His mother was a saint.
“I missed you, Mom,” Patrick said as he followed her into the kitchen.
She started pulling out glasses. “You want some tea, baby?”
“Sure,” he answered. “Things okay?”
“Sure,” she answered flatly.
“You need some money?” he asked quietly. “I thought I’d move some over while I’m here.”
“Oh, baby, that’d be great. Your dad sent a check for Trevor’s birthday too. I couldn’t believe it.”
“Where is he now?”
“Utah.” She got the pitcher out and poured two glasses of sweet tea. “Hill Air Force Base.”
“Utah, huh?” Patrick hadn’t spoken to his father in fourteen years, since the day he left. He’d walked out without looking back at the family that needed him, the family that was falling apart trying to care for Trevor. He had no interest in getting in touch with the bastard.
“Yep, he’s some big wig out there.” She moved to sit at the kitchen table and look out the window.
“Why don’t you go take a nap or whatever you need to do?” Patrick suggested. “I’ve got him. I’ll be here for a few days and hopefully that’ll give you and KK a break.”
She smiled weakly at Patrick. “Thanks, baby boy.” She rose from the table. “We’ll catch up later, okay? I’ll just take a quick nap.” She ran a hand over his shoulder and disappeared into the back bedroom.
Patrick took his tea into the den where Trevor sat, playing video games. “Let’s go to the park, man, throw the ball around.”
“Let me finish this game, ‘kay?”
“Okay, bud.” Patrick sat down and watched the video game and thought about his brother, the one that died on the ground that night, the one that taught him everything he knew about ball, girls, and fighting. He owed Trevor. He wished he knew how to help; he just didn’t. He didn’t know how to treat him.
Fucking impossible situation.
Katrina smiled down at him as he lay splayed on his childhood bed in a room that hadn’t changed a bit. Posters of Chipper and Andruw Jones, along with his favorite catcher of all time, Mike Piazza, were still on his wall and pictures were still stuck in the bookcase his dad had put together right before he left. He covered his eyes by draping his arm over his head.
“You ready to get up?” Katrina asked.
“Well, you haven’t really given me an option about that, have you?”
“Well, my best friend from the hospital wants to meet for lunch and I know you want to get a run in, so I’m waking you up.”
“What does you going to lunch with a friend have to do with me?” Patrick peeked above his arm at her, noticing that she was dressed in a sundress and flip flops already.
“It’s already ten. I mean, do you sleep this late in DC?”
“I never sleep this late,” he answered, sitting up.
“Okay, so you’re going with me to lunch with my friend.”
Now he was paying attention. He didn’t want to eat lunch with her friend.
“So, her boyfriend is about to graduate from college and wants to come back to Savannah to be a cop. I told her you could talk to him about law enforcement and stuff.”
“Why are you best friends with a 21 year old?”
“She’s 23, he’s 21.”
He laughed. “Cougar.”
“Whatever. You should see this guy, he’s the hottest fucker…”
“Um, how did I get roped into this?”
“We’re going to this new brewery downtown, Southbound. A friend of Tim’s is the brewmaster.”
“The brewmaster?”
“I don’t know…the master of brew?”
Patrick laughed. “You’re too much. Whatever,” he conceded, pulling a t-shirt on and grabbing his phone.
“So you’re cool with going?”
“Its fine, KK. I’m going to run for a bit, shower, and then I’ll be ready.”
A few hours later, he and Katrina were sitting in a brewery with one very assertive nurse and her boyfriend, Tim. Stephanie, her sister’s friend, had her long brown hair pulled back in a severe ponytail and was snacking on pretzels. He didn’t know where pretzels qualified as lunch, but he wasn’t impressed. They were all lined up at the bar, the girls in the middle, tasting several beers brewed on site.
“Patrick, could you please tell Tim about law enforcement and any experience you have with the Savannah Police Department?” Stephanie said with an air of disapproval.
Tim was baby-faced and his brown hair was long and shaggy in what was called the “Georgia Boy” haircut, which was really no hair cut at all.
At the mention of Savannah police department, Patrick frowned. He had no respect for the police department; they’d never found the guy that shot his brother. He inhaled to rid himself of the memory of the blue lights at his house when he’d gotten home from baseball practice.
“I don’t know anything about the Savannah PD,” he said calmly, “but I can talk about law enforcement in general.”
Tim grinned. “Anything you can share would be helpful. Come down here, Patrick, I want you to try this beer.”
Patrick obliged his request and walked to the empty beer stool next to Tim. The two women began their own conversation.
Tim pushed a pint of draft beer over to Patrick. “You will not believe this beer. It’s called Smoke and it actually tastes like barbeque.”
“Really?” Patrick asked in disbelief. He took a sip. “Wow, that’s…”
“Crazy, right?” Tim took another swig of his beer and looked at his girlfriend. “Look, Stephanie is freaked out because I’ve decided to go into law enforcement. I guess because of what she sees at the hospital. Tell me about your experience.”
His experience. Well, he was totally disillusioned and he didn’t believe in his agency, hadn’t in a while, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t what this kid was asking.
