SECRET IDENTITY Page 3

  Lorne produced two soft drinks from where he had been shielding them behind his back. “I figured you might like a more welcoming homecoming than to face an empty house.” He gave a nod toward the porch. “Come on. Let’s have a sit like we used to.”

  They took their seats on the stoop, and the years fell away. Several minutes passed as they drank their sodas. Brenda marveled at how much things hadn’t changed despite time, and for that she was truly grateful.

  “Thank you for calling me. I mean, it was nice to hear your voice after so long. And nice to have one of my almost brothers break it to me.” She graced him with a small smile. “Thanks.”

  She didn’t want to cry. She had just gotten off the phone with the hospital when he rang to let her know her father had died, which explained how the doctor had gotten her number. After hanging up, she’d cried herself into total exhaustion and into a state of calm where she thought she could face this return with a more somber spirit. But looking at the warm, sympathetic expression on Lorne’s face, and at his comforting arms, she felt her emotions give way. Burying her face in the curve of his neck, she inhaled his warm, manly scent. It was a natural smell, as Lorne never wore cologne. Not even after he shaved.

  His embrace was as tender as it always was. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d held her. She knew it had been while they were still in high school together.

  Good, sweet, understanding Lorne. God, she’d missed him, and never realized until now how much she treasured his company. It was several minutes before she could tear herself away from his hug.

  “Better?” he whispered.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” Her drink felt refreshingly cool going down her throat. Funny, she wasn’t a big fan of root beer, but for some reason she was finding herself with a tremendous thirst for it.

  “Any time. You know that.”

  He saluted her with his soda.

  “Hey, if it had been the other way around…”

  His voice trailed off, but she understood. His father had died a few years after they had moved to town twenty years ago. But back then she and the boys had been kids in grammar and middle school. Already best of friends, but unable to cope with the serious consequences of death.

  “So, did you get to see the lawyer today?”

  His question broke through her reverie.

  “Yeah. He’ll probate Daddy’s will next week, but he doesn’t see any problems, considering the house and taxes are paid up, and I’m the only heir. He went ahead and let me have the keys so I could start packing.” She tucked away a lock of hair that had come loose from her bun.

  “Whatcha plan to do with the place? Sell it?”

  Brenda sighed. “I had thought about it, but, I dunno.” She glanced back over her shoulder at the only home she had ever known. “I considered renting it out, with me living in the city now, but…”

  “Well, just to let you know the offer’s on the table, we’d be willing to buy it,” Lorne said, glancing sideways at her.

  “For real?”

  He shrugged, and she remembered the feel of hard muscle underneath his shirt. Vaguely she wondered if his chest was smooth of body hair, or if it still had just a sprinkling across those iron pecs.

  Hey, girl. There’s no need to go there. He’s like a brother, remember?

  Yeah, always the brother, the same way his own brothers were like family to you, too.

  “Our place is getting a bit crowded, even though none of us are there most of the time. Working and whatnot. I’ve been thinking about getting an apartment, but I keep putting it off.”

  He turned those dove gray eyes at her and grinned.

  “If we took ownership, you’d still be able to come and visit…and stay if you’d like.”

  Brenda stared into those soft depths she’d always adored, her mouth gaping open without realizing it. For some reason, when he had offered for her to “stay”, she could almost believe he wasn’t implying for a few days or a few weeks, but that he meant a lifetime.

  Which was impossible.

  “Thanks, Lo. It’s tempting. Hell, it’s very tempting. Let me chew on it a while, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Gentle quiet settled back over them. A wren dropped down onto the ground a few yards away, grabbed a bug, and flew away. The sight of it reminded her of the mysterious gentleman who had saved her two days ago.

  “Whatcha been up to lately?” the equally soft voice inquired.

  It was at that moment that Brenda realized that, in all these years, she had never heard Lorne raise his voice or yell for any reason. Lee, on the other hand, had always been the agitated one. The youngest of the Palmer boys, Lee was the enthusiastic, overly optimistic son. And Luke, well, being the oldest brother, he had become a surrogate father after their parents died. And the funny thing was, only two years separated each of them, and Brenda fell right in the middle between Luke and Lorne.

  “Well, you’ve probably seen me on TV,” she began.

  “Oh, yeah. Hard not to, Miss I’m-Bringing-Dobbling-to-Fullerton,” he teased.

  Brenda giggled. “Hey, this town deserved it. Besides, it had everything the company was seeking. Cheap land, lots of available labor, and—”

  “And it made the medical profession richer,” he pointed out.

  At first, she tried to figure out what he knew about the medical patents the company was trying to obtain when she saw him wave his soda at her blue-jeaned legs. Then it struck her. He wasn’t talking about the patents. He was talking about the explosion.

  Brenda reached down and gently placed a hand on her calf where the bandage wrapping was evident below the cuffs of her denim capris. She didn’t know how badly she’d been hurt when trying to escape the poisonous cloud and flying debris, until she and the television news crew arrived at the hospital emergency room, and someone pointed out the trail of blood droplets on the floor. The doctor pulled out a sliver of metal three inches long, and put in eighteen stitches. Fortunately, the cut had been shallow.

