One of the women looked up and waved. “Good day to you, Liam,” she called. “Hello, Sean.” The other woman raised her hand in greeting but didn’t speak. Kim felt the gazes of both Shifter women on her dark gray suit and stupidly high heels.
Liam and Sean gave them a casual wave back. The kids jumped up and down, and one sent a big splash of water over the edge of the pool.
“Look, Liam, I’ve got my own swimming pool.”
“It’s grand, Michael. You look after your brother now.”
Michael turned to the littlest child in the pool, who was splashing happily. “I will,” the older boy said seriously.
They moved on. The Shifters didn’t hide in their houses, the way residents did in Kim’s neighborhood. They roamed outside in the hot weather, working in the yard, looking after kids, talking to their neighbors. Everyone they passed waved or smiled at Liam and Sean, some greeting them, “Now then, Liam. How’s your dad?”
By the time they reached the end of the block, Kim understood how Brian’s mother would know they were on their way without Liam calling ahead. Every Shifter they passed noted Liam and Sean, every Shifter recognized Kim for the human stranger she was. Someone would be on the phone or running through the backyards to alert Brian’s mother.
Brian had been living with his mother, Sandra Smith, at 445B Marble Lane, Kim knew from her files. She’d assumed the address meant an apartment or duplex, but it turned out to be a house set behind another house. A driveway ran past 445A and stopped at the garage of 445B.
Both houses had the look of the 1920s or ’30s, low-roofed bungalows with brick-pillared porches, dormer windows, and separate garages. The front screen door opened as they approached, and a slender woman leaned against the doorframe.
“You’ve brought her then,” she said.
Kim had never met Sandra Smith. When Kim first started putting together the case, she had requested that Sandra come to Kim’s office and talk to her. Sandra had refused, and after a while had stopped answering the phone when Kim called. That was part of the reason Kim wanted to talk to Liam, to find someone who could help her build a solid defense for Brian.
“I hope you don’t mind the intrusion, Mrs. Smith,” Kim began as they approached the porch.
Sandra abruptly turned and went inside, the screen door banging behind her. Kim winced. This interview was not going to be easy.
Liam and Sean pushed past Kim to enter the house, no human custom of standing back to let a lady through a door first. Brian had explained the apparent rudeness to her. To a Shifter, letting a female enter a room or building ahead of a male was ludicrous. You couldn’t be sure what danger lurked on the other side. The male checked it out and then gave the all clear for the female to enter. How could you protect your mate otherwise?
Kim followed them inside and stopped in surprise. Sean had taken Sandra into his arms, letting her lean against him while he rubbed his cheek on her hair. Liam moved to stand behind Sandra. Very close behind Sandra. He rested his chest on her back and both he and Sean murmured to her.
This was crazy. The way Liam had greeted his brother had made Kim think the two of them had something going on. Now she swore the brothers and Sandra were in a threesome.
Liam and Sean stepped away from Sandra, and Sandra wiped her eyes. Kim was struck by how young the woman looked, too young to have a twenty-five-year-old son. Sandra could be thirty, though her eyes spoke of a woman who’d seen far more of the world than Kim had.
“Can I get you coffee, Ms. Fraser?” Sandra asked, her voice shaky.
“No, no,” Kim said. “Don’t go to any trouble.”
Sean smiled at Sandra. “I think a big pot would be grand, Sandra. I’ll help you, shall I?”
Sandra softened under his look, and she and Sean walked to the back of the house to the kitchen. Sean went in first, then ushered Sandra in with his hand on the small of her back.
“What was that about?” Kim asked Liam.
“Sit down, Kim. You look all out.”
She hadn’t really expected him to answer. Kim collapsed to the sofa with a grimace and laid her briefcase on the coffee table. Her feet were killing her. She ran her finger inside her shoes, but it didn’t do much good.
“Are you hurting?” Liam sat down next to her—right next to her, inside her personal space. “Let me see your feet.”
Kim blinked. “Sorry?”
“I saw you limping. Get those ridiculous shoes off and swing your feet up here.”
His eyes were so damn blue. Why did she suddenly long to feel his warm hands on her feet, on her ankles, up her legs under her skirt to where her stockings ended at bare thigh…?
He was a Shifter. This wasn’t right.
“I can’t do that.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“How do you think that would that look? For the mother of the man I’m defending to come back in and find you giving me a foot massage?”
“She’d think it was the first sensible thing you did. You hide behind those clothes like they’re a suit of armor. She’ll not open up to you if you do that.”
“But she will if I play footsie with you?”
Liam smiled a heart-thumping smile. “Get your damn shoes off, woman.”
Oh, to hell with it. When in Rome…or Shiftertown.
Kim couldn’t stop her groan of relief as she eased the heels from her feet. Liam patted his lap. Kim leaned into the corner of the couch and plopped her ankles on Liam’s thigh.
“Is everything in Shiftertown backward?” she asked.
“Backward?”
“Men enter a room first, it’s better to kick off your shoes on a stranger’s couch than be businesslike, and you say hello by rubbing yourselves all over each other.” Kim sagged in pleasure as he moved strong hands over her feet. “Ooh, that’s good.”
