A Marked Man. Stella Cameron

I didn’t, I do now,” Max said. “Where did that come from?” He could always rely on their older brother to state the obvious.

      “Someone has to remind you what we’re facing. You get off in your own world and forget—”

      “Keep it down,” Roche said through his teeth. “We’ve been here a long time now without any problems.”

      “You and Roche have been here a fair amount of time,” Kelly said. “Making sure you two can do what you want to do keeps me pretty busy elsewhere.”

      “Can it,” Max said. “You don’t have to spend so much time in New York and you wouldn’t if you didn’t like it there. We all like it there, remember? It’s home, or it was. You’re in a rotten mood and it isn’t helping a thing. So we’re gonna get more rain, big deal, it rains plenty here and work doesn’t stop.”

      “Delays cost us,” Kelly said. He finished the sandwich rapidly and wiped his mouth on a paper napkin. “You know how hard it is to keep a work crew focused. If the weather gets bad they find inside jobs, and they come back when they damn well please.”

      “Dammit,” Max said. He noticed that noise had dwindled at nearby tables and saw patrons lose interest in their own conversations while they listened to the brothers argue. He dropped his voice. “What’s up with you, Kelly? You get jumpier by the day. If you want out of this project, say so. I never imagined we’d have to resort to hiding away to do our work but it’s the best we’ve got—or I’ve got. You two don’t have to be here.”

      Roche rolled his eyes and kept quiet.

      “You can be an ungrateful son of a bitch,” Kelly said.

      “So you say. You push me too far. We’re finally within shouting distance of opening the clinic’s doors and you’re looking for more problems.”

      Roche half turned away and pulled an ankle onto the opposite knee. Roche the quiet peacemaker with a steely will said less than he thought, much less. Max was the one man who read his twin regardless of the man’s enigmatic demeanor. Neither of them went in for idle talk.

      “Well, hell, it is starting to rain,” Kelly said, looking up at the first big drops on a skylight. He dropped his voice. “I get edgy is all. You’re right, I look for problems. I’ll try to knock it off.”

      “Forget it,” Max said. “We’re going to be looking over our shoulders for a bit. We’ll learn to forget about it in time.” He did not say they’d be looking for unnatural deaths that might be blamed on Max the way two others, fifteen years apart, the second one three years ago, initially had been. He also didn’t mention that he hesitated to give the impression that he cared about any woman in more than an offhand way because knowing him well might be dangerous to a lady’s health. Kelly and Roche thought Annie Duhon was just a nodding acquaintance.

      “Okay,” Roche said, easing a baseball cap out of his back pocket and tossing it on the table. “Is that it, Kelly? You’re edgy and you wanted us all here so you could talk about it.”

      “For a shrink, you have a lousy bedside manner,” Kelly said, jutting his square jaw. “I already said I was uptight, but that isn’t why we’re here. I wanted to go somewhere we could talk without being overheard by the Devols, or those sorry-ass construction workers.”

      “Really?” Roche looked at the nearest table where four men instantly got real interested in their food. “So talk. Quietly. And the contractors are doing a great job. Looks like they’ll finish almost on time and that doesn’t happen so often.”

      Kelly put his elbows on the table and rested his face in his hands. “I’m not sure about this place anymore, that’s all.”

      Roche and Max looked at one another quickly, and Roche shook his head slightly.

      Sure, Max thought, as usual they were supposed to consider Kelly’s unpredictable moods and give him space. “What d’you mean?” he asked, unable to resist. “If you’re saying we’re making a mistake opening Green Veil, I wish you’d said something a year or more ago.”

      “You were so set on it,” Kelly said, his face still in his hands. “Your buddy, Reb Girard, told you this was a good place to get lost and you believed her. I don’t know what I think about it now.”

      “I still believe her,” Max said, getting heated.

      Roche’s crabs arrived, sizzling on the plate. He thanked the waitress who gazed into his very blue eyes for a bit too long, then glanced at Kelly before she scuttled away.

      “Reb’s dad was the town doc around here and she’s the second generation taking care of the folks. She ought to know if it’s a backwater. Half her bills, or more, get paid in chickens and eggs—a ham if she’s lucky.”

      “My heart bleeds for Dr. Reb Girard,” Kelly said, running his fingers lower on his face until his eyes appeared. “She and that architect husband of hers are rolling in it. He owns most of the town.”

      “So what?” When Kelly went into one of these phases they never got anywhere. “I’ve got to go.”

      “Wait,” Kelly said, slapping the table. “I’m telling you I think we should consider selling and getting out while we still can. Someone’s going to figure out who you are. I feel it coming. That cousin of your friend, Reb, is always looking for dirt to put in that miserable little newspaper of hers. I’d say you’d give her enough to last a long time.”

      The cousin was Lee O’Brien and she lived out at Cloud’s End, the Girard estate, while she ran the Toussaint Trumpet, the town’s one paper.

      “You don’t know half of what’s gone on in this quiet backwater, do you?” Kelly said.

      Max figured he knew about everything that was worth knowing, and some of it he didn’t like, but that didn’t change Toussaint into a metropolis. “They’ve had their share of bad luck—of the criminal kind—but it’s over now. Finally. Sooner or later my history will come out. I’m betting everything on having some champions who will speak up, and on winning over the folks who live here. So far, I’m doing okay.”

      “Yes,” Roche said. “I think you really like it here, and I sure do. What have you got against the place, Kelly?”

      That bought him an unblinking stare. “I love it. Especially when I feel like seeing a first-run play.”

      Max laughed. “If you knew how you sound, you’d change the subject. You can get to a play anytime you want to, or whatever—or whomever—you have an itch to see in a hurry. You don’t have to be here at all if you don’t want to be.”

      “So you don’t want to reconsider?” Kelly asked.

      “No.”

      “Neither do I,” Roche said.

      A smile, all unaffected charm and guaranteed to disarm, transformed Kelly. He laughed and flipped back overlong, dishwater blond hair. “Just checking.”

      Roche was first out of his seat and shaking Kelly by the shoulder. “Rat. You don’t change. Outside. I want to beat the crap out of you.”

      Reason stopped Max just in time and he sank back into his seat, but he chuckled watching the other two wrapped in a mock-ferocious embrace. “Nice language from the gentleman shrink,” he said. “You’ve been listening to our clown act here for too long. That wasn’t funny, Kelly, but you always did have a cruel sense of humor.”

      “Just wanted to get us together for once,” Kelly said, punching Roche good-naturedly. “I’m relieved to hear you say you’re not wearing rose glasses, though, Max. Hell, I worry about you and so does Roche, you know that. You got a rotten deal and we don’t want to see it happen again just when you think you’re safe.”

      Max’s stomach revolved but he kept the corners of his mouth turned up. “My eyes are open,”