PROLOGUE
Craig Branson had replayed the horror of that day over and over in his mind. What if he, Mom, Dad, and Sam had gone to another restaurant? What if they’d stayed home and ordered in? Life as he knew it would have continued on the same happy track.
But Dad had just brought in a big ad buy at the local TV station where he was promotions manager, and he was in the mood to celebrate his hard work.
“Where should we go to dinner?” he asked his twin sons, two dark-haired, dark-eyed boys only a few people could tell apart.
They’d looked at each other and begun a silent conversation about the merits of various choices because they didn’t have to speak aloud to communicate.
Then Sam answered for the two of them. He asked to go to Venario’s Italian restaurant. If they ate at Venario’s, they could order an extra pizza and have it for breakfast the next morning.
Mom protested that pizza was no kind of breakfast, but Dad let the boys have their way. If it made his twins happy to bring home pizza, he was all for it, as long as they had a nice portion of chicken or veal for dinner.
Craig and Sam were identical twins, born when a single egg had split in their mother’s womb. Twins were supposed to be close, but there was more between these two eight-year-olds than anyone else knew. There was a hidden bond and a fierce love born of the connection they could never explain to anyone else.
That evening they sat across from each other at the square table topped by a snowy cloth, silently debating the merits of ground beef or ham on their take-home pizza. Almost as soon as they’d come home from the hospital, they’d been able to read each other’s thoughts, a skill they instinctively kept hidden from the world. Mom suspected, but she had never asked them about it because the idea was too outlandish for her to wrap her brain around. She was a down-to-earth woman who wanted her sons to be strong and independent, even when their inclination was to present a united front.
At the next table a group of men was talking loudly; their voices annoyed Mom and Dad, but they didn’t interfere with the Branson boys’ happy conversation.
That was another “what if” that had tortured Craig for the twenty-two years since that night when his whole world had been shattered.
What if he and Sam hadn’t been so focused on each other? What if they’d been paying more attention to their surroundings?
Could Craig have saved Sam’s life?
He didn’t know because it all happened so fast.
The door burst open, and two men charged into the restaurant with guns drawn, already shooting as they ran. The guys at the next table hardly had time to react. One of them tried to stand and went down in a hail of bullets. Another one collapsed in his chair. And the third fell to the side, striking Mom as she screamed in horror.
People all over the confined space were crying out and hitting the floor. But the chaos around Craig hardly registered. His total attention was focused on Sam who had been sitting closer to the scene of disaster.
Sam made a strangled sound and fell forward, his head hitting the table as blood spread across the crisp white cloth. His chest was a mass of pain that Craig felt as though it were his own chest on fire.
He leaped out of his seat, charging around the table to his brother’s side, slipping from his father’s grasp as he reached for Sam, struggling to maintain the fading connection between them. Panic rose inside him, and he clutched at his brother with his hand and with his mind.
Sam, don’t leave me.
Craig?
Sam, I can’t hear you, Sam.
I . . . can’t . . .
Those were his last memories of his brother. He started screaming then, his cries drowning out the sound of a siren approaching.
His father’s arms folded him close, protecting him from harm. But the harm was already done.
Sam was gone, vanished as though he had never been—leaving an aching gap in Craig’s soul.
Despair and anger raged inside the boy who lived. Even at the age of eight, Craig knew that he would find out who had killed his brother and avenge his death.
CHAPTER ONE
The light from the computer screen gave a harsh cast to Craig Branson’s angular features, yet he couldn’t conceal the feeling of elation surging inside himself.
He’d only been eight when his twin brother had been cruelly ripped away from him, but on that terrible day, he vowed that he would find the killers and bring them to justice. Now, finally, finally he had a lead on one of the shooters in a gangland assassination twenty-two years ago.
The restaurant where crime boss, Jackie Montana, and two of his men had been gunned down was full of witnesses. Many of the patrons identified the killers from their mug shots. They were two hired hit men named Joe Lipton and Arthur Polaski who had taken jobs all over the U.S.
