Chapter 2
Austin
Atext Bryce lit up my personal phone.
Hey big brother, are you still coming home for the weekend?
What my eldest younger brother didn't know, and therefore it couldn't hurt him, was that I was currently in Dallas, investigating a cold case tied to my current case.
I texted my confirmation and then emailed my Aunt Mary to RSVP to my cousin Madi’s engagement party.
Was that really three days ago?
I’d missed Jack’s wedding a few years ago, and Jay’s wedding last month, but had attended Jamie’s, Madi’s twin, ceremony the year before.
I used my job and being stationed overseas as an excuse.
What I never said was that I was jaded beyond measure after having to investigate my now ex-wife after she accused me of cheating.
She thought it’d be an easy win in court, but I had resources she knew nothing about at my fingertips, and it hadn’t taken me long to find evidence of her affair.
Plural. She had several fucking affairs.
All with Navy guys who claimed they didn’t know she was married.
That’s all I was to her. A paycheck in a uniform.
After I left the Navy, she lost interest in me and our marriage.
My phone buzzed.
“Winchester,” I answered without thinking, or looking at my caller ID.
“Yes?” Bryce asked with a laugh.
“Bryce, is everything okay?”
“Does something need to be wrong for me to call?”
“No.” Though he rarely called. We texted, we emailed, but we didn’t call. Calling was hard because we lived in different time zones, often on different continents, and as a cop, Bryce’s schedule was almost as hectic and complex as mine.
“Aunt Roni wants to know if you’ll be home for dinner.”
I couldn’t blame them for asking.
“I’ll be there.”
“Good, everyone’s excited to see you.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” I exaggerated. I wanted to see my siblings, but wasn’t looking forward to seeing them all together at a family dinner. Except for Ethan, he was on the road.
As the only Winchester who lived out of state—hell, I live out of the country most of the time—I was an outsider among my close-knit siblings. I’d spend the night observing them while they talked, taking mental notes while they shared stories, and smiling while they laughed at inside jokes.
“Hey Austin, maybe try not to sound like a fucking robot when you get here.”
I leaned back in my chair and pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Copy that.”
“And don’t cancel.”
I deserved that, having cancelled more often than I’d attended.
“I won’t,” I promised before ending the call.
I wasn’t as close to Veronica, Aunt Roni, as my five younger siblings were. Roni was my father’s third wife’s older sister, and was only blood-related to Dalton, Ethan and Eva. Unlike me with my metal heart, the lack of blood relations hadn’t stopped Bryce and Cassie from loving her.
I barely knew her. I was a typical self-centered fifteen-year-old when Dad married Donna, and other than being happy he’d found love a third time, I didn’t expect the marriage to last, so I wasn’t interested in getting close to her or her family.
A mistake I’d made by getting close to Bryce and Cassie’s mom. It wrecked me when she got sick after Cassie was born. She didn’t live long enough to see her daughter’s first birthday. Losing two mothers so young did a number on me, so I refused to get close to Donna.
My instincts were right; Donna died when Ethan and Eva were two. My dad had horrible luck with wives; all three had died young. If I hadn’t known him, I might’ve thought he was a male black widow, but he loved his wives and mourned each one deeply.
I was seventeen and ready to graduate from high school when Veronica stepped in to help my dad with his five young children. In typical teen fashion, I didn’t think I needed her.
People thought I was heartless because I channeled the grief of losing three mothers into earning my way into the U.S. Naval Academy. With a ten percent acceptance rate, I had to bust my ass to stand out.
It wasn’t enough to get good grades; I had to excel. It wasn’t enough to play sports; I had to star. It wasn’t enough to volunteer; I had to make a difference.
My uncle John, a Parker County cop, helped me find volunteer opportunities that stood out from the typical choices like working in a soup kitchen, spending time with lonely seniors, or tutoring younger students.
With my uncle’s help, I created a program to tutor kids in the Fort Worth juvenile detention system. They still used my program, with a few adjustments they’d made over the years.
The program not only secured the congressional nomination I needed, but it helped me earn three additional letters of recommendation. The letters from the Fort Worth mayor, the FWJDC superintendent, and from John, a former Marine turned local cop, improved my chances.
