his friend had driven away, Garrett climbed into the Porsche.
He made a brief stop at his town house, swapping the formal duds for jeans, a Western shirt and old boots. Once he’d changed, he could breathe a little better.
Returning to the kitchen, he turned on the countertop TV, flipping between the networks, watching in despair as one station after another showed Senator Cox and Mandy slipping out of the ballroom, arm in arm.
Deciding he’d seen enough, Garrett turned off the set.
NOW, NEARLY TWO HOURS LATER, only about a mile outside of Blue River, Garrett sped on toward home, the word fool drumming in his brain. He was stone sober, though a part of him wished he were otherwise, when the dazzle of red and blue lights splashed across his rearview mirror.
Garrett swore under his breath, downshifted—Fifth to Fourth to Third to Second, finally rolling to a stop at the side of the road. There, without shutting off the ignition, he waited.
He buzzed down the passenger-side window just as Brent Brogan, chief of police, was about to rap on the glass with his knuckles.
“Are out of your freakin’ mind?” his brother’s best friend demanded, bending to peer through the opening. Brogan’s badge caught a flash of moonlight. “I clocked you at almost one-twenty back there!”
Garrett tensed his hands on the steering wheel, relaxed them without releasing his hold. “Sorry,” he said, gazing straight ahead, through the bug-splattered windshield, instead of meeting Brogan’s gaze. Tate had dubbed the chief “Denzel,” since he resembled the actor’s younger self, and used the nickname freely, especially when the moment called for a little lightening up—but Garrett wasn’t on such easy terms with Brent Brogan as his brother was.
“You’re sorry?” Brogan asked, in a mocking drawl. “Well, that’s another matter, then. Garrett McKettrick is sorry. That just makes all the difference in the world, and pardon me for pulling you over before you killed yourself or somebody else.”
Garrett thrust out a sigh. “Write the ticket,” he said.
“I ought to arrest you,” Brogan said, and he sounded like he was musing on the possibility, giving it real consideration. “That’s what I ought to do. Throw your ass in jail.”
“Fine,” Garrett said, resigned. “Throw me in jail.”
Brent opened the passenger door and folded himself into the seat, keeping his right leg outside the car. He was a big man, taller than Garrett and broader through the shoulders, and that made the quarters feel a mite too close. “There’s no elbow room in this rig,” Brogan remarked. “Why don’t you get yourself a truck?”
Garrett gave a harsh guffaw, with no humor in it. Shoved his right hand through his hair and waited, too stubborn to answer.
It was the chief’s turn to sigh. “Look, Garrett,” he said, “I know you—you’re not drinking and you’re not high. Of all the people I might have pulled over tonight, shooting along this road like a bullet headed for the bull’s-eye, you’ve got more reason to know better than most.”
The old ache rose inside Garrett, lodged in his throat.
He closed his eyes, trying to block the images, but he couldn’t. He heard the screech of tires grabbing at asphalt, the grinding crash of metal careening into metal, even the ludicrously musical splintering of glass. He hadn’t been there the night his mom and dad were killed in a horrendous collision with an out-of-control semi, but the sounds and the pictures in his mind were so vivid, he might as well have been.
For the millionth time since the accident, a full decade in the past now, Garrett tried to come to terms with the loss of his parents. For the millionth time, it didn’t happen.
What would he have given to have them both waiting at the ranch house, just like in the old days?
Just about anything.
“You fixing to tell me what’s the matter?” Brogan asked, when a long time had passed. “I’m on duty until eight o’clock tomorrow morning, when Deputy Osburt relieves me. I can sit here and wait till hell freezes over and till the cows come home, if that’s what I have to do.”
Garrett assessed the situation. Dawn was hours away. The September darkness was weighted with heat, and with Brogan holding the Porsche’s door open like that, the air-conditioning system was of negligible value. He tightened his fingers around the steering wheel again, hard enough to make his knuckles ache.
“I had a bad day, that’s all,” he said. And a worse night.
Brogan laid a hand on his shoulder. “You headed for the Silver Spur?”
Garrett nodded, swallowed. He could feel the pull of home, deep inside; he was drawn to it.
“I’m going to follow you as far as the main gate,” Brogan said, after more pondering. “Make sure you get home in one piece.”
Garrett looked at him. “Thanks,” he said, without much inflection.
Brogan got out of the Porsche, shut the door, bent to look through the open window again. “Meantime, keep your foot light on the pedal,” he warned. “About the last thing on this earth I want to do right now is roust your big brother from his bed and break the news that you just wrapped yourself around a telephone pole.”
Tate was only a year older than he was, Garrett reflected, and they were about the same height and weight. So why did “big” have to preface “brother”? He was pretty sure nobody referred to him as Austin’s “big brother,” though he had a year on the youngest member of the family, along with a couple of inches and a good twenty pounds.
Garrett waited until Brogan was back in his cruiser before pulling back out onto the highway. The town of Blue River slept just up ahead; the streetlights tripped on, one by one, as he passed beneath them.
At this time of night, even the bars were closed.
As Garrett drove, with his one-man police escort trailing behind him, he thought about Tate, probably spooned up with his pretty fiancée, Libby Remington, in the modest house by the bend in the creek, and felt a brief but bitter stab of envy.
They were happy, those two. So crazy in love that the air around them seemed to buzz with pheromones. Tate and Libby were planning the mother of all weddings for New Year’s Eve, following that up with a honeymoon cruise in the Greek Islands. The sooner they could give Tate’s six-year-old twin daughters, Audrey and Ava, a baby brother or sister, they figured, the better.
Garrett calculated he’d be an uncle again about nine months and five minutes after the wedding ceremony was over.
The thought made him smile, in spite of everything.
The countryside slipped by.
At the main gates opening onto the Silver Spur, Brogan flashed his headlights once, turned the cruiser back toward town and drove off.
Pushing a button on his dashboard, Garrett watched as the tall iron gates, emblazoned with the name McKettrick, swung open to admit him.
Home, he reflected, as he drove through and up the long driveway leading