  “Yeah, well, there’s risks with any job.”

  “We saw your interview at the company before the accident. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Hospital checked me out, took some x-rays, sewed and bandaged up my booboo, gave me oxygen and a passing grade, then told me to go home.”

  “Bet the explosion was worse than it looked.”

  “Oh, yeah. Fortunately, I managed to hide inside the Channel Eight news van during the worst of it. For a while there, the news people and I thought we should kiss our asses goodbye.”

  “Until that guy showed up. Who was he?”

  Brenda shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t get the chance to ask.” The mere mention of the stranger in black leather was enough to put her back in a fog as she recalled the way the mystery man had lit her fuse, if just for a few minutes.

  “Think he’s going to be our next superhero?” Lorne inquired.

  “Has to be. You should have seen how he took two solid steel doors and waved them like playing cards to disperse the chemical toxins in the air.”

  She could see him in her mind’s eye, hovering a few feet above the ground as he waved those doors, looking like a dark angel with steel wings. Who is that man? What will he call himself?

  An elbow nudged her arm. “Well, I’m happy to know you’re all right. It’s been a while since we’ve last talked. How’s it going, living in the big city? Gotta boyfriend?”

  Lorne gave her another one of those sideways looks, and added a grin to it. Brenda had to admit to herself that the unshaven, unkempt look worked for him.

  “Nope. You?”

  “Nope. No boyfriend,” he admitted with a straight face.

  She burst out laughing and gave him a hard shove in the shoulder. “I meant, do you have a girlfriend?”

  “No. No time.”

  Sighing loudly, Brenda nodded. “I can relate.”

  They continued to imbibe their drinks as the occasional car glided by, passing through
a neighborhood filled with middle-class houses circa 1950s and ’60s. The shade from the gum tree next to the house made the porch a good ten degrees cooler than the temperature was out in the sun. Brenda breathed deeply of the fresh air.

  “I didn’t know how much I missed this place until now. Hey, you never told me what you’re up to these days. What have you been doing since college?”

  Lorne lifted his knees before propping his arms on them, and dangled his drink can between his legs. “Me? Not a whole lot. I stock goods and bag groceries over at the Supermart, and sometimes I help over at Luigi’s whenever they’re short-handed. Luke is a video game developer for a company out of Nashville. Lee is still employed at the factory.”

  “That’s good to know, but isn’t it crazy how things worked out? Think about it,” Brenda said. “None of us ended up where we thought we wanted to be. I got a degree in music, then became the director of acquisitions at Dobbling Enterprises. You got a degree in criminal justice, but you work part-time at a grocery store and pizza parlor. Luke has a degree in physics, and he writes software. And Lee got his degree in telecommunications, but makes cardboard boxes.” She giggled. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

  “Mmmm, youthful wishful thinking?”

  Mr. Tumlinson from across the street came out of his house, checked his mail from the box mounted on side of the house next to the front door, then went back inside.

  “One of these days, Mr. Tumlinson won’t be around anymore to do that,” Brenda mentioned softly. Suddenly the meaning behind what she’d just said swooped over her like an enormous bird of prey, gripping her in its razor talons and rendering her into little pieces. She dropped her soda and barely covered her face when the tears came again, harder, heavier, and hotter.

  Strong arms wrapped around her and pulled her against him to cuddle. As her sobbing became less controllable, Lorne dragged her into his lap where she could safely fall apart within his embrace. He said little, allowing her to weep until she was spent. Minutes crawled by, and finally Brenda was able to get herself under control. Looking around for a tissue, she was surprised when Lorne lifted the tail of his plaid shirt.

  “Be my guest.”

  “Thanks.” She wiped her eyes before blowing her nose. When she was done, Lorne shrugged out of his shirt and bundled it into her lap. “I can’t believe I did that again.”

  “We were stunned to hear about your dad’s death,” his deep voice murmured against her hair. “He was a great man, and a wonderful neighbor. We’ll miss him.”

  She nodded, unable to answer.

  “Thank you for letting me and my brothers be pallbearers.”

  “Th-thank you for accepting.” More tears flowed. Brenda sniffed. “He…he was always a strong man. He was my superhero. Always strong. Always there, even after Mom died.”

  “Mr. Mac was a good man. My brothers and I always looked up to him.”

  “Even when he caught us in the swimming pool at two in the morning in our birthday suits?”

  Lorne laughed. It was a deep, chesty, man’s laugh, not the high-pitched giggle of an adolescence.

  “Bren, we were in elementary school then!”

  She managed a laugh, and they hugged once more. She felt like she had come home. For real. People were always bemoaning the fact that people could never go home, at least not emotionally. They were wrong. Either that, or she was very, very lucky.

  The Palmers had moved in next door when she was six. Immediately the three boys had adopted her as a sister, and she was included on all their escapades. They had persevered through the trials and tribulations of grade school and junior high, boyfriends, girlfriends, break-ups, proms, final exams, and graduation. As they grew up and filled out, and Luke went off to college, they began to hang out less and less. Brenda went to seek her fame and fortune a year ahead of Lorne. Lee, the baby, took a football scholarship to help with the financial burden.

