I was cleaning in a dark suit because I needed to keep my head occupied. The funeral had been this morning. Quiet and subdued, only half a dozen people had shown up, including myself, Alli, and her girls. Harry was not a sociable guy. He kept to himself and expected others to do the same. Hell, it was touching to see that the few people who did show up were customers of his shop, people who respected him enough as a business owner to show up to pay their last respects. A few guys from our old DEA team showed up, too, but not many. Funerals were simply asking too much of guys who had to look danger in the eye nearly every day on the job.

Brent and Remy had offered to come, but I wouldn’t let them. I didn’t want to drag them into the mess that had somehow developed out here. I did get them to send a guy, though. An operative I’d worked with on a few cases, someone I could trust. I needed backup now that Harry wasn’t around to help keep an eye on Alli’s shop. I intended to put most of my energy into finding the person who drove Harry off the road.

 

I was covered in dust, my white shirt no longer as white as it had been. I bent low to sweep debris into a dustpan, my back to the open front door of the warehouse, when a deep voice cleared itself behind me. I straightened, clapping my hands together to rid them of a portion of the dust clinging to them.

“Mr. Stone?” a tall, broad-shouldered man asked.

“That’s me. Can I help you?”

I studied him as he moved farther into the warehouse. There was no blue band on his arm, so I assumed he wasn’t one of the Guardians. He was dressed casually, in jeans and a solid blue t-shirt. He looked a little like Ron Howard, if Ron Howard had begun taking steroids. He had bright red hair and green eyes, with that sort of aw-shucks grin that Howard had on Happy Days. But he was clearly ex-military if his bulk, his stance, and his overall confidence meant anything.

“I heard you were starting up a security firm here.”

“More like an extension of one that already exists.”

“Are you looking for employees yet?”

My eyebrows rose slightly. “Are you looking for a job?”

The man smiled somewhat wryly. “I heard a rumor you were picking a fight with the Guardians. I’d like to get in on that.”

“Why?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, his face taking on a hard look that took away all resemblance to Ron Howard. “My folks owned a ranch outside of town here. The Guardians found out that one of the ranch hands was selling drugs out of the bunkhouse, so they convinced the bank to foreclose on my parents. Ran them out of town like some old frontier justice bullshit. My father didn’t even know what the hell the ranch hand was up to. If he’d known, he would have got rid of the guy himself.”

“How could the Guardians get the bank to foreclose?”

“My father was a couple of payments behind on the mortgage. But it wasn’t like that was anything new. There’s always a time every year where money is tight, but then market season comes around, and everything gets caught up. He had a verbal agreement with the bank manager, but I guess the Guardians threatened the guy, and he initiated the foreclosure. There wasn’t anything my father could do to stop it.”

“Where were you during all this?”

“Afghanistan.”

I inclined my head slightly. “Thank you for your service.”

The guy shrugged, his expression remaining tight. “So, are you hiring?”

“You have experience in private security?”

“No.”

“You have a gun permit?”

“No.”

Untrained and unprepared. But if I had another man to hang out at Alli’s, that would free up even more of my time to devote to the investigation into Harry’s death.

“What’s your name, soldier?”

“Quentin Forrester.”

“Welcome to Stone Security, Mr. Forrester. You got a place to live?”

“No.”

I snickered a little. “Then grab a broom. I’m trying to get this area cleaned up so we can bring in a couple of beds. I’ve got another guy staying here, too.”

“Great.”

He went right to work, cutting my chores in more than half. I drove him out to Alli’s a couple of hours later, not bothering to warn him what the nature of her business was. He didn’t bat an eye when we walked in, but I couldn’t say the same about the girls. I guess they considered him just as handsome as they had Patrick. Within seconds, both Tommy and Sue were standing close to him, peppering him with questions that had absolutely nothing to do with his role as security. I handed him a gun, another borrowed from Harry’s, thinking he might need it more as protection against Alli and her girls than the Guardians.

The thought made me chuckle all the way back to my car.

I’d moved my things into the warehouse just the day before, a military-style cot delivered by a local department store set up against the side wall in the old office. Another would be delivered tomorrow. I’d gone ahead and ordered three more—you never knew when you might need extra. Those I would set up in the warehouse itself, against the opposite wall from the office near the unisex bathroom the former owner had put in for his mechanics. It was a complete bathroom with three stalls, two urinals, and a community shower stall. Made me wonder what kind of overtime the former owner had paid his people.

I took advantage of the silence of the warehouse to take a shower, washing away the day. My thoughts had continuously attempted to go to the day of my father’s funeral all day. I’d fought those memories, not wanting to walk down that path. But I couldn’t help myself now.

We should have seen it coming. As close as mother and father had been, we should have known he wouldn’t want to live without her. Madeline spent a lot of time with him during that period, and I told myself that that was enough. I was wrong.

