Swept Away (54 page)

Nichols had also finally found out why no one else had ever come back for the artifacts the
Morales brothers had failed to get. Plain and simple, because Ian Zeller aka Omega Man was
an incompetent. He’d been smart enough not to risk showing his face anywhere near the
goods, but dumb enough that Francisco and Carlos were the only guys on his payroll, and once
they’d vanished, Ian simply hadn’t known—according to Nichols—how to proceed. He’d
never feared the brothers had stolen the artifacts, delivered there by their cousins who lived in
Guatemala, because he didn’t think they were savvy enough to sell them on their own. But he finally had begun the process of looking to hire new smugglers when Nichols had placed him under arrest. What it came down to in Brock’s mind was simply that Ian hadn’t been slick
enough to run this sort of operation. He’d seen hints of an amateur all along, and turned out that, when it came to high crime, that’s exactly what “Omega Man” was.

The U.S. Attorney had promised Spencer immunity for his testimony and, once the trial rolled around, good old Ian would be going away for a long time. Brock couldn’t have been happier
about that. It still horrified him to realize how close Kat had come to marrying him, but things
had worked out, so that was all that mattered. And she wouldn’t have to see her dad behind
bars. Letting Spencer off had been one of the hardest things Brock had ever done. But the moment he’d done it, he’d felt a weight lift from him, and he knew that he’d done the right
thing—for Kat.

With all that under control, Brock had spent his time off doing something constructive—he’d
started fixing up the old swamp house. And the more work he put in on it, the more he realized
he didn’t want to sell it. It wasn’t a great place, just a little old house, but it was home—still felt like home—so maybe he’d just head there from time to time when he needed some peace and
quiet. He’d been staying there since his very first night back, in fact, and he found the quiet— not to mention the memories of his grandpa—comforting.

The truth was, all that work—ripping up linoleum, putting in new sinks, starting to paint—had
been not only a good time killer for his mandatory vacation, but a good distraction from what
he really found himself missing. Which wasn’t FBI work.

For the first time in his life, he missed a woman. He wondered how she was and hoped she’d
put the whole wedding fiasco behind her. He hoped she was handling the situation with her
dad okay—even though Spencer wasn’t going to jail, he’d still committed a crime, and would still have to testify to that fact in public. He hoped she’d forgiven her dad since he knew how
much she valued that relationship.

The further truth was, his body ached for her. Some nights he fell asleep remembering her on
the table, or in the shower, or in the hammock, and some nights he couldn’t sleep at all until he
took matters into his own hands. Fortunately, he’d discovered hard work was good for
deterring that, too—at least a little.

She’d had another effect on him, as well. Talking to her about his life had made him realize
how much he’d neglected the things that were important to him. There wasn’t much important,
but he needed to tend to it. Maybe that was why he’d come back to his grandpa’s house. And
he knew for certain it was why he was driving to Gainesville right now.

Making your way into a prison was never fun, and seeing your life-wasting brother on the
other side of a table was even less so. So he didn’t go as much as he should. He hadn’t been
there since Christmas, and that visit had been strictly obligatory, out of holiday guilt, and Bruno
had probably known that.

In an attempt to make up for his absence, Brock had even called a friend in the warden’s office
and obtained special permission to bring his brother a few gifts, and to bypass the usual
application process he had to go through prior to each visit. Being a federal agent had its perks.

So he’d bought two cartons of Marlboros and a dirty magazine and hit the road early for the
nearly four-hour drive to the center of the state. Less-than-classy gifts, but when he thought of
what his brother would most like to have, those were the items that came to mind.

He also, on a lark, had bought a mystery novel. He didn’t think Bruno read much, but maybe if
he was bored enough, he would. Bruno had a good mind, Brock had never forgotten that. He’d
always been able to figure out TV detective shows before the end when they were kids. So
maybe he’d like a mystery to take him away from reality. Hell, maybe that was why Brock had
become a federal agent.

Lastly, he’d tucked into the bag a couple of pictures he’d found at the house—one of their
grandpa, another of them together as kids.

After Brock arrived and got ushered through security, he was shown to one of twenty or so
tables in a stark, industrial-looking room. Around him, he saw women visiting their men, in
some cases whole families, and felt a little bad for Bruno that he was all his brother had. One
more reason he should get here more often.

Bruno walked into the room escorted by a guard, his eyes brightening with surprise when he
saw Brock. “What the hell?” he asked cheerfully.

Brock grinned. “Figured you were probably missing me, man.”

As Bruno sat down in the hard chair across from him, he shook his head, eyes narrowed.
“Nobody told me.” Usually, after the visit application was approved, Bruno was notified and
called Brock to tell him he could come.

Brock shrugged. “I pulled a string or two. Doubt I could get away with it often, but it worked
this time.”

