to admit that it’s a lot more palatable than thinking some faceless stalker is after me.”
“But what if you’re wrong?”
* * *
The next night Sherri’s “faceless stalker” comment was still replaying in Cole’s head as the compulsion to stick close to the ambulance base and keep an eye on her warred with the need to visit his brother.
He didn’t blame Eddie for refusing to talk to him yesterday after the way he’d let Zeke manhandle him. He probably should’ve bailed him out of jail himself instead of leaving it to their father, but he’d hoped the brief taste of life behind bars would scare him straight.
Cole slid into his truck and stared at the drug rehab pamphlet Sherri had pressed on him yesterday, still a little stunned that she’d been more concerned with getting his brother help than fretting over her own situation. It had physically hurt to look at her black eye and the cut his brother had sliced in her cheek. The least he could do for her was get to the truth about the suspicious incidents on her shifts.
Reinhart was definitely out as a suspect. The man was on oxygen 24/7, but he had a son, a son Cole had yet to catch up with. As for Sherri’s suspicions of her colleagues, he hadn’t gotten the sense from any of the other paramedics that they resented her or had any other reason to haze her.
Then again, besides her partner, no one he’d interviewed had seemed concerned that the rash of incidents involving her was anything more than coincidence. Even her uncle, a sergeant in the department, hadn’t known about them until Cole mentioned them. Apparently, Sherri hadn’t breathed a word about the incidents to her family.
Cole tucked the pamphlet she’d shared into his glove box. He wasn’t surprised that her uncle couldn’t imagine anyone having a reason to deliberately target someone as caring as Sherri. Eddie certainly didn’t have one.
At least no reason that Cole knew of. But he didn’t really know his brother anymore. Which was what he’d come to town to change. Cole started his truck and headed toward the old family home. He’d let himself get sidetracked long enough.
As he turned on to their street, Cole’s palms started to sweat. He hadn’t faced his dad in seven years and wouldn’t today if he could avoid it. He parked his truck a few houses shy of the driveway so he could slip out the back if Dad made it an early night with whatever woman he was dating these days. He shrank back at sight of Sherri’s parents exiting the neighboring house. He waited until they’d locked up and driven off, then hurried past.
From the corner of his dad’s lot, Cole cut across the lawn, expecting to kick up clouds of dandelion fluff with every step. But under the forgiving cover of twilight, the place looked surprisingly tidy.
Maybe Eddie’s arrest had drummed some responsibility into Dad. The TV flicked on in the living room, and Dad settled on the couch. Alone. No date.
Cole clasped the porch stair rail. The green paint crumbled off in his hand and an odd sadness twisted in his chest. Painting the rails had been his and dad’s spring project for as long as he could remember. That and tinkering on the old Camaro.
Bypassing the porch for the moment, Cole rounded the corner of the house to peek in the garage. He rubbed a clear circle in the dingy window. The Camaro was still there. He wondered if Dad ever worked on it with Eddie.
Being the youngest, Eddie had always been more of a mama’s boy, which was probably why it’d almost killed Mom when he’d chosen to stay in Stalwart with Dad. Cole couldn’t blame Eddie for not wanting to leave his friends, but if he’d heard how Mom had cried herself to sleep every night, maybe he wouldn’t have minded making new friends.
The ones he had here sure hadn’t done him any favors.
At the sound of a bedroom window sliding open, Cole ducked behind the hedges that hugged the base of the house and the memory of a much younger Sherri playing hide and seek in his yard whispered through his mind. As an only child eager to join in their games, she’d helped bridge the wide age gap between him and his brother on lazy summer afternoons. A backpack thumped the dirt under the window. Then, clad in a black hoodie, Eddie perched on the window ledge of the darkened room.
Cole’s temper flared. Eddie wasn’t supposed to be out after dark—a too-little-too-late curfew had been imposed by Dad, who clearly wasn’t paying any better attention to what his youngest son was up to than he had before Eddie’s arrest. As his brother jumped to the ground, Cole resisted the urge to read Eddie the riot act here and now, opting instead to see where he headed.
Eddie darted behind the garage and re-emerged a second later pedaling his bike.
Cole waited until he’d turned onto the street and had gotten a few houses ahead before he jogged back to his truck. When Eddie reached the corner, Cole pulled his vehicle onto the street at a crawl. This could be the break he’d been hoping for. Eddie had refused to snitch on his drug sources, but something told him his little brother was about to lead him straight to them.
Eddie crossed street after street heading toward the west side of town, seemingly oblivious to Cole’s truck trailing a block behind him. Halfway up Belmont, Eddie ramped the curb and swerved to the back of a squat bungalow.
Parking in front of the playground a few houses shy of Eddie’s destination, Cole’s internal radar ratcheted to high alert. The neighborhood was one of the older ones in town. The postage-stamp lawns appeared neatly kept for the most part. But it didn’t take his brother showing up here to tell him something about the neighborhood wasn’t right. It was a Friday night, and the streetlights hadn’t kicked on; yet, there wasn’t a kid to be seen.
Cole quickly circled to the far end of the playground where soccer fields bordered the backs of the houses for the rest of the street. A discarded cold medicine package caught in the fence reinforced his suspicions that the guy Eddie came to see was a drug dealer. If he’d been driving his cruiser, he could’ve checked the system to see if they’d had any recent trouble in the area.
As he sprinted to the back of the house Eddie had targeted, the wail of a distant ambulance roused concerns for Sherri. But he couldn’t trail her ambulance, let alone do a thing to protect her until he got his brother out of here.
Peering past the detached garage between him and the house, Cole spotted Eddie picking his way up the back steps of the dimly lit bungalow. Its blinds were drawn, and Cole had no illusions the owner would welcome his arrival.
The wood of the dilapidated veranda groaned under Eddie’s weight.
Gripping the chain-link fence, Cole scrutinized the backyard for booby traps. Drug dealers could be sickly creative about safeguarding their privacy.
The veranda’s wooden floor suddenly cracked, and Eddie dropped out of sight, yelping like a whipped pup.
“Eddie?” Cole hissed.
A low groan rose from below the porch.
With one last visual sweep of the backyard, Cole vaulted over the fence. Monitoring the windows for signs of movement inside, he edged toward the house.
Eddie’s head bobbed above the splintered wood.
“What were you thinking?” Cole hissed, offering him a hand out.
Eddie startled at Cole’s hand in his face, but a burst of light from a nearby window got him
