Free Precinct 11 - 01 - The Brotherhood by Jerry B. Jenkins Page A

father’s discipline and consistency and his mother’s devotion to God (or at least to the church)—Boone could have easily become a pain to them.
    He saw himself as smarter than they, and there were times when he would have loved to poke holes in their assumed logic. He’d had the typical separation issues, wanting early to abandon them and their rules and their antiquated ideas, become a rebel, strike out on his own. But the truth was, he was smarter than that. He had the ability to look farther down the road and see that he would only delay his hopes and dreams if he made stupid, regrettable decisions.
    And so he had humored them. Besides, they didn’t deserve rebellion and opposition. His younger brothers gave them all of that they could handle. To their credit, his brothers seemed to be finally turning out all right too, but for years they’d had to deal with the inevitable comparisons to their straight-arrow older brother. Boone’s motives might not have been pure, but he was a hard act to follow.
    Nikki had wisely postulated that Boone’s form of separation and rebellion had come late and in the form of passive-aggressive behavior. Once he was out of the house, he was really gone. He was the son who rarely called, never wrote, and visited only when he couldn’t get out of it. He’d simply had enough of his father’s smug wisdom and his mother’s assumption that any son of hers would share her enthusiasm over spending every minute of every day “serving and glorifying the Lord.” Pastor Sosa would love her.
    Ambrose had a dignified, if severely dated, look. Tall, gray, and willowy, he sat in Commander Jones’s office looking every bit the almost-retired small-town city manager. It would surprise no one that his daily uniform was suit and tie, never anything less. But now, on a sad day off, he wore tan slacks, a seventies-style turtleneck, and a sport coat with a faint checked pattern and a pocket hankie.
    Lucy appeared already dressed for the funeral in a black dress with black purse and accessories—everything, Boone thought, but a mourning veil. She had become matronly with age but retained vestiges of her pretty youth.
    When Boone tapped lightly on the commander’s open door, his mother leaped to her feet. “Oh! Here he is now, bless his heart! Oh, Boone!”
    He surrendered to her exuberant embrace, and both Commander Jones and Jack Keller immediately rose and excused themselves. “Let me give you a few moments here,” Jones said. “Feel free to take all the time you need.”
    Boone wanted to leave the commander’s office to him and use the conference room, but he never got a chance to say so over his mother’s squalling. With her head pressed on his shoulder, she immediately burst into tears. “We’ve been praying for you every second. How awful. How horrible. We’ve lost a precious daughter-in-love—you know that’s what I’ve always called her. And we’ve lost our only grandbaby. But you—oh, Boone. God will have to help you get through this somehow. We’ll be at your side the whole way.”
    “Thanks, Mom.”
    “Standing with you, Son,” his dad said, finally getting a chance to embrace Boone—something he hadn’t done since Boone was a small child.
    The entire morning, from the time he had risen and showered and eaten and ridden to headquarters, Boone had been aware of a strange thing. Something deep in him was working to somehow protect him. He was shutting down emotionally. He no longer felt weepy. The gruesomeness of the deaths was being pushed back, tucked away somewhere he could not access it every moment. Boone would not have been able to survive if those images were ever at the forefront of his consciousness.
    But they had been elbowed aside by a resolute coldness that somehow took the rage that had made him want to kill someone—maybe even himself—or to destroy something, and planted in him some seed of deep resentment. That was not a strong enough word for it, he