“I mean, I know that the ATF is way different than the police, but anything from your experience would help.”
“Well,” Patrick started, “no one gets into law enforcement for the pay. You do it because you want to be a part of something that makes our world safer…better. That’s the same.”
Tim nodded and sipped his beer.
“The thing is, it’s not really what you think or want it to be. Men in law enforcement have big egos and even bigger dicks, at least that’s what they want you to think. I’m not sure about the police around here, but from my experience, you have to really want to go into law enforcement to make it. It’ll beat you down and the stuff you’ll see on a daily basis will change you into a person you don’t recognize. You’ll witness things you’ve never even dreamed…”
Tim’s eyes widened at Patrick’s admission and both took another sip of their beer.
“I think, though,” Patrick continued seriously, “if you can hold on to that one person you helped, saved, or found, it’d be worth it. What you’ll be doing for the first several years of your career will be working to make it to where you can be in a position to save people. You know, menial crap like writing speeding tickets and parking tickets, nothing that you really want to do. Just so you know that going into it.”
Tim nodded and thanked him before he was pulled into conversation with Katrina and Stephanie.
In the room full of people, Patrick felt lonely and barren. His life was getting away from him and he knew he was just going through the motions. Patrick gazed into the draft beer that looked normal, but tasted like actual barbeque. It was deceptive, just like him.
He was a liar. He was disillusioned. He was empty.
Trevor played a card and started yelling. “Oh YEAH, bitch! That’s right, son. I made you my bitch!”
Patrick flinched at the cuss words, but smiled at the fact that he’d been schooled by his brother. “Dude, language.” Patrick laughed.
“What?” Trevor asked. “You cuss.”
“Does Mom let you cuss?”
Trevo
r shrugged.
“Fuck it, whatever.” Patrick was tired. Trevor was a handful and couldn’t be left by himself for any time without messing something up or getting on the internet. Patrick had seen more porn this weekend than he had in the last ten years of his life. He was ready to go home, his home with his things and his problems.
“Yeah, fuck it.”
Patrick moaned. “Trev, you need to give Mom a break, you know.”
“I try, but it’s like everything I do is wrong,” Trevor said, shuffling the cards again. “You want another game?”
“No, I think you beating me twice in spades is about all I can take.” Patrick laughed and looked at his phone to check the time. His phone dinged with a message.
When will you be back tomorrow?
It was from Millie. He messaged back.
Around 5
“Hey, Trev, how about spaghetti and salad for dinner?”
“I don’t want fucking salad,” Trevor answered.
Patrick’s eyes snapped up to meet Trevor’s. “Enough with the cussing.” Patrick guessed he shouldn’t have allowed any cussing; good thing he didn’t want to be a parent, since he was pretty sure he sucked at the whole role model thing.
He was watching Trevor while his mother was enjoying the spa appointment he’d gotten her. She cried when he’d given her the certificate, which made him grief-stricken and desolate, all the emotions he sought to avoid. He’d shut all emotion off the day he’d learned his brother would never get better. He’d been pretty successful at avoiding emotion until El moved into his house and wrecked through his entire pristine existence. She’d made him feel things he didn’t want to admit to anyone.
His mother had cried every day for a year after Trevor was shot. Having a child like this, suspended in childhood, was more difficult than death. With death, you mourned for a while, but had closure. With his brother this way, it was like his mother mourned every fucking day. He didn’t know how she managed.
Chapter Four
GRIZZLY BEAR
About a month later, Patrick held Millie’s hand with his right hand and pulled his suitcase with the other. They’d just landed at Phoenix airport and he was going to meet her parents. Millie was uncharacteristically quiet since they got on the plane.
“Millie, you okay?”
“Huh?” Millie looked at him with a confused glance.
“You’ve been quiet. You nervous about something?” Patrick grinned.
He knew this trip made her nervous; she didn’t know how her dad would react to her bringing a man home. Patrick was a little older than her and he was half black. She hadn’t told him that was an issue, but she hadn’t told him it wasn’t and she was acting weirder than usual.
“Me?” She smiled weakly. “No.”
“Babe, it’s okay to be nervous about your parents meeting me.” Patrick raised their hands to his mouth and kissed her hand. “Parents love me. I’m very charming.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her.
“You won’t charm my daddy. You’ll touch me and he’ll growl at you,” she said anxiously.
“He’ll be eating out of the palm of my hand by Sunday,” Patrick boasted, not really believing his own words.
They stepped outside in the blistering heat. Patrick stopped and pulled his sunglasses out of his bag.
“Oh, shit,” Millie said to herself, looking in the direction of a Cadillac SUV.
Patrick followed Millie’s gaze and saw a woman in a very tight dress get out of the car and wobble on high heels to the back of the vehicle. Her bleached blonde hair was down her back, her boobs purchased, and her face unmoving, showing no emotion.
“No the fuck he didn’t send her to come get me,” Millie seethed.
Patrick stopped Millie in her tracks and pulled her to him. “Who is that?”
“My stepmother.” She looked over her shoulder at the woman who married her father a few years ago and was only five years older than she was.
He laughed. “She can hardly walk.”
