Fortune and Fate (Baum's Boxing Book 2)

by E M Lindsey

  “I’m on my way,” Ryan said, stumbling as he tried to shove his legs into his jeans. “Fuck, where am I?” he asked aloud, then remembered Rhys dragging Ryan through his front door. “I’m at my brother’s. Jesus, that’s twenty minutes away, and I don’t think I have my car. Stay on with me, okay? Just give me a sec to…” he trailed off as he fumbled his way into the living room to find Rhys there with a strange man, both wearing pajamas, the stranger looking vaguely familiar.

  Rhys’ eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need a ride. Something’s happened at Cole’s and I need to get there like right now,” he said. “Is my car here?”

  “No,” Rhys said. “I’ll drive you.”

  Ryan appreciated more than anything the way Rhys snapped into action without asking questions. He grabbed his shoes from the floor, ignoring the curious look of the stranger, and fumbled after his brother into the garage.

  “Are you still there?” Ryan asked Cole as Rhys backed out of the driveway.

  “I am. I…” Cole let out a shuddering breath.

  “Where are you right now? Is there anyone in your house?”

  “I’ve checked the security system. It was armed, and I’m not sure what to use to tell if it had been disarmed at all. It didn’t go off,” Cole said, his breathing a little ragged. “I don’t think anyone’s here, but I can’t be sure. I can’t see, I can’t…”

  “I’m on my way. Just…stay where you are. Where are you exactly?” Ryan pressed.

  “My office. All of my things are just…everywhere,” Cole said. “I can’t find anything. Everything was moved, it’s all…it’s all…”

  “Take a breath,” Ryan commanded. He reached over to tap Cole’s address into Rhys’ GPS display and felt visceral relief when the screen told him they were twelve minutes away. “Are you in a chair? I want you to sit down and don’t move. We need to get the cops there to look at everything.”

  “That’s not a good idea,” Cole said quietly.

  “Because of the thing you’re not telling me?” Ryan pressed.

  Cole’s silence answered the question for him.

  “Is there someone you can call?” Ryan asked, pretending for the moment like it didn’t gut him.

  “Yes. Yes, but…but what if this was me? What if I was sleep-walking or having a night terror and I did this? I don’t know how badly everything’s damaged and I can’t find Kevin and I…I don’t…”

  “I’m with my brother, and when we get there, we’ll find Kevin first, and then we’ll figure out what happened. Stay where you are, okay?” Ryan took a deep breath, willing his brother to drive just a little faster.

  They pulled up to the front of Cole’s, and nothing looked out of place. It was early morning, the sun low and hazy on the horizon, illuminating the manicured garden out front. The door was shut, the windows closed, curtains drawn. Ryan’s palms were sweating as he reached for the handle and jumped out before Rhys had come to a complete stop. He looked up and down the street for any sign of the damned dog. Cole thought maybe he’d done it, maybe he’d wrecked his place, but there was no way Kevin would willingly leave Cole’s side.

  Something was wrong.

  He turned the handle on the door, and it didn’t budge. “Cole?” he said, knowing he was there from the harsh, rhythmic breathing on the other end of the line. “Can you get to the door? It’s locked and I can’t get in.”

  “I,” Cole said, then cleared his throat. “I can’t find my cane, and there’s shit everywhere. I fell twice just getting into the office and I twisted my arm pretty badly.”

  “Okay,” Ryan said. “I can break a window or…”

  “Let me end the call and use the app to unlock the deadbolt,” Cole said, sounding a little stronger. “Twenty seconds.”

  The line went dead, and it was a lot longer than twenty seconds, but less than two minutes passed and Ryan could hear the whine of the deadbolt turning itself. He had his hand waiting on the handle, and the moment it was unlocked, he burst inside and came to a stuttered halt.

  Cole wasn’t wrong. The place was totally thrashed. The furniture had been moved, DVDs and books thrown all over the floor, the side tables overturned. He moved through the room, peering into the kitchen and found every cupboard emptied, food, condiments, pans, plates, cups—all flung around, everything breakable in shards.

