Every Other Weekend

by TA Moore

  “It’s all right, Mom,” Kelly said. “Clayton’s a lawyer. He’s just here to see if Byron has a case.”

  Kathleen put her hands on her hips and gave Clayton a once-over. “He doesn’t look like a lawyer.”

  “You son works for me,” Clayton said. There was nothing overtly chilly in his voice, but there was nothing warm either. Room-temperature detachment. “I agreed to do this as a favor, so if you object to my appearance, I’ll do as the ER nurse suggested—go home and get over the mugging.”

  Before Kathleen could say anything, Jim put his hand on her shoulder.

  “You work for ADA Baker? Former, that is,” he asked. When Clayton nodded, Jim looked approving. “He was a good lawyer and a better man. Always thought what happened was shit. Let them be, Kath. Byron will probably be glad for a visit that’s not you fussing over him. He’s in the guest room.”

  He turned and nudged Kathleen back into the kitchen. Kelly raised his eyebrows briefly. It wasn’t a surprise that Jim knew Baker—that was one reason Kelly had landed the firm’s investigative contract—but he’d never seen his dad endorse anyone that wholeheartedly, especially not a lawyer.

  Clayton nudged him. “Guest room?”

  Kelly hesitated.

  “Second thoughts?” Clayton asked. He reached up and tugged at the knot in the sling where it rubbed against his throat. “Bit late.”

  “I thought Baker wanted us to hold off until the investigation was over,” Kelly said quietly. He cast a cautious look toward the kitchen in case anyone overheard them. “That was just yesterday.”

  A muscle clenched in Clayton’s jaw, hard enough to make Kelly’s ache in sympathy.

  “I’m not Baker’s lawyer, I’m Nadine’s,” Clayton said. “My job is to represent her best interests, to get her away from your brother, not clean house for the LAPD. Guest room?”

  In the end Kelly supposed that if his loyalty lay anywhere right then, it was with Clayton. He pointed down the hall.

  “Just… don’t let him get to you,” he said. “Byron’s good at pushing buttons.”

  A smile appeared briefly on Clayton’s face, and then it was gone again. “I’m good at not being pushed.”

  Kelly wondered if he looked as dubious as he felt. He just shrugged in the end and waved his hand for Clayton to precede him.

  The hinge in the door creaked as it opened. Byron looked up as they stepped into the room, and he grinned a sharp, white-toothed smile.

  “So, I guess you’re Nadine’s lawyer,” Byron said as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. His leg was propped up precariously on a pile of pillows, the halo-cast sharp and painful-looking where it drilled down into his skin. “You know, you got my little brother beat to hell?”

  “Fuck you, Byron.” Kelly closed the door behind him.

  Clayton didn’t say anything. He circled the bed, adjusted the angle of the fiddleback kitchen chair, and sat down. Byron’s smile tightened at the corners. There was something ugly under the sharp charm.

  “What? Nothing to say?” he asked. “Or you just wear yourself out sucking cock?”

  “I thought you were good at pushing buttons,” Clayton said as he pulled his phone clumsily out of his pocket. He swiped and tapped at the screen one-handed. “Saying a gay man gives enthusiastic head is more of a compliment.”

  “It’s like anything else,” Byron said pleasantly. “You have to season to taste, calibrate to the individual. I need your baseline before I can really get to work.”

  “Shut up,” Kelly told him.

  “Fuck off. The big boys are talking.”

  It was a stupid thing to be the last straw—after everything that Byron had done the last few days and all these years—but the jibe slid under Kelly’s guard. He grabbed a handful of Byron’s T-shirt, crumpled the police academy logo in his fist, and yanked him off the pillows. The weight of him pulled at Kelly’s shoulder. Heavy and loose with surprise, Byron smelled of iodine, sweat, and blood. A heavy hospital stink sweated out of him.

  “Shut up and listen to him,” Kelly told him flatly. “Or I’ll—”

  “What? Punch me?” Byron jibed back. He grabbed a handful of Kelly’s hair and wrenched back on it. Kelly clenched his jaw and ignored the sharp pain in his scalp as he refused to move his head. “How long have you wanted to do that? Only took you until I’d already been run down by a car to work up the balls for it.”