“That’s her sexy wobble.”
Patrick laughed again as they walked slowly to the vehicle, hoping he got it all out of his system before this Barbie spoke. “There is no such thing as a ‘sexy wobble.’”
“This is why I love you,” Millie said as she waved at her stepmother.
“Camille, why are you so late? I’ve been waiting forever,” Stepmother said, looking directly at Patrick, who shifted uncomfortably. “And who is this?”
“Well, I didn’t fly the plane myself, Michelle.”
Stepmother looked Patrick up and down and turned around, walking to the driver’s side of the car.
“Well, that was pleasant,” he whispered. “I think meeting your father is going to be very interesting. Do we meet your mother this weekend too?”
“Oh yes, we’re actually staying with her, but doing dinner with Dad and Michelle tonight. We’ll get one of them to drop us off at my mom’s house later. She couldn’t get off doing rounds today.”
“Okay.” He put both of their suitcases in the back and shut the back of the SUV. “You sitting next to your sister-mother?”
“I think it’s best if you ride shotgun. Tonight will be painful,” she said through gritted teeth.
Maybe she wasn’t concerned about his race; maybe it was her stepmother she was worried about. It was easy for him to forget about his bi-racial background, even though it wasn’t that easy being raised in the south. It was always in the background and would rear its ugly head every now and then, reminding him he was different. He would always be different. When Patrick grew up there weren’t that many mixed kids. He gravitated toward having mostly white friends; he’d played ball with them and he wasn’t quite accepted by the black guys in his class. Girls never had a hard time with it—all races seemed attracted to him, which was convenient. Trevor had been popular with the ladies as well, too. His sister had a harder time fitting in with a particular group. She was a cheerleader in high school and that helped tremendously with people accepting her.
He eased himself in the front passenger seat and smiled at Millie’s stepmother.
“I’m Michelle,” she greeted, pulling out into traffic.
“Patrick,” he answered.
“So how long have you been dating our Camille?”
Millie made a strangled noise in the backseat.
“About a year and half,” he answered.
“And I’ve never met you! Camille! I can’t believe you.” She laughed a fake laugh, running her right hand through her hair, her long red nails making his skin crawl.
She was the sort of woman who repulsed him. He wasn’t attracted to all the fake things—purchased boobs, hair extensions, fake long nails and no real personality in the purchased facade. He liked real hair that he could run his fingers through and tug on during sex. Patrick liked the way real tits spread to the side when he was on top of a woman. He liked clean, clear nails. He felt like the woman who had all of the fakeness just purchased those things to cover up what they lacked in intelligence or personality. No, he’d take a real tit over a fake one any day.
Michelle, Patrick, and Millie met her father at Donovan’s Steak House for dinner. Santiago Rodriguez was as tall as Patrick and three times his width, with black hair that was slicked back and hard brown eyes. His skin was as dark as Patrick’s.
“Nice to finally meet you, Mr. Rodriguez,” Patrick said, pulling out Millie’s chair and squeezing her shoulders as she sat. He reached out to shake Millie’s father’s hand; Patrick had the perfect handshake, not too hard, but firm enough to be manly. He moved to his seat and straightened the blazer he’d put on to go to dinner.
“So Patrick, I’ve heard so much about you. You work for the ATF?” Millie’s father asked above the rim of his margarita.
“Yes, sir.”
“Really, that’s so interesting. So you shoot criminals?” Stepmother chimed in, running her hands through her hair.
“We try not to be in situations where we
have to shoot anyone,” he answered, putting his hand on Millie’s thigh under the table. He played with the hem of her short dress as he answered more questions about his work and life.
Once dinner came, the questions shifted to Millie and her job. She’d been working for the Department of Education for around a year and she loved it. It showed in her face as it lit up as she talked about all the senators she met and worked with; her hands flew around in excitement talking about a particular bill. Patrick let his mind wander as he ate his steak and potato. He’d spoken to El briefly this week about what went down in the Keys. She was still shutting him out and it was frustrating.
After digging into Jamie, he was able to determine that the douchebag’s cover wasn’t blown, but after the explosion, he’d taken over $200,000 from the family and skipped town. The agency and the family he was working with were both looking for him; the ATF had teams looking for him in the southeast to no avail. Kevin, his supervisor, told Patrick that Burns, Jamie’s boss, was in trouble, but it was hard to find agents that were willing to go undercover so it might be a slap on the wrist for both him and Jamie when they found him. They would find him, though; they couldn’t let him get away from the operation. The ATF had years invested and would pull out all the stops to get convictions; they needed Jack Ryder, Jamie’s alias, for that.
He felt a kick under the table. He looked up into the expectant faces of all three dining partners. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Daddy was asking when you thought you’d be getting your own house.” Millie looked at him inquisitively.
He shoved a piece of potato in his mouth. Millie had been hinting at them getting a place together for a few weeks. “I hadn’t really thought about it. DC is so expensive; it makes more sense to live with a group until you can afford it. You’d think since we’re catching the bad guys we’d be paid more, but we aren’t.” Not to mention the fact that he was sending money to his family every month as well.
Heart in Wire Page 4
