One Last Chance

A legitimate question, he thought, for a man interested in a woman, as she assumed he was. Right, Buckner. Like she’s wrong. Keep kidding yourself.

“No,” she was saying. “I live in Zephyr Cove.”

He looked blank.

“It’s on Lake Tahoe,” she explained with a laugh that said she was used to that reaction. “Just north of South Lake Tahoe. I have a small house there. I only came here because Paul wanted me to open the club for him.”

The flight from Reno, he thought. “You sing there?”

“Sometimes. In the winter, in some of the smaller places. I can handle small crowds. And I don’t ski, so it keeps me from going stir-crazy.”

“It’s almost winter now.”

She laughed. “Guess they’ll have to struggle through without me.”

“What do you do in the summer?”

“Goof off, mostly.” She grinned. “Providing I make enough money during the winter, of course.” She shrugged. “I sell some of my songs. It keeps me in firewood.”

“How long have you lived there?”

He saw her look change, and realized he was sounding a little too much like a cop questioning someone. Watch it, he warned himself. But she answered easily enough.

“Full-time? Almost five years. But I’ve always spent a lot of time there. The house I live in was my father’s. He left it to me.”

“Then you must not have seen much of your brother,” he said tentatively.

“No,” she said regretfully. “He left home when he was sixteen, and I didn’t see him often after that. I hadn’t seen him at all since I moved. I’m glad he came back to California. At least we’re in the same state. There’s only the two of us now.”

She hadn’t been anywhere near Miami. God, maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she really didn’t know her dear brother was neck deep in slime. He never doubted the truth of what she was telling him. If she was lying, he’d hang up his badge.

“—here?”

He fought off the swamping relief to catch only the end of her question. “I…what?”

“I asked if you work around here.”

He nodded, alarm bells ringing in his head.

“Doing what?”

He owed her this, he thought, but he hoped she would stay clear of questions he couldn’t answer.

“Paperwork, mostly.” That, at least, was true, he thought dryly. “For a local company. I monitor shipments, keep track of some people, that kind of thing.” Nebulous but accurate.

“Have you always lived here?”

“No. I was born in Iowa, but my folks came here when I was just a baby.”

“Are they still here?”

“No. They moved back a few years ago. Said this place was too crazy for them.”

“Were you really the last?”

It took him a minute. “Yeah,” he said with a laugh. “I guess after me they decided one was enough.”

“Waiting for grandchildren now, I suppose,” she teased.

He went pale, as if she’d hit him. Then he yanked his gaze downward, swallowing heavily as he stared at the cup on the table.

“Chance?”

Only the sound of her saying his name so tentatively in that silken voice got through the sudden, unexpected fog of pain. And he found himself answering, telling her the thing he never spoke of.

“They had one. Almost. He died before he was born. Along with his mother.”

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

He took a deep breath. “No. I am. It’s been a long time, and I don’t usually react like that. I guess you caught me off guard.”

“Things like that are never really a long time ago.” Her voice was soft with an empathy that washed over him like a warm tide.

“No. They’re not.” He let out the long breath slowly, back in control. “But after four years it’s not usually so…close.”

After that, the conversation was purposely light, full of such things as likes and dislikes, tastes in everything from music to books to movies, and a few childhood escapades recounted with almost sheepish pride.

When she spoke again of her brother, he had to force himself to remember who she was talking about.

“He used to seem so angry, before he left. I know he resented his father being killed when he was so young. But when he came back the first time, for my father’s funeral, he was different. Like he’d grown up while he’d been gone.”

Probably made his first deal, Chance thought sourly. But now that that vivid image had been shattered, he was able to keep his mouth shut.

“He told Mom that he was the man in the family now. That he’d always take care of us, that he’d see we never needed anything. And he did.”

Could she? he wondered as he made some appropriate reply. Could she really be so calm about it, sounding almost proud of the brother who had no doubt sent them money, if she’d known where it came from?

I don’t believe it, he thought, knowing even as the words formed in his mind that they stemmed more from his own unwillingness to believe it than from any firm conviction. You just don’t want to believe you can be fooled so easily, he told himself sourly.

Aware she was looking at him rather curiously, he quickly asked her about the small, prestigious college she’d told him she’d attended. Had de Cortez paid for that, too? Had the man who sold death on the streets lovingly sent his little sister to school?

He couldn’t think about it, not now. She was sharp. Sooner or later she was going to realize that he was asking a lot of questions and not answering many of her own. He had to take it on faith for now and analyze it later, or he was going to press her too hard and lose the contact altogether.

Later, keeping it carefully vague, he found himself telling her about Quisto and his family, guessing that it would seem as chaotic to her as it did to him. She laughed at their antics and smiled warmly when he told her of how the matriarch of the clan kept treating him like another son.