I assume not. And that’s if it’s true. It may not be.”

“Oh, I’d bet it is. Phillips didn’t know anything about the two littlest kids she has, except that she told him they were real temporary. He figured it was a receiving home thing.” Conall laughed again. “No wonder she hasn’t been as warm and welcoming as she could be.”

“She can’t be thrilled with the arrangement anyway. She’s got two men moving in with her. Must be awkward as hell. You’re extra work, could be a bad influence on the kids. Worse yet, what if the bad guys next door learn you’re there? Your presence could put those kids in danger.”

Conall couldn’t argue. In fact, offhand he couldn’t think of an upside for Lia. When he thought about it, he guessed maybe she’d been decent to the two strange men she’d been saddled with.

Should he try to reassure her that they weren’t interested in immigration issues, either? Was there any way to do that without letting her know that she was on the local law enforcement radar? Without scaring the crap out of her?

No. There wasn’t.

He’d keep his mouth shut, he decided.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” Duncan said. “We could maybe find a reason to knock on their door without making them suspicious.”

“Not yet. Sooner or later they’ll show themselves. If we can get some photos, identify faces, then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”

“Okay,” Duncan said.

Conall recognized a signal and slid off the stool. “I’d better get back.”

“Jane will want to have you to dinner.”

Conall depended on his instincts, developed over years of perilous undercover work. What he didn’t often do was pause to think, How do I feel about that? His stride checked briefly when he discovered he didn’t recognize what he was feeling. Something was going on inside him, but he didn’t know what. It seemed that he was okay with the idea of socializing with his brother and sister-in-law. And that was worrisome. This whole experience was like being flipped upside down and given a good hard shake. Things weren’t settling back into the right places.

Remembering the look of warning his sister-in-law had given him, he said, “I’d actually like that. I told Niall I want to meet his wife, too. And their kids.”

“We’ll do a family get-together.” Did Duncan sound as bemused as Conall felt?

Maybe.

Needing to get out of there, Conall departed after only a few more words, all polite and shallow as a coat of paint.

Where was the bone-deep anger? The resentment? The intense gratitude he’d hated most of all?

Nowhere to be found.

There was a whole mess of stuff going on inside him, but none of it was familiar. That left him unsteady, a stranger to himself. Not a sensation he liked.

* * *

LIA DIDN’T MAKE IT OUT to feed the horses until dark. The younger kids were all in bed. Having Sorrel was something of a blessing right now, as Lia trusted her enough to believe she’d respond to sounds of distress. Otherwise Lia wouldn’t be able to linger outside, as she was doing tonight.

She’d quartered an apple and brought that out, too. She loved the feel of the soft lips on her palm, the whiskers tickling her. Noses butted her chest and she laughed aloud.

Eventually she returned to the porch, where she’d probably hear any cries as she’d left the living room window open to the night air. She chose to sit on the porch with her feet on the top step, her arms wrapping her knees. She didn’t even kid herself that she was here to enjoy the solitude.

She was waiting for Special Agent Conall MacLachlan.

He wasn’t quite what she’d first thought. Although she wasn’t sure what that was. He’d both stirred something in her and scared her from first sight. She told herself she didn’t like him.

The other agent—Jeff Henderson—seemed like an okay guy. Almost too normal to be a federal agent. When she’d asked at breakfast this morning about his family, he had whipped out a photo of a blonde woman who was plain but nice-looking and two kids. The boy looked a lot like his dad, which probably meant his hairline would recede early, too. Jeff glowed with pride.

MacLachlan, though, was another story. He was…maybe not handsome, but definitely sexy. The air all but shimmered around him from a mixture of charisma and testosterone. She could see even Sorrel reacting to it, which worried Lia. That was one of the reasons she wanted to talk to him privately. The boys were another. He’d awakened their interest, which could be good for them or very, very bad.

Mostly, she wanted to know who he was. If that story he’d told at dinner was true.

When he’d first arrived, she thought he was cold. He had a tempting smile that didn’t reach his gray eyes. His expressions were fleeting and hard to read. He was an enigma, and she’d been forced to take him into her house. She didn’t see how she could prevent contact between him and the kids.

And then, what did he do at dinner but discombobulate her utterly. He’d talked to the boys as if…well, as if they were people. Not the way most adults dealt with children. He’d been kind and honest—she hoped—and known exactly the right thing to say.

Lia wanted to know how that could be. Jeff had told her his partner wasn’t married. “No kids,” he’d said, shaking his head as if baffled that a man wouldn’t want them. If Conall had the background he said he did, how did he know what Bren and Walker needed to hear?

Please, God, it wasn’t all an act designed to gain their confidence, to get them to talk to him. About her. What if he wasn’t with the Drug Enforcement Agency at all, but was really with Immigration? Or cooperating with them? She shivered and hugged her knees harder.

I’m paranoid. That’s all. Surely nobody would care all that much about what she was doing.

Still. Why, oh why, was it taking so long to find a place for Julia and Arturo to go? Didn’t Mateo understand how dangerous her situation was? The whole network could be at risk.