  Ryan stepped over the side table which was blocking the path to the hallway and looked down, jolting when Rhys’ voice spoke behind him. “What the fuck happened here?”

  “Obviously we need to find out,” Ryan said, his tone clipped. He moved away from his brother, down the hall to Cole’s office which stood ajar. The place was just as trashed as everywhere else, the desk halfway across the room, computer in pieces on the floor. Cole was pressed against the wall, his left arm curled into his chest, his right hand clenched into a fist, and he whipped his head toward the door the moment Ryan entered.

  “Ryan?”

  “It’s me, I’m here.” Crossing the distance between them, Ryan grabbed Cole’s hand and pressed it to his cheek in hopes of grounding him. “You weren’t wrong, Cole. Everything is upended. I don’t know how this happened, how the hell you were able to sleep through it.”

  “I took,” Cole said, his voice a little choked. “I took something to help me sleep. It was a bad night. My head was hurting, and I was getting these flashes I used to get right after I lost my eyes and I just…I had to…I didn’t think there would be consequences.”

  Ryan squeezed Cole’s wrist, then turned his head and pressed a rough kiss to his palm. “You’re allowed to medicate when you need it, Cole. This isn’t a punishment for taking care of yourself.” He let out a ragged breath. “Someone took advantage. We need to get you out of here and we need to get someone in here to investigate. We can file a report—I know a couple guys at the station, and we can…”

  “No,” Cole said, quiet but firm. “No. I can’t.”

  Ryan’s chest went tight, and a bitter taste filled his mouth, but he didn’t argue. “Then call someone who can help. Rhys is here with me. You…make the call. I’ll be right outside.” He let Cole go, stepping out of the room and closing the door before he could hear a protest. Pressing his forehead to the wall, he took in a shuddering breath.

  “Someone did this. He really slept through it?” Rhys asked, his voice low enough, Cole wouldn’t be able to hear him through the closed door.

  Ryan lifted away from the wall and dragged a hand down his face. “He said he took a sleeping pill last night. There are cameras, so there’s gotta be a way we can figure out what the fuck is going on.”

  “Is he calling the cops?” Rhys pressed.

  Ryan swallowed thickly, then shook his head. “He’s calling someone. He won’t say who.”

  He went quiet when Rhys’ hand fell on his shoulder. “You can only do what he lets you.”

  Nodding, Ryan looked up at his brother, for once not seeing the too-perfect man who made him feel inferior, but a caring older brother who actually did love him. “Why don’t you take off. I don’t know how long this is going to take and whatever happens, I’m going to stick around to help.”

  “What if you can’t,” Rhys said, his tone pointing out that for all of Ryan’s resolve, he might not be allowed.

  Licking his lips, he shrugged and leaned his shoulder against the wall. “Then I’ll call an uber. Or I’ll call Adrian.”

  Rhys hesitated. “I don’t want to just leave you here, Ry.”

  “Please,” Ryan begged him. “I just…I have to work out whatever this is and trust me, I appreciate what you did for me. Last night and today. I owe you, but just…get home to uh…whoever it is you have waiting for you.”

  Rhys flushed and Ryan had a moment of shock because that was the face of a man who had a secret. But right then, his mind was too wrapped up in all of this to process it. “We can talk later?” Rhys asked, tone full of purpose.

  Ryan nodded, then
dragged his brother in for a hug before Rhys turned on his heel. “Wait,” he called out, and Rhys froze. “Can you drive around the neighborhood and look for his dog? He’s a huge, glossy black lab and will come if you call him. I’ll look around here, but I have a feeling he’s gone.”

  “Of course,” Rhys said. “I’ll give you a call in about twenty minutes, after I comb the neighborhood.”

  “Thanks,” Ryan breathed out.

  Rhys merely nodded, then turned and left. When he was alone, Ryan laid his head against the wall next to the door, knowing he shouldn’t be listening, but unable to help himself.

