The First Time Again: The Braddock Brotherhood, Book 3 Read online

  Dedication

  For Danielle and Cody

  Chapter One

  Hayley Lynn Christopher

  and

  Raymond Matthew Braddock

  Were United in Holy Matrimony

  At Good Shepherd Chapel

  Perrish, Florida

  On the Sixth of April, Two Thousand and Thirteen

  Trey Christopher dropped the cream-colored card embossed with swirling pink roses back on the passenger seat. He’d stopped for a fast food meal on the road, but why he’d thought it’d be a good idea to sort through the pile of mail while he ate, he had no idea.

  He stared at the half-eaten grilled chicken sandwich in his hand and realized he no longer had any appetite. He shoved it back in the paper bag it came in and set it aside. He glanced at Hayley’s wedding announcement once more before burying it under a stack of magazines and bills.

  He put the car in gear and headed back onto the highway. He had another few hours of driving before he reached his grandparents’ place outside Edna Falls, North Carolina. He’d hoped to arrive before nightfall, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen. He wasn’t sure he wanted to negotiate the curving lane to their place in the dark, but he’d have no choice.

  Damn. Hayley was married to someone else. They’d been divorced for over two years. Things had not been good between them for a couple of years before that. All of which was his own damn fault.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror and turned up the sound system another notch. Too bad he couldn’t drown out his own thoughts.

  Hayley had adopted her stepsister’s little boy and now she was married to Ray, who probably treated her the way she deserved to be treated. With love and respect.

  Pity party. Table for one. The words from his drug counselor at Mooring Pines popped into his head. Brad had warned him not to get too down on himself. Part of the process for a recovering addict was not only to ask forgiveness from those he’d hurt, but also to learn to forgive himself.

  He turned the stereo up another notch until the car was vibrating from the bass pouring through the speakers.

  Trey’s mood turned from sour to foul by the time he reached the outskirts of Edna Falls, population 2,973. He’d fought his way through a thunderstorm fifty miles back, his knee ached like a sonofabitch and he had to pee. Badly. As in a half hour ago. He’d decided he could hold it until he got to the house. Bad idea.

  He ignored the sign posted inside the town limits. He wondered if old Charlie Langston was still on the job as Edna Falls’s senior man on the two-man police force. Charlie was a typical easygoing country boy, but he could be counted on to break up the occasional teen drinking party. He’d escort the unfortunate home and have “a word” with their parents. That’s all it took for him to keep the peace. He rarely made an actual arrest or handed out citations for any infraction.

  Good old Charlie. Trey had been one of those less than fortunate teenagers who’d been escorted home in an inebriated state. His parents grounded him for a month each time. His father gave him the silent treatment for at least a week. His mother baked him chocolate chip cookies and rubbed his back in sympathy every time she walked by.

  Red and blue lights swirled in his rearview mirror and rapidly became bigger and brighter. A siren sounded a couple of times in warning with that “bwap bwap” sound.

  Trey pulled off onto the soft shoulder of the road. His low beams illuminated the Leaving Edna Falls Town Limits sign fifty feet away. He swore as he reached across to the glove box to find his registration. His bladder reminded him that it was full. Very, very full.

  He opened the car door. The cop car had stopped behind him with its high beams on and the colored lights still rotating. He had reached into his back pocket for his wallet and started toward the patrol vehicle when the door popped open and a cop Trey didn’t recognize got out. The cop held out a hand in warning. “Whoa, now. Stop right there. Put your hands out where I can see them.”

  The cop had his other hand on the butt of his sidearm. Trey did as he was told. “I was going to get my wallet,” he said. “Figured you’d want to see my driver’s license.”

  “Uh-huh. Now turn slowly and place your hands down flat on the hood there.” He gestured toward the cruiser.

  “What?”

  The cop raised his voice as if he were addressing a rather slow child or a senior citizen with a hearing deficiency. “I said, ‘turn slowly and place your hands—’”

  “I heard you,” Trey said. “But I couldn’t believe you said it. Is this an episode of COPS?”

