Chapter 5
Five
Cam’s nieces and nephews were waiting for him at the hospital doors, charging him with shouts of “Uncle Cam!” For a few blissful seconds, Cam forgot the frustrating hours it had taken to get here, forgot that he’d been a continent away when his family needed him, and just reveled in having his family in his arms again.
The reunions continued upstairs in ICU, Quinn and Bobby greeting them in the hallway with back-slapping hugs.
“Was hoping you’d show up with a girlfriend,” Quinn said to him.
“Hey!” Jamie mock protested. “What am I, chopped liver?”
“We knew you’d be here,” Bobby said. “You’re family.”
Cam wondered if his brothers would say the same about Nic eventually.
Once they got over the shock of him bringing home a man.
As far as they knew, he was straight. He hadn’t told his family he was bisexual.
He’d only dated girls in grade school, and he’d kept his college conquests contained to campus, not bringing anyone home.
He’d let the years pass without correcting his family’s assumptions.
It had never seemed like the right time, and now definitely wasn’t it.
That’s why he’d turned down Nic’s offer to accompany him.
If Cam had had what he really wanted, it would be Nic by his side, hand on his back, keeping him steady like he’d done early this morning. Meeting his family, especially—
“Where’s Keith?”
“In with Mom and Dad,” Bobby said, leading them into a nearby lounge. “He’s due back at base tomorrow. Supposed to ship out sometime next week.”
His younger brother was an active-duty Marine stationed at Lejeune, though he’d spent more days deployed than on base during his service so far. “Can he get his leave extended?”
“Tried,” Quinn answered. “Not looking good.”
Unless you knew someone with juice. Like a former SEAL sniper, JAG Corps captain, and federal prosecutor. Granted Nic was Navy, but USMC technically fell under the Navy’s umbrella. He bet Nic knew some higher-ups there too. “I’ve got a friend with connections.”
Phone in hand, Jamie, following his train of thought, was already heading back into the hall. “I’ll call Price.”
“The former special forces prosecutor?” Bobby said.
Cam nodded. He’d mentioned Nic to Bobby when he’d called his brother for a gut check on last spring’s undercover assignment.
That case had required him to tap into the less-than-legal past he and Bobby had shared and worked so hard to put behind them.
They’d lost their sister because of it, Cam and Bobby out on a job the day Erin went missing while walking home alone from the library.
She’d been presumed dead for two decades now, but the wound they’d inflicted on their family had never fully healed, especially Keith’s.
He and Erin had been born only nine months apart, five years after Cam.
Behind the rest of them in age, Keith had latched on to his mother after losing Erin. Cam didn’t want to think what losing her would do to him.
“How’s Mom?” Cam asked.
“In and out,” Bobby said.
Cam’s heart soared, buoyed by the first bit of hopeful news in hours. “She’s been awake?”
“Wouldn’t miss an opportunity to remind Dad to take his meds,” Bobby said.
“Or tell me how to run our fishing boats,” Quinn added. “Like I haven’t already been doing that since Dad retired.”
That sounded even better. His mom was awake and aware enough to nag. “Don’t get too excited yet,” Bobby cautioned, motioning him to sit.
He filled him in on their mother’s status, bringing Cam back down to reality.
She was conscious and stabilized but it was a temporary reprieve.
She was being scheduled for surgery—no, surgeries, plural—starting with a double bypass.
Cam propped his elbows on his knees, spinning head held in his hands.
There would be risk at every step of the way, keeping them on pins and needles for at least the next week, then after, during her recovery.
When he’d be back on the opposite coast.
Fuck.
“She’s awake now.”
Cam dropped his arms and looked up, meeting his youngest brother’s blue eyes across the table.
He was struck by how similar Keith’s bearing was to Nic’s, but that was the only thing the two military men had in common.
Just under six feet, Keith had a bruiser build like Cam’s, like their mother’s, and at thirty-one, he still had his fresh face and headful of dark hair.
“She’s asking for you,” he said, voice clipped, bubbling with the low-level resentment that had taken root the day Erin disappeared. Since the big brother he’d worshipped had let him down and cost him his sister and best friend.
They’d never been close again.
