by Jory Strong
Tyler’s stomach cramped. Take away the money and the expensive, out-of-state rehab, and this was like a bad reminder of his childhood, the constant chaos and uncertainty of life with junkies and drunks.
It was a reminder of how lucky he’d been to escape and become close enough to the Maguires and Montgomerys to feel as though he was part of their families. And despite the encounter with Lyric the night before and her teasing him with a mention of what Grandma Maguire might have seen lately, here was the reminder of why he needed to keep the thing he had for Shane under wraps, why he needed to avoid making out with Madison at the same time as Shane. Or at least in a place that could lead to the three of them getting naked.
He had too much to lose. He couldn’t risk ending up on the outside looking in, not when it came to the Maguires and the Montgomerys.
That’s how it’d been during those early years of foster care. Always feeling alone, unloved—worse, unlovable.
It was a vicious cycle. Feeling those things had made him act out, which in turn had led to new homes, and those rejections had only validated the feelings, making him act out in the next place, and then the next, and the next, until finally he landed in the group home and had reason to want to stay. Because of Lyric and Shane and Braden at first. But then because of their grandparents, their siblings and cousins, their aunts and uncles and friends.
A hand on his arm brought him back to the present. The liquid concern in Madison’s eyes made him aware of rubbing the place above his heart.
“If I’d known Bio-dad’s clue would lead—”
“It’s okay.”
He leaned in, brushed his lips across hers and it felt as if warmth seeped into places that’d been cold for so long. “I’m okay.”
It would have been so easy to end up like his parents. Maybe he would have if Wes hadn’t died of an overdose. Though, in a way, his brother would always and forever be tangled with the beginning of his friendship with Lyric.
The only images of Wes he’d had by the time he met her were the ones he’d drawn, and he couldn’t be sure they were right. But Lyric, of course, even as a kid had known someone who could get into sealed records and snag his brother’s picture. And years later, she’d know someone else, and he’d learned that his old man had died drunk in a car wreck and his mother tricking for drugs in L.A.
Madison’s hand dropped away from his arm. “What do you think the bullet means?”
Shane answered, “We’re in the Tenderloin. It’s got a reputation for being a high crime area. It probably means he was scared, or at least, recognized how dangerous the people he was getting his drugs from were. Could be that he literally bought them here. Could be symbolic.”
Tyler pulled the brochure over so it was directly in front of him. “The bullet could also mean that at this time in his life, he hadn’t hit rock bottom yet. There’s a line through the rehab’s name.”
Shane drummed his fingers on the table. “Or the line could mean don’t go there. I can’t see Bio-dad wanting us to take off to Utah. Besides, that place isn’t going to hand over a client list.”
Madison reached for the folded paper. “Time to look at the clue.”
Shane moaned and grabbed his head.
“Poor baby,” she said.
Tyler laughed. “Don’t be a wuss.”
“Who are you calling a wuss?” Shane said, pulling his hands away from his head. He flexed his biceps. “Do these look like they belong to a wuss?”
He dropped his hands to the fly of his jeans. Stopped, sending a heat wave through Tyler.
The color creeping into Shane’s face had Tyler’s heart hurtling forward. Since when did Shane shy away from talking about his cock?
Tyler’s throat went dry with the possibility that after years of hiding the desire for Shane, Shane was starting to pick up on it—and that maybe, maybe the encounter with Lyric wasn’t totally accidental, and the subtle message that Madison changed things when it came to Shane was as much a part of Lyric’s intervention plans as her scheming to put Taryn on a collision course with Cash.
It didn’t loosen the knot in his stomach. Acting on the attraction still meant the gut-twisting possibility of loss.
He tried to imagine himself taking that chance. His heartbeat grew louder in his ears, but not nearly loud enough to drown out Madison’s husky laugh or the dare in her voice when she said, “So what else doesn’t look like it belongs to a wuss?”
Shane grinned and took his hands away from the front of his jeans. “Sorry, don’t want to cause a stampede.”
Madison snickered. “Away from, I take it.”
Shane slapped his hand against his chest. “Oh babe, you’re always dissin’ me. I’m starting to get a complex.”
Their banter allowed Tyler to get a grip on his thoughts and emotions.
Madison opened the folded paper—another clue.
“Guess it was too much to hope it’d be an address and the message, meet me,” Tyler said.
Madison read the clue. “Miles to go, the sun rises unseen, unmarked, as the journey into darkness engulfs and slowly consumes, threatening to eradicate and leave a legacy unfound and unfulfilled.”
Shane exhaled loudly. “Sounds like Tyler was right. However old Bio-dad is at this point in his life, he hasn’t hit rock bottom yet.”
“Rock bottom is what it takes,” Tyler said. “And sometimes rock bottom is just another name for dead.”
Even he heard the anger in his voice. This was getting to him and he knew why. It was tangled up with his feelings toward his parents, his fear for Madison over what it was going to cost her to let Bio-dad into her life.
Her arm slipped around his waist.
He took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on the clue.
She said, “Miles away suggests the next clue isn’t close.”
“He’s not going to get clean on his own,” Tyler said. “If the first stint in rehab didn’t work, he’d go back, to the same place or to another one.”