  Kelly had just enough presence of mind to be worried about what he might do, but not enough to make himself let go of Byron. He was just… sick to his stomach of all of it. Not just Nadine—the loans, the lies, the late-night calls to bail him out of whatever Byron had fucked up now.

  It must have shown on his face. Alarm flickered through Byron’s eyes, and he flipped his mood the way some people would flip a coin. He rearranged his sneer into an expression that made a stab at both regretful and injured.

  “I didn’t know you were the PI sniffing around,” he said. “If I had I’d have called Lepson off. We’re brothers. We stick together.”

  Next to the bed, Clayton shifted in the chair. “Punching him won’t help Nadine. And it’s not your style.”

  “See, listen to your boyfriend,” Byron coaxed. “He’s right. This won’t help anyone.”

  Kelly grinned. It felt like the same hard mockery of a smile that Byron had greeted them with.

  “It’ll make me feel better,” he said. It was how true that was that finally convinced him to let go of Byron’s T-shirt. He shoved his brother back into the cushions with a disgusted grunt. “Fine. Talk to Clayton, you asshole.”

  He stalked over to the wide window and stared at the street outside, his hands shoved into his pockets to keep them out of trouble.

  “You know I’m your wife’s lawyer,” Clayton said.

  “Well, Jimmy’s wife’s lawyer.” Byron shifted in the bed, and the old mattress groaned under his weight. “I’m not sure where we’d stand legally.”

  “Well, if I took it to court, I’d argue it was rape,” Clayton said. “There’s enough precedent that I could make a strong case.”

  Silence, and then Byron gave a dry, unamused chuckle. “She’s never complained.”

  “Shut up,” Clayton said. “IA knows what you’ve done. They can make that case against you. I just want to get Nadine home safe. Someone took her from the safe house where she was staying. They’ve threatened her. They’ve threatened your son’s life. Where is she?”

  Kelly turned sharply to stare at the back of Clayton’s head. He had known they were going off Baker’s script when they came in, but not that Clayton planned to put a spoke in Internal Affair’s wheel.

  “Well, I don’t have her,” Byron said. “You can look under the bed if you want.”

  “Jesus Christ, Byron,” Kelly blurted out. “She’s your wife. The mother of your kid. Don’t you care about them at all?”

  Byron mugged a thoughtful face. “They left me, remember.”

  “You broke her arm,” Clayton said. “Locked her in a closet.”

  “She fell over. I never touched her,” Byron spat defensively. “The closet was for her own good. If the kid hadn’t gone and let her out, I’d have sorted all this out by now. If she told you I hit her, the bitch is lying.”

  Clayton leaned forward. “You owe someone a lot of money, Detective Kelly,” he said. “That’s what they want. So you know whose money you’ve taken.”

  Byron stayed silent and glowered sullenly at Clayton. He fiddled with the sheet over his lap as he rolled the edge between finger and thumb and then smoothed it out again.

  “That’s the money you wanted from Cole?” Kelly asked. “You wanted to pay them off, get Nadine back?”

  Those were Kathleen’s words in Kelly’s mouth. He recognized them the minute he spat them out—the ready-made excuse that cast Byron in the best light. It left a bad taste in his mouth. But it wasn’t a good enough excuse for Byron, because he stayed mum.

  Kelly listened with half an e
ar as Clayton tried, with clipped logic and a pro forma appeal to his better nature, to convince Byron to tell them what he knew. Even a few minutes in, Clayton could tell that wasn’t the most profitable avenue to pursue. Neither was logic.

  “No harm to Nadine. She’s a sweet girl,” Byron said. “Not really sure it’s in my interest to find her right now.”

  Kelly rubbed his eye and pressed the heel of his hand down hard against the cool round of glass under his eyelid. It was weird, but he could still “see” the smeared blur of phosphenes sometimes. The doctors said it was similar to phantom limbs, his visual cortex’s best effort at a translation of a misfired nerve.

  “Either you help us find Nadine,” he said, his voice rough as he cut through Clayton’s, “or I’ll tell, Byron.”

  “You already told, you idiot,” Byron said with contempt. “You can’t use it as a threat when your boy toy here has already run crying to IA. Catch up.”

