by Jory Strong
Her lips curved upward, drawing his gaze there, loosening the muscles in his stomach.
“Seriously, Tyler, I’m fine. Whatever we find out about Bio-mom and Bio-dad, it doesn’t change the fact that I have great parents—the ones who raised me—and there is no way they were knowingly involved in anything illegal.”
“Okay,” he said, gaze going back to the items on the table, happy for her, that she had parents she so obviously loved, who had to love her just as much, and who were decent—so unlike his own.
His early childhood had been filled with unkept promises. With failed reunification attempts and months of misery every time his parents convinced overworked, uncaring or burned-out social workers that they’d changed and deserved to have their children back.
He lifted his burger, set it down again. “What if yesterday’s hit-and-run was meant to keep Madison from discovering this?”
Shane frowned, stabbed a fry into ketchup. “You’re thinking she was trafficked?”
“No.” He shrugged, realizing he didn’t. “Thought off the top of my head, that’s all. But it doesn’t really play, does it? If Bio-dad discovered this much, he probably found enough to go to the authorities.”
“Assuming he’s a decent human being,” Madison said, a slight edge in her voice this time.
Good. He didn’t want to see her sucked in and hurt.
Tyler snagged a Coke can, thumbed the tab open. “He leave another check?”
“Twenty-five thousand,” she said.
Tyler took a swallow of Coke. “Guilt money?”
“Maybe. Probably. His knowing where I’ve been all along, or knowing how to get that information, makes the most sense. I don’t care. What’s important to me is that I can help my parents. The medical bills…” She shrugged and bit into her hamburger.
His chest flooded with warmth, filled with a nearly overwhelming protectiveness.
He shared a glance with Shane and saw the same thing in his eyes before they slid away.
Shane said, “We don’t know how old Bio-dad was when he hooked up with Bio-mom, but we do know he came from money, plenty of money to pay for no trail leading to him—until now. That’s assuming Madison’s disappearing act wasn’t arranged by Bio-mom’s parents. We went to Oakhurst. They let us check out the yearbooks. We didn’t find Madison’s bio-mother in them.”
Tyler picked up a fry. “Alleged bio-mother.”
Shane snorted. “Since you got the job as a police artist, you’ve started thinking too much like a cop.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Shane grinned. “Let me guess, by Lyric.”
“That would be a yes. How’d the 2903 come into play? Street address? Box number?”
“Neither.” Shane sounded a little growly at having a piece of the puzzle not fit.
“What next?” Tyler asked.
One bite of hamburger left, Shane pointed an elbow at the paper with the next clue. “Bio-dad has the answers.”
Madison read it out loud. “The way forward remains two steps into the future and five steps away from it. Blanketing clouds obliterate and fog the fruitful promise that will one day turn golden. Time spent with T and E and J is haze and rain, though beneath the soil there is unseen growth, a seed that refuses to wither and die, to be strangled by oak roots and obligation though it has not yet escaped the darkness.”
Shane grabbed his Mountain Dew and rocked backward in his chair. “Have I mentioned how much I hate this shit?”
Madison laughed and said, “A time or two. But let’s break the clue down, see if that makes it easier. For me, beneath the soil says the next clue might be buried.”
Shane sighed and leaned forward. “Okay, the two steps, five steps sounds like we’re talking distance. The starting reference point could be either the school or the rental box place in The Castro.”
Tyler polished off the last of his fries. “That works. Oak roots and obligation could definitely mean the school. Laptop is closer to you. Google Earth it.”
“Madison is in the middle. Let her do the honors.”
Madison gathered the lunch trash, balling it and stuffing it into the bag it’d come in.
Shane took the bag, further compacting it. “The basket is the sink. Hundred dollars says I can make it.”
Madison shook her head. “Too easy. Hundred dollars, but you have to bank it off the window and take the shot with just your left hand.”
“Done. Tyler?”
“No.” Tyler glanced at Madison. “I don’t know what’s worse, the possibility you’ve already been corrupted by associating with a Maguire, or your encouraging him.”
Shane snorted and made the throw.
The bag bounced off the window and dropped into the sink.
“Score!” Shane yelled. “And the crowd goes wild!”
Madison laughed. “And you still owe me money. Three hundred at this point.”
“I’m good for it. I can always work it off.”
Shane’s voice dropping at the last was like a hand fisting Tyler’s dick.
It was all too easy to imagine Shane’s doing it, a kiss, a suck, a thrust at a time.
Tyler lifted the clue off the table, eyes boring into it without seeing anything other than Shane with Madison, then Shane with him and Madison.
She pulled the laptop in front of her, giving him something else to focus on and a measure of relief. The sooner they got on the road, the better.
He dropped the clue onto the table.
Within minutes she’d zoomed in on the campus.
“So what are we looking for?” Shane said. “We’ve got the line, fruitful promise that will one day turn golden, and we’ve got, time spent with T and E and J.”
Madison touched a spot on the screen. “This is about where locker one-eighty and the D classrooms are.”
