The Lawman's Secret Son

Again.

He had to admit he’d been confused when Lara suggested they elope a week before the wedding. Why would she want to ruin her big day?

Her smile had been wistful when she replied, “My big day? You mean my mother’s big day. This wedding is turning into the social event of the year, Brady, it’s not about you and me anymore. I want to go to a justice of the peace. I want to get married, just the two of us, the way we wanted. Then we’ll come back and do it Mom’s way.”

The memory of that private, secret ceremony and the night that followed made Brady all the more anxious to put this shift to bed. He would make her the happiest woman in the world. Things would be perfect. He’d make them perfect.

The squad car radio burst into life at that moment. Brady leaned forward, adjusting the volume. He caught little more than blue sedan, dented right front fender before a car matching the description sped past. He reported his location and that he had the vehicle in sight, rattling off the license-plate number as he trailed behind.

Apparently noticing Brady’s flashing lights, the sedan accelerated. It made a series of turns, brake lights flashing through intersections. Brady followed, but not too close. They weren’t going to get very far and he didn’t want to push them into doing something stupid.

More information came in over the radio as the sedan made a wide turn toward the river. Car stolen, two suspects, both minors, unarmed, alleged to have lifted beer from the all-night store up on Breezeway…

Brady and his brother, Garrett, had grown up in Riverport, Oregon, not far from this very neighborhood. Unless the kid driving that sedan had a trick up his sleeve, he’d soon dead-end against the gate securing the old Evergreen Timber loading dock.

But the gate was old, the chain connecting the two sides weak with rust. With barely a pause, the sedan busted through the gate and kept going, careening back and forth as it skidded toward the waterfront and the Columbia River beyond.

Dumb kids. Lifting a couple of cases of beer was nothing to die for, even if they’d compounded the offense by stealing a car. Brady backed off as his buddy and soon-to-be best man, Tom James, chimed in he was seconds away from lending backup.

A collision with a stack of oil drums saved the car from plunging into the river. With a series of thuds, the sedan came to a grinding halt in the middle of the pile, heavy drums rolling and bumping into each other with dull heavy clunks. An overhead light illuminated the scene. Brady stopped his car and exited, rushing forward as the welcome sound of a waning siren announced Tom’s arrival.

A few empty beer cans fell to the ground as the driver and passenger doors opened. Two kids got out of the car. The passenger looked familiar, hardly unusual given Riverport’s modest population of under five thousand. The driver, closest to Brady, stumbled once before taking off across the torn concrete, leaping over oil drums with surprising agility.

“Hey,” Brady yelled as he pursued the driver, leaving the passenger to Tom who he’d heard come up behind him. Within a hundred yards, Brady caught up with the kid and wrestled him to the ground. He avoided a few drunken punches and a torrent of swearwords as he flipped him onto his stomach and cuffed him. He pulled the boy to his feet and marched him back to the squad car where he found no sign of Tom or the passenger.

“If you’re smart, this will be the last night you ever get drunk,” Brady said.

The kid swore at him again.

Once the driver was safely secured in the backseat, Brady turned his attention to Tom and the other teen, following their raised voices. The ground became trickier as the pool of light dispersed. Rambling blackberry vines had sprung up between the cracked concrete pads and snagged his pants as he ran. He got out his flashlight and flicked it on.

A movement caught Brady’s eye. Two figures, six or seven feet apart, facing each other a scant foot or so from the edge of the wharf, the river a shimmering ribbon behind them. Tom, a barrel-chested man who had played football when young, was heaving after the run. He’d lost his hat in the chase and his balding dome glistened with sweat. The boy, only half Tom’s size, appeared posed for flight. The kid yelled something was his fault as Tom’s low voice droned on.

Brady hung back, giving Tom a chance to calm the kid with his usual aplomb. He had a way with kids though some in the department thought him too lenient. Nevertheless, Tom usually got his point across. The kid grew quiet. Good old Tom and his silver tongue.

Brady swung his flashlight down before switching it off. In the last instant before the beam died, he caught a glimpse of the boy reaching behind his back, his pale arm stark against his dark T-shirt, then the glint of light off metal as a gun emerged from beneath the shirt. It all happened in slow motion, time suspended—

A torrent of training flooded Brady’s brain as he pulled his Glock. Tom was a microsecond away from taking a bullet in the gut and he obviously didn’t know it. In that instant, Brady, without options, fired.

For a few seconds, the echo of the gunshot was the only sound in the world. The kid, bathed in shadows, flew to the ground.