Didn’t mean he didn’t want to have his little brother safe and sound in his arms again, especially when Keith regularly put his life on the line. Cam stood and drew him into a hug. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Awkward as it was, Cam didn’t hold the embrace for long, but then Keith clasped his upper arm, keeping him close. “Don’t do what she asks,” he whispered. “This family has been through enough.”
This family, spoken like Cam wasn’t a part of it.
He was still trying to digest the words, his stomach tossing and turning, when he nearly ran into Jamie in the hallway.
“He’s right here.” Jamie held his phone out to him.
“I’ll get your brother’s leave extended,” Nic said, no greeting and no hesitation. Just getting things done for him.
Cam’s rioting insides calmed a little. “Thank you.”
“I wish you’d let me do more.”
Cam angled away from Jamie, hiding his blush at Nic’s softly spoken words. “You got any Gravity distributors out here?”
Nic’s deep laugh warmed his insides, soothing him more. “I’ll check my list.”
“Seriously, Dominic, doing this for Keith will go further than you know.” If Cam could take the threat of imminent deployment off Keith’s shoulders, then he’d feel like he was at least here for his brother now, like he hadn’t been before.
“I’ll get right on it.”
“Thank you.”
“Jamie said you’re at the hospital.”
“Yeah.” He raked a hand through his hair, pacing the area to the side of the elevators. “Getting ready to go up and see Ma.”
“Call me later. Let me know how she’s doing.”
“Will do.”
“Boston,” he said, voice brooking no argument. “Call me.”
Cam felt the urge to salute, which he hadn’t done since his Bureau swearing-in ceremony. “I will. Now go.”
He hung up and handed the phone back to Jamie.
They were outside his mother’s room when his own phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Reading it, he couldn’t help but smile. True to his word, Nic had sent him a list of Gravity distributors in the Boston area.
His uplifted mood, however, was short-lived, disappearing as he entered his mother’s room.
Edith Byrne was a fisherman’s wife and mother of five, a stout Southie who took no shit off anyone, especially her husband and sons.
She was loving, she was tough, she commanded any room she walked into, and she was the high standard Cam held anyone he’d dated up to.
She’d been the glue that had held their family together after Erin disappeared.
Her only daughter gone, presumed dead, she’d saved her husband from the bottle he’d almost drowned in and wrestled all her sons onto the right path.
Seeing that woman, his mother, laid up in a hospital bed looking frail and helpless, hooked up by wires and IVs to a dozen monitors and machines, was going to haunt Cam’s nightmares forever.
His dad rose from the chair next to her bed. His salt-and-pepper hair was mussed, his Sox polo wrinkled, and his blue eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. He was the picture of misery. Cam hadn’t seen him like this in twenty years.
“Cameron,” he said, hauling him into a firm embrace.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Missed you, son.”
Lump stuck in his throat, Cam couldn’t make the words come out, so he held on tighter. Fuck, he’d missed them more than he’d realized.
“Kenneth,” Jamie said, laying a hand on the older man’s shoulder.
“Jameson.” Ken shifted his attention and hugs to Jamie. “It’s good to see you too. Thanks for coming out with Cam.”
“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
“Always such a good boy,” Edye said from the bed.
She held out a shaking hand and Cam clasped it between both of his. “He’s married now, Ma. He’s never going to run away with you.”
His mom was also an incorrigible flirt, though there was no question her heart belonged one hundred percent to her husband and kids. Cam still liked to tease, especially since she’d been a little starstruck by the too-handsome Whiskey Walker.
The hand on her stomach turned over and she flipped him the bird. But the way her one finger wobbled belied the thin veil of humor and normalcy that had settled over them.
“How you doing, Edye?” Jamie bent over and pecked her cheek.
“Better now,” she said with a wink.
Jamie glanced over his shoulder at Cam. “You do come by it honest.” He smiled, likewise trying to lighten the mood, but Cam knew Jamie well enough to see how forced it was. How much he was hurting too at seeing his second mother like this.
“I’d be doing better,” Edye said, “if you’d take my husband downstairs so he can eat and take his meds.”
“Now, Edye,” his father said.
“Now, Ken,” she returned.
His father, like the rest of them, knew better than to argue.
