“Well, let’s open her up.”
Lucky gave me a helpless look. I opened the passenger door and scooped up Butch. “I’ll just take Butch in to meet Cohen.”
My brother loved dogs. I’d use any way to get him to open up, even if it was a little underhanded.
I curled B up against my neck. Maybe Butch would help me too.
I wove my way through the living room to the hallway that led to the bedrooms. The walls were full of photos from Ezra’s various shoots. Some published, some just for his family.
Co and Rhett mugging for the camera at Christmas. A family portrait on the lake when I graduated from high school. One of Jimmy and Cohen when they finished their first training.
The frame was crooked, and the corner of the wood was chipped. I frowned as I straightened it.
Finally, I reached the spare bedroom. A room I?
?d crashed in a million times. Butch seemed to feel my nerves. She burrowed into my neck and licked my jaw. I nuzzled her and kissed her head. “Thanks, girl.”
I lifted my hand and knocked.
“I told you I wasn’t hungry.” The door swung open. Cohen was leaning on a cane. A plastic boot encased his leg up to his knee. His eyes shuttered, then his gaze dropped to the floor. “Ging. What are you doing here?”
“Checking on my big brother since he decided not to show his ugly mug at my place.”
He hobbled back to the well-loved brown recliner in the corner. “I wasn’t in the festive mood.”
“I get that.”
He put up the chair’s footrest. “No need for it to be a downer for everyone.”
I sat on the edge of his bed. Like the angel she was, Butch curled on my lap. “You’re not a downer. What happened was shocking and horrible.”
Stark, red-rimmed eyes met mine. “I watched him fall.”
I set Butch aside on the bed and went onto my knees next to the chair, gripping his arm. “Oh, Co.” Butch jumped down and hid behind me.
All of his muscles were tight, his shoulders ramrod straight. “The whole thing was a shit show. The flight into the flames. We were just supposed to Phos-Chek and get the hell out of there. But then the perimeter was a mess.”
He didn’t see me as he was talking. I could tell he was back there again.
“We’d been fighting all day. Me and Jimmy.”
I frowned. “You guys never fight.”
“We were packing up the day before. Jimmy left the packing to me, as usual. Asshole never wanted to do the hard stuff. ‘You’ll take care of it right, Co?’”
His voice slid into the cajoling charming tone that sounded so much like Jimmy that I shivered.
“‘You like organizing. It’s not for me, bro.’” Cohen swiped his hand through his overlong hair and pushed it away from his face. Clearly, he hadn’t been eating. His face was all sharp angles and his skin looked pasty. “Why should he do anything that had even a shred of responsibility?”
All I could do was hold onto his hand. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay. It’s never going to be okay. He broke protocol and geared up to jump. It wasn’t safe, but he wanted to anyway. Our captain ordered us back, but he wanted to be a goddamn hero. Or just get away from me.”
“Co.” I pulled him down to me, but he stiffened. I let him go and just held his hand.
“He couldn’t face me, Ging. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I stilled. “What?”