Kansas City Christmas

Little Brother didn’t beat around the bush, did he.

Though the idea of a family get-together, with presents and ornaments and food and laughter and love, hit him like a blinding sucker punch, Edward buried his knee-jerk reaction beneath the sarcasm that laced his voice. “I’m busy on the twenty-fourth.”

“Bull—”

“Watch your mouth, little brother.”

“When are you going to move on, Edward?” Holden asked, managing to sound irritated and concerned at the same time.

“I’m working on it.” Edward idly looked out the window to see people hunched down in their coats and scarves against the weather, their arms laden with sacks and packages, purses and briefcases—all going somewhere with a purpose. He used to be driven like that. Catch some bad guys, save the day. Hurry home to make love to his wife and play kickball or tag or read a book with his daughter. Since their deaths, it had taken him four months to get out of the hospital and learn to walk again, the rest of the year to move out of his house to a cabin in the countryside outside of K.C.—to settle in a quiet place where the memories couldn’t find him. It had taken longer still before a visit from his family or a trip to the store didn’t drain every last ounce of his emotional energy. “I’m working on it,” he repeated.

“I know you’ve come a long way. But…please. This will be Mom’s first Christmas without Dad. I think we should all be there for her. I think we all need to be together.”

So, when did the youngest of Edward’s brothers start to sound like the wise old man of the family?

“I don’t want to ruin anyone’s holiday with one of my moods.” He groused a curse beneath his breath. “Staying away might be the best gift I could give Mom.”

“Nobody believes that but you, big brother.” Holden’s voice brightened, changing the tone if not the topic. “We’d love it if you’d come, even if it’s just for a little while. Liza and I have an announcement to make.”

“Surprise, surprise. Are you finally gonna make an honest woman of her?”

“Finally? Give me a break, Dr. Romance. I was in the hospital recovering from a sucking chest wound and a concussion after our run-in with Z Group’s assassin, Mr. Smith.” Holden’s news didn’t surprise him. With a hit man relentlessly trying to silence Liza’s testimony about their father’s murder, falling in love had happened fast. But even Edward’s cynical soul had been able to see the depth of what was between them. “Then we had to find a new place for Liza that had room for three dogs after her house got all shot up. Those are all legitimate excuses for delaying wedding plans with the woman you love.”

“Got that out of an etiquette book, did you?”

But Holden wouldn’t be dissuaded. “So, are you coming to Mom’s or not?”

“She knows I love her.” He deserved a little flak for dropping out of the family—out of life—for so long. But he was making an effort—improving his family relationships, day by day. The rest of the world would have to wait to get his charming self back into the thick of things. “I’m a lot better about calling her than I was even a few months ago. Talked to her last night, in fact. I know she’s planning a quiet family kind of thing—Sawyer with his wife and son and mother-in-law, Atticus and Brooke with her aunts, you and Liza, Uncle Bill.”

“You’re on the guest list, too. Even if you’re just there for a…”

For a what? Edward whistled a long breath between his lips, feeling, not for the first time, the pain his addiction had cost his family. “A toast?”

“Sawyer’s wife, Mel, is pregnant, so she won’t be drinking any alcohol, either. Maybe none of us will. You know how Mom likes that sparkling cider.”

“Relax, little brother. Mentioning booze is not going to make me go out and have a drink.” There were a dozen other things that might tempt him to go back inside the store for a six-pack, but the mere mention of alcohol wasn’t one of them. “I’m okay. I’ll…think about the Christmas Eve thing.”

“You’ve already decided not to come, haven’t you.”

“Maybe I can stop by on another day.” And he would make the effort to do so. It was one thing for him to suffer through the season, but now that he was sober, he knew there was no good reason for his family to hurt any more than they had to. “Congratulations to you and Liza, though. I promise not to tell anyone until you make a formal announcement.”

“I’ve got eight days to change your mind. I’m not giving up.”

“Didn’t think you would.” The interior of the new Jeep had warmed up enough that Edward tucked the phone between his shoulder and ear and pulled off his black leather gloves. “Now, do you have some other reason for calling besides pestering me about family reunions?”

“I might.”

“Come on. I’ve been sitting here long enough that it’s snowing again. So spit it out.”

Though he normally went out on calls with his S.W.A.T. team, Holden had been assigned to temporary light duty—aka sitting behind a desk—since going back to work at the Fourth Precinct after his hospital stay and recovery time. Edward could hear some papers rustling in the background as Holden’s voice dropped to barely more than a whisper. “We’ve come up with a lead on Dad’s murder that we—Sawyer, Atticus, Kevin Grove—the lead detective on the case—and me—believe we need your help to follow up on.”

“Me? I’ve got until January second to let Major Taylor know whether or not I’m coming back to KCPD. Until then, I’m off duty. I don’t even carry my badge anymore.”

“Exactly. You may have street connections that we could use beyond the standard pawn shops and fences.”

Edward had worked overt and undercover drug enforcement for most of his KCPD career. Once he’d had connections on both sides of the law. But since plowing André Butler beneath the wheels of his SUV, Edward hadn’t gone near any of his old “friends.” “You want me to do something illegal? Conduct a search without an official warrant?”

