Confession time. Tell us all about it, Ricky. You’ve been wanting to get this off your chest for a long time now.
“God, no. It should have been. Me making deliveries, that is. But I was out goofing off with my friends and I was late. I—” He broke off, clenching his fists before letting his hands drop to his sides. “I just forgot the time. Do you know what I’d give to go back and change things?”
“You mean, beyond the sacrifice you’ve made of your entire life?”
Jerry’s words seemed to have uncorked something in Rick. His chest began to heave, his shoulders twitching as his face crumpled. Tears coursed down his cheeks as raw sobs clawed their way out of him. He stood behind the bar, shaking his head and crying.
Jerry could feel the tension slowly abate in Flynn. He was angry, yes. Jerry knew his fury was directed at both Rick and himself in almost equal measures. He looked mad enough to start randomly biting chunks out of the furniture, like a shark unexpectedly deprived of its prey. But the anger was contained, under control, tempered by a growing sense that he was missing something.
Standing down from DEFCON 1. Had Flynn still been able to hear him, Jerry would have used that bad joke to help defuse the situation. As it was, he had no one to share it with. He glanced at Flynn with a small nod before going around the back of the bar. Rick stood without protest, tears tracking down his face, as Jerry reached under the counter and removed the gun. It was a Smith & Wesson thirty-eight caliber revolver, for crying out loud. Rick had probably inherited the gun with the bar. He pocketed the bullets and placed the gun on the counter beside the bottle of bourbon.
Goddamned sonofabitch. Bad enough when you were alive, but you just can’t leave us alone, can you, Dad?
Jerry kept his voice calm. “When did you find out it was your father who killed Rachel?”
Mick? The blank shock coming from Flynn was painful, but there was nothing Jerry could do about it now. The moment of disbelief was followed by a bewildered denial. But Mick was always so good to me. To us. Memories of Mick Killian delivering flowers and covered dishes of food to Jean’s house flashed into Jerry’s mind.
Rick wiped his face furiously with the heel of his hand. “You gotta believe me, John, I didn’t know. Not until recently. The old man, he reamed me out but good for not showing up to do the deliveries, but then he never said another word about it. I guess I should have realized something was wrong then, but hell, I was just glad he’d let the subject go for once. I didn’t know. I swear to you.” He reached for Jerry’s arm, his hand freezing in midgesture when Jerry stepped out of reach.
“How’d you find out?” A sort of cold anger was creeping over him, like frost crystallizing over a pane of glass.
Rick took a deep, shuddering breath. “It wasn’t until he had his heart attack. I was home for Christmas, and we’d been at each other’s throats all weekend. We had another big fight, and then suddenly he clutches his chest and goes down. Mom went to call 911, but he wanted a priest. There wasn’t any time.” There were no tears now. Rick spoke in a voice devoid of emotion. “He looked up at me. His face was gray and he was working his mouth, but nothing came out. He took my hand in a grip so hard it hurt, and he pulled me to him. “Rachel,’ he says. ‘The missing girl. It was me.’ And then he died.” Rick covered his face with his hands, his voice muffled as he continued speaking. “Mom never knew. How could I tell her? How could I tell anyone? I could barely understand him myself. So I tried to forget about it. I tried, I really tried.”
Abruptly, he lifted his face, anger blazing out behind his remorse. “What was I supposed to do? It was all so long ago, and he was dead anyway. It wouldn’t bring her back. It wouldn’t change anything, except it would ruin our lives. I didn’t have any goddamned proof.” I’d already given up so fucking much to come back, run the bar, and take care of my mother. It was never enough, though, was it? Never fucking enough.
“You believed him, though, didn’t you?”
Rick didn’t have to nod. Jerry saw the numb conviction on his face.
“It would have stopped us from wondering what had happened to her all these years. If there was someone out there who needed to be put away. If other girls were in danger. It might have made my mother stop drinking sooner.” The words flowed from him as though they’d originated there.
