Buch lesen: «Falling For The Brother»

CHAPTER ONE

MIRIAM THOMAS. INSTANTLY ALERT, Harper Davidson stared at the report on the computer screen in front of her. Miriam Thomas. It wasn’t a common name. But not a stretch to think there’d be more than one woman bearing it.

As newly promoted head of security at The Lemonade Stand, a unique 5.1-acre resort-like women’s shelter on the California coast, Harper made it her first task every morning, after dropping Brianna at the day care on-site, to take a look at the resident status report. Kind of like a doctor looking at patient charts. In the month she’d been doing so, the task had consisted of nothing more than a simple wellness check. The fifteen new residents who’d arrived in those four weeks had all joined them during waking hours and she’d been notified immediately.

Miriam Thomas had been brought in at 2:00 a.m. with a broken arm and multiple contusions on her chin, as though someone had held her head still with great force.

Harper skimmed the basic details in the overview, suspended from any kind of reaction, as she searched out identifying information that generally wasn’t her primary concern. How old was the newest resident and where was she from?

Seventy-five. Albina, California.

Hands shaking now, Harper moved her mouse. Clicked. And clicked again, typing codes and passwords that would get her into a database containing the complete file. She was alone in her small office off the main building at the Stand, coffee not even made, and could hear the silence like the roar of the ocean just wooded acres away.

Miriam? At The Lemonade Stand? What had happened?

Her screen changed and she was in. She typed Miriam’s newly acquired resident number.

Who’d brought her here? She had to get further in to find out details. Why hadn’t Bruce let her know?

The Stand would’ve had no reason to call Harper unless Miriam had asked them to. Which wasn’t likely. Harper’s background check had mentioned her ex-husband by name, but not his family, and it wasn’t like anyone would have memorized that information anyway. She’d never taken the Thomas name. And even if she had, it wasn’t all that uncommon.

She’d never taken the name because she never should have married Bruce.

But...

The page opened and Harper pulled back. In her three and a half years on staff at The Lemonade Stand she’d seen a lot of disturbing injuries and broken women. They were an everyday fact. Not that she ever grew desensitized. But she’d learned early on to draw boundaries around her personal emotions—just as she had as a cop when she’d been first responder at a deadly car crash. Or a murder.

Gazing into the meek stare coming from Miriam’s photo, she lost those boundaries. Miriam, meek? And the bruises on that soft chin... Her face bore little resemblance to the face Harper was used to—one more prone to smiling with confidence that all would be well. Miriam had been the ultimate law-enforcement family member. The wife of a detective. The mother of a detective. The grandmother of a cop. She’d taken it all in stride, certain that her men would survive and make it home in time for dinner.

Or whenever they were expected.

They always had, too.

Her husband had died at home, from kidney disease. Her son, Bruce and Mason’s father, had passed away at home, too, from a heart attack due to being a hundred pounds overweight—not that Harper had been there. She’d only heard about it from Bruce when they’d met in his driveway to pass Brianna back and forth for his bimonthly visitation overnighters.

Taking a minute to catch her breath, on what had started out as a normal Tuesday morning in July, Harper got a bottle of water out of the small fridge beside her desk and sipped from it. Then she swept nervous fingers through her short blond hair and reached for the mouse. Scrolled slowly past that photo.

Miriam had been brought to them from the urgent care in Albina; the report didn’t say who’d brought her in and she assumed someone from the urgent care had called The Lemonade Stand. One of Harper’s employees—probably Sandra, who was the most senior officer on duty the previous night—would have driven over to pick her up. Harper would have a report on that, too.

Scrolling further, she stopped. Stared.

Miriam’s abuser was... Bruce Thomas?

She blinked. Read it again. Picked up the phone and hit the first speed dial.

“Lila Mantle.” The newly married managing director of The Lemonade Stand—a woman who’d given Harper more courage than she knew—answered on the first ring, her tone as calm and level as always.

Lila might smile more readily these days and go home to her family every night, but the fifty-three-year-old was still as dedicated, reliable and firm as she’d been all the years Harper had known her. And, based on what she’d heard, just as she’d been since the opening of the Stand more than a decade ago.

“Our new resident...”

“Miriam Thomas, yes. She’s in Bungalow 7.”

Harper could see that. In a bedroom by herself.

“She’s HSR?” She’d get to the Bruce mistake in a second. High Security Risk meant that someone from Harper’s staff had to be watching her at all times.

“Yes.”

Another sip of water went down with difficulty. The guard assignment wasn’t a problem. She’d do it herself, for any of their residents, anytime the need was there.

What the hell had Miriam gotten herself into since her son had died? Bruce’s father, Oscar, had moved in with his mother after Bruce left home. Made sense, since both of them lived alone in houses way too big for either one of them.

Miriam needed someone to take care of. And Oscar, an Albina police captain, had worked ungodly hours protecting the public and had wanted someone to take care of him at home.

“Why is she HSR?” Harper asked the question before she was ready for the answer.

“Her abuser’s a decorated member of the Albina PD.”

