With Child. Janice Johnson Kay

of flaws, but cowardice wasn’t one of them.

      “Nancy?” he said, when a woman answered the phone.

      “Yes?” His foster mother’s voice had acquired a fine tremor. She must be—he had to calculate—in her seventies.

      “It’s Quinn. Brendan Quinn.”

      “Oh, my goodness! Brendan?” Her voice became muffled. “George, it’s Brendan on the phone!” She came back. “How nice to hear from you. My goodness, it’s been a while.”

      “I know it has. I’m sorry. Time seems to race by.” He despised himself for the weak excuse.

      She’d always let him off the hook too easily. “Oh, it’s just nice to hear your voice now.”

      “Nancy, I’m afraid the reason for my call isn’t good.” He drew a deep breath. “Dean’s dead.”

      The silence was achingly long.

      “Dead?”

      “He was shot last night. On the job.” As if to quiet her moan of grief, he kept talking, told her about the circumstances, the arrest, that he was at Dean’s house right now.

      “Oh, his poor wife!”

      Even as he said the right things—Mindy was resting, in shock—Quinn felt anger again. She and Dean hadn’t known each other that long. Dean had had girlfriends who’d lasted longer than he’d known Mindy. In fact, Quinn was going to have to call one of them, who had stayed friends with Dean. But Mindy was the wife, and therefore assumed to be the person who would be most devastated by his death.

      Knowing damn well he was being petty, Quinn still couldn’t stamp down that spark of something that was a hell of a lot closer to jealousy than he liked to admit.

      Nancy handed off the phone to George, who asked for the details again. Quinn told him when the funeral was tentatively set for and promised to call again when plans were firm.

      “Now, you take care of Mindy,” George ordered.

      After hanging up, Quinn stood to pour himself another cup of coffee. The Howies had sounded as if they’d lost a son. Had they really cared that much? Dean, of course, had been easier to love; despite his often expressed faith that his mother would be coming for him any day, he had craved closeness in a way Quinn hadn’t. Quinn had never known whether he was just a paycheck from the state, an obligation they punctiliously fulfilled, or something more. They’d respected his reserve, his pride, and saved the hugs for Dean.

      Shaking his head, Quinn took a long swallow of coffee and reached for the address book again.

      He was hoarse by the time he reached Smith and Smithers. Dean had had a lot of friends.

      Unlike Quinn, who had never had that talent. Didn’t even want it. He didn’t much like crowds and therefore avoided parties. He hated small talk and polite insincerity. Sometimes realized he just didn’t know how to make friends.

      God. Pain rose in a shattering wave, like the agony when a bullet had splintered his shoulder blade. He’d just dialed a number but had to hit End and put the phone down.

      Twice now in not much over a year he’d had to face how badly he needed his one close friend. The only person who knew his secrets, his weaknesses, his history. Having to watch Dean marry someone who was so wrong for him had been bad enough.

      But Quinn hadn’t felt this swirling void of loneliness since he’d answered the door to find policemen on the doorstep, there to tell him his mother was dead. Maybe it had been there inside him the whole time, but he’d closed it off. Built a floor, firmly nailed down, to seal off a dank, dark basement that seemed to be occupied with rats that scurried out of sight when he looked but watched with blood-red eyes and the glint of sharp teeth when he half turned away.

      He let out a rough, humorless laugh. What an idiotic image! Okay, damn it, he didn’t let himself dwell on his occasional loneliness, sometimes wished he had Dean’s gift for closeness with other people. But rats! Poor me, he mocked himself.

      What he was feeling was the grief of losing family. For most people, there must be a moment when they realized that the last person who’d known them when they were young was gone. When parents died, or a sister or brother. For Quinn, Dean was that person. Like anyone else, he’d deal with the loss.

      Mindy reappeared at five o’clock. She looked like hell, he thought critically, seeing her hover in the kitchen door, her vague gaze touching on microwave, refrigerator, table, as if she’d never seen any of them before.

      She was pretty, he’d give Dean that. She always had had an air of fragility, accentuated now. Maybe five feet four or five inches tall, Mindy was incredibly fine-boned. She kept her golden blond hair chopped short in a sort of unkempt Meg Ryan style that somehow suited the long oval of her face and her huge gray-green eyes.

      The first time Quinn saw her, she’d worn tight jeans cut so low, he’d raised his eyebrows. A smooth, pale stomach had been decorated with a gold belly-button ring. Her baby T had been tight enough for him to see that she wasn’t wearing a bra, and that her breasts were small, high and nicely formed. Dean had leaned close to say something that made her giggle. Not laugh, like a grown woman, but giggle.

      According to Dean, she was twenty-five. Twenty-six now; Quinn had had no choice but to attend the party Dean had thrown for her birthday, during which she’d clapped her hands with delight, danced with such abandon she’d kept whacking people, and almost cried when she’d failed to blow out all the candles.

      “Oh!” she’d cried. “I won’t get my wish!”

      Dean had blown out the last two, then wrapped a comforting arm around her slender shoulders. “Sometimes you need help to get a wish.”

      Her absurdly long lashes had fluttered quickly, as if she had to blink away tears, and then she’d flung herself against him and kissed him passionately. The crowd whistled and applauded.

      Except for the passionate part, Quinn had felt as if he were at a birthday party for a friend’s sixteen-year-old daughter. He’d wondered what she and Dean had to talk about. She was an artist, Dean had always said proudly, but the only product of her artistry Quinn had ever seen was the hand-painted Welcome sign that hung over their front door. It was pretty. Michelangelo, she wasn’t.

      He hadn’t thought much of it when Dean had first started dating her. She’d seemed young and flighty, but she was legal and willing. Some people enjoyed having yappy miniature poodles, too. Not his choice, though.

      But marriage? He was still shaking his head.

      At the moment, half her hair was spiky, the other half flattened from the pillow. Her face was puffy, her eyes bloodshot, her slender figure hidden inside a thick terry-cloth robe that was bright turquoise decorated with red and gold stars. Barefoot, she shuffled toward the refrigerator as if she were an old lady.

      “Hungry?” he asked.

      Her gaze swung toward him as if she hadn’t noticed he was there. It registered his presence without interest.

      “Um,” she mumbled.

      “I can cook or order something. Pizza?”

      She shuddered.

      “How about Chinese?”

      Her response was slow, as if neural synapses weren’t firing at normal speed. “Okay,” she finally agreed.

      She did manage to pour herself some juice while he called. When she carried it to the table and sat down, she said, “You’re still here.”

      “I didn’t want to leave you alone. Since you never got around to calling your mother or a friend.” Quinn shrugged.

      “I don’t want anybody right now.”

      He tried to hide his exasperation. “Then you’re stuck with me.”

      She was quiet for several minutes. Then,