Liam’s thumb traveled over her arch to her heel, his touch warm. Did the man know how to loosen tension, or what?
Another groan escaped her. “This is better than any day spa I’ve been to. You could make money doing this.”
“Shifters aren’t allowed in any profession where they touch humans.” His voice went soft. “We might bite.”
Kim didn’t think she’d mind being nibbled on by him. Her nervousness about Shifters hadn’t quite drifted away, but Liam was dissolving her fears little by little, at least about him. “I think I’d make an exception for you.”
“Pheromones.”
Her eyes popped open. “Sorry?”
“Sean and I felt Sandra’s distress, and we calmed her down. She needed our touch. Like you need me rubbing your feet.”
Kim thought about their caressing, group hug. “She must have been very distressed.”
“She is. Why wouldn’t she be?”
“Was Sean distressed when he came in your office? You hugged him too.”
“Of course I hugged him. He’s my brother. Don’t you hug your brother or your sisters?”
“I don’t have a family,” Kim said. She couldn’t keep the sorrow out of her voice. “Not anymore.”
Liam gave her a look of open pity. “No wonder you’re so tense. What happened to them?”
“I don’t like to talk about it.”
“Talk about it anyway.”
Kim had always thought it best not to open up, but Liam’s blue eyes and gentle voice pried something loose. “It’s no big secret. My brother Mark died when I was ten. He was twelve. He was hit by a car while he was walking down to a corner store with his friends—a hit and run. My parents passed away a few years ago, within months of each other. Old age, is all. They had their kids late in life. So now it’s just me.”
The story was simple, easy to relate. Her grief had burned away to emptiness long ago. She lived in the big house she’d inherited from her parents, and it was—so quiet. She tried to cheer it up with weekend parties or office mixers, but the warmth never lasted. Her parents’ neighborhood was one of standoffish elegance; no kids would dare splash in plastic pools in any front yard on her street.
Liam gently squeezed her feet. “I’m sorry for you, Kim Fraser. It’s the hardest thing, losing a brother. It’s like losing a part of yourself.”
He was too right. Kim’s next words came reluctantly. “When Mark was killed, I blamed myself. I know that’s stupid. I was at a friend’s house miles away, and I was ten years old—what could I have done? But I kept thinking that if I’d been there, I could have warned him, pulled him out of the way, kept him home altogether. Something.”
Liam’s warm, relaxing fingers slid beneath each of her toes. “Sean and me, we had a brother. Kenny. We lost him about ten years ago. You always wonder, if you’d persuaded him to do something different that day, would he still be alive?”
“Exactly.” After seventeen years, Kim had never found anyone who really understood, not friends or colleagues or the child counselor she’d been hauled off to. Now a Shifter she’d met an hour ago wrung the truth from her heart. “I’m sorry, Liam. About your brother.”
He acknowledged the sympathy with a nod. “Did they ever get the bastard who hit Mark?”
Kim shook her head. “The police picked up a guy, but it turned out he didn’t do it. Everyone wanted him to be guilty, wanted someone to blame, but I knew he hadn’t done it when I saw him. He was so scared, and his wife was crying, and I said it wasn’t him—but of course, how could I know? I was a kid and hadn’t even been there. In the end, evidence came to light that cleared him. But everyone was pissed that he was innocent. They couldn’t catch the real guy, so they wanted a substitute.”
His hands slowed. “Is that when you decided to become a defense attorney?”
“No, I wanted to be a doctor.” She grinned. “Or a dancer, I couldn’t decide. I was ten. But I wanted the right guy to pay. I knew that if the wrong person went to prison, then whoever really did hit my brother would have hurt that many more people, you know?”
“Well reasoned for a ten-year-old.”
“I thought about it. A lot. For a while, I couldn’t think about anything else.” Hence the child counselor.
“I know.” He looked grim again.
Kim wanted to ask how his brother had died, but at that moment Sandra and Sean returned with the coffee. Kim tried to jerk her feet from Liam’s lap, but he closed his hands around her ankles and held them fast. She glared, and he smiled back, showing her nice white teeth.
Sean set a tray on the table. It held the whole works: cups, a pot, cream, and sugar. No artificial sweetener. Kim wondered whether that was because Sandra didn’t like artificial sweetener or whether Shifters never had to worry about their weight.
Sandra didn’t look surprised or shocked that Kim had her stockinged feet in Liam’s lap. She poured out a cup of coffee and handed it to Kim without comment.
“So, tell us, Kim,” Sean said, as he sat down and took his cup, “is there any chance for Brian?”
Kim couldn’t lie to them. “Brian’s DNA was on the victim, Michelle, and in her bedroom, and now that everyone watches CSI, they figure DNA is the magic truth. But Brian says he’d been dating Michelle and had gone to her house, so of course his DNA would be there and on her too.”
“Then what can we do?” Sandra asked, angry. “If this DNA has already convicted him?”
“We can prove he was nowhere near the scene of the crime that night,” Kim said. “Which is why I’m here. Neither the private investigator I hired nor my journalist friend who’s been following the case can find any information on his whereabouts that night. I mean, no information at all. Like he’d vanished for twenty-four hours. But I can’t believe no one saw Brian or knew where he was going.”
