Riverbend Road

As a side benefit, perhaps she could persuade him to reduce her suspension by a few days. It was worth a try, anyway.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_c4a9c881-cdd4-541d-8965-c24ab01d05bb)

THIS WAS THE craziest damn day he’d had in a long time and right now all he wanted was a steak, a cold Sam Adams and a nice, relaxing baseball game on the big screen to help him unwind.

Though he had a perfectly serviceable gas grill and it was fine in a pinch, he preferred the rich flavor from the traditional method so Cade spent a moment lighting the charcoal on his old-fashioned Weber. Yeah, he was a two-grill guy. Sue him.

Once the coals were smoldering, he headed inside to turn on the game and pulled the two rib eyes marinating in the refrigerator. Since it was as easy to grill two as it was one, he always cooked an extra and used the leftovers for fajitas or a steak omelet.

He had a very limited skill set in the kitchen, he would freely admit. Most of it involved flames and protein of some sort, though he tried to add fruit and veggies where he could.

He set the steaks on the counter and reached back into the refrigerator for a beer. He was just grabbing the bottle opener when his cell phone rang.

Sometimes he wanted to grab the thing and toss it into the middle of the Hell’s Fury.

As much as he would have liked to ignore the blasted ringing, he knew he couldn’t. It might be an emergency. He was the chief of police and had a responsibility to the people of Haven Point, like it or not.

A quick check of the caller ID showed it wasn’t a problem in his community but still something he couldn’t ignore. His sister-in-law wasn’t in the habit of calling him for no reason.

“Hey, Christy,” he greeted her. “What’s going on?”

She uttered a particularly succinct epithet that basically summed up Cade’s own prior delightful twenty-four hours. “Guess who just called me from jail again? That’s right, you guessed it. Your idiot asshole of a brother!”

And this day just kept getting better and better.

He closed his eyes and pressed the cold bottle to the tension headache brewing at his temple. A familiar sense of helplessness settled in his gut, the same feeling he always had when dealing with certain members of his troubled family.

“I’ve had it. Do you hear me? I told him the next time would be the last time. I told him if he can’t keep his sorry ass off a bar stool, there’s no freaking way I was going to bail it out of jail again.”

“DUI?” he guessed, though it didn’t take any particular detective skills.

“What else? Third one in four months.” She swore again. “It’s like he’s been on one long bender since he lost his job.”

Marcus was the brother just younger than he was, with barely two years between them. He was also the Emmett brother who seemed determined to follow in their father’s wobbly, drunk-off-his-ass footsteps.

Until a few months earlier, things had been going well for Marcus. Though his brother had only graduated high school by the skin of his teeth, he immediately moved to Boise and went to work in construction and eventually made a good living driving a cement truck.

He and Christy had a rocky start, marrying young after she got pregnant, but seemed to be making things work and had even added a few more kids to the mix.

Earlier in the year, Marcus’s company had run into financial trouble and he was laid off and everything seemed to implode.

“I can’t do this anymore, Cade. I just can’t,” Christy said. Her voice wavered and he could hear the tears just below the surface. “When he’s here, he just mopes around doing nothing but snapping at me and the kids.”

“Being unemployed is tough on a guy like Marc, who’s used to taking care of his family.”

“I get that. Believe me, I get it. But instead of going out to find another job, he goes out and buys more booze. What is wrong with him?”

Cade didn’t know how to answer. Christy wanted him to fix his brother. He felt as if he’d spent his entire life trying to duct-tape together the jagged pieces of his broken family in one way or another. Hell of a lot of good that had done over the years. He hadn’t been able to prevent his mom from getting sick when he was eleven and he couldn’t keep anybody else out of the hot mess of trouble they always seemed to land in.

“What do you need from me?” he asked.

“How about a phone number for a good divorce attorney?” she countered.

That would be a disaster for their three kids, who adored their father. On the other hand, living with an unreliable, unstable, angry drunk wasn’t a great alternative.

“I can’t help you there, Christy. He might be an ass but he’s still my brother. He would be devastated to lose his family. You know he loves you.”

“Does he? Really? He’s losing his family right now. He’s just too plastered to notice!”

Was she only calling to complain or did she really think he had some power to change his brother’s behavior? He couldn’t decades ago when they were kids. He certainly couldn’t now.

“I’m not bailing him out this time,” Christy went on. “I’m dead serious. I’m working my fingers to the bone, trying to keep food in my kids’ mouths and shoes on their feet. I’m not going to use my hard-earned money to bail him out of jail one more time. As far as I’m concerned, he can rot in there.”

Maybe that would be the wake-up call his brother needed, the stimulus to get off his butt and make a change. Or maybe Marcus would perceive Christy’s inaction as proof she didn’t love him, which might send him slipping further into the depression that seemed to have caught hold.

“I understand where you’re coming from.”

“Do you?”

Yes. Hell, yes. After his mother died, Cade had tried his best to help his father but had finally had to accept his father loved Johnnie Walker far more than he could ever love his sons.

Marcus wasn’t Walter. He was a good man going through a rough stretch.

“I can try to talk to him, see if I can convince him to go into rehab.”

Christy paused and he heard more sniffling on the line. “Don’t you think I’ve tried that? Only about a thousand times. He won’t listen.”

“It’s worth a shot.”

“Maybe you’ll have better luck. He respects you more than any other man he knows.”

“I can’t make any promises,” he warned. “Any change has to come from him.”

“I appreciate the effort anyway. You’ve been a good brother to him.”

He would beg to disagree. A good brother would have been better at keeping his siblings out of trouble.

“It might be a few days before I can get over there. I’ve got to work double shifts for a while since I’m short an officer this week.” He grimaced at the reminder of Wynona Bailey and her foolhardy stubbornness.

“That’s fine with me. Let him stay in there and stew about the mess he’s created.”

“I should be able to squeeze out a few hours toward the middle of the week to drive to Boise.”

“I hope you can talk sense into his hard head.”

“So do I.”

She was silent for a moment and he heard more sniffling on the line and a muffled sob. “Why does he have to make it so hard to love him?” she finally burst out.