by Aiden Bates
She tilted her head to the side. "Yeah, sure. That happens sometimes though. You get there at the same time, and they just happen to be going through the aisles the same way that you do. It's not like the grocery store is some kind of great and mysterious labyrinth. You go through the store and put things in the basket."
Elias flashed her a quick grin, and Pat tried not to cry. "It's true, you do," Elias told her. "I'm just wondering if your kidnapper didn't follow you through the store that day."
Josie bit her lip and closed her eyes, and then she gasped. "There was a woman!"
"A woman. In the grocery store. Alert the press." Dan sat up, pulling away from Pat.
"This is why we're divorced." Josie glared at him. "She had long brown hair in two braids, and this big scar on her forehead."
Ryan already had his phone out. "I'm going to ask you to sit down and talk to a sketch artist, ma'am. I know it's a difficult thing to do—like ripping off a scab after this long." He gave her a little smile. "I've been there."
Pat stood up and stretched his back, just a little. "The thing is, though, we combed through local records and found several similar cases. There may be other families in a position similar to yours, whose children are still out there. We need to bring them home before they get sick, too."
Josie paled, but she nodded. "It won't bring my Scottie back. If it helps other families, though, then I have to do it."
Ryan put his phone away. "The sketch artist is on his way over. We'll stay with you while you work with him, and then we'll get back to work. Is that okay with you?"
"Thank you." Dan shook all of their hands.
The sketch artist, Charlie, arrived in short order, and he sat down with Josie to work on an image of the woman who had taken her baby. Dan sat as far away from his ex-wife as he could get. "I try not to blame her," he said to Pat, in a quiet voice. "but I can't help it. She shouldn't have taken her eyes off of him for a second, not even a second."
Pat bit his tongue and chose his words carefully. "I think that might be a bit of an unrealistic goal. But I also think that it's natural to be angry, and Josie's a convenient target. I'm not blaming you for being angry. I mean you guys split up and that is what it is, right?"
Dan nodded. "I couldn't stay. Not after that. You know?"
Pat didn't know, but he pretended he did and nodded. "So, accept that about yourself. Find a professional that you can work with, talk to them, and accept that you're angry. Talk through it and try to move forward. It's hard. It's going to be hard. Listen, though. If we're right, and this person is really out there and taking a bunch of kids, there's probably not much that Josie could have done once Scottie was in her sights."
Dan's eyes looked a little brighter when he looked back at Pat. "You think so?"
"I've seen a few disturbed people in my day. Your anger is natural, but don't hold onto it. It's not going to get you anywhere." He gave Dan his card. "Give me a call if you need anything, okay? I'm always around."
Dan hugged him. Pat tried not to wince. Pat wasn't much of a hugger, but if it helped the poor guy get through the loss of his son he would do whatever it took.
Once they were done with the sketch artist, they headed back to headquarters. Elias headed off to lunch. Pat wanted to do the same, but Ryan stopped him. "What's really up with the two of you?"
Pat rolled his eyes and leaned against the wall. "Nothing's 'up' with the two of us that you didn't already hear, okay? We were together for a long time, we broke up badly, now we can't stand the sight of one another. Film at eleven."
Ryan narrowed his eyes at Pat and put a hand on his arm. "There's something you're not telling me, Tessaro."
"There's a lot I'm not telling you, Ryan. That's because it's not all that interesting. People date every day. They split up every day. It's not front page news." Pat closed his eyes.
"Why would a guy who majored in criminal justice think you were wasting your life by becoming a cop?" Ryan bit his lip. "That doesn't make a lick of sense, Tessaro. That can't be what really happened."
Pat pursed his lips. "Why don't you go and ask the trustworthy little rich kid what really happened then? I don't need this crap. I'm sure that if you go and ask Devlin to pull me from the case, he'll do it in a heartbeat."
"That's not what I meant, Tessaro, and you know it. Work with me here. I'm just trying to make the team work." Ryan spread his hands out wide.
"The team works about as well as it's going to." Pat stuffed his hands into his pockets. "I'm going to be off doing my damn job."
The sooner he could get this case solved, the sooner he could get rid of Elias. And that couldn't happen soon enough.
Chapter Three
Elias didn't take long to settle into a rhythm with the Scott Gilbert case. Pat made it easy for him, preferring to work at his own desk and communicating electronically rather than working in the team conference room whenever possible. That should have made Elias happy. The last thing that he wanted, or needed, was more of Pat's scent and presence than absolutely necessary.
So, why was it that Elias constantly found his thoughts drifting back to the alpha who had left him all those years ago?
He mostly stayed in the conference room and worked with Ryan Tran. They got onto a first name basis fairly quickly. Ryan was a friendly guy, and he was easy to talk to. He worked his omega nature to his advantage; people would line up to confide in him. It was probably an especially good asset in his particular line of work, investigating abuse cases. "You guys probably do a lot of work with Cold Case, huh?" Elias asked, as the first week wound to a close.
