Love on the Line - Deeanne Gist [136]
“You both managed to carry on.”
“A day hasn’t gone by where I haven’t thought of you. Why didn’t you wait for me when you got out? I told you I was coming.”
Alec dropped his chair legs on the floor, his eyes turning cold. “I wanted nothing to do with you. Still don’t.” He gave a sardonic smile. “How’d you like shooting up Main Street? You think of me?”
“You know I did.”
He cackled. “That’s why I had you do it. And all that stuff to your lady friend, too.”
Heartsore, Luke shoved his emotions aside. Now more than ever, he needed to remain calm. “Do Necker and the others know we’re brothers?”
Alec harrumphed. “I’d never admit to something like that.”
Sorrow shot through Luke like a fiery dart finding the one sure kink in his armor. “I’m sorry I left you with Glaser that night. In my arrogance, I’d planned to go round up a bunch of fellows to bust you out of jail. Never did it occur to me Glaser would hightail it out of there, heap on a bunch of unfounded charges, and have you locked up in the penitentiary before I knew what happened.”
Scooping up the cards, Alec began to shuffle. “They weren’t trumped-up charges. I’d done every single one of those things.”
A hard right cross completely out of nowhere. “What? But how? Where was I?”
He began to deal a game of solitaire. “While you were out coon hunting and chasing the ladies, I had a pretty good operation going.”
Luke sucked in his breath. He’d had no idea Alec had dealings on the other side of the law. “When did that start?”
“I dunno. Does it matter?”
Grief warred with shock. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Alec moved an ace to the foundation pile and began to build a stack. “I was tired of being in your shadow. Lucious this, Lucious that. You’re all anyone ever talked about. Yet all the while, I was the one robbing the neighbors, peeking in girls’ windows when they thought they were alone. And one time I snuck in and took more from a gal than the jewelry on her dresser. But I couldn’t tell nobody nothing.”
Luke’s gut clenched. He remembered hearing rumors about one of his schoolmates who’d been packed off to live with her aunt and uncle in Virginia. Alec, in particular, had spread the worst kind of gossip about her. Claimed he had firsthand knowledge of her. Never had it occurred to Luke his brother had forced himself on her. Bile churned in his stomach.
Alec shifted in his chair. “Everything changed, though, when I went to jail. Those fellows had never heard of Lucious Landrum. Only of Alec Landrum. And I made a name for myself. Everybody looked up to me. Me, not you. When I got out, I just continued on, is all.”
Luke didn’t know what to do. What to think. He’d sworn an oath. Yet to uphold it, he’d have to sacrifice the very person he’d spent his youth trying to protect. It seemed the ones who needed protecting, though, were their friends and neighbors. “I thought you cared about the people you robbed.”
“I needed to win ’em over so my boys could stay hidden. But that’s about the extent of it.”
How could two brothers be so different? he wondered. Make such different choices? And how could he not have known?
Alec moved a row of black-and-red cards to another spot, then turned over a four of hearts. “I was really sore when you joined the Ranger force after I staged my death and the papers began talking about how you’d been born with a gun in your hand or could pick cherries with your rifle, or how you charged into the last retreat of desperados and brought them out handcuffed—the living ones, anyway.” He shook his head in disgust. “Lucious this. Lucious that. I’d just read about you capturing the state title for all-round rapid-fire marksman when I decided to make a name for myself. To turn the tide.” He finished off a second foundation stack. “And I did it, too. I’m every bit as famous as you and a lot more popular.”
Luke’s mind began to spin. All his young life his pa had impressed upon him the importance of family and loyalty. But he’d also spoken of integrity and the sacredness of a man’s word. What he’d never mentioned, however, was what