She hit answer and pressed the phone to her ear. “Hello.”
Preston’s shock carried over the line in his voice. “Eva! You answered. I mean—how are you?”
Yup, she already regretted it. “What do you want, Preston?”
“Have you given any thought to what we talked about last week?”
“No,” she admitted. “And I don’t think—”
“Please,” he interrupted, a tinge of desperation in his voice. “Just one date. Dinner. That’s all I ask.”
Eva stared out the window at the piles of gray snow lining the road. Cam lied. Preston cheated. What made one any different from the other? They both hurt about the same.
“Eva, are you still there?”
She heaved out a sigh. “Okay. One date.”
…
Cam dropped into a chair after Miguel left with his statement, pressed his fingers into his eyelids to push back his thundering headache, and cursed himself out in every way he could think of—and a few he made up. He still stood behind his reasoning for not telling Eva about his suspicions, except maybe he could have gone about the whole thing differently. No idea how, but there must have been a way to keep her out of it without hurting her. He knew she saw him as her rock, something stable to cling to when her life got too hectic and his lie had ruptured that foundation. And, dammit, he knew how she felt about lies. How many times had she told him over the years that she loved his honesty? How much she loved that, no matter what, she could always count on him to tell her the truth?
And the most fucked up thing about that? He’d done nothing but lie to her since day one. Friendship? Hell, he’d never wanted that from her. He loved her and had kept his lips sealed, never once opening up and telling her the truth about his feelings.
Like she’d said, lying by omission was still lying.
She was never going to forgive him.
He felt three huge bodies crowd around him and groaned without opening his eyes. His brothers saw him the same way as Eva had. He was always the steady one, the reliable one. And, honestly, he was fucking sick of being everyone’s support system. What did he have to hold onto?
“So…” Reece said, drawing the word out.
Greer wasn’t as patient. “Wanna explain to us what the fuck you were thinking, Camden? You told me this wasn’t a big deal, and I believed you.”
Vaughn smacked him upside the head. “That was for lying to us.” Another smack. “And that’s for lying to Eva.”
Cam shot to his feet and pushed through the barricade his brothers made before his twin decided to smack him again. “I fucked up, all right?”
“I’ll say.” Reece, the outwardly calmest of the three, crossed his arms in front of him and perched on the edge of Greer’s desk. A stack of papers fell to the floor. He raised an eyebrow at the mess and then spared his oldest brother a disgusted glance. “We need to hire you a secretary.” Then he returned his attention to Cam. “And we need to figure out this problem of yours before anyone else ends up dead.”
“I have it handled, guys.”
“You’re not handling it alone,” Greer said through his teeth. “I already told you, that’s not how this family works.”
“Yeah, and you’re not Dad.” As soon as the words left Cam’s mouth, he wanted to take them back. After their parents died, Greer had filed for emancipation, worked his ass off to finish school early, and got a fulltime job, then did his best to cobble together a semblance of the family they had lost. On his seventeenth birthday, he’d joined the military solely so he could better support them. He’d taken on more responsibility than any teenager should ever have to and it wasn’t fair of Cam to condemn him for it now.
Greer remained as stoic as ever, but the words must have been like a physical blow. Cam opened his mouth to apologize, but what could he really say? The damage had been done and I’m sorry wasn’t going to fix it.
“Tell us everything you know about Soup’s death,” Greer said after a long moment. “Do you have any suspects?”
He nodded. Soup and the hit contract were so much easier than the minefield he’d stepped into with his heartless remark. “I went through some of my old cases, focusing on the recent parolees that had threatened me in the past, and came up with three names—Arnold Mabry, Tom Lindquist, Gordon Dunphy. I’ve already eliminated Mabry. He didn’t even remember me, and I never considered him a real suspect anyway. His was a crime of passion, and he was drunk when he made those threats against me.”
“And the other two?” Reece asked.
“I haven’t had any luck finding Lindquist. He’s skipped out on his parole officer and there’s a warrant for his arrest.”
Everyone looked at Vaughn in silent question.
“Yeah,” Vaughn said, “I’m on Lindquist.”
Cam’s stomach twisted and he faced his twin. “You should sit this one out, bro. It’s too—”