Hour of Need (Scarlet Falls) Read Online Free Page A

office, and township clerk on the second floor. The cops had the ground level all to themselves.
    He followed the cop through a gray tiled lobby. They passed the elevator and a reception counter, then walked down a short hall into a dark, open room. Detective McNamara flipped a switch on the wall. Overhead fluorescents illuminated a cluster of cubicles and a row of metal filing cabinets. A few closed doors banked the far wall.
    “Sorry, we’re a small force. Night staff is skeletal, just patrol and dispatch.” The detective skirted the cubicles and unlocked the center door. McNamara was a year or two older than Grant’s thirty-five, with the ruddy, windburned complexion of a skier. Jeans and a navy-blue jacket with an SFPD patch on the sleeve hung on a rangy body. He led the way into a cramped but neat office. Two plastic guest chairs fronted an old metal desk. McNamara rounded the desk and dropped into his chair.
    Restless, Grant stood. “I appreciate you meeting me here this late.” He’d called the cop from I-87 an hour before he hit town.
    “Glad to help, Major. I’m sorry for your loss.”
    Grant’s throat constricted. He’d been shot once and nearly blown up twice by IEDs. He had enough shrapnel buried under the skin of his leg to set off a metal detector. Keeping people like Lee and Kate safe was the reason he fought. How could his little brother, secure back here in the States, be dead?
    Suddenly exhausted, Grant eased into a hard-backed chair. “Where are the children?”
    The cop reached behind him. A mini fridge sat on top of a credenza. He pulled out a bottle of water and offered it to Grant. “As I said on the phone, we were unable to reach any family members the night your brother and his wife were killed. Child services placed them in a foster home.”
    Grant’s sister, Hannah, was in Jakarta on business, but the youngest of the four Barrett siblings, Mac, was local. Given Mac’s troubled past, the lack of response to Grant’s messages was concerning.
    Grant accepted the bottle. His eyes burned. He squeezed them shut and rubbed his forehead. “Can I get you some coffee, Major?” the cop asked.
    “No, thanks.” Grant twisted off the cap and drank, forcing icy water down his tight throat. He’d spent the last seventy-two hours in transport from Afghanistan to New York State. Layovers in Kabul, Kuwait City, and Germany had dragged out his return trip. His life had been normal, at least as normal as life on a forward operating base in Afghanistan could be. Now everything was different. His priorities—his entire life—had exploded like a roadside bomb. “I just want to find my niece and nephew.”
    “I understand, but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do until morning.” The cop brushed a hand over his buzzed head. “Look, I know you want to see them, but the kids are probably asleep by now. You don’t want to drag them out of bed in the dark. They’d be frightened.”
    Which is exactly what had happened on Friday night when their parents had been murdered. The cop was right. Replaying that scenario wasn’t in their best interest, but Grant didn’t want to think of Carson or Faith spending another night in a strange house, with strange people, after losing their entire world. Of course, since he’d been deployed before Faith was born, Grant was a stranger to her too, and he hadn’t seen Carson in ten months. Would the boy even recognize him? “Are you sure?”
    “I’m sorry.” The cop laid a pair of reading glasses on the desk. “There are a lot of rules and red tape involved. Middle-of-the-night calls are for crises only. Where can I reach you?”
    The last thing he wanted to do was be alone in his brother’s house, surrounded by happy memories that would be no more, the house where he’d spent two weeks with Lee, a pregnant Kate, and Carson the previous May. He wanted to get a hotel room, with impersonal surroundings that wouldn’t remind him his brother was dead, but