Harper shook her head. “Who?” she asked. One of Bruce’s friends? That might explain the name mix-up.

“Her grandson. Bruce Thomas. He works as an undercover officer and apparently has the skills to convince anyone of anything he wants them to believe. And he has cop friends all over the state. If he doesn’t already know where she is, we can assume he will soon enough. He isn’t being formally accused, and the police aren’t officially involved as of yet. No one wants to ruin a decorated public servant’s reputation unless there’s solid proof that he’s done wrong.”

She couldn’t believe any of this.

“Bruce wouldn’t hurt his grandmother.”

Lila’s silence seemed to echo through the line, and Harper realized she’d spoken aloud.

“You know Bruce was my husband,” Harper said.

“Of course.”

“He wouldn’t do this, Lila. I swear to you. He adored his grandmother.” But someone had hurt Miriam. She couldn’t quite grasp it. And...

“Has anyone called Mason? He’s Bruce’s older brother. He’s a special crime scene investigator based in LA, but travels all over the country. He’ll vouch for Bruce.”

For most of their lives, Bruce had idolized Mason.

From what she knew, the rift between them hadn’t healed, but they talked occasionally. And if the chips were truly down, they’d defend each other to the death. The Thomas family was just that way.

“Mason Thomas is the man who delivered Miriam to us.” Lila’s tone didn’t change. The calm didn’t waver.

Sitting forward, Harper put her water bottle on the desk with such force, water sloshed over the top and puddled. She grabbed a tissue, sopped up her mess. “Mason was here?”

She hadn’t seen him since the week before she’d married Bruce.

And tried not to think of him. Ever.

So her assumption about how Miriam had arrived at the Stand was wrong. Had the urgent care in Albina called him?

But...wait a minute. “Miriam told you Bruce did this to her...” She went back to the picture of a battered Miriam. Staring at it. As though that would make all of this seem possible. Make some kind of sense. “And you’re telling me now that Mason corroborated her story?”

“Not quite. Miriam Thomas claims she fell off a stepladder in her kitchen and sees no point in being here. Mason Thomas is the one who’s claiming the abuse. He insists that she stay inside the grounds at all times until further notice.”

Confused, alarmed, just plain beside herself, Harper pursed her lips and studied the screen. Scrolling down. Then up. Then down again.

“But...what about the police? You said they aren’t officially involved, but is there a report waiting to be filed?” As a private facility, the Stand could keep Miriam if she chose to stay. But only if she wanted to be there. They weren’t a prison.

Or...she could sign a form asking them to prevent her from leaving, for her own safety. Until she’d had some counseling. So many times victims who’d undergone years of mental or emotional manipulation would feel they had to run back to their abusers. They couldn’t trust their own minds.

It happened. More often than Harper would ever have believed.

If Miriam had signed the form, Harper and her team would prevent her from leaving, but only for the designated period of time. Or until she signed a retraction in the presence of witnesses, including a Stand counselor.

“Miriam has refused to talk to the police or press charges. She’s not budging from her stepladder story.”

Frowning, Harper began to focus. “So why is she here?”

“She made an agreement with Mason. If she agreed to stay here, and to sign a VNL, he’d do an investigation himself without making it formal or involving the police.” VNL. The voluntary no release form.

“And Miriam signed it?”

“Yes.” That report would be waiting in her in-box, too. She’d just gotten to work and clicked on resident status... “For how long?”

“Two weeks.”

Mason had been there. At the Stand. And would be around for the next two weeks? Or, at least, somewhere between Santa Raquel, where the Stand was, and two hours north in Albina, where Bruce lived—if he was, indeed, investigating.

There were going to be ramifications. She knew it and could feel them building. She and Mason in contact... Bruce being accused... She had to get all the facts she could before she started to feel things that had nothing to do with Miriam. Or her job.

“Bruce didn’t abuse his grandmother,” she said with certainty.

Why the hell would Mason do this to him?

And then it occurred to her. The brothers must be working together. They knew who’d hurt their grandmother—someone she was protecting—and Bruce, with his undercover skills, and Mason, with his investigative talents, were going to put the guy at ease. They’d let him think he’d gotten away with it, then set him up somehow, in order to find the proof that would trap him and put him away without Miriam’s needing to testify against him. Which, clearly, she was terrified to do. You didn’t get those bruises on your chin by falling from a stepladder.

It was a long shot, considering the fact that the brothers hadn’t had much to do with each other—as far as she was aware—in five years, but Bruce would put all differences aside to protect Miriam from danger. And Mason would come running if Bruce needed him.

“Bruce’s brother is absolutely certain he did it.” Lila’s tone had a different quality to it now. Not defense. Or even authority. More like...compassion?

“Did you talk to him yourself?”

“Yes.” Then that meant...

“You were called in?”

“Yes.”

Prior to her marriage, Lila might have been at the Stand in the middle of the night, since she used to stay at her apartment there as often as she went home to the condo she’d owned. Calling her in had been more common then, too; she’d had no family, no one else who needed her. But that had all changed since she’d finally allowed herself to love again.

