by TA Moore
Nate rubbed his finger along his lower lip and stepped into Morgan’s space. The smell of his sweat cut with something woodsy and green wasn’t strong, but he was too close to ignore it. Morgan grimaced and resisted the urge to shove the man away. He talked as though he was one of those doctors or lawyers, and Morgan had enough trouble with the cops.
“Do you know who did it?” Nate asked as he tilted his chin up to look at Morgan. His voice was casual, amused, but his light-gray eyes were still sharp with interest as he touched Morgan’s arm. “Or you still in the dark?”
“I thought the whole point was nobody knew.”
Nate chuckled and leaned back. “Everybody knows,” he said. “It was the mother. Trust me. I’ve seen plenty of cases like this, and it’s always one of the family.”
“Not the brother?”
Nate tched his tongue and shrugged. “Could be. He’s been in enough trouble since. Not a family I’d want to get involved with.”
The photo on the blog was a few years old. Morgan’s eye was swollen shut in it, and he had the sort of bad haircut you only got from prison shears. He’d hoped it wouldn’t be good enough to put a name to his actual face. He’d been wrong.
“That’s all a misunderstanding,” he said. “Excuse me—”
Nate held up a hand to stop him. “A word to the wise, son,” he said. Morgan strangled the urge to punch the sanctimonious words back down his throat. “No one needs this dredged back up again. No one is going to throw you a parade. If I were you, I’d get out while you can.”
“If you were me, you’d get laid more,” Morgan said. “Get out of my way.”
“Of course,” Nate said as he stepped pointedly to the side. A sweep of his hand indicated the door. “Enjoy your day, but remember, Captain Macintosh isn’t on your side, Mr. Graves. All he wants is to close the most mishandled case of his career.”
“And you’re just telling me that out of the goodness of your heart?” Morgan asked as he studied Nate. “Try again.”
The quick there-and-gone smile twitched over Nate’s face again. He tucked his hand into the pocket of his tracksuit bottoms and pulled out a dog-eared business card for Morgan.
Judge Nathan Fernfield.
For a second, Morgan drew a blank. Then he remembered the picture in the blog and his arm around Boyd’s shoulders as they limped home.
“I kicked your son’s ass,” he said.
“And took his money,” Nate said. “I could live with that. He’s my son, but he’s… hardly going to make anyone proud. However, he is still my son, and I don’t want him dragged into the middle of this fetid investigation. I don’t want my town dragged into the middle of this. I think we’ve all paid enough for someone else’s sin.”
The phone in Morgan’s pocket juddered against his hip bone. He absently put his hand over it.
“What’s your point?” he asked. “I mean, I knew you wanted something, but I thought it was just my ass.”
Nate made a sour face, thinned lips and flared nose, and looked around quickly to see if anyone had heard. No one had. The only other people in the shop were a young mother, huge sunglasses on her tanned face despite the fact that she was inside, and her toddler down in the children’s nook at the back, primary-colored books tucked in around toys and a train set, and the clerk who still hadn’t taken his eyes off the computer. When Nate turned back, he’d gotten himself back under control. The only things that betrayed him were two spots of dull red high on his cheekbones, as though someone had pressed down with their thumbs on the weathered skin.
“I don’t appreciate the attitude,” he said. “All I want to do is protect everyone involved, including you.”
Liar. Morgan pulled out his phone and glanced down at the screen to give himself a moment to hide his contempt. It wasn’t even a good lie. This is for your own good. That was the sort of lie you told a child, not a grown man.
It was Boyd’s number. Morgan tightened his fingers around the phone case and wondered if Boyd was really so desperate that he’d overlook last night. Did he think Morgan hadn’t meant it when he said there was nothing in town to keep him here?
He hadn’t meant it, of course, but those were the sort of lies you told adults.
“I have to go,” Morgan said. Then he didn’t, although he couldn’t say exactly what stopped him. He supposed he just wanted to see whether Nate went with a counteroffer or threat.
Nate ran his tongue over his teeth and scratched his throat. “I’m a judge, boy,” he said. “You’re going to get out of my town. It’s up to you whether I make your life easy or difficult on the way out. Call me if you decide to make the right choice.”
