now too, towering over her, making the kitchen seem much smaller than it had moments ago.
He was dressed in light gray pants, a white button-up shirt and a tie. His sleeves were long in spite of the warm temperatures outside. Little white scars on the backs of his hands left no doubt about the reason for those long sleeves. Her heart seemed to stutter in her chest and her throat tightened.
“Colin?” The once treasured name that she hadn’t allowed past her lips in years tumbled from them in a whisper that was a dash of pain and a huge dollop of guilt.
He didn’t even glance at her.
He slid a pistol out of the holster on his hip and leveled it at her brother. “Brian Sterling, you’re under arrest for felony escape and the murder of Officer Owen Jennings.”
Peyton drew in a sharp breath. What was Colin talking about? He was arresting her brother? Dear God, no. This couldn’t be happening. Not again.
The blood seemed to drain from her brother’s face, leaving him a gaunt, frightened shadow of the person he used to be. His haunted gray eyes, the same ones that Peyton saw every time she looked in a mirror, pleaded with her to help him. The same eyes that had stared at her in bewilderment from the back seat of a squad car as a barn burned to the ground in the distance. The same ones that had blurred with tears on the other side of a thick glass partition in the prison’s visiting room when Peyton broke the news about their mother’s death.
She stood frozen, the broom clutched in her hand. It was ten years ago all over again. And just like then, she was forced to make a choice that no one should ever have to make—the choice between the man she loved and her own flesh and blood.
She slammed the broom against Colin’s forearm, knocking the pistol out of his hand.
“Run, Brian! Run!” she choked out.
He whirled around and took off toward the front door.
Colin swiped his pistol up off the hardwood floor and gave her a furious, searing look that burned right through her heart. Then he sprinted through the house after her brother.
Peyton twisted her hands together in her lap as she sat beside one of the desks in the squad room, waiting to discover her fate. The police officer who’d ordered her to sit there was talking to a handful of other men and women at the far end of the vast, open room. It seemed like every cop in Gatlinburg was here. The place was buzzing with anger and excitement as they studied maps and gathered flashlights, preparing to hunt her brother down like a rabid dog.
She wanted to scream, shake them, somehow make them realize what she couldn’t all those years ago: her brother was innocent. The only thing stopping her was that there was no denying what she’d seen with her own eyes—Brian, standing in her kitchen five years before his sentence was up. They were right that he’d broken out of prison. But they were wrong about the horrible, evil thing they also claimed that he’d done—killed a Memphis police officer after the escape.
Brian had always been headstrong and rebellious, with anger and impulse-control issues that had had him seeing a therapist from the time he was ten years old. But he was also sweet and sensitive. Never a bully, he was the kid who got picked on by his classmates because he was so awkward and shy. He adored animals and had gotten in trouble countless times for bringing home strays. The brother who cried after watching a sad commercial could never have set fire to a building with two people inside. That was the reason she could never, ever believe in his guilt. And that was the reason she knew that he hadn’t shot that police officer in Memphis.
“Is that why you came back to Gatlinburg? Because you knew your brother was planning to escape and you wanted to be here to help him?”
She jerked around to meet Colin McKenzie’s accusing stare as he stood beside the desk. It pained her that his deep voice, angry or not, sent the same jolt of longing through her that it had since they’d both turned fifteen and discovered their friendship had blossomed into something more. The cute boy who’d made all the girls’ hearts flutter in high school had matured into a mouth-wateringly gorgeous man. But all that physical perfection was spoiled by the look of hate blazing from his stormy blue eyes.
The hate was definitely new.
“I suppose from your viewpoint I deserve that. But, no. Why I came back has nothing to do with my brother. Even though he was wrongfully convicted, I would never help him escape from prison.”
“You’d just help him escape from your kitchen when a law-enforcement officer placed him under arrest. Is that the line you’ve drawn in the sand?”
She curled her fingers against her palms. “Okay, I definitely deserved that. And I completely understand that it looked that way to you. But from my viewpoint, my innocent brother was being threatened with a gun. I was protecting him.”
He jerked his shirt sleeve up a few inches on his left arm, revealing a smattering of puckered burn scars. “I pulled two people out of a burning barn after your brother set the fire. Innocent isn’t a word I’d use to describe him.”
Threatening tears burned her eyes but she viciously held them back. “I’m sorry, Colin. About everything. I truly am. I hate that you were hurt. But the truth hasn’t changed. Brian didn’t set that fire.”
He jerked his sleeve back down. “Do you want to go to prison?”
She stared at him in surprise. “What?”
“You’re in a precarious position, Peyton. If I officially arrest you and the DA decides to press charges, you could end up in prison for aiding and abetting a felon.”
“But, I didn’t mean—”
“Why did you do it? Why did you help him?”
She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “I told you. I was protecting him. It was instinct. A choice—family or...” She chewed her lip.
“Or me. And once again, you didn’t choose me.”
The bitterness in his voice made her ache. But there was nothing she could do, nothing she could say that could ever fix what she’d destroyed so many years ago.
Because he was right.
“Give me a reason not to arrest you.”
She slowly shook her head, no longer able to hold back the tears. “I can’t. What I did today was wrong. I know that. But it was automatic, without any rational thought behind it. I’d probably do the same thing again if I had a do-over. Protecting my family is as ingrained in me as breathing. Can’t you understand that?”
Every muscle in his body seemed to tense, as if he was debating what to say but didn’t trust himself to speak.
She brushed the tears from her cheeks.
He swore softly and turned away, his ground-eating stride quickly taking him across the room to one of the groups of officers talking by a window.
Sniffing, she breathed deeply, willing the tears to stop. And all the while, she watched