Flynn flinched at his speech. It was a surreal moment—Flynn’s thoughts entering his mind and forming words to come out of Jerry’s mouth. Like he was channeling Flynn. Like he was Flynn.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do.” Rick was calmer now, as though a long-festering abscess had been lanced and was no longer as painful. “You don’t have a case, though. You’ve got no proof, no hard evidence. So our van was in the area that day. So what? You’ve got the twenty-year-old memory of a kid, that’s all. A kid who was traumatized by the loss of his sister. You got nothing.”
He’s right.
The quietness of Flynn’s acknowledgment made Jerry want to pull him into a bear hug, but no one in the room would appreciate that right now, would they?
“But why, Rick?” Jerry posed the question Flynn wanted the answer to. “Why?” It came out anguished, the word broken, surprising him with the strength of the emotions behind it.
Rick’s defiant expression faltered. “I don’t know. I can only guess. Dad liked to start his drinking a bit early in those days. When I didn’t show for the deliveries, he made them himself. I think he probably struck her with the van. Wasn’t paying attention, wasn’t watching where he was going, and knocked her down. He probably picked her up with the intent of taking her home but then got to thinking how it would look. What it would mean to the business, to the family. He was always so big on fucking family honor.” Rick choked out his sentences.
“She was suffocated with her own jacket.” Flynn’s voice was jarring as he suddenly entered the conversation again, his tone as cold and airless as the vacuum of space.
Rick nodded, wiping snot from his nose with the back of his hand. “I looked up the newspaper account. The papers, they made a big deal over the fact that she wasn’t raped. Don’t you see? It was probably an accident.” The pleading in his voice made it apparent this was the only story he could believe. It certainly made sense. It was probably true. Right up to the point where Mick Killian decided he couldn’t admit to anyone he’d knocked down a little girl while driving the company van drunk.
It suddenly dawned on Jerry that, as Rachel’s brother, he was the one to decide what to do next.
He looked at Flynn, whose eyes blazed at him from across the room.
This can’t be it. Not like this. Not without someone paying for it. Not after all these years. Christ, Jerry, someone’s got to go down for this! My sister. She was my sister.
Jerry waited him out. If the telepathy had worked both ways, he would have told Flynn how wrong this was, and how sorry he was they didn’t have a case to prosecute. He’d have mentally hugged Flynn, too, letting him know how much he sympathized. He did his best without the telepathy, waiting for the moment when he saw Flynn give in, when he saw the defeat in his eyes.
It nearly killed Jerry to turn back to Rick. “You’re right, Rick. We don’t have any physical evidence. We don’t have a strong enough case to reopen the investigation. Technically, you’re an accessory to murder, but we don’t have anything to charge you with there, either. So you can stop worrying, Rick. And thank you.”
Rick shook his head slightly, a classic double take, as though he were a cartoon character. “Wait, what? Thank me?”
Flynn was quiet as he spoke, all anger gone. “For giving Flynn closure. So he knows what happened to his sister, and the case is closed.”
Rick turned a disbelieving face toward Jerry. “You mean it? You’re just going to let it go?”
Jerry lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. “I have to. Otherwise it will destroy me.”
Oh, nice one, Parker. The slightly testy-yet-admiring tone of Flynn’s thoughts almost made Jerry smile. Alm
ost.
“Come on, Parker.” Jerry came around from behind the bar, indicating the door behind Flynn. “We’re done here.” He shot a glance over his shoulder at Rick before dismissing him entirely. Rick merely watched them with a stupefied expression.
Jerry followed Flynn through the swinging door, back through the kitchen, and out the rear exit. Flynn stalked ahead of him, pushing the doors open so hard they almost bounced back into Jerry’s face.
“Well, that was a fucking anticlimax.” Flynn’s bitter words burst from him as they stepped out into the parking lot. His breath rose in a cloud of vapor in the damp air. He slammed the door behind them for good measure.
“You okay?”
“Am I okay? What do you think? I’ve been on the hunt for my sister’s killer for almost twenty years only to find out he’s been dead nearly half that time. I feel like Holmes being told Moriarty was a figment of his imagination.”