“All I want is for you to help us look for a ring. And maybe a couple of disintegrating bullets.”

“DASHING THROUGH THE SNOW…”

Holly Masterson’s singing softened to a hum as she squinted at her computer screen and typed in the next line of her autopsy report. COD—Natural Causes. Massive heart failure due to…

“In a one-horse open sleigh…”

Her fingers danced over the keyboard in time to the music playing over her earphones. Indigent lifestyle of malnutrition, exposure to elements and lack of medical…

“…laughing all the way. Ha, ha, ha. Bells on—”

The red light flashed on her office phone, indicating an incoming call. Holly killed the music as she saved her report. She spared a few moments to back it up to a disk and send it to the printer before pulling off her earphones and answering the call. “Crime lab. Dr. Masterson speaking.”

“Do I really have to call you Doctor? Can’t I just call you Squirt, the way I used to?” Holly grinned at the teasing in her older brother Eli’s voice. “So,what’s keeping you at the lab so late tonight? I tried to call you on your cell, but it went straight to voice mail.”

After a half dozen calls from the same unnamed cell phone, with no one on the other end when she picked it up, Holly had turned hers off and plugged it into its charger. But she had helped Eli raise herself and their younger sister since she was in high school and their parents had died in a plane crash. They’d weathered their sister’s rebellious choices and cocaine addiction together. A wrong number was nothing to worry an overprotective big brother about.

“I like to call it ‘work’,” Holly deadpanned. “You know I man the late shift at the lab, or you wouldn’t be calling me this close to midnight. So what’s up?”

“A guy can’t call his sister just to see how she’s doing?” That dry wit was a Masterson trait. “So…your car’s running all right? You got the stopper on that bathroom drain fixed? You’re not dating anyone I need to check out?”

“Yes. I’ll get to it. And no.” Holly grinned. “So, what’s going on that’s so important you needed to stay up past your bedtime and chat before our regular Friday lunch?”

Several minutes later, Holly was pacing in front of the windows that separated her office from the darkened lab and the autopsy room beyond. This close to the holidays, the crime lab ran a skeleton crew at night. Other than the derelict John Doe lying in the morgue, Holly was alone in the basement. She knew lab techs on the floors above her were monitoring ongoing fiber trace tests and editing background noise off some security camera footage. And she was having one of her own team members rerun a ballistics test on what she’d dubbed a disintegrating bullet—a mysterious new design of deadly ammunition that had shown up in several autopsies this year. Unfortunately, even by the time she’d discovered them inside the murder victims, the bullets had already begun to decompose, making it impossible to read striations and trace them back to the gun that fired it. They’d be lucky if her ballistics specialist, Rick Temple, could determine the manufacturer and caliber of the bullet.

But that was all backlog work. Without any pressing case demands, Holly herself had been making the most of the relatively quiet night—destressing with some music and reading through hard copies of reports. Ever since a virus introduced by an offsite hacker had destroyed several computer records back in April, she’d been using slow nights like this one to rebuild files and rerun tests where there was still evidence available. She took pride in her team’s clean chain-of-evidence record, and it galled her to think that one happy hacker could throw a monkey wrench into what had previously been solid cases, forcing investigations to be delayed or even circumstantial corroboration to be tossed out of ongoing trials. It was a matter of professional pride for Holly to make those evidence reports right again. For the victims in those cases, it was a matter of justice.

But with Eli’s phone call, a much more personal stress had returned. She’d find a way to handle this one, too. Raking her fingers through her short, dark hair, she repeated her argument to her brother.

“Jillian will be just fine. She came out of rehab a lot stronger than either of us expected, so you know that hardheaded Masterson gene is in her somewhere.” Eli had been worried about his other sister, not her, after all. “There’s no need for you and Shauna to cancel your holiday cruise. Between your job with the D.A.’s office and her responsibilities running KCPD, you two have never even had a honeymoon. And you’ve been married almost two years. Go. Have a merry Christmas. Not having to worry about our little sister is my gift to you.”

But Eli wasn’t convinced. “It’s not Jillian who concerns me. If that Blake Rivers bastard is back in town, then you know he’s going to put pressure on her to get back together with him. I swear to God, Holl, after all those years with the drugs when we thought we might lose her, Jillian is finally on a healthy, positive track. She’s gone back to college. She’s volunteering with those kids at the youth center. If getting back with her old spoiled, party-time boyfriend knocks her off her game again…”

“You’ll do what? You know, just because you’re not a cop anymore doesn’t mean you don’t have to follow the rules.”

“I didn’t follow them when I was a cop.”

Holly tucked her long bangs behind one ear, nodding her head in wry agreement. Following the rules was one Masterson trait that was uniquely hers. “We have to give Jillian the chance to make her own decisions and then stand up to the consequences on her own. We can’t bulldoze in and take care of everything for her. That’d just be a form of co-dependency all over again.”

The flicker of a shadow moved past the translucent glass door leading to the hallway, interrupting her thoughts and pacing. She was alone down here, wasn’t she? That’s why she’d dimmed the lights outside her office. No sense wasting the energy if she was the only one working in the lab. John Doe certainly didn’t need the light.