Page 5 of Honor ’N’ Duty

He took a deep breath, reaching way down inside himself to find the strength he needed to get past this. “Fine. But don’t hurt my brother.” They may not have had the closest relationship, but they were still brothers, and Kade couldn’t help but be protective. “Whatever’s going on between you two, don’t hurt him.”

Her expression was a mixture of anger and pain, the same emotions tearing him up inside. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He leaned in. “Then tell me.”

“Laia?” Josh strode toward them, shoving the two Champagne glasses he’d been carrying at a passing waiter and spilling some onto the guy’s jacket. “What’s wrong? What’s going on here?”

“Good question,” Kade had replied. “I was just saying goodbye.”

Then he’d walked away.

Honking dragged him back to the present, and he looked up to see the light had changed. How could he have known then that his brother—not Laia—would be the one doing the hurting?

A psychoanalyst he wasn’t, but in the years since, Kade had come to understand the undercurrents rolling off his brother the day he’d proudly declared Laia to be his fiancé. There was no doubting that Josh had planned on showing Laia off to Kade, but Josh had also seemed happy.

Which made having feelings for Laia that much worse.

He drove through the light, then hung a left onto Second Avenue and passed a funeral home. At the next intersection, he turned left onto Emory Street and parked behind two black-and-white Asbury Park PD units. Assuming Laia had called the police hours ago, he was relieved to see they were still there. Not every town’s police department took burglaries as seriously as they should. Looked like Chief Hassan was making good on his promise.

Eight months ago, Kade and Smoke had assisted the Asbury Park PD on a drug bust and uncovered two kilos of hidden coke. The case had made headlines. Now Chief Hassan owed him a favor.

Laia’s slightly beat-up, gray Ford Escape, one he knew she’d bought at a used car dealer, sat in the driveway she shared with the duplex’s other tenant, Alvita Thomas, a Jamaican woman who’d moved in shortly before Laia and Rosa. Alvita’s green minivan was parked behind the Escape and just in front of the six-foot-high wood fence leading to the backyard.

Alvita stood on the grass in front of her side of the duplex with her two children, five-year-old Coraline and seven-year-old Jaden, eying him suspiciously. Kade had never met the family but had surreptitiously checked up on them the day after Laia and Rosa had moved in.

Like Laia, Alvita was a hard-working single mother. Through his parents, he’d learned the two women had struck up a close friendship, sharing playdates with the kids and helping each other out with babysitting.

Smoke stuck his head through the kennel window, his tail thumping against the kennel when he caught sight of Coraline and Jaden. One thing Kade had learned quickly in the two years since he and Smoke had partnered up was that his dog loved children almost as much as bacon. Maybe more, and that was saying something.

“I know.” He gave Smoke a quick scratch behind the ears, then dug his creds from the glove box. “You’ll see Rosa in a few minutes.”

Hearing Kade’s niece’s name, Smoke’s head perked up, and he leaned farther through the opening, hoping to catch sight of Rosa.

He stuffed his creds in his back pocket, then hooked a leash onto Smoke’s collar and let him out the side door. As they headed up the walkway, Kade noted the residual limp in Smoke’s right front leg.

A week ago, they’d been racing after a mugging suspect at Newark Airport. The perp jumped off a wall, and Smoke took off after him, landing hard on the pavement. He’d taken Smoke to the vet for an X-ray. No broken bones, and the limp was considerably less now, to the point where most people probably wouldn’t even notice it. But Kade did. He and Smoke were so attuned to each other, anything out of sorts with either of them…the other didn’t miss it.

They maneuvered around a pink tricycle and a blue sandcastle mold set complete with two cylinders indented to form the outline of bricks, plus a sand scoop. Smoke’s tail wagged furiously at Coraline and Jaden, who pointed to his K-9, oohing and aahing. Looking like a very large, pure-black cross between a shepherd and a collie, Smoke was an eye-catcher.

The duplex was, in reality, a small gray Victorian that had been renovated to accommodate two families. Not in the best part of town but not in the worst, either. If Laia had accepted the financial assistance his parents had offered or the checks Kade had mailed her, she and Rosa could have at least been living in a small house of their own. But she’d politely turned his parents down.

And never cashed a single one of my checks.

Something that still bugged him. She’d needed the money, but there was another reason he’d sent those checks.

Guilt.

For the role he’d played in all of this.

At the front door, he pulled his creds and damned if his hand wasn’t shaking. His father would have berated him for that transgression, ramming down his throat what a sissy he was being because a good soldier doesn’t shake in their boots. One of many military sayings his father had taken way too much joy in reminding him and Josh.

He was sweating again and this time not just from the heat. In seconds, he’d be face to face with the woman who’d haunted so many of his nights he’d lost count.

Rather than barge right in, Kade stuck to protocol and held up his badge to the cop who stood just inside the screen door. “Kade Sampson, Homeland Security. I’m Ms. Velez’s brother-in-law.” Shortly after Josh’s death, she’d reverted to her maiden name.

The cop, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, didn’t hesitate to open the door, meaning Chief Hassan had made good on his promise and notified his people to cooperate. He could just make out two other cops standing in the kitchen doorway with their backs to him.

“Good-looking dog,” Officer Padkin, according to his nametag, said, giving Smoke a wide berth.