Leslie Parrish - Fade To Black

“We need those backups,” he told the guard. “Right now.”

He showed up at her house late that night.

Stacey had just gone to bed when she heard a car pull into her driveway. Two possibilities immediately came to mind: Dean. Or the bastard who’d killed Lady. One had her wishing she’d worn something at least a little attractive to bed, rather than a long Redskins T-shirt and gym shorts. The other had her reaching for her nine-millimeter, which was right beside her, on her bedside table.

Grabbing it just in case, she shifted her bedroom window blinds to the side, trying to make out the vehicle. And she realized there was a third alternative.

“What are you doing here?” she asked her brother a minute later when she yanked open her front door.

Tim stared at her, surprised that she’d answered before he’d knocked, which told her he hadn’t been certain he was going to. Instead of answering her question, he mumbled, “You finally cut down those ugly bushes.”

“Come in,” she said, seeing a strange look in his eye, one she didn’t like. He’d worn that expression quite a lot in the first few months after he’d been released from the military. It was vacant. Haunted. Traumatized. “Please.”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have come here.”

She took his arm, tugging him inside when it looked as though he might leave. At first worried he’d driven over here drunk, she grabbed his chin, studying his eyes, trying to smell anything on him.

He saw right through her. “I haven’t been drinking,” he muttered.

She believed him. Tim might have come home an angry stranger, but he had never tried to cover up his drinking. And he’d never been able to disguise his glassy-eyed, heavy-lidded reaction to too much alcohol. “Want some coffee?”

“It’s not too late?” he asked, following her into her small house.

“It’s not like I’ll sleep tonight, anyway.” Her head was too full for that. Full of Dean and what had happened the previous evening. Full of the case and questions about what was happening today.

She’d seen the news; it had only inspired more questions. The pictures of that pretty blond girl, however, would almost certainly inspire nightmares.

So, no, she wouldn’t be sleeping much tonight.

Not entirely trusting him not to leave if she let him out of her sight, she said, “Let’s go in the kitchen. I have junk food.”

A ghost of a laugh emerged from his mouth, though he made a visible effort not to smile. He’d had several surgeries, but the scar tissue on his face meant any attempt at a smile would result in only a lopsided sneer.

It broke her heart whenever she looked at him. His left profile was perfect, about as handsome as any man could possibly be. His right wasn’t.

She was the younger sibling, but was well used to being in charge. Taking his arm, she pulled him with her, then sat him down at her small table. Grabbing boxes of cookies and bags of chips, comfort food she generally tried to avoid but had really needed lately, she dumped them in front of him, then made coffee.

He twisted apart his cookie and ate the icing, just like he had when they were kids. Simple pleasures. How he must have missed them all those years.

“What’s going on?” she asked as she sat down across from him.

“I heard about the dog,” he said.

She waited, wondering how much he’d heard. She hoped her neighbors hadn’t gossiped all over town.

“Dad’s pretty broken up.”

She nodded, glad he didn’t know the rest. Tim might not be his old self, but her protective older brother still existed inside that scarred shell. He’d be just as furious and worried as their father if he knew the truth. “I know. Did he call you?”

“Yeah. I went out to see him this afternoon. Helped him plant some flowers on the grave. He wanted sunflowers; I guess Lady used to love to dig in them.”

Her heart twisted, and Stacey made a mental note to plead with her neighbors to keep the questions she’d asked today to themselves. “I’m glad you were there for him, Tim.”

Being needed by someone else was probably the best thing that could happen to her brother right now. It might keep him from dwelling too much on all the things that had gone wrong in his own life. “So,” she asked, “did you come here tonight to talk about Dad’s dog?”

He hesitated, then admitted, “I’m not doing so great.”

No kidding. She didn’t say it, hearing an unexpected vulnerability in his voice. “You didn’t get your job back.”

Shaking his head, he mumbled something, then cleared his throat and tried again. “No. And I won’t be getting it back.”

His defiant expression told her more than she wanted to know about Tim’s involvement with some missing cash at his employer’s used-car dealership. To think he could be reduced to stealing. It stunned her.

“It was fifty bucks and a couple of unauthorized joyrides in some vehicles from the lot,” he said flatly, reading her reaction. “I paid it back. He said he won’t press charges. But I’m unemployed.”

Her upstanding marine brother, a petty thief. God.

Forcing the law-abiding-sheriff part of herself away, she tried to transition into his little sister. “You’ll get another job.”

“I don’t give a damn about a job.”

“You obviously need money,” she said, her tone pointed.

He ignored the sarcasm. “I’m working with Randy a little.”

“Oh, great. Is he opening a beer-testing business?” When he stiffened and scooted his chair back as if to rise, Stacey reached for his arm. “I’m sorry.”

He stayed seated. Barely. “I’ve just been riding along on a couple of his runs. No biggie-I give him a hand loading and unloading.”

Stacey wanted to know the rest, sensing he had more to say, especially given the way his voice had trailed off. Knowing better than to push him, she made light of it. “Come on, you’re telling me Randy does anything more than back that semi up to the loading dock and watch the store employees roll out the big flat-screens?”

“Maybe I just go along for company; his kid isn’t interested anymore,” he admitted, still studying the stupid cookie as if it held the meaning of life. His tone turning bitter, he added, “I don’t really need the bucks. You think Uncle Sam isn’t compensating me?”

“So why did you take the fifty?”

He shrugged, at a loss. “I don’t know. Boredom. Stupidity.”

Anger. Tim had seemed to want to pick fights with everyone lately.

“Maybe I just want people to look at me instead of shifting their eyes.”

And that was probably the truest thing he’d said so far.

“People look at you.”

“Yeah, the circus freak.”

“That’s an exaggeration. You have beautiful eyes.”

“Miraculously.”

“Good features. Not exactly the stud you used to think you were, but there’s nothing wrong with you, Tim, other than a few lines that people who know and love you don’t even see anymore.”

“And the people who don’t know and love me?”

“Screw them.”

Another of those sad laughs. “You always did tell it like it is.”

The coffee was ready. Getting up, she fixed them each a cup, keeping her back to Tim so he wouldn’t see the way her hands shook. She’d cried herself out last night, yet still suspected she had a tear or two left for her brother, who suddenly seemed so lost, so beaten. He’d been stateside for two and a half years, the first six months of it in a VA hospital, the rest here in Hope Valley. Yet this was the first time he’d reached out to her emotionally. The first time he’d admitted he was floundering, rather than just angrily demanding that everyone make way for him and give him whatever he wanted.