  “No, sir. Please do as you’ve been instructed. I should warn you, I’m equipped with a taser as well as other means to bring you under control if you do not voluntarily abide by my commands.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Trey stared at the cop, who was decked out in what looked like a legitimate Henderson County deputy’s uniform, complete with a cap that bore the county logo instead of the Town of Edna Falls official seal.

  “Sir? Do I need to call for backup? Or are you going to place your hands flat on the hood of the vehicle like I asked?”

  “Backup? You have that here? When did Edna Falls join the twenty-first century?”

  “Sir. Place your hands flat on the hood of the vehicle. Now,” the cop barked.

  “All right, all right. Don’t get your boxers in a knot.”

  Trey did as he’d been told, feeling ten kinds of foolish doing it. The only saving grace was that there wasn’t anybody around to see it. “My wallet’s in my back right pocket,” he informed the cop, who was slowly making his way closer. “My license is in the front.”

  “We’ll get to that. Legs apart.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Trey turned to look at the guy over his shoulder. “You’re going to search me before you give me a damn speeding ticket?”

  “Sir. Please do as you’re told. We don’t want any trouble here.”

  “Then why are you making it? How about if you forget you even saw me doing sixty in a thirty-five? Better yet, how about you take out my wallet, check my driver’s license? Maybe there’s some way we can reach an agreement and make this all go away. How does that sound?”

  “Are you attempting to bribe a sheriff’s deputy, sir?”

  “I never actually said—”

  Trey suddenly found himself facedown on the hood of the patrol car. The cop grabbed his left wrist first, then his right, forcing them back behind him. “What the?” He heard a metallic clasping noise. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re handcuffing me?” Trey sputtered in outrage. Even knowing it would be better to shut his mouth and cooperate, he wasn’t going to do it.

  “Do you do this to all your traffic stops?” he asked. “Especially the cute young things who can’t read a speed limit sign? What do they do? ‘Oh, Officer, I’m so sorry’. Do they bat their eyelashes at you while you throw the cuffs on them? Huh? Do they spread their legs first time they’re told, so the big, strong cop can subdue them?”

  “Spread your legs,” the cop grated out.

  “Fuck you.”

  The cop kicked Trey’s left foot and then his right one, effectively separating them. Trey grunted in surprise as his right knee, forced to move without warning, sent an extrastrong pain message to his unmedicated brain receptors.

  “Asshole,” Trey murmured into the hood of his car.

  “Deputy Spoley, to you. Do you have anything on your person or in your pockets I need to know about? Drugs, paraphernalia, needles, anything that’s likely to injure me?”

  Only my fists, Trey thought. Not that they were of much
use at the moment. “No,” he answered dully. God, he needed to pee. Being bent over the hood of the car wasn’t helping matters. He’d have stopped before if it hadn’t poured rain and if his knee didn’t object every time he got out of the car.

  After an uncomfortably thorough pat-down, Trey felt his wallet being removed from his pocket. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t the high and mighty Trey Christopher. Or should I say burned-out, over the hill, drug addict Trey Christopher? Edna Falls’ golden boy. Come back home all rusted out.”

  “Can I stand up now?” Trey asked. Deputy Spoley still had his palm firmly planted between Trey’s shoulder blades, effectively keeping him in place.

  “Certainly.” Spoley stepped back. “I don’t imagine you’re a flight risk. Not with that knee of yours.”

  Spoley gave Trey a smug little smile which made Trey almost certain Spoley had known who he was before he’d kicked his legs apart. His knee began an entirely new round of throbbing, but at least it distracted him slightly from his insistent bladder. He needed to get out of there, get to the house and ice the knee, or else tomorrow he’d barely be able to walk.

  “You got something specific against me, Deputy Spoley?” The cop’s name niggled at his memory. Trey felt certain he should know what kind of history he had with the guy, but at the moment he couldn’t place him.

