Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Noah
Jackson was up before me, and when I came out of the bedroom, he was already in the kitchen with coffee made.
“You didn’t have to come back last night,” I said.
“I know.”
“Bobby probably had everything covered.”
“He did.”
I got myself a mug and filled it with hot water from the kettle he’d put on for me. “So why did you?”
He looked at me over the rim of his coffee. “I missed you.”
I wrapped both hands around my mug and looked back at him.
Three words. Simple and without decoration, like they were just facts he was reporting.
I missed you. The same way he might say it’s cold out or that breakfast is ready.
It was so like him to say something so sweet like it wasn’t any big deal at all.
“I missed you, too,” I said, matching him.
He nodded once, satisfied, and that was that.
We took our drinks to the small table by the window while the city woke up outside.
He told me about his day at the camp. He said the group had done great in the morning with hand-to-hand, but they’d had a hard afternoon with the knife defense because of a real-life experience their department had gone through, but they’d made it through.
“Bobby’s covering breakfast, but I don’t have long before I have to head out there this morning,” he said. “They have range work until noon, and then I have an expert coming in this afternoon for some specialized training.”
“Okay,” I said.
He looked at me. “You could come. If you don’t have anything going on.”
“Are you sure?”
“Wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t.”
“Okay, I have plans with Mika on Friday. He wants to show me his rooftop garden, but today was just going to be television and the puzzle we bought at the bookstore.” I glanced at the unopened jigsaw on the coffee table.
It was a botanical illustration, because of course I picked that one.
It had one thousand pieces and looked like it would be lovely when it was completed.
“Actually, that sounds kind of sad and boring when I say it out loud.”
“Bring the puzzle,” he said. “You can work on it at the farmhouse table while I’m out with the group. Bobby’ll be around.”
I thought about it for approximately three seconds. “Okay. Let me get dressed.”
The farmhouse kitchen was warm when we got there, smelling like coffee and the remnants of whatever Bobby had made for breakfast. The long table was clear except for a coffee mug and a set of keys at the far end, and I spread the puzzle out across one half while Jackson got things organized for the morning.
Bobby gave me a nod on his way through. “There’s food left over from breakfast if you want some. It’s in the fridge.”
“Thanks, but I’m good,” I said.
He poured himself a coffee and turned to Jackson. “Everyone is all set up for this morning, and they’re just killing time till we start. They seem pretty excited about range practice. Apparently, Garza and Mitchell have a friendly rivalry going about who’s the better shot.”
Jackson looked at his watch and nodded. “Okay, tell them we’ll start in twenty.”
“You got it.” Bobby smiled at me and then headed out the front door.
“So you know, there’s an assortment of teas in the drawer under the coffee pot. I don’t have a tea kettle out here, so you would have to heat the water in the microwave.”
“Thanks. You don’t have to stay in here with me. I’ll be fine.” I pulled out an edge piece of the puzzle and set it aside.
“I know, but I’m just getting all my notes from yesterday finished.”
“You take notes?”
“Sure. Most of the time, their departments pay for this training, so if they want a report, I want to be able to provide that. Besides, we have some groups that come each year, and we like to track the progress.”
“That makes sense.”
I went back to my puzzle, and he went back to work on his reports. It felt so peaceful and normal I could almost forget there was a narcissistic rich asshole out there thinking he owned me. Almost.
I’d been sorting edge pieces for about ten minutes when Jackson’s phone buzzed on the counter. He looked at it, and something moved across his face. Not alarm, something warmer than that and more surprised.
“What?” I said.
He turned the phone so I could see the screen. A gate camera notification—a truck I didn’t recognize—and below it a text from Bobby that said: your brother’s here.
Jackson stared at it for a moment. Then he set the phone down and looked at the door with an expression I’d never seen on him before. It was pure happiness, and it was there for exactly two seconds before he remembered himself and schooled his features.
The front door opened.
The man in the doorway was taller than Jackson by maybe half an inch, lighter in build, with brown hair and hazel eyes. He was looking at Jackson with a grin that was entirely unguarded.
“Surprise,” Wyatt said.
“You couldn’t call?” Jackson said.
“I could have. Where’s the fun in that?” He dropped his bag by the door and crossed to his brother, and they did the thing brothers did—a brief, solid embrace, a hand on the back of the neck, and then apart again, both of them pretending it had been casual.
