Chapter 20

Zoe was the first person who called Brock upon his arrival back in Los Angeles. The team had flown out of Milwaukee on Wednesday night and had their last off day of the month that Thursday. Zoe called from work to see how he was doing – and to see if maybe he'd like to have lunch the following afternoon.

Brock had not made arrangements with the team security people for coverage, so he invited Zoe out to his house. She initially declined.

"Um, from a purely professional standpoint, I think I should caution you about inviting someone you barely know to your home," she said.

"I'm not worried," Brock said. "Look, I had the team security people check you out. You're a graduate of Mount Holyoke Academy and Mount St. Mary's University, where you studied criminal justice. You graduated 'summa cum laude' and you were a member of their dance squad your junior and senior years. You were accepted to the sheriff's trainee program last May and graduated from their academy in October. Your test scores at the academy were stellar – top 10 percent of the class. You were one of the top marksmen in the class and you won the hand-to-hand combat ribbon. The note on the file says you defeated the men as well as the women in your class. I figure if you had wanted to hurt me, you would have done it already. Plus, all you had to do was concoct some excuse to run my license plate and you would already have my address."

"That's, uh, well that's very thorough," Zoe said. "How did you acquire this?"

"Cynthia Lu is our head of security and she does some instruction out there from time to time," Brock explained. "She used her contacts. I don't think any of it was confidential. I mean, I didn't get your test scores or anything like that. Although I guess she talked to the psychologist out there. Cynthia said she didn't believe you are a threat. I hope you're not upset."

"No, I'm not upset," Zoe said. "And nothing you've said is untrue. It's just a little disconcerting to have your life spelled out like that but I have to admit that I've done the same thing with you. Yours was a bit easier, I would suppose, since I found most of it in one place. I guess it's good to know that I'm not a threat."

"Hey, even faint praise is praise," Brock joked. "So what do you say? We can have a decent lunch out here; maybe relax around the pool or something. You won't have to worry about some crazy person showing up to accost me and I won't have to worry about interrupting our conversation to sign autographs."

Zoe laughed.

"OK, let's have lunch tomorrow," she decided. "Uh, can you cook?"

"Not a lick," Brock admitted with a chuckle. "But I have a vast array of carryout and delivery menus. Short of that, I can cut up a mean fruit salad."

Zoe had lived in Los Angeles her entire life but she had never had a reason to visit the neighborhood where Brock resided. She was impressed by its security features. It was a gated community but Brock had left her name with the guard. After a thorough inspection of her identification, she had been permitted to enter. The community still had its own security team, although none of them looked as though they would be up to the task of putting down a real threat.

Still, they were quite capable of noticing unusual cars in the area or strangers who appeared out of place. Zoe had come to learn that observation was a fundamental part of police work.

Brock was smiling when he opened the door for her and ushered her inside. The house was much larger than she had expected, given that she understood that her half-brother lived alone. Zoe's entire apartment could probably fit into one room of this home. She suddenly felt nervous to be there. After all, Brock Miller appeared to have it all. He was wealthy and famous. He had dates with sports stars and had actresses showing up at his games trying to get him to notice them.

Why would he want to associate with cop who made less in six months than he made in a week. Still, his enthusiasm in welcoming her didn't seem feigned.

"I'm glad you agreed to come out," Brock said. "I could have called Cynthia Lu and made arrangements but I think they're getting a little tired of following me around."

He gave a crooked grin.

"Plus I think they're worried you might kick their butts again," he added with a mischievous wink.

"This is quite a house," Zoe said, still embarrassed that she had put one of Brock's security team on his butt.

Brock rolled his eyes.

"It's the last time I let my agent make arrangements for me," he said. "I mean, geez, who needs this much room? I'm one guy. Everything I own could fit into the garage."

Zoe smiled back at him. Despite his money and notoriety, Brock seemed as normal to her as anyone.

"I was thinking my whole apartment could fit in this room," she commented.

"Probably side by side with the last place I lived," Brock agreed. "I swear to God, the first time I walked in I hoped it had a map like at the mall. I worried I would pee myself the first time I had to go because I couldn't locate a bathroom."

He gestured Zoe to take a seat and then sat in a chair across from her.

"Thankfully every other room has a commode so I needn't have worried," he continued. "I know it's only 10:30 in the morning but if you're hungry I can scrounge us up something."

"I ate breakfast before I came out," Zoe told him. "I wasn't willing to risk your culinary skills twice in one day."

"Probably a good idea," Brock said. "The first year I was out of prison I managed to eat almost every meal with my neighbors. Otherwise I probably would have starved. I could fix cereal and Pop-Tarts."

