“I got this,” Max slurred. “I’m winning this—”

“Shut the hell up.” Lane focused on the Marine. “I’ll get him out of here and you won’t have to worry about him ever coming back. Ever. In return, you let us walk.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll blow your head off. Trust me, after the week I’ve had, it will be the least dramatic thing I’ve had to deal with.”

SEVENTEEN

“I’m telling you, I had him.”

As Lane punched the Phantom’s accelerator and sped him and his idiot brother the hell away from the White Snake’s den of ridiculousness, he didn’t bother replying to that. Then again, there wasn’t much to argue with in the passenger seat. Next to him, Max was slumped against his door, with the only thing keeping him upright being the belt that cut across his chest.

“I’m serious, Lane. . . .”

The words drifted off into an exhale that was part curse, part snore. And so help him God, Lane was ready to open that door and let the bastard fall out onto the side of the damn road. He was so sick of cleaning other people’s messes up—and more than that, there was important shit going on, all kinds of things that were a helluva lot more critical than a drunken bar fight.

Plus, hello, in the last two nights, he’d taken a gun out twice and gotten into a physical altercation himself. He did not like the trend. He wasn’t Maxwell, goddamn it.

“How’m I get the bike?” Max asked.

“We’ll go back tomorrow. See if it’s still here.”

“Don’t tell Edward ’bout this, ’kay?”

As if they were still kids, and this was another of Max’s stunts.

“Edward is not going to care,” Lane snapped. “He’s too busy rotting in jail to worry about you as a grown-ass man getting into a fight in a frickin’ bar because some woman you don’t know and don’t care about is giving you head.”

“Okay, let’s not blow this out of proportion.” Max looked over. “Blow—get it?”

“What the hell are you doing, Max? Seriously, how old are you—”

“Like you haven’t been in similar situations—”

“Not anymore. I grew the hell up.”

As they stopped talking over each other, Lane came up to a three-way stoplight and put his left blinker on. In front of them was a housing development of million-dollar homes, the new colonials and brick Georgian-like houses clustered around man-made ponds with fountains that were under-lit. The property had previously been one of the grand old farms, back when Charlemont hadn’t had suburbs.

If he hit the gas and plowed through the intersection, he and Max and the Rolls would end up in a lake.

Maybe it would sober Max up.

Tempting.

In the end, though, when the light turned green, he made the turn onto the four-laner that had been the city’s main thoroughfare before the highway system had come along. There were no other cars out, and soon enough, he came up to the first of the strip malls of little shops and restaurants. Then there was a larger Kroger parking lot and a bank and a library branch.

“When are you leaving town?” Lane demanded as he came up to another red light.

“Trying to get rid of me so soon?”

“I just figured you’d be going.” Lane glanced over. “You never stay put.”

“Well, I can’t stay here.”

“Oh, yeah? You want to tell me why?” When there was only silence, Lane smiled grimly. “So I learned something today.”

“What was that?” Max pushed himself upright like he was hoping the greater verticality would help clear his beer-brain. “Hopefully it was useful information.”

“It appears that Edward couldn’t have killed Father.” Lane looked over again. “He didn’t do it.”

Max seemed to keep things cool, that bearded face not changing its expression, those eyes staying focused on the road ahead. “How you figure that? And he confessed, didn’t he—”

As the light turned green, Lane wrenched the wheel and shot the Rolls into the parking lot of a BBQ place. Then he hit the brakes hard enough to jerk the seat belts and threw the engine into park.

“What the hell, Lane! You want to get us killed—”

Lane spun around. “Be honest with me.”

Those pale gray eyes narrowed. But did not meet his own. “About what.”

“Edward and Father and the murder. You were there, weren’t you. You were part of it.” As Max refused to answer, Lane wanted to grab the guy and shake him. “I know you and Edward met before Father was killed. A couple of days before, someone saw the two of you on the far side of the Ohio. You must have planned things then—or was Edward trying to talk you out of it?”

Max’s big body shifted in the seat and he pulled at the seat belt. “I got to go—”

“You can’t let Edward take the fall for this.” Lane snagged the guy’s arm, because he was worried Max was going to bolt. “Edward shouldn’t have to clean up this mess—it’s not like when we were kids. This is not a beating he’s volunteering to take for you when you more than deserve one. It’s life in prison, Max. If you did it, you need to man up.”

“Can we just go back,” the guy muttered as he fumbled with the belt’s release.

“Why—so you can pull a runner in the middle of the night again? You’re a coward. I don’t know how you live with yourself—”

“Says the man who’s spent a decade distinguishing himself by who he’s been fucking. I can read headlines, you realize. Yale taught me that much.”

Lane opened his mouth to hit that jab back as hard as he could, but then he stopped. “You know, for the first time, I feel like I’m really seeing you for who you are. And it’s nothing I respect.”

He popped the locks on the doors. “Go. I’m done with you—but know this. I’m going to get Edward out of jail, whether he wants me to or not—and even if it means you’re in that fucking cell as his replacement.”

Max released his seat belt and gripped the door handle.

But instead of opening things up and falling out face-first onto the pavement, he just sat there.

After an eternity, he whispered, “I can’t keep going like this.”

“Damn right you can’t.” Lane banged the dashboard with his fist. “Come on, Max. Just tell me the truth. We can handle anything. We can get you a good attorney, and we can fight it—”

Max put his head in his hands and began to weep.

At first, Lane was so stunned, he just stared across the leather seats at his brother. He had never seen Max break down like this, the sobs wracking the man’s strong body, the misery so manifest, he contorted in on himself as if he were struck by blows.

Lane reached over and gripped Max’s shoulder. “It’s okay—”

The words came fast, pushed out by great emotion: “Edward didn’t kill his father . . . oh, God, he didn’t kill him. . . .”

“I know.” Lane’s voice got rough. “I know, Max. I know he didn’t do it.”

Max threw his head back and wiped his face with his broad palms. “He didn’t kill. . . .”

“It’s okay, Max. Just tell me what happened.”

The silence that followed was so long, if Lane hadn’t seen his brother’s chest pumping up and down, he might have thought the guy had passed out with his eyes open.

Just when Lane couldn’t stand it any longer, Max repeated, “Edward didn’t kill his father.”

“I know he didn’t.” For godsakes, they were going around in circles here. “I know it wasn’t Edward—”

Max let out a hollow laugh. “You don’t understand. He didn’t kill his father . . . he killed ours.”

After Max heard the words come out of his mouth, he closed his eyes and tried to reconnect with his buzz. Floaty, spacey, and not-giving-a-fuck had been much better than what he was feeling now—and damn it, he was so sick and fucking tired of swimming in this cesspool of sadness and grief he’d been thrown into three years ago.