The deep sound of an engine made her stiffen. As she saw headlights turn into her drive, she was glad she hadn’t turned on the outside light. She’d have felt unbearably exposed.

It wasn’t too late to go in, before he saw her.

No. This was a good time to talk to him, to feel him out, and she had determined to seize it.

The Suburban rolled to a stop by the barn. A moment later it went dark and silent. The door slammed, and Conall strolled across the yard toward the house. One of the horses whickered softly and Conall’s head turned but he kept walking.

She knew the exact moment he saw her.

CHAPTER FOUR

HE DIDN’T SAY anything until he reached the foot of the steps. She could see him better than he could probably see her, as light shining through the living room window fell on his face as he stopped.

His voice was deep and quiet. “Enjoying some peace and quiet?”

“Something like that. I actually came out to feed the horses.”

“Kids okay?”

She liked that he asked, but didn’t trust him. “All asleep except Sorrel.”

His shoulders moved slightly. “Teenagers tend to be night owls.”

“She’s only thirteen.”

“She looks older,” he said thoughtfully.

“She, um, acts older than that in some ways. Younger in others.”

“Is that a warning?”

Lia frowned. “I suppose it is. She’s rather drawn to men.”

“Ah.”

She hesitated, unsure whether to say more. Sorrel was in counseling. Lia didn’t like exposing her kids’ problems to anyone unnecessarily. Surely neither of the two men, federal agents, would behave inappropriately toward a thirteen-year-old girl.

After a moment, she said, “What I really wanted to talk to you about is the boys.”

Hearing how aggressively that had come out, she winced. His expression had been reserved; now it closed completely. Bang. All access denied. She’d blown it.

“I’m sorry,” she said hastily. “That didn’t come out the way I meant it to. The thing is, they’re…vulnerable.”

“And I should have kept my mouth shut at dinnertime.” His tone was resigned. “Understood.”

“No.” She bent her head and bumped it on her crossed arms, then lifted it again. “It’s not that at all. Everything you said was…right. They opened up to you.”

He stared at her. She imagined he’d tensed, but couldn’t be sure. He was very, very good at hiding what he was thinking.

“Okay,” he said slowly.

“I don’t want you being nice to them if you don’t mean it.” She’d gone from belligerent to fierce and didn’t regret it. “If you keep being nice, they’re going to—” She had to swallow, and still her voice came out small and cracked. “Depend on you.”

“And I won’t be around for long.”

“It’s not that,” she said again. “I won’t be a permanent part of their lives, either.” Why did saying that out loud make her feel as if her heart was breaking in two? Kids came, kids left. That’s what she did. “They know you’re only here for a while. What would be bad is if you talk to them, spend time with them, and then blow them off.”

“I see.” He paused. “Let me think about it, okay?”

“Okay.” She hugged her knees harder. “Was what you told them true? About your parents and your brother?”

Still he didn’t move, his expression didn’t change. His eyes were too shadowed in the limited light for her to read them, assuming she could have.

“Yes.”

Lia nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you, but sorry isn’t necessary. I haven’t been a kid in a long time.”

She wondered if he’d ever been a kid after his mom walked out. Or was he even before that? His couldn’t exactly have been an ideal family.

“Even so.”

“All right.” He finally put a foot on the first step. “You planning to stay out here long?”

“Maybe a few more minutes.”

“Do you mind if I sit down?”

Her pulse stuttered. “No, of course not.”

He settled at the top of the steps a few feet away, leaning against the post opposite hers. He stretched out his long legs, looking relaxed and comfortable. For some odd reason, Lia had a suspicion he was neither.

“Having us here must be a pain.”

“An inconvenience,” she corrected.

His mouth twitched. “Is that all?”

“A worry.”

His gaze suddenly felt more intense. “Why?”

Because I’m doing something illegal and I’m afraid you’ll notice? “Because I have to think about your influence on the kids, of course. Sorrel and the boys all have big problems. I know I can’t shield them completely, but I try.”

“So I’ve noticed.” He sounded amused. “The glare you gave me at dinner was a clue. Why wasn’t I supposed to criticize the movie?”

“Their mom gave them the DVDs. They’ve been watching them over and over.”

“Ah. Gotcha.” He thought about it. “There are worse movies they could be clinging to.”

“Bambi?”

He grunted; maybe laughed. “Yeah, that one would suck.”

They sat in silence for a minute or two, Lia gazing out into the darkness, Conall—she thought—still looking at her. The sounds of the night were quiet, familiar: the soft, distant hoot of an owl, a whicker from one of the horses, the rustle of grass. None of it felt peaceful, not with him here. Not knowing why he was here.

Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer and started talking. “I take it you grew up locally. Are you glad to be home?”

“No.” For the first time, that deep, husky voice sounded harsh.

Startled, Lia turned her head. “Your memories are that bad?”

“Yes.”

Okay. She groped for a response and came up with nothing better than another, “I’m sorry.”

For the first time, he reacted visibly. Not much, only shifting, but the movement was jerky for a man who customarily moved with the lithe ease of a hunting cat.