She’d taken her son back into her life, trusting herself to love him and his family well. And married the man who’d been the only one able to break through the barriers she’d put around herself.

But now, to call Lila out of bed in the middle of the night... Someone had been pretty damned concerned.

Maybe Mason hadn’t known he could trust Lila with the truth—that he and Bruce were working together?

“So Bruce is still working and living his life as usual?”

“That is my understanding.”

“And Miriam’s injuries...they’re non-life-threatening...” She read over them again. Severe facial contusions in the chin area and a broken arm.

“Correct.”

“Maybe she did just fall.” The chin bruises, if she’d landed with her chin in something—say, the gold egg carton she was so fond of.

“According to Mason this isn’t the first time.”

Wow. She simply couldn’t grasp the reality. Couldn’t imagine how it must make the brothers feel, knowing someone was hurting their grandmother.

Brianna.

She became aware of the first ramification stirred up by this mess.

“How many times before?” Until a month ago, four-year-old Brianna had spent every other Friday night and half of Saturday with Bruce. And, since Oscar’s death two years before, since Bruce had moved in with his grandmother to help her out, Brianna had been with Miriam, too.

“The doctor suspects, based on previous bone cracks he could see on the X-ray, at least three.”

“To the same arm?”

“Yes.”

It made no sense to her at all.

“And the cracks had time to heal.” Which meant that whatever had been happening had been going on for a while.

“Yes.” Lila didn’t often point out the facts, didn’t explicitly share what she knew. Her way was to give her conversational partners the time and space—usually with a bit of guidance—to find the truth on their own. To figure it out for themselves, rather than be told. She was a huge proponent of helping people think their own thoughts, draw their own conclusions.

Because so many victims of abuse—as everyone now knew Lila had been—were denied that right to the extent of believing themselves incapable of trusting their own thoughts.

“Brianna stayed in that house every other Friday night.”

“I know the two of you used to go to Albina on your weekends off. I suspected she might’ve been visiting her father.”

“And my parents,” Harper said, her screen steady on the picture of an injured Miriam. “They have a small vegetable farm and I’d stay with them. Brianna would spend Friday night at Bruce’s. From Saturday afternoon until we came home on Sunday, we’d be with my folks.”

“What’s happened with her visitation since you accepted the new position?”

As head of security now, she couldn’t be gone every other weekend. She had vacation. And days off, but they rotated.

“Bruce has to make the drive here, to my house, to see her. He can take her to his hotel on Friday night, or I said he could just pick her up and spend time with her, then bring her home...”

“Has he done that?”

Well... “Not yet,” Harper said, closing the screen when she could no longer bear to look at it. “But he’s an undercover cop and he’s been on assignment. We knew going in that there’d be times, when he was on a job, that he’d miss his weekends. It happened up in Albina, too, but Miriam still got to visit with her.”

She could hear her defensive tone. It wasn’t that she wanted to be with her ex-husband anymore. If she did, her marriage might have lasted more than a year. But she couldn’t see a good cop having his life ruined because he couldn’t keep his pants zipped.

None of that mattered at the moment. “You should know, Miriam isn’t fond of me,” she told her boss. “Truth be told, she pretty much hates me.” The rest of the staff had a right to know what they might be facing.

But if Mason and Bruce were working together, presumably they’d chosen the Stand because she was there. Because they trusted her to keep their grandmother safe while they did their bit?

Bruce knew where she worked, if not the actual address, the name of the shelter. And he was a decorated cop with cop friends, she heard Lila’s words again.

“Why does she hate you?”

“I left her grandson.” Miriam hadn’t been subtle in expressing her opinion as to where the blame lay. But she’d reluctantly agreed to keep her opinions about Harper to herself when Brianna was around, as long as Harper never showed up in their home. Unless Miriam was discreet, Harper wasn’t going to let Brianna stay overnight with them. Bruce had given her full custody of their daughter, without state guided visitation rights—probably to stay on Harper’s good side—and that meant she didn’t have to let Brianna stay overnight with him. He’d given her everything she’d asked for in their divorce, requesting only that they remain in touch. That she at least let him be her friend. He hadn’t wanted the divorce and had repeatedly begged her for another chance. He’d said he understood when she’d been unable to do so. Deep down, Bruce was a good man. One who lived a deceitful professional life that sometimes bled into his personal morality.

Miriam Thomas was at the Stand. Brianna attended day care there. She played out on the grounds during set times. The two of them could feasibly visit each other. Brianna would want to see her great-grandmother. Miriam would no doubt insist on seeing Brianna, too. And maybe there was no reason she shouldn’t. Maybe Miriam had agreed to stay because of Brianna. Maybe they’d be able to help Miriam help herself.

She wondered whether Miriam would let Harper do anything for her. But she knew she’d find a way. It was her job.

All the Stand’s residents were like family to her for as long as they were with them. She didn’t have to like them. She didn’t even have to know them. She’d vowed to protect them with her life—every last one of them. And she would.

Just as soon as she sorted out this new reality.