  “I might. Then again, I might not. But I’ll share something with you my daddy used to say: Be nice to the people you meet on your way up the ladder. You might be meeting them on your way back down.”

  “Write me the ticket and spare me the sermons, would you?”

  “Have you consumed any alcohol this evening, sir?”

  “No.”

  Spoley stepped closer and sniffed the air. He was a couple inches shorter than Trey, which put his nose on a level slightly below Trey’s mouth. “I’ll have to ask you to take a breathalyzer exam, sir.”

  Below the handcuffs, Trey flexed his fists. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”

  “Wait here,” Spoley instructed. From the trunk of his vehicle he removed a portable breathalyzer unit.

  He offered a large, straw-like mechanism to Trey. Trey got a bad feeling. He tilted his head back. “I haven’t been drinking. I’m not taking a portable breathalyzer test.”

  “Refusing to do so is certainly your right, Mr. Christopher.

  “You want to arrest me for DUI, do it. Haul me in and test me there.”

  Spoley stared him down for a few seconds and then shrugged as if it didn’t make any difference to him. But Trey got the distinct impression it did.

  “If you wouldn’t mind taking a seat next to your car.” Spoley indicated the shoulder. “I have some paperwork to do.”

  “Hey, look.” Trey tried for a friendly tone, and even he could tell he hadn’t quite made it. “Can you take the cuffs off? We both know I’m not going anywhere. Hell, take my keys and hang on to my wallet while you’re at it as insurance.”

  Spoley nodded once as if he knew he’d gone above and beyond the call of duty for a routine traffic stop. Trey turned around and Spoley released the cuffs. Trey rubbed at his wrists and glanced around at the surroundings he could see from the car lights. There were no houses nearby. Not one car had passed them since they’d stopped. Beyond the pool of light around their cars was pitch black.

  “You mind if I go over there and take a leak?” He indicated a small clump of bushes about twenty-five feet away. “I gotta pee like a sonofabitch.”

  Spoley looked at him as if considering his request and the possible ramifications of his answer. Finally he said, “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  Trey limped behind the bushes and unzipped his fly, nearly groaning in relief. He peed for what felt like five minutes before zipping up and making his way back to the cars. He leaned against the driver’s side of the hood and did his best to keep the majority of his weight off his bad knee. What was next, he wondered. A cane? A walker? He was barely into his thirties, but most mornings he felt like an old man before he even got out of bed.

  He waited for Spoley to finish. And waited. And waited. And waited.

  The guy was enjoying messing with him a little too much. Trey renewed his silent vow to pay Spoley back at the first opportunity.

  As Trey was about to approach the patrol car and ask what was taking so long, Spoley opened his door and got out. He strode toward Trey with a spring in his step.

  “Here’s your license and registration, Mr. Christopher.” He handed the documents back to Trey, and Trey shoved them in his front pocket, anxious to get going. He stifled a yawn.

  “These are your citations,” Spoley said.

  “Citations? How many tickets did you write? I only went over the speed limit once.”

  “Yes, sir.” Spoley smiled a creepily pleasant smile, as if he hadn’t been the cop from hell a short while ago.

  “This is your traffic citation.” He handed the multiple-page document to Trey.

  “Since you refused the breathalyzer, I’m not going to arrest you on suspicion of DUI.”

  “I haven’t been drinking. I haven’t had a drink in over a year.”

  “So you say.” Spoley used a conversational tone as he glanced over the next document as if checking for accuracy before handing it to Trey. “This is for your expired tag.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve got the new tags. I forgot to put them on.”

  Spoley gazed at him steadily, daring him to say more, before he handed Trey another citation. “This one is for violating county ordinance #513849-B.”

  “Yeah? What kind of trumped-up charge is that?”

  “Indecent exposure.” Spoley touched the brim of his hat and strutted back to his car. He got in, killed all the lights but the high beams, made a U-turn and disappeared into the darkness of a side street.

