A Question Of Honor. Mary Anne Wilson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ eye out for a police cruiser, the one his childhood friend John Longbow told him he would be driving.

      John had been surprised by Adam’s call a few days ago, assuming that his friend would be back according to his normal timetable—get home the day before Christmas and leave as soon as he could.

      To be honest, Adam had been surprised by his own decision to arrive home early. But it had ended up being an oddly easy one for him to make.

      When he’d called home to let his mother know when he’d be there, he’d figured she wouldn’t be happy but that she’d understand how busy he was. And besides, she would have Jack, his older brother, and Gage, his younger brother, there, which would take some of the sting out of her disappointment. Lo and behold, he’d been wrong, very wrong.

      The waitress appeared with his coffee. A cute blonde who never stopped smiling or calling him “hon” as she set the steaming mug in front of him. “You new around here, hon?” she asked with that smile still blazing.

      Adam didn’t flirt well. He’d always thought that if something happened, it happened, but working to make it happen didn’t sit well with him. Been there, done that, he thought as he poured cream into his coffee. He hated playing games. That was why he liked relationships with no ties and no complications. He would admit to anyone that he had commitment phobia. He liked freedom and moving along when he had the urge to go. His latest stop had been Dallas, on the police force there, but already he was thinking about making a change, maybe heading to California.

      The waitress was waiting for an answer, and he was vague. “I’m just here for a few days,” he said as he picked up his mug and turned back to the window.

      He heard the waitress sigh, and in the window watched the reflection of her walking away. Then Adam’s image overlapped hers. With his ebony hair combed straight back from his sharp-featured face, one half of his heritage was emphasized, and it wasn’t the fair-skinned Irish side that rose to the surface. He could see his mother’s Navajo ancestry that defined him in more ways than one.

      All three Carson boys were chiseled from the same mold physically, with decent height, tanned skin and bold features. But their characters were uniquely different. Jack was the homeboy who loved the land. Adam was the restless one, and their younger brother, Gage, was passionate about building anything. But right then it was Jack who filled Adam’s thoughts as he waited.

      That simple call to his mother, but Jack answering the phone, and everything changed when he heard his brother’s voice come over the line.

      As he picked up his mug, he spotted the police cruiser emblazoned with Wolf Lake P.D. on the door and John behind the wheel. Adam put down his coffee, slapped a five-dollar bill on top of his tab and then headed for the door. The waitress calling after him, “You come on back, hon, you hear?” He let the doors shut on her voice and he approached John, who had gotten out of the cruiser.

      The men hugged, thumped each other on the back and got inside the car. “Welcome back, man,” John said, and in that moment, Adam experienced something unsettling and unusual for him. A huge wave of homesickness washed over him. He couldn’t remember that ever happening to him before, even as a kid. He’d always looked beyond the horizon.

      Until now.

      Adam murmured, “I appreciate the ride.”

      “Glad to do it,” John said as he swung the cruiser out into traffic.

      “Did you really have business in the city?” he asked, eyeing the man’s dark uniform, which looked rumpled from prolonged wear.

      “Of course I had business in Santa Fe. Besides, I like having good company when I make this trek.”

      They had barely gone a few blocks before Adam’s cell phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and glanced at the ID, expecting it to be work or even his mother. But he did a double take. The call was from his kid brother, Gage, and that surge of homesickness came again.

      “Hey,” he heard over the line after he answered the call. “What are you up to?”

      “Just off a plane in Santa Fe and heading for home.”

      Gage didn’t sound surprised by that statement. “Good, Mom’s looking forward to it.”

      “Mom called you about me coming back now?”

      “No, actually. John did,” Gage answered. Adam was confused.

      He turned to look at John, who was staring dead ahead out the window. “You called Gage about me coming early?”

      John glanced dark eyes at him and nodded. Without saying a thing, he went back to his driving.

      “Why?”

      No hesitation. “Jack.”

      Adam closed his eyes. There were no secrets in Wolf Lake. Everyone knew the Carson family’s history and circumstances, especially their good friend John. “Go on,” Adam said into the phone.

      Gage spoke quickly. “I’m real busy here.” Where that was, he didn’t say. Gage’s design and construction company worked all over the globe, and Gage, who was a hands-on owner, went wherever the jobs were being done. “I won’t be home for Christmas, so I was glad to hear you would be.”

      There was a commotion almost blotting out Gage’s voice. “Hold on,” he said, then, “Listen, Adam, I have to go. Just call me when you get there and see Jack.”

      Adam barely had time to say “Okay” to his kid brother before the line went dead. He put his phone back into his pocket and looked at John again. “Why did you call him about Jack?”

      John shrugged. “Worried.”

      Adam was worried, too. He was worried enough to not only come home early, but block out a month of sick leave with the police force to give himself time to figure out what he needed to do to help his older brother.

      John kept talking. “He’s not himself, although, I understand that after what he’s gone through. But he rides off for days alone into the high country. He’s at work on and off, mostly off, but he’s still living in the apartment above his law office. Going to tell me why you’re here early? What got to you to make you do that?”

      Adam noted the landscape changing as they left Santa Fe. The old-world charm of the city, with its adobes and pueblolike housing clusters, morphed into vast, sprawling land, cut here and there by massive buttes and towering mesas. Home. He swallowed hard. “I talked to Jack. He was at Mom and Dad’s place, and he answered the phone when I called.”

      “He asked you to come home?”

      “No, he’d never do that. It wasn’t even anything Jack said, not really.” Adam remembered his brother talking about anything and everything except himself. His voice was different, flat and uninvolved in what he was saying. “When I asked him about some things, I could tell he’s not doing well.”

      “He’s grieving, Adam.”

      “I know. But it’s been a year and a half since Robyn was killed in the accident, and he’s not moving on. You said he’s staying by himself mostly. He lets Maureen take care of his cases, and those rides alone...” He thought of Jack going to law school, leaving the town for an extended time, СКАЧАТЬ