Luscious - Lexi Blake Page 0,44
glad you had to come here.”
Macon understood. Adam wasn’t saying he was happy he’d gotten injured, but it had led to a good thing. “I cursed it for so long, but I know what you mean. If it hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be brothers again. I wouldn’t have a family. Sometimes it’s too easy to curse the place we’re at in life because we can’t see where the road is going to lead us. I wouldn’t have found Ally.”
Adam’s smile put him at ease again. “I’m glad she’s making you happy. She seems like a great woman. She’s good with Tristan and she’s become Serena’s white board buddy lately. I’ve heard them plotting sex and murder three times this week. By the way, if you see either woman playing around with a chainsaw, hide. They’re really creative.”
He hadn’t realized how the simple act of connecting with his brother could change his life, his perspective, his everything. Having Adam as a brother fundamentally made his life better. “I promise. And have I said thank you lately?”
“There’s no need. Not ever. You’re my brother and you always have a place here.” Adam sobered. “I came over here to talk to you about family actually. Our very fucked up one. I got a call from Dad about twenty minutes ago.”
Macon set down the whisk and felt his shoulders tighten. “What’s wrong? Did he take a turn?”
Adam shook his head. “No. He’s still in remission. You know I think the old goat will likely outlast the rest of us. He was looking for you. He said he doesn’t have your new cell number.”
“Why? He said everything he needed to say when I tried to come home.” He relaxed a little. It didn’t matter. What mattered was Ally and she was getting ready for breakfast and then they would go down and help out with the cleanup at Top.
“It seems that Elise has had a change of heart. She left Alan three days ago and dear old Dad thinks she’s on her way down here.”
Warmth spread through his system. This was what revenge felt like. Big Tag talked about it a lot. Now he got it. “Oh, she figured out Alan went through his trust fund years ago. This is a good day.”
Now he could go back to his waffles. He started to warm up the iron and opened the fridge to grab the blueberries for his compote.
“He asked about you. About how you’re doing with the leg,” Adam said.
Macon shrugged. “He didn’t care before. I’m not sure why he does now.”
“I know why he cares. A private investigator called asking him about the incident that cost you your leg.”
And just like that his appetite was blown. “That was a year ago.”
“The PI thinks there’s something you’re covering up,” Adam explained. “Apparently he got information from Private First Class Rowe’s family. They don’t believe that things went down the way you said they did.”
“I told the Army everything.”
Adam’s voice went soft. “Macon, you were trapped underneath that car for two days.”
That was only supposed to be in the official, classified report. “How do you know that?”
Adam’s eyes rolled. “Do you know who I am? Do you think I can’t get hold of a couple of non-sanitized reports? Hell, I didn’t even have to hack anything. Big Tag got them for me. I read them on my way to pick you up.”
Macon’s chest felt too tight. Adam had known all along. “You read them months ago and you’re only now asking about it?”
Adam shook his head. “It didn’t matter before. Now it does. Now it looks like some PI is going to come after you. I need to know if you lied on that report, Macon. I need to know what happened so I can clean it up for you.”
“There is nothing to clean up. We got hit by an IED and then attacked by a small group of insurgents. They took apart my whole team and I was the only one left alive. We were so deep in enemy territory that I wasn’t extracted for days. I was the only survivor. Why would I lie?” Because the truth would be too painful for everyone, including himself. Because Rowe deserved better than what happened to him out in that desert.
“They did a good job on the reports. They pushed them through very quickly. Someone was watching out for you, but I wish they’d fudged that one bullet. The bullet that killed Private First Class Rowe wasn’t