“I shouldn’t have said that.” He inhaled; let it out audibly. “Oh, hell. There’s nothing secret about it. Being back here has unsettled me, that’s all.”

“You went to see your brother, didn’t you? Did something happen that bothered you?” she asked, genuinely puzzled.

He laughed, but the sound wasn’t pleasant. “I haven’t seen Duncan since I graduated from college, and that was a long time ago. I never intended to set eyes on him again. It’s my luck that I got stuck with this operation, and that Duncan is the police chief.”

“Never see him again?” She was hung up on that part. “But…you said he raised you. You made it sound like a good thing.”

“It was a good thing. He was noble.” Bitterness roughened his voice now. “You don’t have to tell me. Duncan MacLachlan always does the right thing, whatever the sacrifice he has to make. He saved my ass. I know that.” He was breathing hard. “Oh, hell,” he said again. “I shouldn’t have gotten started.”

“I don’t mind listening if you want to talk.”

He was quiet so long she thought he would rise to his feet any moment and say good-night. And really, why would he talk to her? They were strangers.

But Conall shocked her by speaking after a minute. “He did save me. I’m not kidding about that. I wasn’t like Brendan and Walker. I wasn’t a good kid who could have gone to a foster home like yours. Nobody would have wanted me. I cut classes, smoked pot, got drunk, was in constant fights. I stole a car before my twelfth birthday.”

Shocked, she was the one to stare now.

“I guess you could say I was acting out.” He laughed again. This time he almost managed to sound amused. “My middle brother, Niall, wasn’t much better. I guess Mom ditched us for a good reason.”

“No,” Lia whispered. The single word held so much fury, it burned her throat. “No. What she did is awful.”

He leaned his head against the post, and she saw his eyes close for a moment. “Yeah. You’re right. It was.”

Lia was beginning to feel cramped, but she couldn’t make herself stretch out her legs. She needed to stay…contained, to hold herself tightly together. Stupid, but she couldn’t make herself move.

“My point was that neither Niall nor I rallied willingly behind big brother.” Conall’s voice came out low now. “Oh, we were good as gold at first. For a couple of months.”

“Scared.”

“Oh, yeah. After that, we…challenged him.” Strangely, Conall was smiling now. “He figured the only way he could get us to toe the line was to scare the shit out of us. So he did.”

She stiffened in outrage. “How…?”

“Doesn’t matter. He didn’t hurt us, if that’s what you’re asking. But you have to understand, neither of our parents had ever bothered being authority figures. All of a sudden Duncan, who was supposed to be one of us, our brother and buddy, became this…” He paused and she knew what word he was about to say. “This tyrant. I didn’t take it well.”

“What about your brother?”

“He wasn’t so happy about it, either, not at first. What I never understood was that instead of rejecting big brother the despot the way I did, he gradually went over to the dark side.” Another laugh. “Or maybe it was the glorious and good side, I’m not sure. The two of them became friends again. They stood up for each other at their weddings. Niall’s a cop, too. I said that, didn’t I? But him, he followed in Duncan’s footsteps.”

“Didn’t you?”

His head clunked a couple of times against the post. “Not long ago I’d have said ‘hell no’ to that, too. Now…” He shrugged. “Truth is, I don’t know. I’m not exactly in the same line of work as they are.”

Which was splitting hairs, but she suspected he knew that.

“I don’t know,” he repeated. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

“I can understand that.” She knew why she did what she did, but didn’t like to dwell on the past, either.

They sat in a considerably more peaceful silence for a bit. Finally he asked, “What about you, Lia Woods? Did you grow up around here?”

“Down in the Kent Valley. My parents have moved recently to Arizona. I ended up here because my great-aunt on my dad’s side didn’t have any kids and left me her house when she died. I could have sold it and gone on with my life, but it seemed like the perfect opportunity to do something I’d always wanted to and take in kids.”

“You don’t hold an outside job?”

She shook her head and felt her braid bump on her back. “Not anymore. Some foster parents do, of course, but I tend to take the really troubled kids. Or ones like Walker and Brendan who need some special attention. While their mother was in the hospital, we spent as much time there as we were allowed. A nine-to-five job wouldn’t have been compatible with what they needed from me.”

“What’s next for them?”

That question surprised her. She’d expected something along the lines of Why foster?

“They’ll go up for adoption. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, their chances aren’t great. They’d be better if they get split up, but…God. I can’t imagine. They need each other.”

With quiet force, he said, “It would be an abomination to tear them apart.”

She swallowed emotion trying to spill out. “Yes. It’s not in my hands, although I’ll express myself forcefully if anyone suggests they be separated. I may never know, though. Usually I foster fairly short term. They might get sent elsewhere. It’s possible they’d thrive in a more typical family situation, or that their caseworker will decide they need a father figure. I tend to get more girls than boys.”

“Will they survive one more change?”

“I don’t know,” Lia whispered. “They’re…withdrawing.” It took her a few deep breaths to calm herself. “You got further with them tonight at dinner than I ever do. So maybe they do need a father figure.”

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