Small town guys from Laurel Springs, TX, didn’t have many opportunities to build an application that’d impress a panel of Navy veterans, but I’d found the right support and knocked their stripes off.
I left for the academy in Annapolis, MD, three weeks after giving my high school valedictorian speech.
Bryce was twelve. Ethan and Eva were four.
Because I wasn’t home much during my junior and senior years, I barely knew my youngest siblings. I watched them grow up in emailed pictures and talked to them via the occasional video chat and the less frequent shared holiday meal.
What little contact I had with them I owed to Veronica. She held the family together, even after my father died.
I should bring her flowers. And wine.
It wouldn’t make up for the years of neglect, but it was a start.
My laughter echoed off the dull gray walls of my bare, temporary office in the Capital Investment Advisors building.
I know more about my siblings than they’d be comfortable with. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Keeping tabs on them was my fucked up way of loving them from a distance.
My fortieth birthday wasn’t far off, and I realized I felt alone.
My whole life had revolved around work, but it no longer fulfilled me like it used to.
Time to stop pretending I didn’t need a family and get to know them in real life by forging genuine relationships, rather than observing from a distance and building files.
I have five adult siblings to get to know. I felt less lonely just thinking about it.
The reminder on my calendar warned me I had ninety minutes to get to Laurel Springs, barely enough time considering I needed to stop for flowers and wine.
Before closing my laptop, I checked the progress on the digital aging app.
A lion’s roar greeted me when I pressed Veronica’s doorbell.
“Who the hell rings the bell for family dinner?” Cassie asked as the door swung open. “Oh.” Her eyes grew two sizes bigger. She turned and yelled into the house. “It’s only Austin.”
“Hi Cassandra.”
“It’s Cassie.” She mumbled, “You should’ve left the stick you keep up your ass at the office.”
“Well, don’t just stand there letting the heat in, come inside,” Veronica yelled as she approached from the kitchen.
“Veronica, thank you for having me,” I said, handing her the rainbow bouquet.
“Everyone calls me Roni,” Veronica reminded me before sniffing the flowers. “Veronica is too formal.”
Like me. Too formal. Too quiet. Too distant.
Unlike my siblings, warm and fuzzy didn’t suit me.
“Hello Bryce.”
“Christ, could you sound less human?” Bryce asked.
“Leave him alone, copper,” Eva defended me as she came in for a shy hug.
Her long, shiny black hair, pulled back into high pig-tails tickled my arms. Eva, who insisted we pronounce her name Ava, had changed the most over the years.
The plain girl who’d blended in during elementary school had blossomed into a colorful artist who loved to stand out.
At least that’s the impression she gave. Eva dressed like a happy goth but kept mostly to herself, at least that’s what Bryce said, and only came out of her shell with family.
Unlike previous visits, I hugged back, squeezing until she complained about the wine bottles bruising her.
“Are you still working for John?” I asked, knowing she wasn’t.
“Nah, Meg returned to work, so I was deemed superfluous.”
When my brain flashed through the details from Meg’s file like a slideshow in my mind, I hit the stop button. I wanted to reconnect with my family, and remembering all the details about my cousin’s wife wasn’t the way to do it.
“Do you miss it?” God, I suck at small talk.
“Shockingly, yes. Even if the job itself was humdrum.”
“Superfluous? Humdrum?”
“Eva loves using fancy old words,” Cassie explained.
I nodded with a forced grin. That’s something I should’ve known, but didn’t. It’s not something you learned from a background check or surveillance file.
Why would it be? It wasn’t important in the bigger scheme of things.
“Get in here and help Bryce set the table,” Veronica, Roni, I reminded myself, said, walking towards the kitchen.
I catalogued the layout and all possible exits as I walked through the living room to the large, open kitchen. She’d knocked down the wall between the kitchen and dining room over a decade ago to make the area more cozy, her words not mine, after she took in her nieces and nephews.
“The kitchen looks great.” She’d upgraded the old farmhouse appliances and warped shelving for modern stainless steel and stained oak cabinets.
“Thank you. Cassie, grab a vase, will you?” Veronica, Roni, said, handing off the bouquet as she closed the distance between us and pulled me into a hug. “It’s been too long.”
I couldn’t disagree. My job kept me out of the country more often than not, and my U.S. home was in Washington, DC. I didn’t come home to Texas often.