  “Not IA.”

  “Who, then? Mom?” Byron shrugged that idea off and laid his head back on the pillows. “She’d be pissed, but she’ll come around. She always does. I mean, she’ll have a new grandkid. That always cheers her up.”

  “No,” Kelly said. “I’ll tell Dad.”

  Byron had the gall to look affronted. Clayton looked… exasperated, as though Kelly were being childish. But he didn’t get it—this was family.

  They never told Jim. It had practically been Kathleen’s catchphrase. Jim would just get into a fight with the neighbor whose window was broken, and he didn’t need to know that Worth had dented Kathleen’s car because they’d fixed it already, and as for Byron getting caught peeping on a neighbor’s daughter? He’d just be embarrassed.

  Don’t tell your Dad. No need to upset him.

  “What makes you think he doesn’t know?” Byron blustered. “Me and Dad, we’re both cops. We get what needs to be done.”

  “He knows about Jimmy,” Kelly admitted. “Maybe he knows about Nadine. I bet he doesn’t know about Harry. Dad loves the kids. He wouldn’t have ignored that.”

  It felt true, but Byron’s glare confirmed it.

  “You’ll kill him,” Byron said. “He’s still recovering. You get him involved in this….”

  Kelly walked over to the bed, leaned down, and braced one arm against the headboard. “Not just about this,” he said. “About everything. I’ll tell him about all the times Cole has bailed you out over the years, that drunk-driving case that just went away, and that you tried to sell your son.”

  “That was to family,” Byron said. “Hardly counts.”

  It did. There was no point in trying to explain that to Byron, though. Kelly reached up and flicked his eye with his finger. It made a satisfying, brittle ping.

  “I’ll tell him what really happened to my eye that day,” Kelly said. “That you took the sucker off the arrow, that you sharpened it with the knife you’d stolen from the kitchen, and that you told me to run.”

  He’d always thought it would feel good to finally say it out loud, to get the truth out from where he’d stuck it behind Kathleen’s injunction of “you don’t remember.” It would be cathartic. Instead, his throat just hurt, and he felt that same sick pop of fear he’d felt when Byron had said, “Run.” Byron wasn’t that much older than Kelly, but there’d been something eager in his voice that felt older.

  The unshaven line of Byron’s throat moved as he swallowed and looked away from Kelly. He licked his lips.

  “Jesus,” he groused. “You going to dredge up all our ancient history?”

  Kelly pushed himself back from the bed. “Yeah,” he said. “Every single shitty thing you’ve ever done, for everyone I meet. My eye, that poor fucking French girl you abandoned in Mexico that time and Worth had to drive down and get her. Until nobody in the family—not even Cole, not even Dad—will give you the time of day. They’ll never bail you out again. Or you can help us and play the martyr for Mom when IA comes calling. Tell her I snitched on you again.”

  On the bed Byron thought about it. He rolled the edge of the sheet back and forth in his fingers. The starched white was already grubby from handling. When Kelly turned around, Clayton had an odd expression on his face.

  Probably the expression someone wore when they’d dodged the dysfunctional family bullet. Aggie would sympathize. She’d missed her chance.

  “I do this,” Byron finally said, “then we’re square, right?”

  Kelly missed the anger. At some point during his conversation with Byron, it had just drained out of him. All that was left was a sort of aching weariness, like the emotional equivalent of that moment in the ring when, flat on your back on the canvas, you just couldn’t see the point in getting up.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Why not. You help us find Nadine, and we’re square.”

  That made Byron grin, and his cheerful, easy gleam of charm made you wonder if this time he’d actually gotten rid of his demons.

  “Cool,” he said. “Because you aren’t going to like this.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I THOUGHT you might be thirsty. You’ve been in here talking for so long.”

  Mrs. Kelly—“Call me Kathleen”—handed out cold glasses of lemonade with added bright-eyed, saucy-old-lady charm. Clayton recognized it. His mom used to greet social workers with the same glassy cheer when the stink of freshly applied bleach wasn’t enough to hide the wear on the seats and holes in the walls.

  Nothing to see here, just a normal, loving family.

  Clayton drank the lemonade and smiled an unreadable social-worker’s smile back at her.

