Falling for the Brother

In three short months Mason had grown truly fond of the man.

On his other side, not as close as Miriam, Brianna stood holding hands with her mother. In full dress uniform, Harper bent to say something to her daughter, then straightened, her gaze ahead. Behind them, more than a hundred cops stood, fully dressed, their hands crossed and resting in front of them.

Music played, a flutist behind them, while directly across from him, on the other side of the casket, stood a thirty-year-old blonde woman with three children, huddled together and crying. A host of other family members of hers, many of them known to the Albina police as key players in a drug-trafficking business, stood behind the woman, dressed in suits and ties, their hands crossed and resting in front of them.

Oh, brother, what have you done?

Mason’s chin twitched, and he could feel the emotion building up inside him, threatening to break free. He’d loved the guy. From the second his parents had brought him home, he’d loved him. And loved him, still.

More than a hundred people were standing around that grave because every one of them had cared about and respected the man.

Bruce had had what he’d always wanted—the love of everyone with whom he came into contact—and it hadn’t been enough.

He looked across at Emily, Bruce’s secret wife, and the three children, one older than Brianna, two younger—the family he’d lived with on and off since before he’d married Harper. He still couldn’t understand what his brother had been.

What he’d done.

Falling in love with a perp, the one he’d really been sleeping with before he married Harper, knowing his family would never accept him living that life, he’d fooled them all. His marriage to Harper had been a cover for his real love. Both times he’d admitted infidelity to her, it had been because he feared he’d been caught out. After the divorce, he’d needed to keep her on the hook so people wouldn’t suspect he really had a thing for a woman in his make-believe life. The nights he’d spent away from home as an undercover cop, he’d spent with Emily. The ones he’d spent with Harper, and later in Gram’s house—Emily had thought he’d been on the road, taking care of family business. Drug business. He’d been able to keep up the pretense, even with her father and brothers, because he’d lived his cover—as a man who had contacts and could let them know what the feds were doing so they could run their business without fear of getting caught.

And he’d played the department, too. Bringing in bad guys—always enemies of “the family.”

He’d been a dirty cop. A man who’d loved his real life, a life that everyone thought was just the cover. But a man who’d also deeply loved the family he’d been born into.

The family he couldn’t bear to disappoint.

Emily was why he’d been desperate to marry Harper, even after she’d slept with Mason. Gwen had begun to suspect that he was in too deep with his cover girlfriend, and he’d had to get her off track. It was also why he’d slept with her the night of his bachelor party. To convince her that sex was a moment in time with him—whether with Emily or with her. Sex with Emily meant no more to him than sex with Gwen.

Emily was where he’d run whenever he got mad and walked out. Emily was where he ran that day he’d left Mason, Gram and Harper in the state park.

He’d taken her and the kids on an impromptu vacation to Europe. And when he returned, when he’d known that Mason, the FBI and the Albina police were closing in on him, he’d finally told his first wife, the love of his life, Emily, the truth.

By all accounts she’d stood beside him. The fact that he’d ended up dead in his car the next week could have been attributed to her—she’d certainly had motive—except that Mason had found no evidence whatsoever to prove that she’d had anything to do with his death.

Perhaps a member of her family had something to do with the close-up gunshot to his head. He’d been playing them for years. Maybe a cop had taken him out. Perhaps it was self-inflicted, as it had been made to appear. Perhaps no one would ever know.

“Why are those people so sad if Daddy’s in heaven with God?” Brianna’s sweet voice was more than a whisper, but not glaringly loud.