Out of the Dark (23 page)

CHAPTER T
HIRTY

Belize

Two weeks later

Brenda stretched and sat up. She yawned then reached for a bottle of water in the ice bucket next to her beach chair. “We having fun yet?” Emily asked.

“Oh God,” Brenda groaned. “I’m ready to go home, except I don’t think my stomach will let me fly.”

“I warned you. But would you listen? No.” Emily laughed. It sounded strange to her ears after so much sorrow. “Never party with the natives. They’re better at it.”

“Now I remember you saying that.” Brenda squinted over at her. “About the time you finished off your third
Margarita.”

“The difference is
I stopped there. Unlike someone I know. Someone who spent most of the night hugging the toilet.”

Brenda put her sunglasses back on. “Shut up.” She rolled over with a moan. “When did t
he sun get so frickin’ bright?”

“Always has been.”

Brenda sat up and gulped more water. Emily looked out at the Caribbean coast and smiled. The turquois water, the warm sunlight, and the swaying palm trees were just what the broken-heart doctor ordered.

She’d
finished a warm stone massage, a yoga class and thirty minutes in the sauna. Her body felt relaxed and renewed, while her heart struggled to mend.

“I’m glad I punched your sister.”

“I know you are.”

“She deserved it.”

“Definitely.”

Brenda looked at her. “I wish I’d punched Stanley too. And choked those two dogs.”

“No one has the right to hurt a dog.”

“Okay,
maybe just super glue their mouths shut.”

Emily laughed. “Poor doggies. They don’t know they sound so
obnoxious.”

Brenda rubbed her face. “I guess I should be glad she didn’t sue me.”

“I wouldn’t let her do that.”

“Did you get in touch with that guy? The one you did all the investigating on?”

“Yeah, I did and I think Mac is going to be very happy.”

“What about you? Are you ever going to be happy?”

“I’m working on it. I’m smart enough to know when to walk away. Mac’s a great guy, but he can’t be my guy.”

“Love stinks.”

“You’re right. Love only wins the day in movies. In real life, love is elusive and damn hard on the heart.”

“Maybe we expect too much from men?”

“As opposed to marrying the first guy wearing pants?”

“I agree
. Let’s keep our standards high.”

Emily dropped her glass and rolled out of her chair, laughing.

“What’s the deal?”

“We have high standards? What about Howard?”
Emily asked.

“Howard was a mistake.”

“Howard was a thief.”

“In my defense, I didn’t know that until my brother ran a check on him.”

“How smart can he be to date a detective’s sister?”

“Duh.” Brenda joined in the fun. “He looked so surprised when Kenny showed up at the door with an arrest warrant.”

“You told me he peed his pants.”

Brenda turned hysterical. “He did.”

“And there is always me with Stanley. I can’t believe I was that desperate.”

“I don’t think you were desperate. In a strange kind of weird way, Stanley isn’t so bad.”

“You’re right.”

“Until he took up with your bitch of a sister. That’s so low, he’s crawling on his belly.”

“Poor Stanley wasn’t the first man to fall for Victoria’s charm. I think she’s taken every guy I’ve ever dated.”

“
Then why didn’t you smack her?”

“I guess because she’s the only family I have.”

“That’s sad. Are you still going to their wedding?”

“I guess.”

“I’m not.”

“I don’t think you are going to be invited.”

“Good. I’d throw rocks at them.”

Emily tried to put Ma
c behind her. She and Brenda had been in Belize for four days. Tomorrow they’d fly back home and life resumed
as normal. As if it could.

Emily picked up her cell phone and listened to Mac’s voice mail again.

“Instead of playing with your phone, call the guy, for crying out loud.” Brenda slipped on her sandals and walked toward the waves. “You have nothing to lose.”

“Just my pride.”

Brenda stopped and looked back at her. “How does that make you feel in the middle of the night?”

“He only wants to apologize and I don’t want to hear it. The man doesn’t love me. He just wants to know I didn’t commit
suicide or something.”

“The lies we tell ourselves
.”

Emily pushed the delete button and erased Mac’s message asking her to call hi
m back. It had been days. Time she got back to her life.

Frank had taken care of getting her another house, and had put Mr. Dooley in
charge of restoring everything back to normal. While Emily hadn’t put out a dime, somehow whatever she needed or wanted magically appeared.

When her phone rang, Emily jumped. The caller ID was one of her
clients in France. She’d been expecting the call. Next Monday she had a corporate meeting in Paris.

***

Bedford, TX

Home from
a recent assignment, Mac locked the door and looked around his silent apartment. After putting his gear away and showering, he’d flipped on the TV for another lonely night. A knock sounded at the door. In an instant Mac’s heart went from a normal beat into Atrial Fibrillation.

Em?

With her gone, his life had returned to normal on the outside. Inside, it was empty as a spent chamber. His emotions felt like they had been spit out of a blender. He wanted to go after her, but couldn’t. Besides she’d made her feelings known by not returning the one call that had taken him all day to gather the nerve to make.

Mac opened the door and a tall man stood on his apartment landing. “Hi, you John McKinsey?

“Yeah.” This guy looked familiar in a bizarre kind of way. Mac wondered if he knew him from somewhere.

The guy took a deep breath. “I don’t know how to say this but, I’m your brother, James.”

