True Ruin (True Men #3)

Prologue

Rearviewmirror – Pearl Jam

The world had gone silent, save for the static hum of the hospital’s fluorescent lights and the occasional beep of the monitor tracking his vitals.

Dallas True didn’t trust silence.

After all, an eerie calm had filled the air right before the attack.

Blowing out a fast breath, he stared at the ceiling, the scents of antiseptic and burnt coffee hanging in the small space, and wondered when someone in a rumpled lab coat would allow him to put weight on his ankle.

His gaze roved to the crutches leaning against the wall, a dull reminder that he wasn’t bulletproof.

No matter what he’d tried to prove.

When he heard the comment whispered in his older brother’s exacting tone, Dallas knew it was time to get out—of his head or the hospital, he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t seen Justin in three years, but he still heard that voice when he needed it least.

The door creaked, and the spongy squeak of rubber soles cut through the internal debate.

Dallas suppressed a groan when his senior editor stepped inside, his stomach tensing the way it had when he’d been hauled into the principal’s office in high school.

He didn’t say a word. Fortunately, maturity had taught him that a man could buy all kinds of things with well-timed quiet.

Information. Sympathy. Acceptance. Sex.

“Hell of a way to earn a vacation,” Leonard Pierce said, the perpetual Lucky Strike dangling from his mouth, his voice scraped raw by the habit.

The metal chair next to the bed screeched across the vinyl tile as he dropped his considerable bulk into it.

It was easy to see why he’d taken a management assignment two years ago.

Field reporters often had to run for their lives, and Pierce wasn’t running anywhere.

Biding his time, Dallas tapped a pen against the bed’s shaky tray table. For the past hour, he’d been struggling to finish a story he wasn’t sure had an ending. “Pretty certain you can’t smoke in here,” he finally said, because one of them had to say something.

“This isn’t my first rodeo, kiddo. Completely safe if you’re not hooked up to oxygen.

” His watery brown gaze scanned the space as he gave a feeble yawn Dallas didn’t believe for one second.

“Lucky the shrapnel didn’t catch you in the eye.

Though that pretty face of yours could take a few hits.

” He shrugged and fished a matchbook from his wrinkled coat pocket.

“Women like scars, inside and out. I can’t say why; they just do.

Won’t hurt your chances, being roughed up a bit.

You forget, I’ve seen you in action. The brooding ones always win. ”

Dallas grunted, unwilling to go there, for God’s sake. In fact, he was going to wait this out. Pierce was the best managing editor at Reuters, a terrific newsman, but he was shit at managing people.

It would be entertaining to watch him try.

“The click of a satellite phone still makes my pulse jump, too. Dictating stories line by line, madness unfolding around you in villages so remote they still use telex machines. Wrong-place, right-time stories are the thrill of a journalist’s life…

until they do him in.” Pierce struck the match against the striker and cupped his hand around the flame.

“Adrenaline only goes so far, kiddo. Putting yourself at risk without considering the risk usually doesn’t end well. I should know.”

“Am I being fired?” Dallas asked, his patience wearing thin. He started to rake a hand through his hair, then remembered they’d shorn it with military precision upon arrival to check for head wounds. “Is that it?”

Pierce coughed and jabbed his cigarette at Dallas. “Jesus, didn’t you read the fucking memo?”

Dallas glanced at the leather satchel sitting across the room. He’d had a concussion when they brought him in, but he vaguely recalled someone delivering an envelope the next day. Scrubbing his fist across his brow, he released a ragged sigh. “Um, no.”

Pierce exhaled a thin stream of smoke and watched it curl toward the ceiling. His fingers, yellowed at the tips, trembled. “I thought you were turning it down. You know, trying to talk my most headstrong reporter into something against his nature isn’t my idea of a good time.”

“Talk me into what?”

Pierce grinned, enjoying this despite his claim otherwise. “Deputy bureau chief. Cairo.”

“Bureau chief,” Dallas whispered, slumping against the lumpy pillow. He hadn’t expected to land this gig for another five years. At least.

“Deputy bureau chief,” Pierce clarified with a pointed look.

“You ain’t starting at the top. You’ll hire stringers, edit dispatches, coordinate coverage, occasionally file analysis pieces, though most of those will fall to the junior leaguers, a meager two souls.

Long hours and plenty of ‘em, that’s a promise.

But it’s a step up, a big one, your first test in managing an editorial crew.

Stable housing, expense account, fax machines, even electricity most days. ”

And the unspoken but enormous win: Dallas would decide the stories they chased.

Pierce didn’t have to sell it. The position was coveted, as was the location. Only London, Johannesburg, and Nairobi were more desirable. Dallas palmed his belly, trying to contain the nervous flutter.

Here it was, no campaigning involved, and he wasn’t sure he was ready.

“Only catch, you have to have your head on straight, kiddo.” Pierce chewed on the butt of his cigarette, his gaze narrowing. “You’ll have other people’s careers, other people’s lives, on your shoulders. No jitters, no jolts when a car backfires, your nerves gotta be steadier than cement.”