  Trey crawled into the Cayenne’s driver’s seat, easing himself down, babying his knee. Spoley had a chip on his shoulder, but Trey had something Spoley probably didn’t have. Money. Lots of it. A decent attorney ought to get him out of everything but the speeding ticket.

  Unfortunately, even after he negotiated the winding country road, located the house and parked in the driveway, the bad feeling didn’t go away. By then Trey had a pretty good idea who Deputy Spoley was, and why he might still hold a grudge.

  Chapter Two

  Trey reluctantly woke at dawn the next morning. He stared up at the plaster ceiling in what had been his grandparents’ bedroom. The walls were covered in ancient cabbage-rose wallpaper, which he’d already added to his list of things to change.

  Experimentally Trey shifted slightly to see how bad things were this morning. Right knee throbbing. Constant twinge in right shoulder.

  He reached over and uncapped the bottle of ibuprofen on the nightstand, tumbled four tablets into his hand and swallowed them with a gulp of water from the bottle he’d set next to them last night.

  He stuffed the extra pillow under his head and listened to the sounds of the birds waking up. Filmy lace curtains, possibly as ancient as the wallpaper, let the grayish light filter through from outside. Trey knew by the time he got up and made his way to the kitchen, the mountains in the distance would be obscured by fog which wouldn’t burn off until late morning.

  He scrubbed his hands over his face and yawned. Carefully, he flexed his left knee, hearing the cartilage in his joints crack and pop from ankle to hip. He lowered the leg and stretched his arms over his head, trying to work out the kinks. He’d learned to be careful, to go slowly, especially first thing in the morning. His body had taken a beating from years on the field. He’d paid for all the success he’d had in his career by feeling this way each and every morning.

  His right shoulder protested as he carefully rotated it to warm up the muscles. Probably should ice it once he got out of bed and got moving.

  Last but not least he carefully bent his right leg, feeling it resist as he did so. Damn, it hurt. He’d never have the range of moti
on in this leg he’d once had. He had to get back into physical therapy to give himself the best possible outcome after the last surgery.

  Eventually, he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Levering himself up with one hand on the nightstand and leading with his left leg, he got himself upright and limped to the bathroom.

  More ancientness greeted him in the form of a claw-footed tub, a pedestal sink and a toilet missing lots of its original enamel coating. Despite its age, the plumbing worked. He peed and washed up, splashing cold water in his face and making a mess of the small space.

  He looked down at the puddle he’d created on the curling linoleum. He threw a towel down and used his left foot to move it around to mop up the water. He’d need to find a cleaning service.

  Practically dragging his right leg along with him, he made his way to the kitchen. Time stood still in his grandmother’s kitchen. Nothing had changed in years, except the appliances she’d been forced to replace when the old ones wore out.

  The round oak table surrounded by a variety of mismatched chairs took up most of the open floor space. The cabinets had gone through a few incarnations of color over the years but were now covered in an off-white shade. Ecru, maybe.

  The long countertop was covered in some sort of reddish linoleum and sealed along the edges with a strip of silver metal.

  Above the scratched porcelain sink, double windows offered an unobstructed view of the back of the house, including his grandmother’s now neglected garden. Some of her perennials were still going strong, poking their blooming heads through the overgrowth of weeds.

  Another thing for the list. A gardener or a professional landscaper. Maybe both.

  Trey limped across the scarred wood floor to the coffeemaker. This, at least, he could handle. By trial and error he’d learned how to make coffee after years of having someone else do it for him. His mother. His wife. A waitress. Room service. His housekeeper, Miriam.

  He thought of her fondly. She’d called him “Meester Trey” and performed even the smallest task promptly. Not once had she complained of his less than stellar behavior, not about the mess he’d make of the bathroom or the stuff he knocked over in one of his under-the-influence moments. She never said a word about the procession of women he’d paraded through the house after Hayley left.