“What are you doing here?” Jackson asked.
“You needed an expert in hostage negotiation, so here I am.”
“I hired Bryson Tanner for that job.”
Wyatt made a what can you do gesture. “Wolfe called me last week and said you were on vacation and your expert fell through, so he offered to fly me in.”
“I talked to you on the phone from the cabin, you could have told me then.”
“I could have, but again… where’s the fun in that?”
I was just sitting there watching them, grinning at the way they were together, when Wyatt looked past Jackson at me, and his expression shifted into something that was undisguised interest.
“Well,” he said. “You must be Noah.”
I set down the puzzle piece I was holding. “And you must be Wyatt.”
He grinned. “Jackson talked about me.”
“Jackson mentioned you existed,” I teased.
He laughed, surprised and genuine, and headed straight for the coffee maker with the ease of someone who’d been in this kitchen before. “That tracks.”
Jackson checked his watch. “I have to get out to the range.” He looked at me, then at Wyatt, with the expression of a man making a calculation. “You staying here?”
“Sure,” Wyatt said, already pulling out the chair across from me. “Go do your thing. We’ll be fine.”
Jackson looked at me.
“Go,” I said. “I’ll be here.”
He leaned down and kissed the top of my head on his way out, which made Wyatt’s expression do something extremely smug that I chose not to acknowledge.
He stalked to the front door, but before he left, he pointed at Wyatt. “You behave, and don’t be telling him embarrassing stories about me.”
“Oh, don’t listen to him,” I said. “I want all the embarrassing stories.”
Jackson sighed and shook his head as he walked out the door. The door closed behind him, and Wyatt sat down. He wrapped both hands around his mug and looked at the puzzle with genuine assessment. “Botanical?”
“It’s a peony.”
“How far along?”
“I just started it. I’m still searching for edge pieces.”
He reached out and picked up a piece, studied it, and slotted it into one of the edge pieces I’d set aside. “I’m good at puzzles. It’s a cop thing. Pattern recognition.”
“Then you’re hired,” I said. “I have about nine hundred and ninety-nine pieces to go.”
He smiled, and it occurred to me then that I’d been wrong the other day when I said they didn’t look much alike. They had the same bones, the same eye shape, just in different colors, and Wyatt had that same way of paying attention that Jackson had.
“So,” Wyatt said, sorting a section of pieces by color with quick, practiced movements. “How are you doing? Actually doing, not the version you tell people so they’ll stop worrying.”
I looked at him. “You don’t waste time.”
“I’m only here for one day.”
Fair enough. “Better than I was,” I said. “I’m still working on it.”
He nodded, no performance in it. “That’s the right answer. The people who say they’re fine are the ones you worry about.” He set a piece in place.
“That sounds like something Jackson would say.”
“Well, we were raised by the same people.”
“Good people, it sounds like. Sorry you lost your mom so young.”
“He told you about our mother?” Wyatt looked up from the puzzle.
“He did.”
Something in his expression settled. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”
We worked in companionable quiet for a while, the puzzle taking shape between us.
“He called me from the cabin,” Wyatt said after a while. “The night you got there. He didn’t say much. He never does, but I could hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“That something had shifted.” He fitted two pieces together and set them in place.
“Jackson’s been taking care of things his whole life.
Our grandfather, then our dad, then the people he worked with, then this camp.
He’s good at it, and he doesn’t complain, but he’s been doing it alone for a long time. ”
I looked at the puzzle. At the emerging shape of the peony, the petals coming together one piece at a time.
“He’s not alone now,” I said.
Wyatt looked at me. And then he smiled. “No,” he said. “He’s not.”
Crowe
I was coming back from the range with the group, Garza was going on about something that had happened there when someone’s shot went wide, when I looked up and saw Wyatt standing on the porch watching us.
“Hey, little brother,” he called out.
“You’re only two years older than me,” I said.
“Still makes me older. Noah and I are almost done with the puzzle.”
I stepped on the porch step and looked up at him. “I told him you were good at them.”
“He’s good, Jackson.”
“I know he is.”
“Good for you, I mean.”
I nodded and moved past him to go inside.
Noah was at the table with the puzzle spread out in front of him, and he looked up when I came in and a smile spread across his face. The puzzle was significantly further along than it had been this morning.