The shot thundered again and again in Brady’s head. He couldn’t feel his hand still gripped around his gun. He saw Tom kneel beside the boy, his body mercifully blocking Brady’s view for a brief moment, saw Tom’s jaw work as he looked over his shoulder and yelled something, saw him yank his cell phone from his pocket and start punching in numbers.

The place would be swarming with help within minutes.

Brady, finally able to move, walked toward Tom and the still shape of the fallen boy. He’d lost his flashlight, he couldn’t feel his feet, he still held the gun and it weighed a million pounds. He stopped short.

Tom’s flashlight illuminated the scene. His florid face had taken on green undertones. “It’s the Armstrong boy,” he said. “He’s dead.”

Brady’s heart sank like a rock to the very bottom of the sea. No wonder the kid had looked familiar. The Armstrong family had lost their only other child, a sixteen-year-old girl, a few weeks before. This kid was a year behind her in school. Billy, that was his name. Brady had gone to school with Bill Armstrong Senior.

His voice low as though afraid of being overheard, Tom said, “What in the hell happened?”

“He was going to shoot you,” Brady said. Wasn’t it obvious?

Tom shone a light at Billy’s empty hands, flung toward the river. The boy’s silver watchband shimmered on his wrist. “With what?”

Brady made himself concentrate past the roaring inside his head. “He pulled a gun out of his waistband in the back. There wasn’t time to do anything but react.”

“Are you sure? I mean, the light is tricky—”

“He pulled a gun.” Brady tried to muster more confidence than he felt. He had seen a gun, hadn’t he? Oh, God…

Tom’s voice sounded just as dazed. “I was trying to talk some sense into him. You must have heard him, ranting and raving, blaming himself for his sister’s suicide, blaming the cops—”

“I thought you had him calmed down, but when I lowered my flashlight, I saw him reach—”

“All right, Brady, all right. If you say there was a gun, there was a gun.”

Brady wasn’t any more convinced by Tom’s words than by his own thoughts. If there’d been a gun, where was it now? If he’d made a mistake, how would he ever live with himself?

Tom pushed his hat back on his high forehead and added, “This is going to hit his parents hard. And Chief Dixon. A thing like this looks bad for the department and he’s been waiting for you to mess up.”

Like my father, Brady thought. He couldn’t wrap his mind around any of that, not now, not so soon. Distant sirens announced the imminent arrival of the troops. The supervisor, an ambulance, the M.E. The place would soon be crawling with professionals.

“Lara, too,” Tom added as though it just occurred to him. “I bet she got to know Billy and Sara down at the teen center.”

Brady shook his head. He couldn’t think. Wait, sure, she’d mentioned these kids along with a dozen others…

Tom suddenly seemed to grasp the impact of his comments. He said, “Damn, I’m sorry, Brady. Don’t worry, if there was a gun, we’ll find it. You saved my life. I won’t forget it.”

Brady’s gaze shifted to the river rushing only a few feet from where the boy had fallen. If Billy Armstrong’s gun had flown into the water as Billy took the bullet, it was possible they would never find it.

And in the back of his mind, a voice. Slurred like his father’s voice, thick with booze. What if there wasn’t a gun, you moron? What if you gunned down an unarmed kid? What then?

Chapter One

One year later

The minute Lara drove over the bridge into Riverport, she knew coming back was a big mistake. It didn’t matter how many times she told herself it was only for a couple of days, the feeling persisted. There was too much history here.

She turned on Ferry Street, passing the teen center without looking at it. Next came the bank and the hardware store. A red light at the corner of Ferry and Oak caught her as it always had. She kept her eyes on the road until the light turned green.

Her mother’s big old Victorian sat perched on an acre of manicured gardens on the outskirts of town. Most of Riverport’s other big old houses were gone, their land cut up and sold off to contractors for subdivisions. The mansion had been updated over the years—a solarium on the back, the kitchen expanded—until now it was quite a showpiece.

Lara had grown up in the house and it was with a surge of familiarity, if not homecoming, that she turned into the driveway. Her mother wasn’t actually in residence as she’d left for an Alaskan cruise just a few days before. Myra, her mother’s housekeeper, must have been waiting, though, for Lara had barely set the parking brake when the garage door rolled upward. Lara restarted the car and drove into the enclosure, sighing with relief when the doors closed behind her. She glanced into the backseat, then heard Myra coming through the side door that connected the house with the garage.

“Miss Lara,” Myra called as Lara got out of the car. She approached with a big smile. “Your poor mother will just die when she learns she missed your visit. Here, let me help you.”