The phone had gone still in Morgan’s hand. That Boyd had given up right that moment seemed like a sign.
“What’s it worth to you if I go quietly?” he asked.
Nate smiled. For the first time it looked real. “Call me,” he said. “And we can discuss that.”
He stepped back from Morgan and strode into the back of the store, arms out. “Darling,” he said as the woman in the sunglasses stood up to greet him. “Sorry I’m late. I have a change of clothes in the car.”
It probably wasn’t as cool a car as Shay’s, but Morgan would put money on it being more expensive. If twenty grand would get him over the border, forty or more, and he could even pay Boyd back.
Morgan looked at the card again and then tucked it safely into his back pocket. He needed out of this town, out of Sammy Calloway’s shadow, and if Mr. Fernfield was willing to pay him to do something he was going to do anyhow? Why the hell not?
The picture of Sammy splashed over the book on the shelf stared at him accusingly. What did he know, though? Morgan dragged his gaze away and ducked out through the door onto the street. It was bright after the dim, mood-lit bookshop, and Morgan squinted as he flicked open his phone to call Boyd back.
It could be important, he told himself when his thumb hesitated. Maybe they’d realized he wasn’t Sammy and were going to ship him back to jail. It was possible some new evidence had solved the whodunnit, and he was free to go. Or Boyd wanted to talk to him.
He hit the Call Back button and waited impatiently as it rang. The Fernfield family—second edition, Morgan guessed from how young the wife was—came out of the bookshop with a train in the kid’s arms and a box of books. Nate, one arm tucked around his wife’s waist, didn’t spare Morgan a look as they walked back to his car.
It was expensive.
The ring tone cut off, and Boyd’s voice crackled down the line. “Where are you?”
“Could ask you the same,” Morgan said. “It would have been nice to have someone on my side when the shit hit the fan this morning.”
“Don’t be a dick.”
“You love it.”
Boyd laughed and then tried to turn the noise into a cough or a cleared throat. It wasn’t a convincing effort.
“Mac wants to talk to you,” he said. The last shreds of amusement drained from his voice as he talked. “I’ll give you a lift. And you don’t know I’d be on your side, Morgan.”
“I know,” Morgan said as he shifted the phone from one ear to the other. “But you’re the only one who might consider it. What does Mac want?”
It took Boyd a second to answer. “I’ll tell you when I pick you up.”
Morgan smiled thinly. “You think I’m a flight risk?”
“That is why I had to put up bail. Morgan—”
“I’ll be at the school,” Morgan said. It was, if the instructions he’d looked up before he got distracted by the fresh display of “Town’s Best Missing Kid” books in the store window, just a few blocks away. “Unless you miss me.”
He hung up. Always leave them wanting more.
THE SUN baked faded white rose petals into the concrete as the mass of bouquets tied around the stoplight wilted and shed in the sun. A handful of teddy bears, fresh and crisp still, were buried in among the blooms. Posters were stuck up in the dusty windows of bar
e shops, fresh images of the little boy plastered over sun-bleached old ones with the promise “We’ll Find You.” A young man lay on his back on the pavement to take pictures of the shrine with his iPhone. Down the street, outside the school, a woman in glossy-pink newscaster chic and worn trainers spoke earnestly to the camera propped up on her coworker’s shoulder.
“Fuck,” Morgan muttered. He hunched his shoulders uncomfortably and turned away from the street to scowl into the cluttered interior of the antique shop. A creepy bald doll, a mangy gray curl painted on its forehead, stared back at him with one cracked glass eye.
Someone bumped his shoulder.
“It used to be worse,” Boyd said. He leaned against Morgan, not quite on him but an easy sprawl of contact from shoulder to hip. It was casually intimate and left Morgan uncertain of how to respond. A hand on the ass he knew what to do with, but not the nudge of Boyd’s chin against his shoulder. Most of the time he was okay with what he’d put together out of his fractured childhood, but sometimes it was impossible to ignore that he was… stunted. He watched Boyd’s reflection in the window to gauge what was appropriate… and maybe just to enjoy how pretty Boyd was, from his ridiculous stubble-shadowed jaw to his heavy cheekbones, as he made a wry face. “First anniversary, my teacher wouldn’t let me go outside. I had to sit with her in the cafeteria until it got dark.”
