Flirting with Disaster (Jackson: Girls' Night Out 2)

“Yeah. New stuff came up.”

“That guy is pretty crazy, huh? The survivalist? And his brother, I suppose.”

“They definitely have some issues, even aside from being murderers.” That was all he was going to say, but as he watched her smear butter over the cheese sandwiches and drop them into the sizzling pan, he realized this was an in. “They didn’t have much of a chance, I guess. By all accounts their dad was a bad guy. Mom died at home, giving birth to Saul in their cabin. They were raised alone by their father, and he was a crazy son of a bitch who got in trouble with the law a lot.”

“Mmm.” She stared into the pan and didn’t respond.

“He obviously had a big effect on their lives.”

“Families are funny that way,” she muttered.

He watched her flip the sandwiches and tried to think of some other way to open her up. He knew it wouldn’t be easy. She couldn’t trust him because he was a marshal. He had to find a way to show her he would sympathize. That he understood that the world was more complicated than the law allowed.

His neck prickled as an idea occurred to him.

“Do you want something else with this?” she asked. “You probably need more than a grilled cheese to fill you up.”

“No, that’s good.” Suddenly nervous, he eased past her to get two plates from the cupboard. She checked the bottoms of the sandwiches then slipped them onto the plates before carrying them to her small table.

He brought their glasses and took a seat after she did. “My family...” he started, before pausing to wet his dry throat. “My family seemed perfect, I think. We had a good life. Stable. A house and a backyard and two parents. The American dream. But my brother had problems.”

She frowned as she chewed, looking confused. “I thought you only had a sister.”

“I do now. My brother died.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, her voice alarmed, as if it had just happened.

“He was five years older than me. The firstborn. Popular. Confident. Star football player. I don’t know what happened. He made the wrong friends at some point. Partied a little too hard. Then he was tackled in a game, and his leg was screwed up pretty badly. He wasn’t the star running back anymore. He got bored and partied a little harder.”

Isabelle nodded.

“None of us realized it at the time, though. He was charming and outgoing and so confident through all of it. He graduated and went to college. I was thirteen, and he was still my hero.”

He stared at the grilled cheese in his hands for a moment before he set it down. He realized Isabelle had set hers down, too, but she still said nothing. He’d hoped that he would need to tell only a little bit. Let her know that he understood the kind of darkness family could pull you into. But he hadn’t said that word yet. Any of those words. Heroin. Junkie. Overdose. The words his parents would never say, even now.

“I don’t know when he started using, but he didn’t make it through his freshman year of college. He was a full-blown junkie by February.”

“Heroin?” she whispered.

“Yes. We didn’t know it at first. All I knew was he was back home and living in his old room in the basement, and I was happy about that. Can you believe it? He had free time to spend with me. I thought it was great.”

She nodded. “Of course you did.”

“But that didn’t last long. By the time I was fourteen, I knew he was shooting up. At fifteen, I was the only one in the house who would talk about it. My sister was older, but she was busy with school and not the type to confront anyone. And my parents were just...” He waved a hand. “They couldn’t accept it. They refused to admit he had a problem. They said he had a lot of pain with his knee and ankle and he’d bounce back.”

Tom took a bite of his sandwich, surprised that it tasted good. He was halfway through it in a few bites, but Isabelle didn’t say a word. Why wouldn’t she talk? Why wouldn’t she offer him something in return?

“He overdosed?” she finally asked.

He’d told most of the story. He might as well tell the rest. “Yes. When I was sixteen. I found him in his room the next day.”

“Oh, Tom,” she said. Her hand came into his vision and curled around his wrist. “I’m so sorry.”

He nodded and forced a shrug. “I try not to let my colleagues know about my...phobia, but I really don’t like seeing corpses.”

“Shit,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I teased you.”

“You didn’t know. I’m sorry I overreacted. We all have our secrets. It’s not easy to talk about them.”