Studying it, Tyler said, “It’d take more than five steps to reach the corner, but maybe the numbers are related to something else, like a shelf or drawer, or a box with five and three or fifty-three on the label. Maybe T means turn the corner. The classrooms would begin with the letter E and J might be a janitor’s closet, or a classroom with a teacher or subject that starts with J.”
Madison shifted the view to the grounds, such as they were. This was not a school with a sports program, or at least, not one that didn’t involve going off campus.
“Trees aren’t my thing,” she said. “But I’m not seeing anything that’s obviously producing fruit.”
Tyler touched the screen. “This is definitely an oak tree. The others are mostly boxwoods.”
Shane spun the clue. “So we’ve got two possibilities when it comes to the school. The E hallway, or the next cache is buried near the oak tree, either of which could tie in to the numbers somehow.”
Tyler pointed out the obvious by saying, “Either of those possibilities means we’d have to wait until dark. It also assumes we can use the keycard and go in without worrying about setting off the alarm. Plus, if something has been recently buried out by the oak tree, what’s to keep someone else from spotting it and digging it up?”
Shane nudged Madison’s hand off the laptop’s keyboard. “Let’s look at the place in The Castro.”
The Google Earth view changed.
“Still assuming it’s buried,” Tyler said, “We’d be looking for a park, or long shot, a yard. Fruit meant Market Street in the last clue.”
“Fuck!” Shane said, excited. “The fruitful promise that will one day turn golden. Market crosses where Golden Gate Avenue hits 6th, and that’s right near Taylor Street.”
“Could be our T,” Tyler said, finger following Taylor on the screen. “Here’s Boeddeker Park, which happens to be bounded by Jones Street and Eddy Street—J and E.”
Shane grinned. “Are we good together or are we good?”
Sensual images poured into Tyler’s mind. He shut them down.
“We’re good,” he managed, feeling a surge of panic when Madison’s quick glance i
n his direction made him wonder if she’d guessed that he wanted Shane.
She Googled the park. It was in the Tenderloin and had once been notorious as a hangout for drug dealers, junkies and drunks.
Familiar territory, though he hadn’t grown up in San Francisco.
“This could fit the clue,” Madison said, feeling a buzz of adrenaline. “Time spent with T and E and J is haze and rain could mean he was getting high to escape the pressure and the unhappiness of giving up on his dream. It also works with not having escaped the darkness.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Shane said as Tyler stuffed the clue, birth certificate and picture back into the envelope.
“What about a shovel?” she asked. “Do you have one?”
Tyler laughed. “Shane doesn’t do flowers, shrubs or a garden. He’s only good with the lawn because he likes having a beer while rides the mower.”
“True,” Shane said. “If we get to the park and end up needing a shovel, we’ll get one.”
They left the house, Tyler carrying the envelope of stuff from the rental box.
She took Shane’s hand, then Tyler’s.
Both of them tensed, but neither pulled away.
“Admit it,” she said, the subtle jerk of their hands a tell. “Solving the clues is kind of fun.”
“I’ll get back to you on that,” Shane said, but he was grinning.
Tyler frowned. “It’s what he’s got planned for you that worries me.”
She squeezed his hand. “It’ll be okay. I’ll be okay.”
They reached Shane’s Jeep.
Tyler got in the back.
She slid into the front passenger seat thinking about the way their hands had jerked in hers, the way they’d acted around each other last night, and this morning. She was absolutely certain Shane and Tyler were attracted to one another—and fighting it. Only they seemed to be struggling individually against the attraction, not mutually.
As soon as she thought it, she knew it was true.
It was impossible to be in a band, to spend hours and hours practicing, playing, partying together, and not sometimes have chemistry spark and lead in a physical direction.
Bands broke up over the drama that came when lovers became ex-lovers or cheating lovers or on-and-off fight-and-break-up-and-make-up lovers.
She’d resisted getting involved with bandmates. At first, because being together had been the dream with Elijah. Then later, because she’d seen what a train-wreck it could be, and she wanted to make it as a musician more.
But it didn’t mean she hadn’t experienced the heat. Hadn’t crushed on bandmates who didn’t have a clue, and hadn’t had attraction spark into something both parties were aware of, whether they both tried to fight it or not.
Still, given that Shane and Tyler had known each other since they were kids, how could they not know they were attracted to one another?
It only made sense if neither of them was openly bi.
Her body hummed as if she’d successfully run an obstacle course and slammed her hand down on the buzzer at the finish. Her skin tingled and she half-turned so she could study Shane and Tyler.
Could that really be it? It had to be. She’d told Shane that Eli was bi, that they used to look at gay manga together. His hand had given a little jerk in hers then too—and he’d said nothing. While Tyler had told her that he and Shane had never been involved with the same woman, which made sense if they didn’t want to risk having their feelings for one another revealed.
And now they were both with her.
Longing swelled with the glimpse of a possible future—only she didn’t know what to do about it, how she could claim it when she had promises to keep to Eli.
“This is it,” Shane said. “Boeddeker Park.”
There were a lot more trees than she expected. Though now she couldn’t see Bio-dad burying something in such a public place when he couldn’t be sure how quickly they’d figure out the clue.