“Reporters?”
“A few,” Boyd said. “But it wasn’t a story yet back then. It didn’t have a following. It was more of a mob—frightened parents, angry parents, bigots. Hill had come back to work a few weeks earlier, and the anniversary brought all that animosity to a head. Mrs. Calloway torched his car.”
That dragged a blurt of surprised laughter out of Morgan. “Really?”
Boyd gave a sharp jab in the ribs with his elbow. “It wasn’t funny.”
“I suppose,” Morgan said. He slid his arm around Boyd’s waist and tucked his fingers into the waistband of his jeans. Maybe if he grabbed some ass, his brain would fall into line. “I just…. People say they’d do anything for their kids, but it’s usually just hot air and back pats. She went for arson instead, so she can’t be all bad.”
“She wants to see you,” Boyd said. “At the hospital.”
Maybe it was the flash of admiration he had for the woman’s firebug tendencies, but Morgan felt an itch of concern under his skin.
“Is she okay?” he asked.
Boyd glanced up at him, the question that was always there suddenly unmistakably on his lips, but he resisted the urge to say it.
“No,” he said. “She’s not going to die tonight, but no. Right now she’s refusing to cooperate with anyone, so if you go to see her, it’ll speed things up.”
He left what “thing” unsaid. So Morgan corrected the sentence for him.
“So I get to leave.”
It got him what he wanted. Boyd stiffened slightly under his arm and then pulled away. It was a warm afternoon, hot enough to bake roses, but Morgan still felt deprived of that extra heat against his side.
“If that’s what you want. Well?”
Morgan turned away from the creepy window and glanced across the street. The news crew was interviewing the man with the iPhone while kids from the school clowned in the background.
“Do I have a choice?” he asked as he faced Boyd. His stomach ached, and a hard knot of expectant dread had wedged under his ribs like a fist. It felt like it had when he was a kid, on his way to meet the next set of new parents who didn’t want him. But this time he was the asshole on the doorstep, all smiles and hugs and the smell of fresh cookies until Morgan thought maybe this time they meant it.
Boyd sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. “Look, I get why you don’t want to,” he said. The idea of that made Morgan’s stomach ache even more than before. “And you don’t have to. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t owe us anything.”
“But?”
“Please?” Boyd asked wearily. Nothing else. He didn’t beg or barter, just asked and waited. As though he thought there was a chance Morgan would actually not fuck this up and let him down.
Somehow that made it harder to say yes. He didn’t want this to make Boyd think better of him, not when Morgan knew he was only doing it to get the cash to skip town. But it didn’t look as though he had a choice.
“Fine. Whatever,” Morgan muttered sourly. “If it gets you all off my back.”
He was punished with one of Boyd’s easy smiles, although it looked a little more worn around the edges than usual.
“Really?” Boyd asked. He folded his lower lip between his teeth as he let his gaze trail thoughtfully down over Morgan’s body. Then he shrugged and turned away, his next words tossed back over his shoulder. “Didn’t think that was the part you wouldn’t enjoy.”
Heat flushed through Morgan’s body, an expected wave of it from his balls to his ears. He didn’t bottom—ever—but the thought of Boyd’s lean, compact body pressed against his back and his mouth on his throat was… not that bad.
He stretched his legs to catch up, which didn’t take long, and cupped his hand around the nape of Boyd’s neck.
“I prefer you on your stomach,” he said as he tugged Boyd off-balance and into his side. This contact was definably sexual enough that Morgan felt comfortable with it. He pressed his mouth to Boyd’s ear in a kiss as he growled, “Maybe we could try a bed.”
It should have made Boyd as uncomfortable in his skin as he’d made Morgan. That was the point, to even out the uneasy tangle of lust and distaste that made Morgan’s spine itch. Instead Boyd turned into the kiss, his mouth warm and eager as he pressed it to Morgan’s.
