our hearts out.”
“Lovely family,” Tory murmured. “Do you believe her?”
“I believe in not taking chances. The address and phone numbers for cops are unlisted, but if you’ve got a computer, some skill and enough time, you can find anybody. It’s been over a week since the shootout and we don’t know what information Heath has, if any. If the threat is real and he finds the addresses of the cops who were at the credit union, the logical place for him to start looking for us is at home. Which is why I’m here. And the reason I tried to call you for hours. And sent my brothers by here, too,” he added.
“I’ve been out.” Bran almost missed the elusive shadow that flickered across her eyes. Almost. “I got home about fifteen minutes ago.”
He waited a beat, watching her. “Where’s your car?”
“In the shop, remember? Sheila Sanford picked me up,” Tory said, referring to a P.I. she often teamed with on jobs.
Bran felt his frustration surface; he’d spent hours trying to contact her and getting no results. Worrying about her.
“What about your cell? In addition to the machine here, I left messages on your voice mail. Said they were urgent.” He leaned in. “I realize we haven’t spoken to each other for three months. We’ve got issues to deal with. But when I call and say it’s important that you get back to me, I’m not playing games.”
Her chin came up. “I left my phone in the car.” She shoved back her chair, walked to the V in the counter where the answering machine sat. “It doesn’t show any messages waiting,” she said, turning back to face him.
“Well, darlin’,” he drawled, “I sure as hell left one. And I’ll make a wild stab at what happened. While you were gone, Danny dropped by and checked to see if any of his pals left him a message. Brother dear just couldn’t go to the trouble of leaving you a note to call me. Sound familiar?”
Thinking of his reprobate brother-in-law put knots in Bran’s gut. He couldn’t blame the breakdown of his marriage on Danny. But the way Tory had dealt with the kid’s screw-ups had magnified the problems in their marriage and ignited the final blowup that prompted him to pack his bags.
Tory’s chin went up another notch as she gripped her hands on the counter behind her. Her breast-skimming blond hair was still tousled from their rolling around on the ground and his comment about her brother had color rising over her cheekbones. Watching her, Bran felt his chest tighten. How many times had he seen her look much the same after a long, searing bout of sex?
Standing there, just standing there she was getting to him, filling him with need he didn’t want to feel, stirring up images of her that he’d spent days, weeks, months trying not to think about.
“We aren’t going to talk about Danny,” she said in a voice that had gone very low and very cold. “Ever again.”
“Seems to me we have to,” he countered, feeling his own face heat as three months of pent-up anger kindled bright and hot. “Because your story doesn’t add up, and I figure it’s because of Danny. You depend on your cell phone for your business. If you had forgotten and left it in your car while it was being worked on, you’d have gone back and picked it up. Of course, that’d be a little hard to do if you didn’t know the whereabouts of your car.” He narrowed his eyes. “Danny took it and disappeared. That’s where you and Sheila have been, right? Cruising around looking for your brother and your car? Think maybe I ought to track him down? Remind him his license got suspended when he chose not to pay all those traffic tickets he’d racked up? Remind him of what happened to him after he got tossed in jail?”
“I doubt Danny needs a reminder of that. Any more than I need one about the questionable choices I’ve made.” She used her hand to make a sweeping gesture of the kitchen. “Not when they’re all around me,” she added in a voice that sounded like chipped glass.
“You don’t like the house, you can always move out.”
“I plan to, as soon as you sign the divorce papers my lawyer sent you.”
“Sent me? Your slick attorney didn’t just send them. He had a process server track me down at the briefing station and slap the damn papers in my hand.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Every cop on the shift knew what was going on.”
“I didn’t know.” The flicker of surprise in her eyes verified that. “I had no idea my attorney planned to serve you that way.”
“Well, now you know.”
“I talked to him yesterday. He said he hasn’t received them back from you. Why haven’t you signed them?”
Bran curled his hands into fists. He’d sat in his ratty apartment, staring at the document for hours, telling himself to just sign the damn thing and be done with it. The fact he had no clue why he hadn’t was like a splash of alcohol on his rekindled anger. And, hell, maybe he was ticked because she’d beat him to the punch and served him first!
“I’ll let you know when I sign them.”
“Why wait?”
Rising, he sent her a caustic look. “Why hurry?”
She lifted a palm, dropped it. “Look, we made a mistake. We ran off and got married when the only thing we knew about each other was how good we were together in bed. If we’d just stayed there, we would have been much better off. Instead, we’ve spent the past eleven months trying to force each other into molds in which we’ll never fit.”
She stabbed a hand through her hair, closed her eyes. When she reopened them, an aura of weariness had replaced the agitation.
“You left, Bran. You walked out. You belong in this house, I don’t. I’ve found a condo I want to buy. Legally, it’ll be a lot easier to do that after our divorce is final. Why won’t you do both of us a favor and sign the papers?”
He damn well wished he had an answer for that. Since he didn’t, he flipped the topic. “Let’s get back to the reason I’m here,” he said, closing the space between them. “Vic Heath.”
“Fine.” She thrust her tumbled hair behind her ears. “Fine.”
“His mother might be right about Vic being in eye-for-an-eye mode. And my having put him in prison gives him even more reason to come after me. If he shows up here, I don’t want him to find you. You can bunk with Morgan, Carrie and Grace until he’s picked up.”
“You’re the one who should stay at your sisters’ place. Heath’s after you, not me.”
“True. But if he can’t find me, he might settle for my wife. I don’t want you hurt, Tory.”
“I don’t want you hurt, either,” she said quietly.
“Well, that’s something we agree on. You can pack a bag now. I’ll drive you over to my sisters’ place.”
“Has Heath been spotted since he left the funeral home in Tulsa? Does anyone even know if he’s still in Oklahoma?”
“No, to both questions.”
“If the threat was to me, I’d go.”
Bran