  Boom, boom, boom, boom. Four years in a row one of the Fullerton Four, as they called themselves, left the nest. The Palmer boys remained in town, returning once they’d gotten their degrees. But Brenda was on her way up and up, getting hired at Dobbling Enterprises as a clerk fresh out of college. From there, she worked her way up to assistant director. And now here she was, within the span of a year, suddenly thrust into the position of director and given charge of finding new locations and clearing the way for Dobbling to expand. Naturally, her first instinct had been to help bring prosperity back to Fullerton, and to her delight, the board of directors had okayed her plan to build in her hometown.

  Funny how circumstances had brought her full circle. That was when she realized how long she’d been gone, and how much she’d missed her hometown. Now with the factory gone, and Michael McKay’s sudden death, the brightness surrounding her homecoming was covered in a black pall.

  “Hungry?”

  “When am I not hungry?” she challenged, pulling back to look him in the face.

  Lorne grinned. “Guess some things never change. Come on. I’ll treat, but you drive.”

  “Don’t you have a car?” They uncurled themselves from each other and got to their feet. Brenda went inside to get her purse.

  “Luke has the car tonight,” he said.

  “One car, three brothers. The math doesn’t add up, Lorne,” she teased, locking and closing the front door behind her.

  “Hey, I can walk to work in ten minutes, and Lee rides the bus.” He followed her into the garage and waited for her to unlock the passenger door with her remote.

  “All right, smart guy. Where am I going?” she asked as they both hopped into her car.

  “Where else?” he smiled.

  “Pooches!”

  They laughed in unison.

  Chapter 5

  Pooches

  Pooches had not lost its feel for nostalgia since the day it opened back in 1954. When Lorne escorted Brenda into the soda and burger shop, memories of yesterday seemed to rise up and greet them. The results made them feel as if, once again, they were naive teenagers filled with hope, ambition, and dreams. Brenda, with her desire to go to the big city and create a stir in the art world. And he with his predetermined destiny.

  At that time he had been waiting for his powers to show. Luke had already found out he had been blessed with tremendous mental abilities. Very little was beyond his reach—telepathy, clairvoyance, mental projection, telekinesis. By the time he’d graduated high school, Luke was already helping the police, FBI, and Interpol with their cases, but he was doing it very hush-hush. Very much incognito. No one knew him as anything other than Mr. Mental, and no one outside of law enforcement was even aware that he existed. If there came a time when he had to “appear” before a group, he did so as a disembodied face, a floating head like a pale, ghostly mask, with ink-black eyes.

  As for Lee, the first time he had disappeared into thin air it had shocked all of them, including himself. But when little brother managed to fold himself into a two-dimensional image no bigger than a business card, and slip between the cracks in doors, he had gone on to help the government. Hence he took the name Espionage.

  But Lorne had been a late bloomer, and nearly twenty-one before he got his first inkling of what he was capable of doing. First came the power of flight, followed by his exponentially increasing strength. When he had discovered he could project that strength as a nearly impenetrable shield, Luke had suggested he be the one to take their father’s place and go public. Be the next superhero. Luke sure couldn’t do it, as his body would be too vulnerable if exposed. And Lee’s powers were not suitable for saving others. All Lorne had needed was the right opportunity to present himself while he honed his abilities. The right opportunity and the media. He just never expected Brenda McKay to be there when it happened.

  He waited for Brenda to plop herself down in a booth before he slid into the seat opposite. She gave a little cry of surprise to see the roto-songs jukebox still sitting at the end of the table, and she happily flipped thr
ough the selections.

  “Criminy! I can’t believe they still have this! Does it still work?” She glanced up to read aloud the price. “One song, one quarter. It was three songs for a quarter in our day.”

  “Yeah, and gas cost seventy-nine cents a gallon, too,” Lorne reminded her with a smile. He tossed her a menu seconds before a young thing in a pink uniform and white bib apron showed up to take their order.

  “You still like your cheeseburgers with tomatoes only?” he asked.

  Brenda stared at him in surprise. “You remember? Yeah.”

  “Two cheeseburgers, one with tomatoes only, the other all the way but dry. And two shakes, one strawberry and one chocolate.”

  The waitress nodded as she furiously scribbled their order, then left.

  Lorne eyed the woman across the table and tried to get a firm grip on his heart. When Luke had announced that Michael McKay was at death’s door, Lorne had worried about Brenda. Did she have anyone who would comfort her in her time of emotional need? Was there someone in her life who would accompany her back to her hometown for the funeral? After calling her to give her the sad news, he had gone in search of his older brother to find out.

  “She’s unattached,” his older brother had informed him later, giving him a hard stare with those steel gray eyes.

  Lorne didn’t ask him how he knew or if he was sure. Luke was Mr. Mental. With the exception of his two siblings, the man could read anyone’s mind within a few hundred yards, or even further if he had a direct link to them, like through a phone call.

  Still, he had needed to hear it from her own lips. Even then, there had been something in her body posture, in her tone of voice, which had betrayed her. She may not have a boyfriend with her in the flesh at the moment, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone in her life.