Kansas City Christmas. Julie Miller

he’d dealt with violence and death nearly every day, but he’d been able to remain detached and focused enough to get his job done. But then he’d lost Cara and Melinda, and death had become an inescapable, personal, destructive demon. Now his father, a good man—the man he’d once aspired to be—had been murdered as well.

      How many pieces of his soul did a man have in him to lose?

      Commissioner Shauna Cartwright finished her eulogy, and the blue KCPD uniforms all bowed their heads for the minister’s closing prayer. The twenty-one gun salute visibly jolted through his mother, Susan Kincaid, whom he could see sitting between two of his brothers—Atticus and Holden. His brothers wore their full dress KCPD uniforms with black mourning ribbons draped across the badges on their chests. He searched beyond the green awning to find his next eldest brother, Sawyer, standing hatless in the rain. He wore KCPD dress as well. Sawyer stood next to William Caldwell, one of their family’s oldest friends. Bill was leaning in, offering some condolence or words of wisdom that Sawyer would hear but not take, especially if the words involved patience or let someone else handle this. Bill Caldwell was like an uncle to them—having been a fraternity brother of their father’s and fishing buddy before any of John Kincaid’s sons were even born.

      Edward was looking at a family in stoic devastation. It wasn’t a world that he’d ever wanted to welcome them to.

      “What the…?” Edward pulled his shoulders back and stood a little taller. “Don’t do this, Atticus.”

      It was one thing to feel the emptiness and injustice of the day. It was another to have to put words to it and deal with anybody else’s pain. But his brother had broken away from the gathering and was striding straight toward him.

      Atticus’s gray eyes matched his, as determined to have this conversation as Edward wished he could avoid it. Stubborn son of a gun. Atticus wasn’t a man he could glare away. Not if the proffered hand was any indication.

      “Don’t tell me you don’t recognize what this means, Edward. It’s good to see you.”

      The idea of turning around and walking away remained a distinct possibility. But the idea of explaining his cowardice to Cara or Melinda, who rested only a few yards away, was even more untenable. So he reached out and shook Atticus’s hand, grudgingly reconnecting with his family. Grief and anger and understanding passed between them. “Don’t you dare try to hug me.”

      Atticus almost laughed at his grinch-like reply. But this wasn’t a day for laughter. Instead, his younger brother turned and stood beside him, watching as friends and family dispersed, ducking under umbrellas and walking down the hill toward their cars.

      They stood together, like the old days, back when John Kincaid’s four sons had been invincible. Those days were long gone—for Edward, at least. The soft patter of the rain on the overhanging trees should have been a soothing sound. But Edward heard each plop against every branch like the ticking of a clock. Atticus didn’t do anything without a purpose, and he seriously doubted that this reunion was just a “Hey—how are you doing?”moment.

      “You should come say hi to Mom. She knows you’re here, but it’d mean a lot to her if you made the effort to touch base.” He should have suspected Atticus’s mission before he spoke. “She’s hurting. We all are.”

       Welcome to my hell.

      But it was a sentiment he would never utter aloud to his grieving brother. Edward inhaled a deep breath and tried to say something appropriately sympathetic. “I’m sure Mom has invited people over to the house, but I can’t do the small-talk thing. Just give her my love.”

      “Give it to her yourself. Let me get Sawyer and Holden on this. We’ll keep everyone away and you can have a private moment with her before she leaves Mt. Washington.”

      “Atticus, I…” Grandma needs a hug, too. Edward ducked his head and turned away as his daughter’s sweet voice tormented his conscience.

      He could wallow in grief and anger all he wanted. But he’d never been able to say no to his little girl.

      His mother needed him right now. His family needed him. Edward had nothing left to give, nothing left to say. But for Cara and Melinda—and for John Kincaid—he’d find the strength to at least go through the motions. He’d find the caring that had been gutted from him somewhere along the way.

      “I’ll meet you by her car in ten minutes.”

      “WHEN I GAVE YOU BOYS literary names, I didn’t think you’d take them to heart.” Susan Kincaid, dedicated English teacher and loving wife and mother, patted Edward’s knee as she scooted closer beside him in the rear seat of the funeral home’s limousine, still parked on the road that twisted through Mt. Washington cemetery. “Edward Rochester Kincaid—just like Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester—you’ve been burned so badly by the world that you feel your only comfort is to hide away from it. He didn’t find peace until he was forced from his seclusion by Jane. He didn’t understand how much he was loved and needed, either.” Resting one hand on the folded American flag that sat in her lap, she reached over and laced her fingers together with Edward’s. “These are hellish circumstances to force you from your seclusion. But I’m so glad you’re here, son. It…soothes me.”

      Soothing? Edward was shaking inside his skin with raw emotion and the uncertainty about what he should—and could—do to help his family through this tragedy.

      Cocooned by the rain and three younger brothers who stood guard outside the long black car to ensure their privacy, the limo’s plush interior absorbed the scoffing noise Edward made. He breathed in his mother’s subtle perfume along with the musty dampness that clung to their clothes and took note of the slight tremor in her chilled fingers as they nested inside his broader, callused, scarred-up hand. He’d never been given much to romantic notions, not even before a killer bent on revenge had torn his life apart.

      A year and a half ago Edward had been a damn good cop, one of the best undercover operatives KCPD’s drug enforcement division had ever put on the streets. Edward and his team had worked months to put one of Kansas City’s top cocaine suppliers out of business. Yet a technicality had allowed André Butler to walk away after a mistrial. Sure, Butler’s empire had been destroyed, his sources outed. But until a second trial could be mounted, the self-proclaimed modern gangster had walked out of the courthouse a free man—a free man looking for payback against the cop he’d trusted like a brother—a brother who had ultimately betrayed him.

      Butler had been released on December twenty-third. His first stop after spending the night with a girlfriend and stealing her car the next morning? Edward’s front yard. According to witnesses, Melinda had been building a snowman that day, keeping herself busy while Cara loaded presents into the car for the Kincaids’ traditional Christmas Eve get-together at his parents’ home. Butler had lured Melinda out to the street, shot Cara when she tried to protect their trusting little girl and then shot Melinda to silence her wailing cries over her fallen mother. Edward had been out to pick up a bicycle with training wheels for Melinda’s Christmas present when he got the call about Butler being spotted near his own address. He’d raced and skidded over slushy, snow-packed streets in a desperate effort to get to his family.

      By the time he turned the corner onto his block, Edward knew he was already too late. Butler ran to his car, turning his gun on Edward’s speeding SUV and firing off multiple shots. Edward prayed the bastard’s neck hadn’t snapped when he ran him down—that he’d died a slow, painful death. Though he’d barely felt it at the time, one of the bullets had cracked his windshield and pierced his chest, doing plenty of damage to his insides. Plowing over Butler, crashing through a line of parked cars and wrapping his engine around a tree had done even more. With both legs busted and his own blood leaving a crimson trail across the snow, Edward had crawled to the front sidewalk to try to breathe life back into the women he loved.

      He’d taken out the bad guy, but he couldn’t save them.

      Merry Christmas.

      Yeah, any romantic notions he might have once had were long