It happened in two quick blinks of an eye.
He started to rise on a small hill in the road and a midnight blue Buick was suddenly topping it, headed straight at him. Thomas jerked the wheel and struck loose gravel, careening over the rise in the road at a skid. He braked, lurching to a halt, just barely stopping himself from going into the ditch.
He could no longer see the Buick because of the bump in the road, but suddenly he could divide his life into before the moment he’d seen that speeding vehicle and everything that came after.
He shut his eyes and shook as memories slammed into his consciousness with the force of a locomotive.
The interior of Joseph Carlisle’s office was cool and dim. His father hadn’t been going into his office at the trucking company since Rick and Abel had died. Thomas sunk into one of the leather chairs in front of his father’s desk and briefly shut his eyes. They burned. He had slept maybe three or four hours in days. Ever since the funeral.
Ever since he’d finally done what Rick had asked and listened to the recording Rick had given him just days before he died.
He opened his eyes, and noticed Joseph had taken note of his haggard appearance, unshaven jaw, worn jeans, and an old T-shirt from his Navy EOD days.
Mighty are those that flirt with fate.
Mighty? Perhaps. Or maybe he’d just been lost. He’d been fearless as a kid, accepting almost any dare, because he figured deep down, he didn’t deserve the stability of a family. Now that he was beginning to experience the shakiness of what he’d assumed was a stable world, the idea of going down on a bomb seemed downright tame.
“You look like shit . . . and like you’ve been getting about as much sleep as your mother,” Joseph said as he sunk down into the chair behind his desk. The chair was a large, winged-back number. Joseph used to overfill it, not only with his large, once powerful body, but with his charisma. Presently, it looked like the chair had grown.
Or Joseph Carlisle had shrunk.
“You should contact your doctor and ask for sleeping pills,” his adoptive father continued in a toneless voice. When he clutched his side and winced, a large figure stepped into Thomas’s peripheral vision. He scowled as he watched Newt Garnier—Joseph’s longtime right-hand man—open up a drawer and take out a bottle of antacid.
“You’re the one who needs to see a doctor,” Thomas said. His irritation mounted when his father accepted the tablets from Garnier, washing them down with a swig of coffee.
“It’s just my damn acid reflux.”
“How do you know? Who diagnosed you? Has Garnier gone and got his medical degree in the past few months?” Thomas snapped. He ignored Garnier’s malevolent glare. He and Thomas had never gotten along. Thomas figured Garnier was jealous of anyone who shared a special relationship with Joseph Carlisle. He knew his mother and Garnier had never been on the best footing either, but his father refused to hear a word against the man.
“Don’t let your mother hear you saying stuff like that,” Joseph said wryly. “The last thing she needs at this moment is something else to worry about.”
Thomas went still, only his gaze moving over Joseph. Had what he said been a subtle threat? Had Joseph noticed the way Thomas had scrutinized him from across the crowded rooms at the wake and the funeral, as though he were trying to bring the sight of his adoptive father into focus? It disoriented him, this necessity for suspicion, this compulsion to try to consider the man he’d known and loved for most of his life in a different light.
When Garnier slammed the drawer shut and Joseph grimaced as he took another swig of his coffee, Thomas inhaled slowly, attempting to smooth over his confusion and a rising anger that he wasn’t quite sure how the hell to contain. He’d been having more and more trouble controlling his temper since Rick had died. Now that he’d listened to the tape, he found himself increasingly at the mercy of his fury.
His adoptive father looked old. The thought drained the rage and helplessness out of him. He sagged into the leather chair, suddenly feeling too weary to complete the task that had brought him to his father’s house in Lake Forest today.
But he would finish it. Too many questions were buzzing around his head. He needed answers.
He’d continue for Rick.
“I’d like to speak with you alone,” Thomas muttered.
Garnier opened his mouth as though to protest—the man was becoming increasingly proprietary over Joseph in the past several months—but Joseph waved his hand dismissively.
“I’ll be right outside if you need me,” Garnier rasped.
“We won’t.”
Garnier swung around his square jaw at Thomas’s pointed comment. Thomas held his stare until the big man stepped out of his vision.
“That guy’s an asshole,” Thomas said under his breath.
“He says the same about you,” Joseph Carlisle replied without rancor. “Maybe that’s why I like both of you.”
Thomas distractedly picked up the trophy sitting on his father’s desk.
“I can’t believe you still have this thing,” he mumbled as he flipped the cheap trophy in one hand so that he could read the inscribed plate. FIRST PLACE, DIVISION IA, THE LAKE FOREST PAN-THERS, 1985.