Marcus winced. No, he was not that stupid. He weighed the risks, considered the odds. And he always decided that the victim he was saving was worth whatever it took.

Stone sucked in a startled breath. ‘You want to die,’ he whispered. ‘You sonofabitch.’

Marcus shook his head. ‘No. It’s not like that.’

Stone straightened in his chair, his gaze growing coldly furious. ‘Then what is it like? Tell me so that your slow brother can understand.’

Marcus rubbed his temples, where a headache was now in full force. Stone only pulled the ‘slow’ card when he was really upset, a throwback to the childhood that neither of them ever wanted to remember, but that neither of them could ever seem to forget. The same events, the same loss, had touched them so differently, forming them into the men they were today.

‘I didn’t ask you to come in this morning so that we could fight,’ Marcus murmured.

Stone set his jaw, his hands clenching into fists. ‘That’s just too damn bad. ’Cause we’re gonna.’

‘Oh for God’s sake. I don’t want to die, Stone,’ Marcus said, suddenly too exhausted to argue, much less fight. ‘But I see people like Tala and . . . they deserve to have a life.’

‘More than you do?’ Stone demanded.

Again Marcus let his silence speak, and Stone shoved his hands through his hair, yanking on the ends like a man at the edge of his sanity.

Which was far too close to the truth. For both of them.

‘And they said I was the slow one,’ Stone snarled, releasing his hair. Roughly he smoothed it back, dropping his chin to his chest in defeat. ‘You’re a goddamn stubborn idiot.’

Under the circumstances, Marcus supposed that was fair. ‘Will you help me anyway?’ he asked quietly.

Stone’s eyes flew up, their gazes clashing like swords. ‘Help you kill yourself? No. No fucking way in fucking hell.’

‘I don’t want to die,’ Marcus repeated, more forcefully this time. ‘I’m asking you to help me deal with this whole Tala situation, and with Jill. Sooner or later some other paper or news crew will see my name in the police report. They’ll know I was with a seventeen-year-old girl in an alley when she was shot to death. I’d like to get the real story out there before I’m turned into a sadistic pedophile.’

Stone paled. ‘Shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t think past you being shot.’

‘Well I need you to think a little further out now.’

Stone squared his shoulders. ‘What do you want me to do?’

Finally, Marcus thought. He’d expected a little anger from his brother, but not the shit storm he’d just sailed through. Mikhail’s death had them all riding too close to the edge, Stone most of all.

‘I want an article with your byline on the Ledger’s home page ASAP, and in tomorrow’s edition on the front page, above the fold. I want you to report that I had been approached by the victim in the park and that she asked me to meet her so that I could help her escape an abusive household. That we were meeting a CPD cop, but that the victim was shot minutes before the cop arrived.’

‘Abusive household,’ Stone repeated. ‘Not the fact that she’d been “owned”.’

‘No. That’s for the cops to follow up on.’ And for me as well, he thought, but he wasn’t going there with Stone right now. His brother had been far too shaken by what had already happened.

‘Okay,’ Stone said, his eyes narrowing suspiciously, and Marcus knew he had not been fooled. ‘How do you want me to explain the fact that you were in an alley in a shitty part of town?’

‘Say that Tala didn’t want to be picked up in her neighborhood because she was afraid word would get back to her abuser. Just don’t make it sound like a quote. A quote could be challenged by anyone who has access to all the evidence.’

‘Specifically the video you handed over to Bishop.’ Stone grimaced, as if merely saying Scarlett Bishop’s name left a bad taste in his mouth. ‘Why the hell did you do that, anyway? You didn’t have to reveal the video files, much less give them away.’

Yes I did. I really did. If for no other reason than to obliterate the mistrust that had suddenly shadowed her dark eyes. He had grown accustomed to that look from others in the five years since he’d taken the Ledger’s reins. People – especially cops – tended to despise newspapermen, and Marcus could live with that. Because at the end of the day he knew that whatever he’d done, whatever he’d had to do, it had been the right thing for those too helpless to defend themselves.

But seeing that look in Scarlett Bishop’s eyes . . . It stung. And it made him angry. Because alongside the mistrust had been a bruised fury that had seemed far more personal than the normal contempt cops had for the press. Some reporter at some point had crossed a line and hurt her.

Marcus would do whatever it took so that she never had cause to look at him that way again. Even if it meant trusting her with his own pain. She had to have viewed the videos by now. She’d seen his visceral, personal reaction to Tala’s murder. He’d allowed her to see his heart.

‘Marcus?’ Stone leaned forward, snapping his fingers in front of his brother’s face. ‘You still in there?’

Marcus blinked, bringing Stone’s worried face back into focus. ‘Yeah, I’m here.’

Stone leaned back, worry becoming wary regard. ‘You got all glassy-eyed there for a second. Maybe you should see a doctor.’

‘I got checked out by the paramedics. I’m fine.’

Stone was unconvinced. ‘They told you to go to the hospital, didn’t they?’

‘Yeah, but I’m okay.’ Actually he felt a little queasy, but he always did at the mere thought of entering a hospital. He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. ‘I gave Detective Bishop the files because someone murdered a young woman right in front of me. It was the—’

‘Right thing to do,’ Stone interrupted, rolling his eyes. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it.’

Marcus wondered sometimes. Stone could be shown the right thing, but his brother didn’t always get it on his own.

‘It also takes me out of the suspect pool,’ Marcus said quietly. I hope.

‘Let me see it too.’

‘I don’t think you really want to.’

Stone’s expression hardened. ‘No, I don’t, but I need to know what I’m up against in case Bishop decides to release the video to the rest of the press. Show me. Now.’

Marcus didn’t think Scarlett would do such a thing, but he kept that opinion to himself as he turned his monitor around so that Stone could view the screen. Stone watched in silence, flinching at the gunshots, his face going positively gray after the second bullet knocked Marcus flat on his face. And then, when Tala’s splintered skull came back into view, his breathing became hard and choppy.

‘You okay?’ Marcus murmured.

Stone jerked a trembling nod and kept watching. When the video ended, he drew a deep breath, let it out in a shuddering exhale. ‘You gave her . . .’ he started, his voice rusty. And breaking. He cleared his throat hard. ‘You gave her this exact file?’

‘Yeah.’

Stone lifted his eyes, and for a moment Marcus could see the boy his brother had been. So young, so scared. So vulnerable. Looking for comfort.

‘Okay. I get it now. You had to do what you did,’ Stone said.

‘Which thing? Helping Tala, or giving Detective Bishop the file?’

Stone closed his eyes. ‘Either,’ he whispered. ‘Both.’ When his eyes opened, the vulnerability was gone, replaced by his usual confident facade. It was Stone’s armor, his last line of emotional defense. When that broke down, he lost control and . . . well, that was never good. But Marcus would never share that with anyone.

But you did. You told Scarlett. Yes, he had. Kind of. He’d been lying in a hospital bed with a punctured lung, and Scarlett had come to see him. She’d been so angry with Stone because his brother had withheld information that had been vital to saving the lives of a woman and a little girl. Scarlett hadn’t understood. Hadn’t had a clue about what made Stone tick.