The mention of prison jolted Zoe back to reality.

"I've read about a lot of that," she told him. "My mom gave me some of the details. I'm not sure if she didn't know much or if she didn't want me to know. She was very reluctant to tell me much about you."

"I guess I can understand that," Brock said.

"Then you're the only one," Zoe replied. "My dad – our dad, I guess – left me a letter with his attorney to be given to me when I turned 21. It was the typical self-serving drivel you'd expect from a dying man. He said he was sorry that he didn't get to watch me go to prom and walk me down the aisle. Like I've told you, I barely knew him. But the one thing that was of interest to me was the part where he hoped that I had gotten to know my brother, Jordan. I guess he expected that your mom would grab the money and we would have had a chance to connect."

"He didn't know my mom very well then," Brock said. Zoe smiled at him.

"I pressed Mom to tell me about you," she continued. "She was very reluctant. I think she had kept tabs on you. She told me that your mother had died some years before. You had gotten into trouble and finally moved away."

"I did not get into trouble," Brock insisted.

"No, I understand that now," Zoe said. "But that's what I knew. I was a little pissed off at her. I asked her how she could have let you be raised in foster care. I told her that we had a duty, not to my father but to you, to see that you turned out OK. After that, it took me a while to trace you. I mean, there are about 30,000 people named Jordan your age. Mom didn't tell me where you born or anything like that. I finally focused on where my dad was raised. That narrowed things down. I knew he had married my mom before he was 19. Then I got the bright idea to get a copy of Dad's will. That's where I got your full name, Jordan Scott DeVoe, except there was no Jordan DeVoe in the public records.

"I hit Google and found out the rest – although most of it was innuendo or second- or third-hand. I couldn't find the public records anyway and I tried. I was in my last year of college and I drove straight to mom's house. I told her you had not gotten into trouble that you had been railroaded by some corrupt people looking to cover up their kids' crimes. Then I insisted she tell me how to find you. She said you had simply disappeared after high school. I didn't really know about the name change. I mean, I guess I could understand it but nothing I read really connected Brock Miller to Jordan DeVoe."

"Most of the records were sealed," Brock said. "The name change was kept quiet for obvious reasons. My court documents were all expunged. I'm sure they still exist somewhere but they are not supposed to be available to the public. The only thing that really had my new name on it was the financial settlements from Lewis County."

"Which, it turns out, were sealed after a year," Zoe pointed out.

"Yeah," Brock answered. "I wanted them to remain open to the public, mostly because of the embarrassment it caused the fine folks down there but my attorney convinced me that it would be better for me long-term if they were difficult to access. We really didn't want people putting the two together."

"I spent a week in Wilkins and that pointed me to Corbly," Zoe explained. "Corbly pointed me to North Carolina and it gave me a name to look for."

"That's pretty good detective work," Brock joked. "You should be a cop or something."

Zoe laughed along with him.

"I was really surprised to learn you were playing professional baseball," she continued. "You were in Akron when I first figured out who you were. I wasn't sure how to approach you or even if I wanted to. I was equally unsure of whether you would want me to. I had almost decided just to let it go but then you were traded out here. I decided that was pretty much divine providence, as far as I was concerned. I am truly sorry about how we met. If I would have known what was going on, I would have found a better way to do it."

"Well, it's done and here we are," Brock said with a shrug. "I'm happy that you went to all the trouble to locate me. I had the chance to visit with some of my friends during my road trip. I guess I was pretty excited about you ... existing."

He gave her a sheepish look.

"My friends, well, they've been like sisters to me," Brock said. "I mean, it's hard to explain. I've dated them all at one point and two of them are sisters."

Zoe's eyebrows shifted upward.

"Crap, this is not going well," Brock said. "Uh, OK, it's like this. I was pretty messed up when I got out. My mom was gone and I was alone. I had sold the farm in Wilkins and I used the money to buy a house in Corbly. Well, my neighbors were two girls about my age: Jen is the same age as I am; Melanie is two years older. They helped me get my feet back on the ground. Jen and I went out for a while but things didn't work. Melanie and I dated later but, again, it just wasn't meant to be, I guess. Anyway, after a fiasco of a football game in my hometown, I ran into Susan Simpson and Tara Wyatt. Susan is..."

His voice trailed off.

"Susan was the girl being attacked that day," he said softly.

"And she didn't think to come forward to help you out?" Zoe hissed.