  “…not alone, no. No, he didn’t. As long as the cameras picked up on…alright. No, it’s best if I do it myself, otherwise I won’t be able to trust it done correctly.” There was a long, pointed silence. “No, he doesn’t, but it’s getting more difficult. None of them are… I don’t know what you’d have me say, sir.”

  Ryan backed away, not able to listen any further to the man he was falling in love with discuss all the ways he’d been lying. Because that was what it was. Ryan wasn’t an idiot, he’d been working with the system for far too long not to be able to spot deception.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, then went back into the living room to survey the damage, then to the kitchen. It was a mess, it looked like a hurricane had erupted in the home, but there wasn’t anything they couldn’t fix. His hands itched to start putting it back together, but he didn’t know what Cole might need to do—whether his people, whoever they were, would need to come take photos or process evidence—so he left it.

  “Ryan?”

  He spun on his heel and marched back down the hall at the sound of his voice and found Cole leaning against the doorjamb of the office. “I’m here.”

  Cole tapped his phone against his palm, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “They were able to get some photos from the camera feed, but whoever did this knew the code to the house and disconnected the cameras for twenty minutes.”

  Ryan blinked at him. “They did all this in twenty minutes?”

  “It appears that way,” Cole said, his voice trembling a little. “The security team is working on seeing if anything was caught from outside—a vehicle, person, anything. But they said we can—I can—start putting it back together.”

  “We,” Ryan said gruffly.

  Cole shook his head. “You know I’m keeping a lot from you, and you know by now this is directly related to that.”

  “I have a lot of suspicions,” Ryan confirmed. “And they’re not making me feel really good right now, but I’m not about to leave you here alone to deal with this. I like you. Shit, I like you more than I ever planned on liking you, Cole. We can talk about the rest of it later. Right now, we need to get your house back to where you can live in it.”

  Cole licked his lips. “Not sure it’ll matter. Someone knows where I am, has my code. Bloody hell, if Claire had been here…”

  Ryan reached for him, unable to stop himself. “She wasn’t though, which may mean that whatever they were after has nothing to do with her.”

  “And Kevin,” Cole said, his voice breaking at the end. “He would have come when I called if he were…”

  “I have Rhys looking for him,” Ryan told him, pressing his palm harder against Cole’s. “He’s combing the neighborhoods, and then we’ll put in a call to animal control and see if anyone picked him up. He’s a service dog. He’s not going to wander off on his own.”

  “What if someone took him?” Cole asked in a small, quiet tone Ryan was so unused to.

  Ryan reached his free hand up and cupped his cheek for a second. “We will find him. One thing at a time, okay?”

  “Okay.” Cole made a strangled noise, squeezing Ryan’s hand, using his other to rub at his eyelids. “Right now, I need to find out if they’ve taken anything.”

  “So, get working. From what I can see, they trashed your office, your living room, and your kitchen. I’m guessing the garage too. What about your bedroom?”

  “Nothing seemed out of place,” Cole said slowly, “but there could be things upended everywhere that I missed.”

  “Let’s start there,” Ryan said, then offered his arm and led the way.

  15.

  The first time Cole woke in the hospital, his body was a mess. He felt pain he couldn’t describe, and his brain was struggling to process the experience of his eyes no longer being there. He saw bright flashes of light, movement, which the doctors would later explain was a thing that often happened after losing one or both eyes. It was his brain trying to replace what wasn’t there. He didn’t entirely understand, but when it was explained to him, when he realized just how much his life had been changed, he spiraled. Never before had he felt so, entirely helpless and terrified.

  That morning nearly rivaled waking up in the hospital, burnt and blind. He recalled the moment right before he lost consciousness—the pain and stress ebbing away and sleep claiming him. He woke up ready to face another day and enlist Wes’ help in trying to determine whether or not he was finding threat where there was none. He was ready to get back to his life.

  And then he’d fallen, and his hands had determined that something was wrong. Someone had been in his home, had disordered everything, had made him truly blind in the one place he’d finally felt safe and free to exist as himself. When he’d called Kevin and there was no response, Cole knew that his safety had been compromised.

