Midnight Choices

Jeff shook his head, popped the gum in his mouth. “Draws from inside his jacket as he pushes the door open.”

“Then he’s a helluva shot.” Duncan could have made the shot himself. Not many others could.

“Yeah. He’s good, but jumpy. Killed a dog.”

“A dog?”

“When he was headed out of the last place he hit. A stray came around the corner of the store, startled him. He shot it and ran.” Jeff stuffed the empty gum wrapper in the trash can next to the door. “So we’ve got bullets, but not much more. We know he’s male, around five-seven, average build. He wore jeans, a dark jacket, gloves and a ski mask both times. No skin showed. We don’t know if he’s white, brown, black or yellow with blue polka dots.”

“No one made the vehicle?”

“One of the clerks thinks it was a dark compact, not new. She didn’t get much of a look at it. He makes ’em lie on the floor once they empty the register.”

“Did he…” Duncan stopped, shook his head. Damned if Jeff hadn’t gotten sneakier with his pitch. He’d nearly reeled Duncan in this time, gotten him involved enough to ask questions. “You’ll catch him sooner or later. If this guy was really bright, he wouldn’t be hitting convenience stores. They don’t have much cash.”

“Sooner’s better than later. A jumpy, not-so-bright gunman makes mistakes. People get hurt then.” Jeff started for his car. “You going to let me give you a ride?”

“I need to finish my run.”

Jeff nodded, reached for the handle, then gave Duncan a steady look. “What you’ve been doing—that’s important. No doubt about that. A cop doesn’t get much chance to save the world the way you army types do. Sometimes all we can do is drop in on a nineteen-year-old mother who works nights when she isn’t trying to learn bookkeeping. Maybe that will keep this perp from hitting this store, maybe not. We don’t get a lot of sure things in our line of work.”

Duncan’s mouth quirked up. “I remember when you used to try to get me to volunteer for some damned committee or other. Roped me in a few times, too. If you’d had the good sense to go into the army instead of the police force, you’d be their ace recruiter by now.”

A grin lit Jeff’s face. “I’m getting to you. Duncan, we need you. I know it wouldn’t be fun to be a rookie, not when you’re used to being a big-deal sergeant, but if you take some courses, you can move up quick. The chief’s keen on getting a sharpshooter.”

Duncan’s smile slid away. He gave a single shake of his head that combined refusal and warning.

“Okay, okay.” Jeff held up his hand as if to stop a flow of protests. “But you’ll think about it.”

Duncan watched his friend pull out of the parking lot and didn’t think about anything except whether he needed to stretch again. No, he decided. His muscles were still loose and warm.

He’d just started running again when a shot rang out.

He dropped and rolled, reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. Then lay on his stomach on the cold concrete, his arm throbbing fiercely. Little by little, understanding seeped in. Along with humiliation.

Not a gunshot. A backfire. From a ’92 Chevy packed front and back with teenage boys, some of whom were staring and laughing. Yeah, pretty funny, all right, he thought as he pushed to his feet and slowly resumed his run. Watching a grown man nearly mess himself because your car backfired would be one hell of a good joke to kids that age.

He concentrated on keeping his shoulders loose as he ran. They had a tendency to tense up when his arm was hurting, which made the jarring worse. The Chevy turned west at the light.

It was a shame Jeff had already driven off. If he’d seen how Duncan reacted under fire these days—or anything that passed, to his screwed-up senses, for being under fire—he sure as hell would drop the subject of Duncan trading one uniform for another when his enlistment was up. Which would happen in two and a half months.

He very carefully didn’t think about that, either.

Ben was sitting in his favorite chair next to the fireplace, which still held the ashes of its last fire. His shoes were on the floor beside the couch, his feet propped on the coffee table. One of his socks had a hole started in the heel. A glass half-filled with bourbon sat on the table beside his feet. He’d poured it after Gwen left, then forgotten it.

He was holding the photograph. It was all he could see, all he could think about, the grinning boy in that picture.

Zachary. His son.

Zachary Van Allen. Not McClain.

The front door opened, then shut. He lifted his head, scowling, and saw Duncan standing in the doorway, staring at him with no expression on his face.

