had been there. At the Stand. And would be around for the next two weeks? Or, at least, somewhere between Santa Raquel, where the Stand was, and two hours north in Albina, where Bruce lived—if he was, indeed, investigating.
There were going to be ramifications. She knew it and could feel them building. She and Mason in contact... Bruce being accused... She had to get all the facts she could before she started to feel things that had nothing to do with Miriam. Or her job.
“Bruce didn’t abuse his grandmother,” she said with certainty.
Why the hell would Mason do this to him?
And then it occurred to her. The brothers must be working together. They knew who’d hurt their grandmother—someone she was protecting—and Bruce, with his undercover skills, and Mason, with his investigative talents, were going to put the guy at ease. They’d let him think he’d gotten away with it, then set him up somehow, in order to find the proof that would trap him and put him away without Miriam’s needing to testify against him. Which, clearly, she was terrified to do. You didn’t get those bruises on your chin by falling from a stepladder.
It was a long shot, considering the fact that the brothers hadn’t had much to do with each other—as far as she was aware—in five years, but Bruce would put all differences aside to protect Miriam from danger. And Mason would come running if Bruce needed him.
“Bruce’s brother is absolutely certain he did it.” Lila’s tone had a different quality to it now. Not defense. Or even authority. More like...compassion?
“Did you talk to him yourself?”
“Yes.” Then that meant...
“You were called in?”
“Yes.”
Prior to her marriage, Lila might have been at the Stand in the middle of the night, since she used to stay at her apartment there as often as she went home to the condo she’d owned. Calling her in had been more common then, too; she’d had no family, no one else who needed her. But that had all changed since she’d finally allowed herself to love again.
She’d taken her son back into her life, trusting herself to love him and his family well. And married the man who’d been the only one able to break through the barriers she’d put around herself.
But now, to call Lila out of bed in the middle of the night... Someone had been pretty damned concerned.
Maybe Mason hadn’t known he could trust Lila with the truth—that he and Bruce were working together?
“So Bruce is still working and living his life as usual?”
“That is my understanding.”
“And Miriam’s injuries...they’re non-life-threatening...” She read over them again. Severe facial contusions in the chin area and a broken arm.
“Correct.”
“Maybe she did just fall.” The chin bruises, if she’d landed with her chin in something—say, the gold egg carton she was so fond of.
“According to Mason this isn’t the first time.”
Wow. She simply couldn’t grasp the reality. Couldn’t imagine how it must make the brothers feel, knowing someone was hurting their grandmother.
Brianna.
She became aware of the first ramification stirred up by this mess.
“How many times before?” Until a month ago, four-year-old Brianna had spent every other Friday night and half of Saturday with Bruce. And, since Oscar’s death two years before, since Bruce had moved in with his grandmother to help her out, Brianna had been with Miriam, too.
“The doctor suspects, based on previous bone cracks he could see on the X-ray, at least three.”
“To the same arm?”
“Yes.”
It made no sense to her at all.
“And the cracks had time to heal.” Which meant that whatever had been happening had been going on for a while.
“Yes.” Lila didn’t often point out the facts, didn’t explicitly share what she knew. Her way was to give her conversational partners the time and space—usually with a bit of guidance—to find the truth on their own. To figure it out for themselves, rather than be told. She was a huge proponent of helping people think their own thoughts, draw their own conclusions.
Because so many victims of abuse—as everyone now knew Lila had been—were denied that right to the extent of believing themselves incapable of trusting their own thoughts.
“Brianna stayed in that house every other Friday night.”
“I know the two of you used to go to Albina on your weekends off. I suspected she might’ve been visiting her father.”
“And my parents,” Harper said, her screen steady on the picture of an injured Miriam. “They have a small vegetable farm and I’d stay with them. Brianna would spend Friday night at Bruce’s. From Saturday afternoon until we came home on Sunday, we’d be with my folks.”
“What’s happened with her visitation since you accepted the new position?”
As head of security now, she couldn’t be gone every other weekend. She had vacation. And days off, but they rotated.
“Bruce has to make the drive here, to my house, to see her. He can take her to his hotel on Friday night, or I said he could just pick her up and spend time with her, then bring her home...”
“Has he done that?”
Well... “Not yet,” Harper said, closing the screen when she could no longer bear to look at it. “But he’s an undercover cop and he’s been on assignment. We knew going in that there’d be times, when he was on a job, that he’d miss his weekends. It happened up in Albina, too, but Miriam still got to visit with her.”
She could hear her defensive tone. It wasn’t that she wanted to be with her ex-husband anymore. If she did, her marriage might have lasted more than a year. But she couldn’t see a good cop having his life ruined because he couldn’t keep his pants zipped.
None of that mattered at the moment. “You should know, Miriam isn’t fond of me,” she told her boss. “Truth be told, she pretty much hates me.” The rest of the staff had a right to know what they might be facing.
But if Mason and Bruce were working together, presumably they’d chosen the Stand because she was there. Because they trusted her to keep their grandmother safe while they did their bit?
Bruce knew where she worked, if not the actual address, the name of the shelter. And he was a decorated cop with cop friends, she heard Lila’s words again.
“Why does she hate you?”
“I left her grandson.” Miriam hadn’t been subtle in expressing her opinion as to where the blame lay. But she’d reluctantly agreed to keep her opinions about Harper to herself when Brianna