As if the same thing had occurred to Tyler, he said, “I think what we’re looking for isn’t literally buried, but it is underground. Look at how green the grass is. What if the word rain is doing double duty as a clue? I’m guessing irrigation box.”
“Works for me,” Shane said. “Let’s go with it.”
Thinking about the numbers, Madison said, “If you went two steps in, then five away, that second distance suggests left or right. But either way, you’d be traveling the perimeter.”
Shane grinned and snagged her around the waist, pulling her into him and lifting her heart with the sheer fun in his eyes. “Beauty and brains. I like that.”
His mouth came down on hers and she opened for him, met his tongue with hers and melted against him. She was aware of Tyler nearby, ached for him to join them even as the first kiss melded into a second one, and then a third before Shane’s lips left hers.
“How about a bet?” he said. “Three hundred says it’s the second box we find.”
Tyler groaned but there was a hint of huskiness in the sound, enough to confirm for her that watching her with Shane had turned him on.
Need tugged at Madison, coiling and reaching places it hadn’t before, even with Eli. If Tyler had been closer, she would have hooked him the way Shane had done her. She would have pulled him in, close enough so his hip touched Shane’s, so their body heat merged the way she’d like their bodies to.
Was he a bottom or a top? Or would they switch off, given that she already had ample proof they liked to be the one doing the penetrating?
She shivered. She’d like to make a different bet, could easily envision it, one of them sitting naked in a chair while the other made out with her on the bed, the bet being whether the one watching could last without coming, without joining them.
Heat pooled in her heart, in her breasts and between her legs. Part of her was unnerved at how thoughts of Shane and Tyler kept distracting her from what should be a driving need to get to the end of Bio-dad’s quest and get back to Richmond—a thought immediately countered by the memory of her parents’ hugs before she left for the airport, their telling her not to worry about her father, their hopes that she’d fit with the band they believed she was auditioning for, their excitement at the prospect she’d return to pursing her music, even if it meant living on the other side of the country.
Her heart spasmed in a tangle of guilt and sudden homesickness. She wanted to make things right. To tell them the truth. To ensure that they didn’t lose the house or have to worry about whether or not they could afford more medical care.
She wanted to justify their belief in her by making it as a musician. Even if she’d never be as good as Elijah. Even if what she hungered for was to hear her songs played by musicians in bands like the one he would have been in if he hadn’t died.
“Let’s find the box,” she said.
She stepped away from Shane, only to take his hand and then Tyler’s when they reached the grass. She couldn’t be near them without wanting the physical connection, without needing it. The longer she was with them, the harder it was to evade the truth of what she really wanted versus what she thought she needed to do.
They reached a corner and turned. The sight of a ground box provided a welcome respite.
The three of them crouched. Shane pulled out a knife.
“Any takers on the bet?” he asked.
Tyler shook his head. She said, “No, I like having you owe me.”
He sent a sensuous smile her way then wedged the knife into a thin crevice, popping and lifting the lid.
Inside the irrigation box was another box, this one metal.
Madison picked it up. “Let’s sit at the table.”
Tyler dropped the green lid back onto the irrigation box. “I wonder if Bio-dad puts the clues in place, or if he’s paying a private investigator or a lawyer to do it.”
“Don’t know,” Shane said as they headed toward a picnic table. “Could be any of those, or a family member or a personal assistant. But my gut sa
ys this box hasn’t been here long. He couldn’t risk it being found. He’s probably got triggers in place because as far as I can tell, no one is tailing us and I checked the Jeep this morning for a tracker.”
Tyler’s hand settled at the base of her spine. “Madison accepting the plane ticket would tell him when she’d show up in San Francisco. I doubt the locker at school is usually empty. He probably had someone clear it at the end of the day, put his stuff in it, with the plan of swapping it with the kid’s in the morning if you two didn’t figure out the first clue right away.”
Shane nodded. “The stuff in the postal box has probably been there since he rented it. He’d have a second key. He could have someone check the box. It could even be someone working there.”
“And here?” Madison said, feeling the urge to rub her arms as she looked around, wondering if someone was watching from one of the buildings surrounding the park.
Shane huffed out a breath. “Good question. But nothing we can do to find that answer.”
They reached the table. Madison sat on the attached bench, Shane sliding in at her right, Tyler at her left.
She opened the box, her eyes catching immediately on the unfired bullet.
“Looks like a forty-five round,” Shane said.
He pulled a dark blue bandanna from a pocket and used it to pick up the bullet and set it on the table.
A beer bottle came next, then a couple of pills.
Still using the bandanna as a shield, Shane removed a spoon used for preparing drugs, then a syringe.
“Probably for heroin,” Tyler said, something in his voice making her turn toward him, the tight expression making her think this was the drug his brother had overdosed on.
She covered Tyler’s hand with hers, squeezed. His expression loosened.
“We can dust for prints,” Shane said. “But I doubt we’re going to find them. That’d be too easy.”
Madison picked up the last item in the box, an envelope large enough to be locked into position at the bottom by the press of its edges to the metal.
Opening it, she spilled the contents onto the table.
There was a folded piece of paper that would be the next clue. A brochure for a rehab facility in Utah, and a check for fifty thousand dollars.
