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Doogan stepped to the edge of the wall, looked down it slowly, and then with a low “Come on,” he moved to Billy’s fallen form.
Sirens and flashing lights filled the apartment as Zoey rushed to Billy, kneeling beside him. The wound where the bullet had been dug from his side had torn open. Blood stained his T-shirt and dripped to the floor. Pale, weak, he stared up at her miserably as Doogan rushed back to the kitchen.
“I’m so sorry, Zoey,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Holding his hand, Zoey patted it gently, aware of Doogan hurrying back, a stack of her dishcloths in his hand.
“I’m still beating your ass in that race at the end of the month. That scratch on your side won’t save you.” It was impossible to keep the tears from her voice or from falling down her face.
His head lolled to the side, resting on her shoulder as Doogan worked to stop the bleeding, his eyes so hard, so cold, it broke her heart.
He was distancing himself, pulling away from anything he might feel.
“I killed my brother, Zoey,” Billy said, misery spilling from him. “I killed him.”
“No, Billy, you didn’t kill your brother.” Doogan’s head jerked up, that inner rage so reflected in his gaze that Zoey flinched. “Trust me, the man you killed, killed your brother. He wasn’t your brother when he made the choice to betray everyone who trusted him. He ceased being your brother in that single second. You hear me?”
“Like your brother?” Billy asked, the words sending shock racing through Zoey. “When he betrayed you?”
“Like my brother,” Doogan agreed, the rage, the flash of pain, all of it receding beneath the ice as he stared back at Zoey.
He’d lost so much and she hadn’t even known. He hadn’t shared any of it with her, no part of himself but the pleasure they’d shared.
“Makes you dead inside?” Billy sighed as the security system to the doors activated, notifying the intruders tearing through the house that law enforcement had been called and they were now being recorded.
Mackays, their in-laws, and their friends were filling the rooms; EMTs rushed behind them and Zoey’s world became chaos. And through it all, she knew the one thing she would remember most was Doogan rising to his feet, turning his back, and walking away.
Walking away from her.
NINETEEN
Three weeks later
Doogan stepped into the shadowed, cold stone walls of the Doogan ancestral home, and for the first time in far too long, he didn’t feel as though he were smothering from the loss of his daughter’s laughter ringing through the halls.
The pain was still there, bittersweet, regretful, and tinged with guilt. He’d always blame himself for his sweet Katie’s death and the confused horror he knew she must have felt that day. She’d known she wasn’t supposed to leave the house with anyone, but her uncle Regan had come for her. Her nanny wasn’t around; of course she hadn’t known Uncle Regan had locked the nanny in a closet, and her “unca” promised her it was all right to leave.
Her uncle promised her that her mommy was w
aiting to give her the bicycle she wanted so bad, and of course he’d already told her daddy. It was fine. And his sweet, trusting Katie had left with him.
And then her mother and her uncle Regan had tried to make her get in the car with a strange man. A man whose face frightened her. One she knew her daddy wouldn’t want her with. She hadn’t known Rigsby, but she’d seen the evil in him.
Katie had broken away from them. Her flight was caught by a security camera on a nearby business. The fear in her face, the tears, and her mother’s and uncle’s rage as they tried to catch her. She’d run in front of the car before anyone could do anything. There had been no way the driver, whose speed had been clocked at no more than six miles under the speed limit for the residential street, could have seen her. Still, it had been too fast to stop, to keep from slamming into the little girl racing from between the parked cars.
Doogan hadn’t even been able to tell her good-bye.
The driver said Regan had been inconsolable, that Katie’s final words had destroyed him.
“Why, unca? Why did you let me get hurt? My da will miss me, unca. I want my da.” Then Katie’s sweet eyes had closed and never opened again.
Katie’s grave had been placed next to her grandmother’s, where she would rest secure between loving grandparents when Doogan’s father passed. Doogan’s plot was below his baby girl’s; her nanny had asked to be buried above her. The middle-aged woman had passed in her sleep six months later when her heart had just stopped beating. Another death Doogan laid at his bastard brother’s and traitorous dead wife’s feet.
His wife’s lover had killed her before the day was out. A gunshot to the head. Doogan had found Regan later in Katie’s room, the gun he’d used to kill himself lying on the floor beside him. The grief and guilt, he’d written before taking his own life, was more than he could bear. He’d believed Catalina. Believed Doogan was divorcing her to be with another woman and taking Katie from her.
Breathing in deep, he strode through the vaulted entryway and through the family room to the office on the other end of the room. His father’s call that he had visitors had pissed him off. The old man refused to tell him who the visitors were, only that they were friends, and someone Doogan needed to see.
There was no one person he wanted to see. The only person he needed to see, he assured himself, was better off without him.