“Your brother is a cheater,” Noah said.
“I’m efficient,” Wyatt said, following me in. “There’s a difference.”
“You grabbed the piece I’d been looking for for twenty minutes.”
“And I found it in thirty seconds. You’re welcome.”
I pulled out the chair beside Noah and sat down, looking at the puzzle. It was a peony, Noah had said when he chose it, mostly assembled now, the outer petals locked into place and the center coming together. I looked at Noah. He looked at me.
“I like him,” Noah said.
“That makes one of us,” I grumbled.
Wyatt pulled up a chair. “He loves me,” he told Noah. “He’s just congenitally incapable of saying so.”
“I’ve noticed that about him,” Noah said.
“Hey,” I said.
They both looked at me.
“The afternoon session,” I said. “We should talk about the format.”
Wyatt let me redirect. He was good at that. Knowing when to push and when to give something room. We spent the next twenty minutes going through the afternoon plan for the de-escalation and hostage negotiation session.
After a bit, Noah looked up at me. “I’ve been sitting here too long. Do you think it’ll be okay if I go for a walk and get some air?”
“You should be safe here. The whole place is wired, and the camp is full of law enforcement. Just stay where we can see you. Or I can come with you if you want.”
“That’s okay. Stay here and talk to your brother.” He smiled at Wyatt and gave me a quick kiss. Then he headed out the door.
Wyatt leaned back in his chair and looked at me with the expression I’d been waiting for since he walked in the door.
“So,” he said.
“So,” I said.
“That’s Noah.”
“That’s Noah.”
He tilted his head. “The same Noah you told me Wolfe wanted you to check on. The one you described as”—he adopted a flat, mimicking tone—“just someone who needed a welfare check.”
“Things changed.”
“I can see that.” He drank his coffee. “He sat here for two hours and did a puzzle with me and talked about peonies and his mother and the flower shop and his therapist, and somewhere in there, he managed to make me feel like we’d known each other for years.” He paused. “He’s not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. Something more”—he searched for it—“fragile, maybe. Given what he went through.”
“He’s not fragile.”
“No,” Wyatt agreed. “He’s really not.” He set his mug down and looked at me directly, the teasing gone now, just the brother underneath it. “You look different, you know.”
“I look the same.”
“You look like someone who has somewhere to be at the end of the day.” He held my gaze. “I haven’t seen that on you in a long time, Jackson. Maybe ever.”
I looked at the puzzle on the table. The peony was almost complete, just a handful of pieces left in the center.
“It’s complicated,” I said. “With everything going on—”
“It’s always going to be something,” Wyatt said. “There’s always going to be a reason to wait.”
“You sound like Hawk.”
“Hawk’s a smart man.” He leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “I’m not telling you to do anything. I’m just telling you what I see from the outside. He talks about you the way people talk about things that matter. And you—” He stopped. “You went back into town last night.”
I looked at him.
“Bobby told me,” he said. “He thinks it’s great, by the way. His words.”
I exhaled. “Of course he did.”
“Jackson.” Wyatt waited until I looked at him. “I’ve been in Cedar Hollow, Ohio for what feels like forever, watching eighty-year-olds argue over a bingo card and a goat terrorize a bake sale. The least you can do is let me be happy for you.”
“You could always come back,” I said, pointing out.
“I could.”
“He said something last night,” I said. “When I got in. He was half asleep.”
“What did he say?”
I looked at the table. “You came home.”
Wyatt was quiet.
“He didn’t mean to say it,” I said. “He was barely awake. But—”
“But it felt true,” Wyatt said.
“Yeah. Not being at the apartment in town, but being where he is. That part.”
He nodded slowly. Then he reached out and picked up the second-to-last puzzle piece and handed it to me.
“So let it be true,” he said.
I took the piece. Looked at it. Set it in place.
One piece left in the center of the peony.
“You’re going to make me say it,” I said.
“I really am.”
I looked at my brother across the table.
“I’m glad he’s here,” I said. “I’m glad I went to get him, and I want him to stay.”
Wyatt picked up the last piece and set it in front of me.
“There it is,” he said quietly. “That’s the one.”
I picked up the piece and studied it for a minute. I looked at Wyatt and nodded, and then I put the last piece in.
The puzzle was complete.