Shane tapped the brochure. “What I said earlier still applies. He doesn’t mean for Madison to go to Utah.”
She straightened. “We’re looking for a stand-in, a place he could arrange to leave something for me. The only words in the clue that lend themselves to the name of a rehab place are journey, legacy and sun rises, which could also be sunrise.”
Shane whipped out his phone. Minutes later, he held it so they could all see the screen. “How about Sunrise Journey Rehab and Recovery Services?”
Madison folded the check and shoved it into her back pocket. “I’d say we have a winner.”
She placed the clue and brochure back in the envelope, then wedged it into the box. “What about the other stuff?”
Shane stood. “We’ll dust for prints, just in case. If they’re clean, we ditch the paraphernalia and the pills. I’d rather not get pulled over and have that shit in the Jeep.”
Tyler followed Shane’s glance to a public toilet. “Good call.”
“Back in a sec,” Shane said, and jogged toward the Jeep.
Madison turned toward Tyler. She brushed her fingertips against his lips. “Tyler—”
He bit her fingers gently. “Stop worrying about me. I am a Crime Tells detective. I do work for the police. It’s not like I haven’t encountered drugs and mayhem a lot of times since I was a kid.”
Ache spread through Madison. “A kid? How old were you when your brother died?”
“Seven.” He touched his forehead to hers. “Seven. And Wes was twelve. He stole from my parents’ stash of heroin.”
Remembering the nightmare that’d haunted him as a child, she put a hand on his chest. “You knew he’d stolen it. You searched for hours. You found him.”
He covered her hand with his. She felt his heart beating steady and strong beneath her palm.
“I caught him stealing it. I tried to stop him.” The hand on hers tightened. “He was already too much like our old man, quick to use his fists. He pretty much beat
me to hell and back. Left me curled up, hugging my guts and bleeding all over myself.”
She felt a swell of love for that little boy, for this very decent man. “But you got up and went after him anyway.”
Tyler shrugged. “Not fast enough.”
His heartbeat remained steady and strong beneath her palm, even as her feelings for him deepened.
Shane returned, setting the fingerprinting kit on the table.
Tyler eased away.
Shane dusted the bottle and spoon and syringe.
They’d been wiped clean.
The bullet was the same.
The box would be too if they bothered to dust it when they got back to his place or Tyler’s.
Tyler gathered the drag paraphernalia and pills into the bandanna then grabbed the beer bottle. “I’ll get rid of this shit. Meet you at the Jeep.”
Shane began packing up the fingerprinting kit.
Madison slid off the bench seat, biting her bottom lip as she watched Tyler walk away.
“He’s tough,” Shane said, sounding gruff.
“I hate that my coming to California is dredging up old memories for him.”
Shane grasped her hair, tugged. “Don’t go there. He wouldn’t want it, and besides, the shit he went through before he landed in his last group home gets stirred from time to time. He deals with it. It goes away.”
She turned her head to look at Shane. “He didn’t tell me he was in foster care.” But thinking about it, a kid OD-ing at twelve would have caused child protective services to swoop.
Shane shrugged. “It’s not a secret. His parents were junkies and drunks. He was in and out of foster care pretty much from the get-go. Fucking legal system kept putting him back. Even after his brother died, they sent Tyler home one more time.”
Tyler disappeared into the public toilet.
Shane released her hair to comb through it, the stroke of his fingertips on her neck sending a shiver of delight through her.
“If you ask him, he’ll tell you that he landed in a good place. Hell, he’ll even tell you that the first day of his new life was the day he showed up at school and ended up sitting next to Lyric.”
Madison had to laugh. “After meeting her, I am so not surprised.”
Shane pulled her against him. “You did just witness my expertise in the area of fingerprinting. That’s not something a wuss could pull off.”
“Are we back to that? Tyler was the one who called you a wuss, not me.”
“True. But I didn’t hear you rushing to defend my manly prowess. So that means we need to discuss payment for services rendered.”
“I am holding your IOU if you’ll remember.”
“Reduced by a hundred. Make sure you remember that.”
She rolled her eyes.
Shane grinned, recognizing that part of the attraction was how easily she laughed, how easily they laughed together, how naturally they fit and how good it felt to be with someone who wasn’t angling for a wedding ring because of his family name or his stash of cash, who didn’t want bragging rights for having slept with him.
Madison had a core of loyalty—and that was like holding aces. She was resilient but still soft—and totally sensual.
Being with her heated him up faster than any other woman ever had—and then there was the fact that she’d been with Tyler, that his being with Tyler would turn her on, not off.
Don’t go there.
But it was hard not to when he knew the exact instant Tyler emerged from the toilet and saw the two of them.
Immediate impulse, lean in, take Madison’s mouth while Tyler watched.
Why stop himself now?
His mouth covered hers and it was like coming home. He moaned, pleasure rushing straight to his dick with the touch of her tongue to his.
One of these times, he needed to get her horizontal, naked and horizontal, but for now at least this was safe, the risk of getting outed manageable. Not non-existent, but even if Tyler were to join them, the odds were good that he could focus solely on Madison.