  The people looking for survivors, the people trying to clean up the mess after the attack, had gotten there. Why they hadn’t just offed him in his bed while he slept made no sense, and why they’d thrash his home didn’t either, but there was no mistaking this for anything other than what it was. They had found him.

  And it also meant Ryan was in danger. It also meant everyone he knew there, everyone he’d grown to care about, could be hurt. The thought threatened to choke him, but he was drawn out of the spiral by the gentle squeeze of Ryan’s hand.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  Cole shook his head. “No. Sorry, I was thinking.”

  “It’s okay,” Ryan said, far kinder and gentler than Cole deserved. “Someone definitely went through your things. All your desk drawers are open, and your laptop is here but it’s been ripped to pieces.”

  Cole swallowed thickly, then removed his hand from Ryan’s arm and felt his way to the desk. His fingers confirmed Ryan’s words—the computer had been dismantled and left in bits on the desktop. His hand touched each of the drawers, the scattered papers that were useless to him now, but he’d been holding on to for his superiors. He couldn’t tell Ryan what they were, so he had no way of verifying if anything which had been deemed important was now missing.

  He would have to take this all to Taber. The man hadn’t answered his call, and his direct superior had seemed unfazed by the entire description of what had happened. Then again, General March was in London and had never seemed to care much about what Cole did so long as he filed his reports on time and made sufficient progress with his rehabilitation.

  “I’ll deal with this later,” Cole said eventually. He turned from the desk and started to take the well-measured steps to the closet when Ryan’s sharp call of his name stopped him.

  “Shoe boxes,” Ryan said in the stunned silence. “About a foot in front of you. There’s like five of them. They’re all sitting there with their lids open.”

  Cole dropped to his knees, shuffled forward, and touched them. The shoe boxes had been photographs he’d kept, though he’d never be able to look at them again. They were everything Isabel had sent him over the years, and everything he’d taken with his mates on leave. His fingers told them they were all there. Or at the very least, mostly there. He curled his hands into a fist and breathed out raggedly, frustrated by his inability to do this.

  “Cole,” Ryan said very softly.

  He shook his head. “It’s not,” his words cut off, unable to speak for the rage he was feeling at his situation. “I don’t
know how to explain how impotent I feel right now. And you…you can’t help me.”

  “I’m trying,” Ryan said, frustration showing in his tone. “I’m trying to help you, trying to understand. And I get you can’t tell me everything…”

  “I can’t tell you anything,” Cole blurted, his hands pounding onto the tops of his thighs. He turned his head and felt a vicious ache that he couldn’t just open his eyes and look at this man. “You can’t possibly know how this is for me.”

  “You’re right,” Ryan said a little coldly. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to stand here with you.”

  Cole swallowed thickly, then shook his head. “It’s better if you don’t.”

  “What?” Ryan asked. His tone was completely flat, and Cole heard a distinct sound of him taking a step backward.

  “You should go. There’s nothing I can tell you, and I need someone else who will know if anything was taken. You can’t help me.”

  He heard a soft, pained noise that made him hate himself with everything he was, but before he could take it back, before he could break his oath and just confess the way he wanted to, the way he had with Wes, Ryan’s phone began to ring. Ryan made a frustrated noise, then picked up the call.

  “Yeah? Oh. Shit, okay. Just…yeah that’s fine. He’s here. Thanks.”

  Cole’s brows furrowed. “Who…”

  “My brother found Kevin,” Ryan interrupted in that same, flat tone.

  The relief was so intense, it overwhelmed the momentary pain of being forced to reject Ryan, and he bowed his head, feeling the back of his throat burn with tears he could no longer shed. “Thank you,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  “He’s on his way right now, and then we can get back to work on the—”

  Cole lifted his head, feeling more burning hatred for the words he had to say. “No. I…it’s better if you go with him. I can’t do this with you, Ryan.”

  Ryan made a frustrated noise, then Cole heard him walk toward the door. “This isn’t what you want, Cole. I know that. I can see it on your goddamn face.”