Janice Johnson - The Call of Bravery

And Niall…well, Niall did screw up. He used to be a good boy, too, until Dad got out of prison and things weren’t the same. But even so, he was also the star forward of the middle school soccer team and the basketball team. Dad liked Niall because he played the bagpipe like Dad. In fact, he was better than Dad, Con privately thought, maybe because, like Duncan, Niall had that ability to focus so intensely, he shut the world out.

Niall had Duncan, too. They were friends. When Mom and Dad started yelling, they often disappeared together. Con would look out his bedroom window and see them walking down the sidewalk to the school, one or the other dribbling a basketball. They didn’t seem to remember he was here.

Like they’d waste time teaching him, the runt, to play basketball. Not that long ago, Dad had said, “Usually a boy can start playing the bagpipe by the time he’s nine or ten, but you won’t be able to.” He’d snorted and turned away.

The nosebleed had finally stopped. Conall washed his face again, and decided he really needed ice. He could hardly see at all.

He’d made it most of the way downstairs when he heard Dad yell, “Why are you blaming me? You’re supposed to be raising the damn kids, aren’t you? If that pathetic excuse for a boy is anyone’s fault, he’s yours.”

Conall froze, steps from the bottom.

“Mine?” Mom screamed. “You know I never wanted him. You’re the one who insisted we have another kid. God knows why, when you can’t be bothered doing any real parenting. Conall wouldn’t be such a mess if you did.”

“What am I supposed to do with him? Teach him how to be a man?” Dad laughed as if the idea was unbelievably stupid. That laugh sank into the very marrow of Conall’s bones, becoming part of him. “He doesn’t have it in him.” His voice became ugly. “Is he even mine, Laura? Because I sure as hell don’t see myself in him.”

This time Mom’s scream was wordless. There was a metallic crash as if she’d thrown something like a pan. Ceramic splintered. Dad bellowed in fury; there was another crash and then a thud, the screams and yells continuing.

Conall whimpered. Feeling the way with his foot, he retreated up a step, then another. Please don’t let them hear me. Please don’t let one of them come out of the kitchen.

When terrible weeping replaced his mother’s screams, he turned and fled, stumbling, falling, banging his shins but scrambling up the stairs. He raced into his room and shut the door. Quietly, so carefully.

I sure as hell don’t see myself in him.

I’m glad, Con thought fiercely. I wish he wasn’t my father.

You know I never wanted him.

He wished she wasn’t his mother, either.

Conall cried again, and was ashamed. The snot he wiped away with the back of his hand was mixed with blood, and he didn’t care.

Sometime in the next couple of hours, all his rage and bewilderment and hurt hardened until his emotions felt petrified, like a slice of smooth stone he had on his desk that had once been wood. At first the sensation was uncomfortable, but that wasn’t surprising, was it? Think how compressed the wood must have been to become stone. All moisture squeezed out. After a while, the glossy, hard surface in his chest felt okay, and he could replay what he’d heard his parents say without feeling anything in particular.

He did stiffen when he heard footsteps on the stairs and his bedroom door opened. By this time he couldn’t open his eyes at all. If Mom pretended to care now, he didn’t know what he’d do.

But it was Duncan who swore, and said, “Have you put ice on your eyes?”

Conall shook his head.

“I’ll get you some.”

Duncan’s footsteps retreated. Eventually he came back with a bag of frozen vegetables and a washcloth to wrap it in. He said, “There’s a lot of blood in the bathroom,” and Con shrugged.

“Nose,” he mumbled, and grabbed for the bag as it slipped.

“Don’t suppose you want to tell me what it was about.”

He shook his head.

“Did Dad do this to you?” Duncan’s voice had changed a while back to sounding almost like a man’s. Now it was so hard, so unforgiving, that change was complete. “Or Mom?”

“No,” Con whispered, wincing when he realized one of his teeth was loose. He wriggled it with his tongue.

“I saw the kitchen.”

“They were fighting. This was a couple of guys.”

Duncan sighed. His weight compressed the edge of the bed as he sat. “You know, you can run away instead of getting into it every time.”

Conall shook his head.

“Sometimes it’s better to be smart than brave.”

He got it, he really did. But…there wasn’t much to him. Pride was about it. If he ran, he wouldn’t even have that. He wasn’t like his big brother.

He told himself he didn’t care, and almost believed it.

Conall shrugged again. Duncan tried to talk to him for a bit, then finally gave up and went away.

Alone again, Con realized that today, for the first time, not caring was easy.

CHAPTER ONE

DOMINGO GARCIA STAGGERED toward the storefront and artistically fell against the large window, which shivered from the blow but didn’t break. He slid to a sitting position on the sidewalk.

Crouching on a concrete staircase dropping to a basement apartment not thirty feet away, Conall MacLachlan watched with admiration. Garcia played a homeless guy like no one else; Conall didn’t even want to know what he’d rolled in to make him stink like that. The sacky army fatigue jacket did a great job of hiding a bulletproof vest.

As they’d hoped, the steel door to the storefront slammed open. Two big men appeared, one with a snarling Rottweiler on a leash, the other using his body to prop open the door.

Clutching his bottle of cheap wine in a brown paper bag, Garcia peered blearily at them. “Hey, dudes.” He pretended to look alarmed. “Your dog won’t bite me, will he?”

The handler laughed and told Garcia in obscene terms that yes, indeed, the Rottweiler would rip him to shreds if he didn’t move on.

Garcia whimpered and got to his hands and knees, coincidentally a few feet closer to the door and the dog’s frothing muzzle. Then he demonstrated his one true talent. Everyone had to have one. Garcia’s was handier than most, however, for a special agent with the United States Drug Enforcement Agency. He could puke at will, assuming he’d primed his stomach in advance. Conall had sat with him an hour ago while he consumed two huge burritos in green sauce at a little Mexican joint a few blocks away.

Now, with sound effects and spectacular retching, he brought them back up. Vomit spattered the dog handler’s shoes and pant legs; even the Rottweiler backed up in alarm. Garcia managed to drop the wine bottle and shatter it, adding to the mess and stench. The other guy swore. All their attention was on the stinking pool of vomit and the seemingly drunken homeless man crawling on the sidewalk. The dog whined and scrabbled backward toward the door.

Conall murmured into his transmitter, “Now,” and moved, coming in fast while Johnny Harris did the same from the other direction. At the same time Garcia sprang to his feet, his Sig Pro pistol in his hand.

“Drop your weapons! This is a police raid. Drop them now!”

Conall slammed the doorkeeper to the sidewalk and went in first, low and fast. Garcia leaped over the dog and was on his heels. Reinforcements sprang from a van parked halfway down the block and within seconds were on the two guards, dragging them away from the window glass in case of flying bullets before cuffing them.

The interior was poorly lit, the window having been covered with butcher paper, the bare overhead bulb maybe forty watts. Two men burst from a rear hallway, firing as they came. Conall took one out with his Glock while Garcia brought down the other. They kicked weapons away and plunged down the hall. The back of the store was the drug distribution facility; the guys packaging coke were already wild-eyed at the spray of bullets and had their hands up before Conall went through the door.