Tyler reached them.
The heat surging through Shane went up another thousand degrees. It was impossible not to kiss Madison one more time before releasing her.
“Ready to visit rehab?” Shane asked.
She nodded.
“You take the lead,” he told her, wondering the minute the words left his mouth if he was even talking about their next stop.
“I will.”
She picked up the box, tucking it under her arm, the bullet inside dropping and hitting the metal side.
Chapter Eight
“Here goes,” Madison said, opening the door and stepping into Sunrise Journey Rehab and Recovery Services.
Like Oakhurst Preparatory, this place obviously catered to the rich. The view of Fisherman’s Wharf through a reception area window said expensive real estate. While pictures of a tranquil ranch in the Napa Valley promised success for those footing the bill.
The auburn-haired woman who stepped from an office was model tall and attractive, perfectly tailored and tastefully adorned with the right jewelry.
“May I help you?”
“This may sound odd. But my name is Madison York. I’m wondering if something was left here for me. A package, or possibly an envelope.”
“Just a moment,” the woman said, crossing to another office and knocking softly on the door, the lack of surprise causing Madison’s nerves to jangle.
From inside the office, a man’s voice said, “Come in.”
The woman slipped in, closing the door behind her.
Madison’s palms dampened and her pulse sped. Shane draped an arm over her shoulders while Tyler’s hand tugged hers away from her jeans and enfolded it.
The door opened.
The woman emerged with a metal box similar to the one at Boeddeker Park.
Madison deflated, realized that she’d been hoping for—what? That Bio-dad would step from the office? No, not that, but that at least someone who knew him and was meant to tell her something about him would come out, maybe even meet her and carry an impression of her to him.
Shane muttered, “This is getting old.”
Madison took the box.
They returned to the Jeep.
She set the box on the mustard-yellow hood.
Inside there was another brochure for an out-of-state rehab place. There was an empty pill bottle, a couple of hundred dollar bills rolled tight, as if used to snort drugs, another large envelope.
She pulled the envelope from the box and opened it, removing the first item she touched.
It was a check for seventy-five thousand dollars.
“Doesn’t change my mind,” Shane said. “This shit is still getting old.”
It was, but it was impossible not to feel a measure of gratitude. She hadn’t read past the bank’s intention to foreclose, but surely there was now enough to keep her parents from losing the house.
She tugged a photograph out next. It was the same girl who’d been holding the baby, only fast forward a couple of years and this time there was no doubt that she was looking at an image of her younger self.
“This picture had to have been taken pretty close to the time I was adopted.”
In it she was smiling. Bio-mom was smiling. Their cheeks were rosy, their blonde hair windswept.
Behind them were…tall hills? Low mountains?
“Do you recognize the scenery?” she asked.
Tyler said, “Somewhere in the San Joaquin. Let’s look at the clue.”
It was the last item in the envelope.
Madison unfolded it and placed it on the Jeep’s hood.
Discoveries made as the past unfolds into the future. A turning point fully embraced so unwanted destiny becomes welcome yoke, the first true steps toward it taken among cantaloupe fields that stretch for twenty-one miles.
The picture, the wording, it was hard not to think that this clue would lead her to Bio-mom.
Madison’s
heart thudded hard and fast. Her stomach churned.
She reached for Tyler’s hand and welcomed the feel of Shane’s at her waist.
“You want to keep going on this?” Shane asked, and she knew both men had come to the same conclusion she had.
Did she have a choice? Hadn’t she known this was a possibility after accepting that first five thousand along with the boarding pass and a card with Bulldog Montgomery’s number on the back?
“I have to.” Not just for her parents, but for herself.
Shane exhaled loudly. “Okay then. First up, we need a city.”
Tyler’s hand squeezed Madison’s. “Google the distance between Stockton and Newport News.”
Shane turned, leaning a hip against the Jeep. “Because?”
“The clue you and Madison found in the locker. Remember that first line? It said from coast to coast, two-thousand, nine-hundred and three miles mark the distance, but the number didn’t have anything to do with finding the rental box.”
Shane nodded. “And Madison showed up in Newport News.”
His arm left her waist. His fingers tapped the cell screen. He shook his head. “Two thousand, nine hundred and thirty-four miles by car.”
“Try Modesto.”
His fingers were already busy. His smile said it all. “Two thousand, nine hundred and three by road.”
Madison touched the clue. “If we approach this the same way we did the last one, the words that pop as the most likely to lead to an address are yoke and cantaloupe.
Shane did the search, his frown deepening until finally it gave, just a little bit.
“There’s a Cantaloupe Springs Apartments in Modesto. That’s the best I’ve come up with. Let’s hit it first, try something else if that’s a bust.”
Tyler said, “We can grab something to eat before we get there.”
They hit a Taco Bell on the outskirts of Modesto. Finished the meal by the time they’d entered a rundown, rough-looking area where tennis shoes dangled from power lines and pit bulls roamed fenced front yards or were chained to trees.
Cantaloupe Springs Apartments was three stories of green adobe tagged with graffiti.
Shane parked.
In the passenger seat, Madison rubbed her palms against her thighs.
