Read Dirty Laundry for Free Online Page A

years separated us. Well, a few years and quite a few inches. Mike took after our mother, a small Japanese woman named Ryoko our father met while stationed overseas. Stocky and broad shouldered, Mike fended off any short jokes growing up with hard fists and an even harder head. I simply grew taller, had longer legs, and could outrun him until he gave up. I might have been the only one of us to get my dad’s brown hair and green eyes, but we’d both inherited his hot temper.
    Since I wasn’t going to be running any time soon with the punctures in my thigh, Mike was going to have a distinct advantage, even if I wanted to walk away from his shit. I took the easy way out and stood up, using my height to intimidate my ruffled brother. Picking up Madame Sun’s coffee cup, I turned my back on him, then hobbled over to the sink to wash up.
    He followed, an infuriated duckling trailing behind me.
    “Why didn’t you call me?” Mike came up about a head short of being able to stare me down, but his nostrils flared with the intensity of rabid sunspots. “I told Jae—”
    “Let’s agree on something, brother. You don’t tell Jae anything.” I shook off the excess water from my hands and wiped them on my jeans. I’d forgotten about the dog bite on the back of my thigh, and the press of my fingers on the thin bandage nearly made me yelp. “He was nice enough to pass along the message, but he’s not one of your peons. Neither am I. I’ll call you when I call you.”
    “I wouldn’t have to contact Jae if you’d returned any of my calls.” Mike circled around me and helped himself to a tea bag and a cup. He filled the cup with hot water and turned around to find me already at my desk. “We need to talk.”
    “We don’t need to talk.” Finally turning on my computer, I waited a few seconds for it to boot up so I could begin a case file for Madame Sun. Sure, she was a free ride, but that didn’t mean her case deserved any less attention. Also, Claudia would ship me to Siberia if she came back and the files weren’t in order.
    After setting his mug down on Claudia’s computer table—well out of my reach—Mike hitched himself up onto the edge of my desk and poked me in the shoulder. I flinched, the residual pain from a gunshot wound pulsing along the point of his finger, and he had the good grace to look slightly apologetic.
    “I talked to Ichiro again this morning. He wants to know how you’re doing.” Mike offered up a shrug. “I didn’t know what to tell him.”
    “Dude, we’ve gone over this.” I wasn’t in the mood to go a round with Mike. My night’d run long, and my sleep was too often disturbed by the aching skin on my thigh. “Why do you have to tell him anything?”
    “Because he asked about you. He’s our brother, remember?”
    Ichiro. Our half brother. The one our mother raised in Japan after she supposedly died while giving birth to me.
    Jesus had nothing on Ryoko McGinnis Tokugawa.
    Mike’d been trying to shoehorn me into a relationship with Ichiro ever since we’d found out he existed. I wasn’t interested. Not now. Maybe not ever. I needed time to wrap my head around being tossed out by not just one mother but two. It hurt too much to think about, so I did what I usually did when I didn’t want to get hurt.
    I avoided thinking about it.
    “I’m working a case here, Mike. Do I bunny rage into your office whenever I feel like it?”
    “Bunny rage?”
    “Never piss off a jackrabbit,” I said, turning back to the mess of papers I’d left on my desk. “They’ll cut you.”
    “Cole, Ichiro—”
    “Mike, do you know what Ichiro means?” I turned in my chair and glared at him. “You follow enough baseball to know. It means first son . That’s what he was to her. She left us, Mike. She fucking left us with our asshole father and walked away.”
    “We don’t know what happened between them.” It was a weak protest but the best one Mike had. Neither one of us knew what went on