Page 43 of Honor ’N’ Duty

“C’mon.” He held out his hand, and when she took it, he gently urged her inside. With Cartel goons following her, standing on the front porch, visible to anyone driving by, was something he wanted to avoid.

Her expression was identical to one he’d seen on many a victim’s face. This wasn’t blood and carnage, but it was her home, and it had been invaded for the second time. The first had been by federal agents executing a search warrant. The second time had been by a drug cartel’s henchmen.

“What now?” she breathed.

“Stay here while Smoke and I clear the house.”

Moving swiftly, he and Smoke went through the rest of the downstairs, then headed to the second floor. After reassuring himself that there were no uninvited guests in the duplex, they rejoined Laia in the living room. “Now we go room to room. I’ll ask you some questions as we go.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“Take a look around the living room.” If he’d ever had the balls to paint his bedroom walls in different colors like this, his father or grandpa would have forced a can of castor oil down his throat.

Sighing, she picked up one of the framed photos, shaking off the broken glass. It was the photo of her and Rosa at the beach.

Crouching, he picked up another photo, the one of Laia and Rosa fishing. “I didn’t realize you were such an adventuress.”

She smiled at the photo in his hand. “You seem surprised.”

Was he?

The woman he’d spent forty minutes with in an elevator had such a conservative air about her. So yeah, he was surprised. Then again, he’d never really gotten to know her.

“Are you?” she prodded. “Surprised?”

“No.” He shook his head, then, “Yeah. Maybe a little.” Try a lot more than a little.

He’d seriously liked her when they’d met, but this unexpected side to her personality was a breath of fresh air in his own by-the-book, play-only-by-the-rules lifestyle.

“I wasn’t always this way.” With care, she leaned the broken frame against the wall. “After Josh died, I decided to stop trying to be what everyone—Josh, my mother—expected me to be and live my life the way I want to. And I’m trying to instill that in Rosa, too, so she won’t make the same mistakes I made.”

He wanted to ask what mistakes she was referring to but didn’t. “It takes courage to go against people’s expectations.” He admired that in her and wondered if his life would have turned out differently if he’d had the same guts, if he’d rebelled against his family’s military legacy filled with rules, structure, and duty above all else. “Is there anything Josh left you in this room?”

She turned slowly in a one-eighty. “Nothing.”

He put his hand at the small of her back, urging her into the kitchen where every drawer had been pulled out and every cabinet door opened. The contents of the space beneath the sink sat on her kitchen table, along with dishes, pots, and pans.

A choked gurgle came from the back of her throat. “Josh didn’t cook. He couldn’t even boil an egg.”

He chuckled. “You know, you’re right. He couldn’t.” A memory blasted his consciousness—the two of them cooking in their mom’s kitchen or, at least, trying to. Josh’s hard-boiled eggs had turned out more like cement eggs, cooked about twice as long as necessary and hard as a brick.

Next they moved into the little office adjacent to the kitchen. He pointed, indicating Smoke should search not for people but for narcotics. If there was so much as a dust-size speck of cocaine or heroin in the room, Smoke would hit on it and sit in front of the location. Smoke finished circling the room, then trotted out into the living room.

“What about in here?” Kade asked. “Were any of Josh’s files or papers stored in the desk or filing cabinet?”

“No. You, I mean your agency, took all of Josh’s papers. In the end, the only document of any importance to me after he died was Rosa’s birth certificate. Not even his will did us any good. Anything he might have left to us was seized by Uncle Sam.”

“I know.” He did know because he’d been told after the fact that the evidence custodian had driven off with an entire cargo van full of boxes. He’d also heard that Josh’s office at the bank had been searched, but no ledger was ever found, hardcopy or digital.

Laia began stacking her textbooks and spiral notebooks in a neat pile against the wall. “This will take forever to straighten up.”

Smoke came back into the room and sat beside Laia. His ingrained canine response was to offer sympathy the only way he knew how. Smoke let out a soft, commiserating whine, as if sensing her sadness, and rested his snout on her shoulder. She put her arm around the dog’s back, leaning into his body for comfort.

Kade gritted his teeth. It should be him offering her his body to lean on, but he couldn’t risk it, couldn’t so much as touch her. What had almost happened last night on the sofa couldn’t almost happen again. Stick to business.

“Is there anything here that Josh left you? Something you might have forgotten about, no matter how small?”

“No.” He couldn’t see her face, but she shook her head.