“Hey.”
Flynn stopped in his progress toward the car, looking back over his shoulder at Jerry.
“Come here.” Jerry opened his arms.
Hesitating for a brief moment, Flynn dropped his head and rushed blindly into Jerry’s arms. Jerry caught him with a whoosh of released air at the impact, and then held on tight as Flynn hugged him, hard. Jerry cupped the back of Flynn’s head. “It’s okay,” he whispered into Flynn’s hair. “It’s going to be okay.”
Flynn sighed, held on for a moment longer, and then wriggled out of Jerry’s arms like a stray cat that didn’t want to be held. “I need to tell you something.”
“Is this about you logging onto my computer this afternoon and reading my IM messages to Jane?”
Flynn boggled at him. “You knew?”
It was time to let the smug out. “Well, you were a bit clumsy with the soundproofing. And you’ve been thinking about it all afternoon.”
Flynn looked up at the night sky and held his palms up, as if questioning the universe what he’d done to deserve this. When he looked at Jerry again, he was serious. “Look, I just want you to know, I’m sorry for how things have been between us lately. And I’m going to do my best to be the man you seem to think I am.”
“Idiot.” Jerry motioned Flynn back to him. Flynn came without hesitation this time. “You already are.” Flynn sighed and relaxed into him.
“Flynn?”
“Yeah?”
“Have you taken up smoking?”
Flynn lifted his head to look at him, frowning. “No, why do you ask?” He wrinkled his nose, sniffing the air.
“Well, maybe because your pocket seems to be on fire.”
“What?” Flynn jumped back. “Christ!” He slapped at his coat pocket vigorously. The smell of singed cloth was plain in the cool, damp air. “The artifact! It’s getting hot!”
He pulled out the artifact and flung it to the ground between them, snatching back his fingers and blowing on them. The symbols on the sides of the box glowed faintly blue in the darkness of the parking lot.
“What the fuck?”
They stared down at the humming blue light. Jerry took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around the artifact, picking it up. He felt the heat through the folded cloth.
“Be careful, will you? I’m not sure you should touch it.” Flynn briefly sucked on his thumb and then blew on it again.
“I’m not touching it.” Jerry held it up to one ear. “It’s stopped ticking.”
“That can’t be good. Maybe you should throw it far, far away.”
“What? And lose our only chance at trying to switch back? Are you nuts?”
He should have picked up on the threat sooner. Between the revelations in the bar, and Flynn’s apology, and the disturbing aura surrounding the artifact, he’d missed the new presence, not picking up on it until it was already in motion. Hatred boiled up out of the darkness behind them, coming from behind the van like lava cracking the earth. Jerry had just a moment’s warning before he looked up to see Paul bearing down on them from the other side of the van, a baseball bat raised to strike.
Time seemed to slow down. He knew he had a split-second to make a decision that might affect all their lives. Flynn was so focused on what was in front of him Jerry knew he couldn’t warn him in time. Paul’s thoughts were a fetid wave of bile: assurance that he had every right to kill “Parker” simply because he was gay, that he would kill “Flynn” before he could start the investigation on him. If Rick should happen to see him, well, he’d kill Rick too, and make it look like a robbery gone bad.
In his hand, the artifact thrummed and trilled as light gently pulsed from it. Jerry did the one thing that seemed to make sense to him. He took hold of it with his bare hand.
Jerry, no!
He wished he could have told Flynn why he’d made his choice, but he’d run out of time. The burning glow washed over him, and then he was back in his own body, looking at Flynn, who could now see Paul heading toward them, who could hear Paul’s murderous thoughts.
Flynn opened his mouth to shout a warning but Jerry already knew what was coming. He had just enough time to duck his head under his arm before the blow hit. He heard the crack of bone as his world whited out in one brilliant, dazzling flash.
Chapter 15
WHEN HE became aware of his surroundings, he had no idea where he was.
This isn’t good.