  “Hey, maybe this one will stick around,” Byron cracked. He winked at Clayton. “Mr. Reynolds here could be my brother-in-law. Gotta make sure he’s up to it.”

  “Stop teasing your brother,” Kathleen chided him as she tugged the sheet straight on the bed. “He doesn’t get the joke.”

  “That’s because it’s not funny,” Kelly said.

  “You have to learn to laugh at yourself.” Kathleen ruffled Kelly’s hair with an affectionate hand on the way past. The sharp urge to push her hand away caught Clayton by surprise, and he tightened his fingers on the frosted glass. It didn’t seem to bother Kelly, who just brushed his hair back when she was done, but the casual affection didn’t sit right with Clayton.

  I don’t really remember. That was the sort of lie a parent taught you.

  “We’re nearly done, Mrs. Kelly,” Clayton said. “If we could just have a few more minutes.”

  She glanced at Byron and raised her eyebrows in a mute question. He nodded impatiently and waved her out of the room.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “I’ll go. And call me Kathleen, Clayton. If you want some ice for that poor hand of yours, just let me know.”

  She tucked the tray under her arm and let herself out.

  “She still hasn’t asked about my eye,” Kelly muttered as he leaned back to set his lemonade on the windowsill.

  “Oh, I told her you’d been fucking some guy and his wife decked you,” Byron said. He took a drink of lemonade and wiped his mouth on his arm. “Figured you wouldn’t want to worry her.”

  “Great,” Kelly said dryly. “Thanks.”

  Byron shrugged and turned back to Clayton. “So, what you want to know?”

  “Who have you pissed off enough that they’d kidnap your wife and threaten your child.”

  “Might need to narrow that down,” Byron said. “I’ve fucked over a lot of people who trusted me. Some of them were real assholes too. Any of the guys I sent down as Jimmy, if they found out I’m really a cop, they aren’t going to give me a ‘good job’ trophy.”

  “Who currently wants to kill you?”

  Byron rubbed his jaw. His fingers rasped through the stubble. It had gone gray quicker than his hair and was almost silver already.

  “That’s the thing. Nobody,” he said. “Jimmy is doing okay. He’s impressed the right people, got his foot in the door of the drug ring we’re after, and I’ve bee
n playing it safe. No reason for anyone to suspect anything. I mean, my neighbors wouldn’t piss on me if I were on fire, but none of them have the guts to actually start the fire.”

  “I bet Mrs. Sirkasian would,” Kelly said.

  Byron chuckled. “That old bag,” he said, almost fondly. “She would too. Got a set of brass ones on her, but she liked Nadine. Was fond of the kid.”

  “Harry,” Clayton said.

  “Yeah, him.”

  “Nadine said you knew the men that came to the house that night,” Clayton said. “That you owed them money.”

  “Then she either lied or she got it wrong,” Byron said. “I don’t know what happened that night. We had a fight. I called her a stupid cow, and then she started crying like it was news to her. The kid was yelling ‘Don’t you talk to my mom that way,’ and it was starting to do my head in. So I fucked off and left them to it. When I got back, she’s a bloody mess on the couch, and the kid won’t say anything. She tried to call the police, but that’s not exactly workable in my line of work, you know. So I got the phone off her and went to call Lepson. When I got back, she’d run off to you. Never told me she knew the guys who did it. Doesn’t make sense. I owe money. Jimmy doesn’t.”

  “You tried to get Cole to mortgage his house,” Kelly pointed out. “You offered to sell Aggie your son for a couple of grand. Why’d you need the money?”

  “Because my ex drove her car into a wall and then didn’t die until she got to the hospital,” Byron said. He shifted on the bed, grimaced, and rubbed his knuckles into the meat of his thigh. Clayton wasn’t about to waste any sympathy on him, but a glance down at the raw, bruised pulp of Byron’s lower leg made him glad it wasn’t his. The torn tendons in his hand hurt enough. “I had to pay some bills, settle her debts, put Mom up in a hotel, and all the baby crap with Max. I needed quick cash to pay off some bills and, well, I’m not good with money.”

  Kelly sighed. “But Jimmy is, with help from the LAPD.”

  Byron made a gun with his finger and pointed it at Kelly.