His brother’s eyes dropped to the plastic bag sitting between them, then he looked inside. “What’s all this for?” He immediately extracted the two old photos Brock had popped into cheap frames.

Brock drew in a deep breath and allowed himself to be honest. “I guess it’s ’cause I miss you.”

They never said things like that to each other—ever. So Bruno stayed quiet for a moment,
looking down, still studying the pictures. Finally, he lightened things up, lifting his gaze back
to Brock. “You still Mr. Big G-Man, out there being all James Bond and Mission Impossible?”

“Yeah,” Brock replied, then spoke one more truth he hadn’t quite allowed himself to realize
until this very moment. “But I might give it up soon.”

“Yeah? Why?”

Brock swallowed back the emotions his admission had just made him feel. “Just tired, I guess. Ready for something new.” There were a lot of reasons, actually, all tumbling through his head
and gradually getting smoothed out, just like Kat’ s sea glass. It was about growing weary of
bad guys, about shooting Carlos, about endangering Kat. But mostly the last one, if he was
honest with himself. He wasn’t sure he ever wanted to risk endangering anyone again.

Bruno’s mouth cut a grim line across his face. “Guess it’s pretty fucking embarrassing to be an
FBI man and have a brother in the slammer.”

Yeah, sometimes it was. It had made it a little harder for Brock to get into the Bureau, in fact—
despite his ultimately fitting the perfect FBI profile in every other way—but he’d never told
Bruno that. Now, he said, “It makes me sad. But that doesn’t have anything to do with my job. I just wish you had a better life. I wish you knew what I know.”

He realized he was shocking the hell out of Bruno with all this serious talk, but his brother
didn’t bail on him by making a smart remark or changing the subject. “What’s that?” he asked
quietly instead.

“That life can be pretty damn good without breaking the rules.”

Unfortunately, Bruno didn’t look like a believer. Finally, he replied, “I don’t mean to do it. I
just don’t know what else to do. You know?”

“You get a place, a job,” Brock told him. “You try living like other people.”

“A job, man? You know I never had much of what did Gramps call it? a work ethic.”
Brock smiled wryly. “True enough. But you could change. I could help you.”
“What are you saying?” he asked, eyes narrowed.

And Brock told him what he’d been thinking about for the last part of the drive up here. “Next
time you get out, man, I want to help. I’ll help you find a job you can live with. All you have to
do is promise me you’ll try. Try really hard.”

When Bruno said nothing, he went on.

“Because it’s worth it, man. There’s good stuff out there.”
“Like what?”

Kat popped to mind. But he didn’t want to give her so much credence in his head, so he said,
“Just having your own place, nice things. Having your own life. Freedom. And there’s
always women, sex.” He grinned.

Bruno grinned back. “Women. Now that I could get into.”

“If you could do anything you wanted, live anywhere you wanted, what would it be? And
don’t give me some shithead answer like you want to live in a mansion and sit by the pool all
day. If you could have something—something simple but good—what would you pick?”

For a long while, he feared his brother would come up with nothing, that his life was so lost,
so far gone, that he had no more dreams anywhere inside him. When finally Bruno answered.
“Remember those pictures you showed me, of the mountains, and the buttes, the stuff you saw
out West?”

After that other mandatory vacation three years ago. “Yeah.”

“I’d like to go there,” Bruno said. “Go someplace far away from here. Someplace where it’s
not so damn hot. Someplace cooler, someplace green.” He sighed. “Sometimes I watch TV
shows about different places, and I think—maybe I wouldn’t mind being some kinda park
ranger or something.” He stopped, let out a laugh. “Stupid, huh? But maybe I could do
something else someplace like that. They need other people at those places, right? People to
clean up, fix the roads, other stuff. Maybe I could do that. In a big park somewhere.”

Brock started to nod, seeing a little spark of hope and ambition in his brother’s eye for the first
time maybe ever. “We’ll work it out, dude, figure it out together. Soon.”

Brock left the Gainesville Correctional Institution feeling a sense of cautious hope. For all he
knew, Bruno would get out, then rob him blind. If not that, he might just disappoint Brock— again. But Brock suddenly believed people could change. He’d changed once upon a time, and
was going through other changes now, again. Who knew—maybe even Clark Spencer could
change. So it wasn’t impossible for Bruno to change, too. All he knew was that he had to try to
help him do it, had to give his brother another shot at life.

As he hit the road toward home, he decided he’d do some research on what it took to be a park
ranger. And he’d find Bruno some books about some of the big parks out West and mail them
to him, so that for now he could at least go there in his head.

Kat turned one of her favorite Raku vases just a little to the left, so that the light shone more intensely through the row of sea glass at the top. She’d come to the gallery early—just after closing, but before the special dinner with her friends and parents to celebrate her opening
tonight—in order to make last-minute adjustments to the displays, and to just sort of soak up
the glory of her first real showing, her initiation as a real, live artiste.