She lay back and closed her eyes. “I work with the cops for three months and I get Dad and me kidnapped, and a man is dead, and now Dad has another heart attack.”
“Don’t forget Travis getting shot.”
She’d never forget Travis’s silence as he drove her through the East Side, to the warehouse. Forgiveness felt very far away. “How is Travis?” she asked, trying for Christian charity.
“Two doors down from Dad, recovering from a gunshot wound to the shoulder, with an extremely bored uniformed cop sitting outside his door.”
She couldn’t laugh, but she did muster a weak smile.
“Sorenson and Hawthorn were both here, but one cop, however, is conspicuous in his absence. Where’s Dorchester? I figured he’d have to be pried from your side with a crowbar.”
“He’s gone.” At Caleb’s single raised eyebrow, she added, “Between the siren and the ice pack crackling I was a little distracted, but I put the pieces together in the ambulance. He said something about Stockholm, and this isn’t real.”
Clearly mystified, Caleb blinked, then gave a sharp bark of laughter that reverberated in Eve’s cheek. “Stockholm syndrome, or a variation thereof. Under considerable emotional stress some hostages form attachments to their captors, although the analogy doesn’t hold in your situation.”
“He thinks what I feel for him isn’t real.”
Her brother sat forward, elbows on knees. “Maybe he’s right.”
The apocalypse must be on its way if Caleb was agreeing with a cop, even a cop who saved two members of his family from certain death. “Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?” she asked.
“He’s right. It’s not real, Eve, what happened over the last few weeks. It’s a bizarre interlude in your life.”
“I know that, Caleb, but that doesn’t make the feelings any less real,” she said evenly. “I love him. He feels something too, but he won’t admit it. I think I scare him.”
“You scare the hell out of me,” her brother said, then the smile disappeared. “Oh, Eve.”
Hot tears trickled into the bandage on her cheek, and her sinuses swelled and throbbed under her bruised cheek. “It hurts when I cry,” she said shakily.
“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “You’ve got one hell of a shiner. The doctor said you’re lucky you don’t have a fractured eye socket.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said, and reached for the box of tissues on the nightstand.
Caleb shut his mouth, shifted onto the bed, and held her while she cried.
*
Matt stood in the basement, sunlight filtering through the dirty casement windows onto the dusty pile of stereo equipment. He had a decision to make. To do that he had to get very clear about who he was and what he wanted. Boxing no longer brought clarity, and only a fool continued to use ineffective tactics. So the first step was to bring speakers, tuner, and disc changer up from the basement.
It took two trips, but eventually the relics from an archeological dig into the late twentieth century sat on the floor in the corner by the entertainment center. The cables were still attached to the components. He plugged them in, pushed the main power button, inserted a disc at random, and pressed play. Nothing. He pulled all the cords out and licked them—a trick he’d learned wiring radios on patrol—plugged them in again. The slow guitar chords from Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is” blasted out into the living room. Matt put his hands on his hips and let the music wash over muscle and bone held too tight for too long. When the song ended and the disc spun to the Violent Femmes he opened his laptop, grabbed a CD at random from the shelves behind the television, and inserted it into the disc drive to import. It would take a while, but he had time. He was on desk duty until the department cleared his role in the shooting death of Lyle Murphy, and he’d used the time wisely. A new AC unit would go in next week.
He was sitting with his back to the wall, watching the sun set and listening to Pearl Jam’s “Given to Fly” when he saw Luke roll up the ramp. His brother opened the door and braked to a stop by the recliner, a pile of mail on his lap.