Cam waited for them to step out before dragging the chair closer to the bed. His mother tried to push herself upright, and Cam patted her arm over the wires and IVs. “Nuh-uh-uh.” He fished out the bed controls from where they’d slipped between the mattress and bedrail. “You have a button for that.”
She glared with eyes the same dark shade as his and reluctantly took the controls, adjusting her position. “You look tired.”
Always looking out for everyone else, never for herself. “Was helping a friend move last night.”
She swiped at her gray bangs. “She pretty?”
Cam bit back a laugh. No one would ever describe Nic as pretty.
Ruggedly handsome, yes. But pretty? Never, not with cheekbones cut like glass, eyes like ice, and lips just this side of thin, which, when pressed together, made him look like he was deciding your fate.
In many cases, he was. Pretty didn’t even describe him when dressed in that light gray suit Cam loved so much or when covered in come.
“Sharp, intense, older,” he answered instead.
“Good,” Edye said with a nod. “Will keep you in line.”
He did chuckle at that, and so did she, until her laugh got caught in a cough, her heart monitor skipped, and Cam panicked, reminded that this wasn’t his usual healthy, firecracker mother. She’d had a heart attack, and she had the fight of her life ahead.
“Mom,” he started, his voice cracking.
She cut him off, reaching out a shaking arm toward the bedside table. “Hand me, please.”
On the table were a few of his dad’s things—glasses, watch, and keys—together with his mom’s reading glasses and one of her books.
He slid the paperback off the table, turned it over, and smiled.
He remembered this series—the ones with Scottish tartans and brooches on the covers.
They were her favorites, the spines so cracked you could barely read them on the shelf.
She’d read them dozens of times, to herself and aloud to her kids, to the point Cam could still remember the engaging, sweeping tales of love and family.
“You want me to read to you?” he asked.
“I’m not blind,” she griped.
“Glasses then?”
She shook her head and held out her hand. Cam passed the book to her, and she opened it, shaking loose a laminated library card.
A duplicate of Erin’s that she’d had made from the original in Cam’s wallet.
Edye used her copy as a bookmark, always there to remind her of her daughter, who was likewise a ravenous reader. In Cam’s wallet, the card served to remind him of the place he should have been then and the rules he lived by now so as not to make any life-shattering mistakes again.
“Solve it,” his mother said, snapping him out of his thoughts.
He didn’t have to ask what she was referring to. It was the reason he’d decided to join the FBI. But the unsolved case of Erin’s disappearance was cold for a reason. He’d been unsuccessful, like every other detective or investigator who’d touched the file over the past twenty years. “I’ve tried.”
“Need to know,” she said, increasingly winded. She set the book in her lap and laid the card over her heart, tapping it. “No time.”
He laid his own hand over his mother’s, struggling for words. “We don’t know that. The doctors—”
“No time.” She closed her eyes and a tear slid down her cheek. “Need to know if she’ll be there waiting for me.”
Cam’s head swam as his heart drowned. He had to lay his head on the bed and make himself breathe. His mother’s fingers carded through his hair, coaxing and calming. “Please, Cameron.”
Dragging in a breath and sucking back his own threatening tears, he righted himself and squeezed his mom’s hand. “I’ve tried. My entire career.” She was the last person he ever wanted to disappoint again but he’d hit a brick wall on Erin’s case, time and again.
She flipped the book to the last page and held it out to him. Taking it, he was surprised to find the normally blank couple of pages at the back filled with his mother’s meticulous handwriting.
Dates, locations, and details.
He looked back up at his mother. “Are these case notes? When did you start this?”
“The past year, after you left. Kept you both close.” She tapped the side of her head. “Kept this going too.”
Something else he came by honest.
He stared at the scribbled-on pages, running his fingertips over the amateur sleuthing his brilliant mother had been doing.
She covered his hand, stopping its movement. “Need to know.”
He couldn’t disappoint her. Especially if this turned out to be the last thing she asked of him. Not when he’d failed her before.
“Are there more books with notes?” he asked.
“That series.” The words were thin, a battle to get out. “Started rereading. By the bed at home.”
He clutched the book in one hand, her hand in his other. “I’ll try.”
She squeezed, a fraction of her normal strength. “Hurry.”