I’m only here now because of work.
The face of a female infant flashed across my mind’s eye. The program was aging her, using her parents’ features, so I’d have a face to run facial recognition.
I’d be looking for a needle in a haystack, but it was my best lead.
“I’m sorry I haven’t visited more often.”
“Holy shit, did everyone else hear that?” Bryce asked.
My grin worked muscles in my cheeks that’d been dormant for far too long.
Smiling was something I did when I needed information and had to play nice.
“Are you trying to smile? Because it looks like you’re in pain.”
“Fuck you, Bryce.”
“Boys, play nice,” Roni warned us. “Cassie, why don’t you open the wine Austin brought while the boys finish setting the table.”
Roni’s long, flowing zebra patterned dress billowed around her when she spun back towards her stove. When she lifted the lid, the rich scent of spiced meat assaulted my nose and made my mouth water.
“It smells good.” I hadn’t eaten a homemade meal in months, and the smell alone was enough to make me drool.
“It’s my famous roast beef recipe.”
If I’d had it before, I’d forgotten. It’d been years since I’d last been home, and the last meal we’d eaten together was a Thanksgiving turkey.
“Where’s Dalton?”
He was a firefighter paramedic, so I assumed he was on duty, though I hadn’t verified before driving over.
“He’s on duty.”
“We’re watching E’s game later, if you’re so inclined,” Eva said.
E was what she called her twin, Ethan. He played short-stop for the Houston Falcons baseball team.. I followed his team and could recite his stats, but hadn’t seen a game yet this season.
“Sounds good.”
“Who are you, and what’d you do with our brother?” Bryce asked, using what I assumed was his interrogation voice.
Leave it to him to give me shit.
“You worried I’m an evil doppelg?nger or something?” I joked.
“No… you’re too friendly to be the evil doppelg?nger.”
That hurt. I deserved it, but it cut to the bone.
“What can I say? Turning forty does things to a man.” I shrugged off my emotions.
“You’re not forty yet, old man.”
Old man? That hurts even more.
“Does that mean you’ll visit more often?” Cassie asked. She and Bryce were the siblings I knew best because of our relative closeness in age. Seven and nine years was a decent gap, but I was thirteen years older than Dalton, who had a year on the twins.
“I hope to.” It depended on me working more in the States, something I rarely did.
My current case led me to a cold case. The cold case sent me on a wild goose chase that’d led me from Spain to Germany, then back to DC before finally leading me to Texas. Where it led next and how long it’d take was anyone’s guess.
I intended to apply for a transfer to the Dallas satellite office after closing my current cases. It’d mean more desk work, but it was time to leave the overseas fieldwork to the younger guys.
Bryce stared at me, his eyes practically neon signs of skepticism. I couldn’t blame him; I’d been gone, distant, for a long time.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love my family; I did. I just didn’t know them. I’d let my career create more distance between us than our age difference.
I can change that.
As we finished eating the best meal I’d had in months, Roni asked, “How’s the logistics job?”
“Boring, but it pays well and I get to travel.” When I left the Navy and took the job at the CIA, I created a cover story to justify my time abroad.
I told my family, including my now ex-wife, that I’d accepted a job as a logistics and financial analyst for the military, making sure our troops overseas had everything they needed.
That job was too boring for my ex. Hence why she started sleeping with sailors.
“Such a waste of your fancy education,” Bryce said. It wasn’t the first time he’d said something along those lines. My brother had great cop instincts, which meant he was the only person who challenged my cover story. “Didn’t you do spook stuff in the Navy?”
“Spook stuff?” With my poker face in place, I sipped my wine before reminding him. “I was an intelligence officer; I stared at spreadsheets and analyzed data for a living.”
Lie. My job wasn’t just analyzing the data; it was piecing it together to tell a story of who our enemies were and predicting their next move.
Bryce held eye contact, no doubt waiting for me to show him a tell that I was lying.
I wouldn’t. My Navy and CIA training and experience would beat his local police academy training and small town law enforcement experience any day of the week.
“How’s small town law enforcement treating you?” I asked.
Laurel Springs had a reputation as a safe community, the perfect place to raise a family.
“We don’t have many felonies, but the misdemeanors keep me busy.”