There it is. Dallas tossed his pen on the tray. “How long am I grounded?”

Pierce stretched out his legs, hooking them at the ankles.

His khaki cuffs were ragged from years of abuse.

“You’re talented, True. Aside from me, maybe the best on-the-run writer in the business.

” He held up a beefy hand before Dallas could respond to the rare compliment.

“But your brashness is a liability, flat-out. Not much of a criticism, because it takes one to know one.”

“Hold on a second.” Dallas sat up, wincing as a jolt of pain shot through his ankle. “I couldn’t let Rafael take the fall. I talked to you about it.”

Pierce sighed and gave the pack of Lucky Strikes a soothing tap.

“And I told you, getting too close, giving your fixer money to disappear, crosses a line. You do your job, he does his, even if he’s only sixteen.

We agree on the risks going into the deal.

Helping someone—admirable, okay, sure—but it’s not what we’re supposed to be doing out there.

Defying your editor is another matter we should cover. ”

“When did I—”

“You received that evacuation order two days before the hotel was hit. I sent the damned dispatch myself. You went back in there to get that kid out.” Pierce shook his head and cracked his knuckles, making Dallas wish he would light another cigarette.

“Don’t yank an old man’s chain, True. This isn’t your first rodeo, either.

How about the camera you slipped past a checkpoint in Zaire last year?

The local military wasn’t too happy about that stunt, especially when the piece won those awards. ”

But the kid, his fixer, had been there because of him. Though he couldn’t use that argument.

“How long?” Dallas whispered, trying to recall when he’d taken time off. Last year, or was it ’95? His brothers had been riding him—his cousin, Campbell, too—for months about coming home. As if anywhere was truly home.

With an infuriating smirk that said he knew he was winning, Pierce settled back, the chair squealing in protest. “Two months’ leave isn’t so bad when you think on it. You can start working on that book you’re always gabbing about.”

Dallas slid from the bed, balancing on one leg, a move he’d perfected when the nurses weren’t looking. “Rest rotation, you mean.”

Swearing beneath his breath, Pierce wrestled the cigarette pack from his pocket. “What’s the damn difference? Take the offer, show up for briefing on December 1. End of story.”

A rush of memory—cotton fields baking beneath the hot sun, the sharp scent of red clay, a young woman’s teasing laugh on a summer day—broke over him.

“Go visit your brothers,” Pierce advised, jamming an unlit cigarette between his teeth. “The one who contacted me when no one had heard from you in weeks. Joey? Jimmy?”

Justin.

Without comment, Dallas muscled his arms into the sleeves of a faded Duke sweatshirt, then bent to awkwardly work a black Dr. Martens boot onto his good foot.

And they were half-brothers, not full, although the half had never mattered to anyone, least of all him.

If there were issues—and there were—bloodlines weren’t one of them.

Hell, his colleagues didn’t even know about Promise.

His professional bio listed Philadelphia, not a word about secrets hidden away in rural South Carolina.

Not realizing his reporter was preparing to flee, Pierce kept talking about rehab protocols, corporate liability, and insurance forms, but the words blurred, thin as the gray light leaking through the blinds.

Dallas had been torn by too many things lately.

The safety of a desk assignment against the adrenaline of the field was one.

So was the pull between staying away from a town he’d once hoped would heal him and aching down to his studs to return.

That ache went all the way back to when he was fourteen, battered, alone, his mother gone, with nothing but a birth certificate in his hand and a last name that had never belonged to anyone real.

Not until he’d boarded a Greyhound bus, ridden into a small Southern town, and knocked on the door of a grand house in a neighborhood he had no business entering. They’d taken him in without question.

Well, everyone except Justin.

Driven by that old pinch of resentment, Dallas reached for the IV line. A clean dart of pain burned up his forearm as he pulled the needle free.

“Christ,” Pierce growled, rising from the chair.

“Tell them I’ll take it. Cairo. And the two months of mental restoration.

” He hobbled across the room, the tile cool beneath his bare foot.

His ankle screamed, but he ignored it, working a crutch beneath his armpit and rolling his shoulder.

Good thing he’d put on sweatpants this morning.

If he was honest with himself, he’d been planning this breakout for days, and he knew exactly where he was headed.

Damn Justin and his fucking letters.

“You can’t just walk out, True.”

Dallas gave a half-smile and grabbed his satchel. “Seems I can.” He started for the door, each crutch-thump churning up emotions he had no intention of digging into tonight. He was going to let his recklessness ride a little longer.

Pierce’s shout followed him into the dimly lit hallway. “Where the hell are you going?”

The past came at him in snapshots. He wondered if his brothers were still working on that broken-down mill of Campbell’s, if the trees in the vacant field behind the high school were shifting into fall, or if, by the time he got there, they’d already be bare.

Promise, South Carolina, had been the worst thing to happen to him.

And, somehow, the best. It had handed him the family he’d wanted, the heartbreak he hadn’t, and memories he’d never outrun.

Dallas lowered his head and let out a disbelieving laugh at the question that rose before he could stop it.

Had Gabi Wilder thought of him even once since he’d left?

Guess he was going to find out.