The air gushed from Mac’s lungs as he stared into strangely familiar blue eyes. “I don’t have a brother,” he replied. Denial wasn’t working. There was something so primal about this guy. Same height, eyes, built, and stubborn cowlick.

The guy shrugged his shoulder
s. “I didn’t know I had a brother either until I received a call from a lawyer. Emily Richards.”

“Em called you?”

The man calling himself Mac’s brother put out his hand. “I’m James McKinsey.

Trembling, Mac stared at the offered palm. It represented a bridge to his past. One he feared crossing, because you couldn’t reverse this situation once the handshake put
it in motion.

Fear turned to courage. Mac raised his eyes, clasped his brother’s hand and pulled him to his chest. Tears gathered in the corner of his eyes.

When they separated Mac invited him in and offered a beer. His brother took it and gulped down a
mouthful before the questioning began. “So, how do you know you’re my brother?” Mac asked, silently praying this wasn’t some cruel joke.

“I was born in
‘70. When I was a little guy my aunt took me and raised me. I knew I had a mother, but I don’t remember much about her.”

“I was born six years later. Mom never mentioned I had a brother.”

James rubbed the back of his neck. “Lucy, my...our aunt told me mom was married to a jerk. Guess no one liked the old man.”

“I didn’t know him well. He took off when I was seven or eight.” Mac
finished off his Heineken. “Mom talked about him, but he never came around.”

“I heard she was m
urdered during a drug deal gone bad.”

“W
orst day of my life,” Mac said, his throat tight. “Everything changed after that.” Memories rushed forward. Because he’d been a minor when it all happened they had kept him out of the report and sent him into the foster system. “Mom was hooked pretty bad by the time she died.”

“I read the report.”

“They told me I didn’t have any family.”

“I don’t know why they would say that. Then again, maybe they a
sked Lucy to take you, and she refused. I have no way of knowing. I didn’t find out mom was murdered until I became a cop and looked into the report.”

“You
’re in law enforcement?”

“Yeah, I’m a Captain for the Dallas Police Department.”

Pride filled Mac’s chest and swirled around his heart as gently as a spring breeze. Considering their childhood, they could have become their parents all over again. Somewhere in the gene pool there had to be some decent people who were made of stronger stuff.

“Wonder what mom would think about what we’ve become.”

“I can’t even imagine. Since I barely knew her. You know, there are times I can’t remember what she looked like,” James said.

“I can see her as plain as day. I like to think of her straight, clean.” Mac peeled the label from his bottle. “You know she tried a few times. Tried to get away from the dopers, pills, the booze...but she couldn’t stay clean long.”

“Aunt Lucy and her husband did a great job of raising me, but they had two kids of their own. And while they were really good to me, I never felt I belonged. Then I heard from this lawyer. She came into the precinct several days back and asked me all these questions about my past.” James shrugged “It made me wonder.”

“I can’t imagine how Em made the connection.”

“Oh, you didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Couple of weeks ago Fort Worth PD picked up the old man on some outstanding warrants. Turns out this lawyer’s friend, Brenda, has a brother in the department. I guess this Brenda mentioned you to him and started the wheels turning. Anyway, the detective said the guy told him he had two sons.”

“Leave it to good old Rayland.”

“So, Miss Richards started looking into some closed records and found you had a brother. She showed up at my house last week.”

He chuckled. “That sounds like Em.”

“You know her personally?”

“Yeah, I do.”

James spread out his arms. “Bro, what have you been up to for the last thirty two years?”

Mac laughed. “We can’t cover it all in one visit.” He pointed to his brother. “And you, a cop and all.”

“And you.” James leaned back and stretched his arms on the back of the coach. “Hell, nobody seems to know what you do.”

Mac studied the
family he’d missed all his life. How many times had he wanted to reach out to someone? How many times had he pulled away, frightened?

“Something I have to say,” Mac said. “When mom was murdered, I was there.”

James sat up. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, I hid in a closet. She’d shoved me in there. I stayed all curled up in a ball. Afraid to come out. Scared to save my own mother.”

“You know, at seven you couldn’t do much, don’t you?”

“I do, but I fear one day on a job I’ll turn back into that little kid. I won’t be there when someone I love needs me.”

“You’re not that scared kid anymore, bro.” James stood and put his arm around Mac. “You never will be again.”

“How do I know that?”

“Because I’m your older brother and I say so.” James said, good naturedly. “And you need to stop blaming yourself for what happened to mom. You couldn’t save her. She couldn’t save herself. From what I hear, you’re pretty damn good at what you do.”

“Yeah, but there is always a little bit of doubt.”

“I know, John. And there always will be. I struggle every day to do the right thing. Just like every other person out there.”

“The line of business we’re in doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room
,” Mac said.

“This is how I deal with it. I am what I am. Yeah, I came from bad stock
, but I learned a long time ago the difference between right and wrong. And I always try to do the very best I can at the time.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Hey, I have another surprise.

“Really, I think you finding me is a
lready a pretty big surprise.”

“You have two nephews. Eight and Ten.”

“Well, Holy shit. You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. I have the wife, two kids, a van and a mortgage.”

“Wow,” Mac said. “I’m impressed as hell.”

“What about you?”

Sadly Mac hung his head. “Naw, nothing.”

“You never married, had kids?”