The thought swam lazily around his head like a brightly colored koi in a goldfish pond. A small part of him thought he should be upset, but the greater part of him took it in with a curious detachment.
He couldn’t open his eyes. He tried, only to find that the lids seemed to be glued down. He wanted to reach up and touch them, to see what was preventing him from opening his eyelids, but his hands wouldn’t obey his commands. Like lifeless lumps of flesh, they remained unmoving at his sides. He gradually became aware of the sounds within the room, the steady beeping off to one side, as well as the rhythmic grinding-pump-whoosh that seemed to coincide with the expansion of his chest.
Christ. He was in a hospital on a positive pressure ventilation system. How he knew that, he wasn’t certain, but that’s where he was. He heard the acceleration of his heart rate as he processed this information. He had no control over his breathing, though. The machine automatically performed that task, and he was incapable of changing the rate or depth of each breath. A moment’s panic overtook him as he realized he was at the mercy of this machine, of the people taking care of him.
Don’t fight it. Don’t fight it.
Someone took his hand. A warm grip enveloped his hand, sending blessed relief into his cold fingers. Someone’s thumb stroked the back of his hand. Okay, he wasn’t alone. Someone was watching out for him. It would be all right. He let go, and rode the wave back into nothingness again.
The second time he was fully aware, he was conscious of a woman speaking.
“How’s he doing, John?”
A chair creaked somewhere on his right, very close to where he lay. The machines were still doing their thing, but they were background noise. For some reason, every bit of his concentration strained toward that someone to his right.
When the person beside him spoke, his voice was rusty, as though it hadn’t been used in weeks. “About the same. A bit better, perhaps.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, right?” The woman sounded closer, as though she was no longer at the door to the room but standing by the foot of his bed now. The cheerfulness sounded forced to his ears. “So the swelling is down?”
“Yeah.” Whoever this John was, he had the sexiest voice ever. It was gin-roughened, a bit husky with an odd drawl that sounded both languid and sleepy. A bedroom voice. “They decided against doing a tracheotomy and an internal monitor. His numbers are looking good, so they reversed the medically induced coma.”
“That sounds promising. I’m glad, John.”
“Yeah, me too. He’d have freaked if they’d shaved off all his hair.”
Holy crap, they better not
have shaved off all his hair! He tried to touch his head, but his arm felt ten times heavier than it should have, and refused to budge.
“And the ventilator?”
“Maybe tomorrow. They want to try and take him off it before they have to put a trach tube in. There’s some time limit or something. If he has to be on it for more than four days, they want to put a tube in.”
Four days. Christ. How long had he been unconscious?
“Sorry about missing the breakfast.”
There was a sardonic ruefulness to the man’s voice, and he couldn’t help but be interested in the conversation taking place in front of him.
“It wasn’t a very large or festive gathering.” Her voice was very dry. It was no surprise, then, that she changed the subject back to his condition. “But these are good signs, right? When do they think he might regain consciousness?”
“Dunno.” The man sounded impossibly weary. John. She’d said his name was John. It was a nice, strong name. “Every time I ask, they give me a long list of parameters but no real time frame. My best guess is ‘it depends.’”
“It’s going to be all right.” He heard her shoes click on the tile floor. Not a nurse, then. Not with heels like that. Something stirred in his memory at the sound, but he couldn’t pin it down.
“He took this hit for me, Nancy. It was me Paul was going for. Jerry took it for me.”
Jerry? He didn’t feel like a Jerry. They must be talking about someone else. Who the hell was Paul? And why had he been attacking them?
The high-heeled shoes came over to the bedside, and there was a rustle of fabric. A mental picture of a classy woman in a business outfit came to mind, a woman with vibrant, red hair wearing a black suit. He could picture her bending down to talk to John, who would be slouched in his chair. “There’s something between you two, isn’t there, John? I mean, more than just the fact that you work together.”
“Is it that obvious?”
Ouch. The bitterness in John’s voice burned like discovering a paper cut when you were using rubbing alcohol—a bright, breathtaking, unexpected sting.
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