And the smell. Ugh, he smelled like sweaty armpits and dirty feet and…
“Wh-what are you doing here, Derek?” She spoke without thinking and winced inside at how bitchy the question made her sound. But still, it was a question that needed to be asked, and ugh, the smell. And he was standing in her house without an invitation.
And for that matter, how the hell had he gotten in? She was sure she’d heard Greg lock the front door before leaving. She’d been hyper-focused on him as he got the hell out of the house and recalled with vivid clarity the sound of the deadbolt lock thunking shut.
Without waiting for an answer to her first question, she moved on to her second. “How did you get in here, anyway?”
Then to her third. “And what…what do you want?”
He chose to address the second. The answer was simple and straightforward and heartbreaking. “Greg gave me a key after you bought the place.”
He said it without a moment’s hesitation, and Brenna knew instinctively he was telling the truth. She felt her face redden from anger and shame. Without asking her—hell, without even telling her—the man with whom up until a short time ago she’d thought shared everything had handed out keys to their home like spare change to a vagrant.
And that was damned close to the truth. Brenna knew Greg’s relationship with his brother was a sore spot for her husband. He hated talking about Derek. But he’d said enough over the years to clue Brenna in to the fact that Derek Weaver had had issues for years with drug abuse and criminal behavior. At one point he’d been homeless and maybe still was.
Judging from the way he looked—and smelled—homeless seemed like a pretty good guess.
And he was standing in her kitchen, hands jammed into his pockets, shuffling his feet like a kid who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
She took a deep breath. “What do you want, Derek?”
He glanced at the floor and then looked up. His face was bruised and swollen. And was that blood on his clothes? “I need to see Greg. Where is he?”
“Is that blood on your clothes?”
“Where’s Greg?”
“Derek, is that blood on your—”
“Where’s Greg?”
Derek’s tone was harsh and impatient and he was nearly shouting, and Brenna took an instinctive step backward. She was dimly aware of a lightning bolt of pain shooting through the heel of her left foot and she knew she’d stepped on a shard of glass, but at the moment that seemed like much the lesser of two problems.
“He…he left for work a few minutes ago. What’s wrong, Derek?”
“Get him back here.”
“What? He’s halfway to the city, I can’t—”
“Get him back here.”
Derek had stopped shuffling in place and his eyes lasered in on hers with an intensity she’d never seen. He stared at her without speaking and everything stopped. It was probably for ten seconds but it felt like ten minutes. She tried to muster up some decent outrage but couldn’t quite manage it.
Finally Derek broke eye contact, and for just a moment Brenna thought he was going to forget about his request and backtrack down the hallway and out the front door, and that would be just fine with her. He would still have a key to the house, but the minute Greg came home from work tonight she would light into him with the righteous fury she couldn’t quite manage now, and he would goddamned well go out and find his brother and retrieve the key, and that would be that.
But it didn’t happen. Derek didn’t backtrack down the hallway.
Instead, he moved forward, into and then across the kitchen, passing right in front of Brenna, who backed up further until her ass struck the counter and she had nowhere to go. She didn’t think she’d sliced up her bare foot any worse but couldn’t be sure.
Derek walked straight to the stove, glass crunching under his boots. Then he reached out and plucked a steak knife from the butcher-block set Brenna had placed next to the stove for easy access when cooking.
Then he turned and faced his sister-in-law. He didn’t threaten her with the knife, but he didn’t have to. It glittered in the sunlight streaming through the window over the sink, glinting dangerously as he twitched and shook.
“Get Greg back here,” he said again. He spoke quietly and calmly, and that was even more frightening than when he’d been shouting.
She stepped to the phone, staying as far away from the knife as she could, knowing it was pointless—he could lunge forward and skewer her easily if he wanted to, and she would be helpless to stop him—but doing it anyway. Blood from the gash in her foot smeared the floor as she walked and she wondered how many other cuts she was getting that she couldn’t feel at the moment thanks to the adrenaline flooding her system.
Then she made the call.
4
The traffic on the Southeast Expressway was a pain in the ass, as Greg had known it would be. He’d grown up in the area, and for as long as he could remember this particular stretch of highway had been known as the “Southeast Distressway,” a moniker that was depressingly—and reliably—accurate.
But knowing the traffic would suck was not the same thing as accepting it, and Greg had never been what anyone would consider a patient person. Between the shit show with Brenna at breakfast and the fact Greg was already running late because he’d overslept, his nerves were thrumming like guitar strings even before his cell started ringing. Seeing HOME on the caller ID didn’t make things any better.
He glanced at the phone and back to the road. Thought about ignoring the call. What the hell could she want that she couldn’t have mentioned twenty minutes ago? She sure hadn’t