Going home for the funeral, seeing the grief on the faces of my siblings, brought home how important family really was. If we’d all been there…I was in Jackson, working with the DEA. Gentry and Aidan were both deployed with the military. Brent was the only one nearby, but his job as a cop kept him incredibly busy. But Madeline…

I buried my head under the warm spray of the shower, the hurt that I thought I’d buried a long time ago burning like a wound newly reopened. So much loss. I still felt my father’s death the most. I wasn’t sure why. My mother died of cancer, a death my siblings and I had prepared ourselves for despite the fact that father tried to hide its return. But Madeline and Josie’s deaths were just as unexpected, a car accident that stole them away at a time when life was just beginning to become optimistic again. Josie was only two, and Madeline was pregnant again, bringing new life into the family. The double funeral—triple, really—was the most heartbreaking thing I’d ever experienced.

But it wasn’t that tragedy that still haunted me.

My father was a strong man. He was independent and determined, the kind of guy who always seemed to have all the right answers, the guy who stood as strong as an oak tree when everyone else was faltering. He was the rock on whom the family had all built their foundations. To lose him was to lose our security, our foundation.

And to lose him to suicide was an insult. It was in that final act that he finally acknowledged that we children were not enough to keep him alive, to keep him as happy and fulfilled as mother had done.

It hurt.

Maybe that was why my father’s death still bothered me. I was angry. I didn’t understand why having the five of us kids wasn’t enough for him. He missed out on the birth of Remy’s daughter, missed out on Brent’s second marriage and Gentry’s marriage and discovery of a son he never knew he had. He missed out on Aidan finding the love of his life, and Bo finally giving in to feelings we all knew he had for Remy, making an honest woman of her. We all had lives, had all moved on with them. And he was missing it.

Any children I had, my father would never know.

I closed my eyes, allowing the hurt to wash over me. I missed my dad. I missed my brothers and my sister. I missed having family around even if it was annoying when they put their noses where they didn’t belong. At least they cared enough to want to know what was happening with me. At least I was enough for them.

I sighed, turning off the shower and grabbing a towel, roughly drying my skin before tucking it around my waist. I slipped on a pair of plastic flip flops and headed out across the warehouse to the office where I’d hung my clothes from a pipe that protruded from the ceiling. Not a great closet, but it’d do for now. I’d never been above roughing it.

I was halfway across the cavernous building, thinking I should get some sort of office equipment to keep track of the paperwork we were generating with the architect, when the outer door opened.

“Ruth?”

Her cheeks were flushed as she walked into the building, dark enough that I could see it even from this bit of distance. And it wasn’t that lovely innocent blush that I was so used to. Her eyes were snapping with anger.

“You’re an ass!” she said, flinging an envelope at me.

I hadn’t seen Ruth since the night Harry died. I’d been so wrapped up in the planning of the funeral and getting the warehouse habitable that I just didn’t make the time. It seemed selfish to drag her into this mess I found myself in.

I stooped over to retrieve the envelope. “What is this?”

“You convinced me that my brother was paranoid, that you had nothing but good intentions toward me. I should have known better than to believe you!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Look at them. Tell me it’s not what it appears to be.”

I studied her face for a long moment, this sense of dread joining its friends, grief and sorrow, in the center of my chest. I slid my finger under the flap and pulled out a thin stack of photographs. A part of me knew what they were before I even flipped them over, and that only added to the dread burning inside of me.

Just as I’d imagined, they were pictures of me and Alli outside her house. Hot pictures. Pictures that made it look as though Alli and I got nasty right there on the front porch of her house while her children were asleep inside. And we almost had, I supposed.

“This isn’t what it looks like, Ruth.”

“You didn’t kiss that woman just hours after leaving me? Just hours after we…after we did what we did here, in this place?”

I shoved the pictures back in the envelope. “Harry died that night, Ruth. My friend.”

“I know.”

“We were drinking, and she was hurting. We were hurting.”

“So you…you did that?”

“She kissed me. I kissed her back. We were comforting each other.”

“That’s not what it looks like in those pictures.” She gestured with her arms, flinging them around like she was so filled with frustration that she didn’t know how else to get rid of it. “And the fact that you never came to me, never sought comfort in me…”

“I didn’t want to get you involved in this. The Guardians—”

“That’s not the only reason.”

“Ruth—”

“You had your fun. Now you’re moving on.” She brushed a hand over her cheek, wiping away a tear. “I get it. But the least you could have done was come tell me yourself.”

“That’s not what this is.”

She grunted. “Have enough respect to be truthful.”

I stared at her, coming to a realization that I couldn’t ignore. I was about to go to war with this faction of her church that her brother belonged to. If I kept seeing her, she was going to be caught in the middle, and she’d have to make some very difficult choices. I didn’t want to put her in that spot.

So, yeah, it was about the Guardians. But it was also about me, and about her, and about things that were completely out of both our control.

“You’re right. It was fun while it was fun, but Harry’s death changes things.”

She lowered her head, tears falling to the ground that were like grenades going off inside my head. Was it supposed to hurt this bad? Hadn’t I already been through this once this year?

I crossed to her, and she let me slip my hand over her upper arm. But then she pulled back.

“I hate you,” she whispered softly.

I stood there for a long time after she left, numb.

Maybe my father wasn’t really missing anything when it came to me. Maybe it would always be this way. Maybe I’d never have a wife, never have a family. Maybe I’d never find a girl who could hold on long enough for me to get my shit in order.

Maybe alone was just how I was supposed to pass through this life.