Ryan huffed out a laugh. "Not so much. Cold cases are investigated a little bit differently than regular cases, and when you add the fact that all of their detectives are alphas to the mix, it doesn't usually tend to work out well. That's how I met my alpha, actually. We were assigned as partners, and we were absolutely at one another's throats." He grinned. "Alphas don't usually play well with others."
"I guess not." Elias grimaced. "We don't have a lot of them at HomeSafe, thank God. I don't know how you do it, having to be around them all the time. They're pushy." He shuddered away from the memory of Pat snapping out the order to meet him in the lobby. It had been abrupt, but Elias was more disgusted by his own eagerness to please.
"It helps that I've got guns, and lots of them." Ryan smirked. "We've had enough altercations that they know better than to go all alpha on me. Even my alpha doesn't get all alpha on me." He looked around the room. It was late, and they were alone. "I was kind of surprised that Tessaro got that way, though. It's pretty out of character for him."
"Is it?" Elias had to think back to their college days.
"Was he like that when you were—when you knew him?" Ryan toyed with an empty coffee cup and averted his eyes. He'd caught his own slip, but Elias hadn't mistaken his meaning.
Elias had to think for a moment about how to respond. "He wasn't a dominating guy, if that's what you mean." He tugged at his collar. Even thinking about Pat, all those years ago, was heating him up past the point of tolerance. "I mean you never forgot that he was an alpha, but he didn't need to assert it all the time, you know? He was just Pat, and he did his thing, and you could take it or leave it, but he was going to do his thing without reference to anyone else." He rested his head on his hand. "I'm sorry. You don't want to hear all of this crap about a colleague."
"Of course I do." Ryan snorted, and then he winked. "I mean first of all, it's on your mind. You might as well let it out. Second, I'm your friend. We haven't been friends long, but that's what friends do. Third, Tessaro's always just been this chaotic force who comes in and does things in people's lives, usually for the better. It's hard to think about him coming from somewhere, or having a past. Hell yeah, I'm curious." He let out a little laugh. "I'm a cop. I'm a nosy bastard."
Elias had to chuckle at that, even if his stomach turned. "You sound like one of my Criminal Justice professors. Um, okay. He was always a little closed off
to most people. It was different with me, for the most part. I don't know how much he's told you guys about his background, and it's not for me to share, but he didn't have the greatest childhood. He's pretty self-reliant, because he's had to be."
Ryan nodded, stroking his chin. "I see a lot of that. The guy would still rather bleed out on a back road somewhere than admit that he needs help from someone, so that hasn't changed."
"That sounds like him." Elias made a face into his coffee cup.
"No, I'm being literal." Ryan's face got serious. "A few years ago, he got shot in the leg while working on a case and refused to call for backup. The guy he'd just arrested had to wait until he passed out and stole his cell phone, then dialed 911." He drummed his fingertips on the table. "He almost died. And would you believe that he's got no next of kin, or anything, in the system? My alpha, Robles, was the one they called."
"Jesus." Elias buried his face in his hands for a moment. "I mean yeah, he was always pretty independent, but he wasn't stupid. You don't think he was…" He couldn't say the word. It was too awful to contemplate.
"No. He's just a stubborn ass who refuses to ask for help. Trust me."
The door opened, and Pat walked in. His gray eyes gleamed, like a steel blade catching the light. His stubbled jaw was set, and tight, and Elias could see the anger burning inside of him. "Gossiping? Seriously?" He looked Elias over, just for a moment, and Elias' breath caught in his throat. Alpha was angry with him, and that was a terrible feeling.
Then Pat flicked his eyes over to Ryan. "I expected better from you, man." He slapped a stack of file folders down onto the table. "If you're going to go spreading a bunch of rumors about a colleague, do it off site."
Ryan hung his head for a second, and then he picked it up. "Look, Tessaro, we weren't spreading rumors—"
Pat held up a hand. "I don't want to hear it. Just stay out of my personal life. We work together. You're a good detective. Don't go getting ahead of yourself, okay?" He turned on his heel and made for the exit.
Elias glanced at Ryan's dejected face and made a snap decision. He didn't want to spend more time with Pat than he had to, but it wasn't on Ryan to fix this one. Ryan had been trying to help Elias out. "Pat, wait." He chased after his ex and followed him down the hall.
He caught up with Pat a few doors down the hall, putting a hand on his arm to try to slow him down. "Pat, hang on."
Pat stopped, but he jerked his arm away from Elias' touch. "You don't get to put your hands on me, Elias." A shadow passed over his face, and he turned away. "That time is long gone."
Something inside Elias twisted, but he held it in. "Don't be mad at Ryan, okay? He could tell that I was upset and was trying to walk me through it. He wasn't trying to be disrespectful to you."
"Oh, I'll bet." Pat twisted his mouth into a bitter parody of a smile. "I'm sure that he wasn't trying to weasel more gossip out of you for the rest of those meatheads." He shook his head. "You used to be smarter than that."
