Tara Quinn - Falling For The Brother

“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.