Duty Bound Read Online Free

expecting me to crack at any moment.
    Maybe I was.
    Like now.
    Damn Harper and her causes. Why couldn’t she just leave this one alone? There was no story here. At least that was what I kept wanting to believe. I knew the way the military works— I’d get more answers than Harper would if I confronted any of my commanding officers, but that didn’t mean I wanted to. I’d be lying if I said that a few theories hadn’t crossed my mind, but most of them involved me and my own role in the whole thing.
    Don’t go there.
    In the two months I’d been home, I still hadn’t found my place. Sure, there was the family business, and I knew my dad was happy to have me working with him, but it just wasn’t my dream. It was his. As much as I was trying to make everyone happy, there wasn’t an ounce of friggin’ joy in me. There wasn’t an ounce of any real emotion in me anymore.
    Liar.
    Okay, there was the frustration with Harper. That was a given. And maybe, just maybe, there was a surprising jolt of attraction, especially when I actually reached out and touched her. “That’s ridiculous,” I told myself. Harper was practically a sister to me. I’d known her most of her life. She was a pain, a thorn in my side, not…attractive.
    Liar.
    So she was attractive. So what? There were tons of attractive women in town. Maybe it was just time that I actually went out with one. Maybe that would help me feel a little more…something. Anything had to be better than this. This constant state of numbness was getting old.
    Decision made, I could finally let myself relax. No more watching the news. It was time to find some sort of game to watch. Surely with a thousand damn channels there had to be something sports related on.
    As soon as the screen came on, there she was. Son of a…
    “Are you worried about making enemies, Harper?” the reporter asked right before the camera panned back to her.
    “Not at all. If there’s nothing to hide and what they’re saying is true, then they have nothing to worry about. All I’m asking for is the truth.”
    “How do you know they’re lying to you now?”
    Harper’s gaze narrowed slightly. “Because they haven’t agreed to meet with me. All I’m asking is for a few minutes of their time, to know how my brother and so many others died. If they’d just talk to me, I’m sure that would go a long way to clear things up.”
    This time, I actually did smile. Hell, I even laughed. Harper was in over her head on this one. This wasn’t some small campus rally to lower the price of school lunches or an initiative about safety in the public parks. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she was pissing someone off big time.
    Someone right here in town had been bold enough to slash her tires. Shit. There were probably a lot of candidates, and I hadn’t been back long enough to get the gossip on where people stood these days in their political views.
    Guess it was time to start mingling with the locals again.
    ***
    It was weird to stand in front of a place that was so familiar and not feel the comfort of it like I once had. Gavin’s house. I’d put it off as long as I could, but I now needed to do more than just go to work and go to bed, so this was where I ended up.
    The house looked exactly the same, but I knew it wasn’t. Gavin wasn’t here. This was the first time I’d ever come to the Murphy’s home without him. Don’t go there right now, I reminded myself, even as I tried to remember how to walk up the steps to the front door. My legs were like lead, and it was all I could do to breathe normally.
    I didn’t even have to knock. Charles Murphy must have seen me coming because the door opened before I lifted my hand. “Levi! What a surprise.” Rather than the handshake I’d been expecting, he pulled me in for a hug. We went inside, and I no sooner had a foot in the door then Gavin’s mother, Darlene, had me in her embrace. They were huggers. It wasn’t personal.
    “Look at you!”