"No," Brock said. "In fact, her parents rushed her out of the jurisdiction and then out of the country. She didn't come back to the United States until I had already been released. I think she was really traumatized by what happened to her. Well, when everything was said and done, Susan had to go into foster care. Her parents were in prison – still are, as a matter of fact."

"That's terrible," Zoe said.

"It worked out," Brock said. "She wound up living next door to me – with Melanie and Jennifer Miles as sisters."

"Oh, well, I guess it did work out," she said. "I'm sure you weren't thrilled with it, though."

"Not really," Brock admitted. "I grew to like it, though. Then there is Tara Wyatt. I was dating Tara when everything happened. She would have nothing to do with me. She didn't visit me in juvie. She didn't even write to me while I was inside. The next thing I know, she is living down the street from me in Corbly. Coupled with something else that happened at the time, it was a little too much for me. I decided I was going to live in a remote town in Montana."

Zoe laughed, thinking he was joking.

"I'm not kidding," Brock said. "I drove up there as soon as school was out. I planned to find somewhere I could just hide from everyone, where no one knew me and I knew no one."

"So what happened?" Zoe asked.

Brock shrugged.

"I think I grew up a little on the drive up there," he admitted. "I started to understand that the world didn't revolve around me. I took a few moments to reflect on the situation from other perspectives. I also realized that I enjoyed being around people. I couldn't become a hermit. It's just not in my nature. So I came back to Corbly and made the best of the situation."

"Do you still talk with Susan and Tara?" Zoe wondered. "I mean, it has to be hard to get over something like that."

"It was hard," Brock said, "but I managed. It helps that both of them are super sweet. It took me a while to put it aside but eventually things got better. I'm as close to them now as I am to Jen and Mel. You'll meet them soon. Did you see the story about the women's soccer program in disarray?"

Zoe didn't understand the change in topic but she knew her brother had once dated one of the players.

"Sure, it was all over the news," she said. "I was interested because I already knew about you and Chastity Durant."

Brock nodded.

"Tara did the story," he said. Zoe couldn't miss the note of pride in his voice. "They were all out here to visit. It was during my break. All four of them moved heaven and earth to help out anyway they could. I mean, you have to understand, these people had never met Chastity. The only way they knew her was through me. But they knew I was fond of her so they did whatever they could to help out. That's what I mean. These four are the best people I think I've ever met. I don't think I could have put up with some of the stuff I put them through. I was tough to live around for a while. It was worse when we were in college. We all went together and we all lived together. Yet here we are, four years later, and we're planning to live near each other again."

"That's nice to hear," Zoe said.

"Well, I'm glad you think so," Brock replied. "Because you have to understand, any sister of mine is pretty well going to be a sister of theirs. You thought you had just located a lost brother but it turns out you might have found a whole new family to be a part of."

Zoe wasn't certain things would work out that way but if it did, it would be more family than she had ever dreamed of.

"So, tell me a little more about you," Brock prompted as they dined on delivered pizza. Zoe had to go to work at four p.m. so only Brock sipped at a beer.

"You know the big things, I think," Zoe said. "My mom and I were really close until the last couple of years. I mean, it was always her and me against the world. My dad left us pretty well off. He didn't have life insurance but the studio where he was injured paid out a pretty hefty settlement. I was a day student at Mount Holyoke. That means I lived at home and not in the dorms."

"Are you Catholic?" Brock interrupted.

"Lapsed," Zoe admitted. "Mom went to Mass twice a week. I stopped going except for the required times in college. I gave Mom a Mass of Christian Burial but that was the last time I stepped foot in a church. How about you?"

"I'm not really religious at all," Brock said. "It never played much of a part in my life. I mean, I went to Sunday school when I was little but I think that was so my mom could have a few hours of peace."

"What denomination?" she asked.

It took Brock a minute to think about it. He had stopped going long ago, preferring to spend Sunday mornings in the woods behind his house. His mother still got a respite from his presence so she didn't insist.

"Episcopalian," he answered. "Honestly, I have no idea of the differences. It could just as easily have been a Baptist or a Methodist Church. The Episcopal Church was the nearest to our house so that's where I went. Like I said, it was more a matter of having me out from under foot than it was a need to see to my spirituality."

"Did you have your mom's service in a church?" Zoe asked, ignorant to the pain she was about to cause. She regretted the question as soon as she asked it. Brock's face turned dark and tears welled up in his eyes. It took him a moment to answer.

"She was cremated," he said. "I wasn't permitted to go to the service. My conviction was already under appeal so my attorney took care of the details. We had no service. I think some people who knew her got together at the fire hall for a memorial but, again, I can't say for certain."