Almost desperate, with a hungry edge to the scrape of his teeth against Morgan’s lip. He clenched his hands in Morgan’s shirt to pull him closer and then shoved him away.
“Sorry,” Boyd said. He licked the taste of Morgan off his lips. “That was a mistake.”
It was. Morgan should have been glad one of them had kept their head long enough to remember that. And he was glad, definitely. His balls might object, but he’d live.
“Yeah?” he said defensively. “What, I get upgraded from bad idea?”
Boyd snorted and reached up to run his thumb over Morgan’s lower lip. “That was a mistake, not you,” he said. “Because now we’re going to be on the news.”
He tilted his head across the road. Morgan looked in that direction and saw the camera pointed at them, the little light on top flicker-red as it recorded.
“Shit,” he muttered as he glowered and took a half step toward the curb. As he moved, the cameraman looked warily up from the viewfinder to watch him. Boyd grabbed his arm to pull him back, and Morgan reluctantly let him, with a coarse jab of his finger aimed over the road as Boyd dragged him toward the pickup. “Whatever. Fuck ’em. If Shay or Mac give you any grief about it, just say I grabbed you and kissed you against your will. It doesn’t matter what they think of me.”
Boyd unlocked the pickup and finally let go of Morgan’s arm. He tossed a dry look at Morgan over the hood as he got up into the cab.
“Because you’re leaving,” he filled in the end of the sentence for Morgan. “Fair enough, I guess.”
It was. Morgan knew that, but his pride still rankled that Boyd had just shrugged it off without even an attempt to defend Morgan’s good-ish name. He slammed the passenger-side door and slouched down on the worn leather, his feet braced against the back of the footwell.
The radio flicked on as Boyd started the car—some old country track, all twang and sass—and then off again as he hit the knob. He reached over and ruffled Morgan’s hair with a rough hand. Morgan spluttered, caught somewhere between indignation and laughter as he hit the deadfall where normal reactions should be.
“Get off,” he said as he moved his head out of the way. “Weirdo.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to anyone,” Boyd said as he turned his attention back to pulling away from the curb. “And I’m not ashame
d of anything I’ve done.”
Morgan grunted and stared out the window. He tapped a nervous tattoo against the plastic of the door and felt very aware of the stiff square of card shoved into his pocket. It must be nice not to be ashamed of yourself.
HOSPITALS ALWAYS made Morgan thirsty. His throat was parched and his tongue like a sheet of crumpled paper. It made his wrists itch too, as though he had an invisible poison ivy rash across the underside. He was probably allergic to the bleach or something.
“Here.” Boyd handed him a bottle of cold vending-machine Dr Pepper. “All they had.”
Morgan rolled the bottle between his wrists, the chill some relief as it soaked into the bones.
“How long is this going to take?” he growled as he leaned his shoulder against the wall. “I thought she wanted to see me?”
He actually sounded almost resentful there, as though it wouldn’t be a get-out-of-jail-free card for the night if Donna Calloway sent him away. Morgan glanced sidelong at Boyd, and whatever could he come up with to pass the time? After all, he’d made a good-faith effort to protect Boyd from himself… and Morgan. It wasn’t his fault it hadn’t worked, and why waste what could still be Morgan’s last night?
Either in town or as a free man.
Boyd frowned at him. “Did you even listen to what I just said?”
“I was thinking about whether you still wanted to suck my cock,” Morgan said conversationally as he twisted the lid off the Dr Pepper. He watched Boyd’s ears blush a startled pink. “And if I’d let you. My mind drifted.”
Boyd cleared his throat and ignored that.
“The doctor wanted to make sure she was in the right frame of mind before you went in,” he said. Or, since Morgan could tell he’d heard the words before, even if he didn’t remember them, he repeated them. “He doesn’t want to upset her any more than she already is, and if she agrees to a DNA swab, she needs to be in her right mind.”
Morgan took a drink. It felt wet and cold, but once he swallowed, his mouth was still dry. He offered the bottle to Boyd.