Ben didn’t try to read his brother’s expression. Even as a boy Duncan had been good at tucking everything away out of sight, and the older he’d gotten, the better his poker face became. But he saw the tense way Duncan stood and the stiff way he held his left arm. And he saw his bare head.

“Damnation,” he growled, rising to his feet. “I thought they operated on your arm, not your thick skull, but only an idiot would go running for hours with a half-healed wound. And in this weather, without a hat! I don’t know what they taught you in Special Forces, but a jacket isn’t enough. Half your body heat—”

“Not tonight.” Duncan’s voice was hard. He advanced into the room, voice and body taut, like a big cat ready to strike. “I’m in no mood for your bloody nursemaid act tonight.”

Ben took a deep breath, fighting back a surge of temper. Nagging Duncan to take better care of himself was the wrong way to go about things. He knew that. But in the past Duncan would have greeted Ben’s bossiness with a raised eyebrow, maybe a polite “yes, ma’am” or some other nonsense.

He’d changed. Ben didn’t know what had happened on this last mission, but it had damaged more than Duncan’s arm. “It must be close to freezing out there,” he said in the most reasonable tone he could muster.

“Believe it or not, the army doesn’t make us stay in at night when the weather’s bad. But we aren’t going to talk about my sins tonight. We’re going to talk about yours.” His pause was brief. “Her car is gone.”

Ben’s empty hand closed and opened again. This was going to be hard. “I offered Gwen a room here, if it’s any of your business. She preferred to stay at a hotel.”

Duncan just looked at him. He’d never been one to fill the air with words, and seldom used two when one would do, or one word when a nod or a glance was enough. Right now, though, his silence felt crammed with accusation.

Ben’s scowl returned. Damned if he was going to put up with any lectures—silent or otherwise—from his younger brother. “She didn’t tell me. I didn’t know the boy existed.”

“I know that,” Duncan snapped. “There’s no doubt in your mind that he’s yours?”

Duncan’s irritation reassured Ben. At least he hadn’t needed to be told that his older brother would never have ignored his son if he’d known the boy existed. He answered Duncan’s question by crossing to him and handing him the photograph.

Duncan’s eyes widened, then clouded with some emotion Ben couldn’t read. After a long moment he handed the photo back. “Poor kid. He looks so much like you it’s scary.”

“Yeah.” Ben couldn’t say anything else right away. He didn’t know what to do, what to think—his emotions were so full, so contradictory, he was afraid he’d start cursing. Or maybe bawl like a baby. He cleared his throat. “Not that I would have thought she was lying, even if he hadn’t turned out to look like me.”

“You knew her well, then?”

There was a subtle insult in the tone. Or maybe the insult lay only in Ben’s mind. “No. Not exactly. Hell.” He ran a hand over his hair. “It was pretty much a one-night stand, all right? We met, we hit it off, and… You remember that vacation Annie nagged me into taking a few years ago? Gwen and I met then. We spent a couple days together.” And one night.

“Then you walked away without realizing you’d fathered a child.”

“She could have told me.” Ben began to pace. “She should have told me. I’ve missed so much… He’s four. Four and a half years old.” His voice held wonder and loss and anger.

“So why didn’t she tell you?”

Ben felt all the weight of his own guilt in those softly spoken words. “That’s between her and me.”

“When I think of all those Friday-night lectures you used to hand me and Charlie about responsibility and safe sex…” Duncan’s mouth tightened. “Dammit, Ben. What the hell happened? How could you not know there was a chance you’d started a child in her?”

The disillusion in Duncan’s eyes was harder to face than his anger. Ben stopped by the big picture window. He’d forgotten to pull the drapes, and his own reflection stared back at him from the night-darkened glass—a big, dark man in worn jeans and an old flannel shirt. “I knew,” he admitted gruffly. “We used protection, but…” He couldn’t bring himself to go into detail, but the fact was, she’d put the condom on him. Only she hadn’t gotten it on right, and he hadn’t noticed until afterward, too intent on what he felt, what he wanted.

Just the sort of thing he used to warn Duncan and Charlie against.

He grimaced. “The odds of her getting pregnant were pretty small. When I didn’t hear from her, I assumed everything was okay.” He’d convinced himself of that. He hadn’t wanted to think about her. Or the way he’d ended things between them almost as soon as they began.