Elias narrowed his eyes. "Do you really want to go there?"
"I don't really want to be here, but someone couldn't just let me leave my reports and go to the club now could he?" Pat threw his arms up in the air. "Sure. Ryan's a nice guy. And I'm sure that there's a part of him that really does think that you need your little hand held, that you're deeply traumatized by having to pretend to work with the guy you threw away ten years ago." He rolled his eyes. "But he's still a cop, and he's still mated to Robles, and I know those guys. They're going to gossip like church ladies. Every little detail you give them is going to be public knowledge." He put a hand on his chest. "Trust me here. I'm one of them."
"Don't remind me," Elias murmured. "Would you listen to yourself? You're acting like they're all out to get you."
Pat closed his eyes and let out a slow, controlled breath. He flipped his eyes open again. "It's a little hard not to some days. Like when I step into what's supposed to be a team space, that I can't use, and find the team members gossiping about me."
Elias bit his lip. "Isn't his alpha your next of kin on the forms?" He didn't want to know that. He didn't want to be involved. If he was involved, he had to feel bad about it, and he didn't want to feel anything about the way that Pat lived his life. Pat's life was Pat's.
Pat rolled his eyes. "His was the only phone number I had when I had to fill out the forms. Since when do you care?"
"I don't." Elias looked away. "It's kind of concerning, though. Don't you have anyone closer?"
Pat pushed past him. "Good night, Elias. Have a great weekend." He walked back toward wherever it was that he spent his time, back stiff and shoulders thrown back.
Elias' walk back to the conference room was much slower than his flight from it. Ryan was still there, dark eyes narrowed in thought. "How mad was he?" Ryan asked.
"I tried to explain what was going on. I can't say I know if the man he is now will get over it." Elias rubbed at his face. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come between you."
Ryan waved a hand. "He's got good reason to be paranoid. His boss has been taking an activist role in some folks' personal lives lately, and he's the last single alpha in the department." He stood up. "That, however, is between Tessaro and Lt. Devlin. You got plans this weekend?"
"Yeah. I've got a family get-together." He made a face. "It's going to be absolutely miserable, but it is what it is. They're donors to the org, so I can't blow it off."
Ryan lifted his eyebrows. "Huh. Guess you can't. I guess I'll see you on Monday, then."
They shut things down and locked the room up for the weekend, and Elias made the long drive back to Providence.
He had a hard time getting to sleep that night. It was hard to force himself to relax. He'd spent all of those years thinking of Pat doing something beneath himself, but ultimately being surrounded by people who loved him. Everyone knew that omegas needed companionship, and needed their family around them. Not a lot of people understood the needs of alphas, and that alphas had a drive that was just as strong. He wouldn't have spent four years with Pat if he hadn't known, deep down, that Pat would be a great guy to build a family with.
He understood that Pat didn't have a great foundation for that sort of thing. He didn't like to talk about it. His mom wasn't in the picture. She'd been deported when Pat was a young kid. Elias had met his father only once. The senior Tessaro had failed to impress. But Pat had so much to give. He had so much love, and so much empathy, and so much kindness in his heart that he almost had to be someone's mate.
Tessaro doesn't do relationships. That one alpha had said those words, with a little laugh that said more than his words did. Elias didn't know Pat at all anymore. Ryan's story about the bullet had been chilling. The Pat he'd known had been the kind of guy to always reach out and give a hand to other people, and always had a crowd of people around him. How was it possible all of that had gone away?"
He rolled over and tried to fluff his pillow. Pat seemed to see himself as the victim in their breakup. Elias didn't remember things that way, but maybe he'd let the aftermath cloud his memories. He still didn't think that there had been any real victims. Their relationship simply hadn't worked. It happened. It was sad, but sometimes people just weren't meant to be together.
Why, then, was Pat so upset with him? Okay, he'd gone and slept in his car, but Elias hadn't asked him to do that. They'd broken up, but Elias hadn't kicked him out. It was their apartment, not his apartment. Pat's name was on the lease, for crying out loud. He'd just taken off…
He rolled over again. Why was he devoting this much time to Pat Tessaro? Who cared what Pat thought about the breakup at this late date? They hadn't worked out. They were never going to work out. Their worlds were too different. His fathers, his brothers, his uncles, they'd all been very up front with him about it. He's a nice enough toy, good enough for practice, but come on, Elias. He's barely civilized. He's a scholarship kid. He's not like us. He'll never fit in, and he'd never be welcome with us.
Elias
had ignored them all, sure that his love for Pat would see him through. He'd been wrong. He'd been lucky that his family had been willing to stand by him when he'd been in the hospital. He couldn't imagine going through all of that entirely alone.
Kind of like nearly dying of blood loss, and only surviving because a newly arrested killer decided to call an ambulance for you.
That didn't follow. Ryan clearly had some very real concerns about Pat. The body language of his fellow alphas had been open and friendly enough when they'd all walked into the meeting room. Pat himself had been relaxed and friendly with them. He'd been at ease with that lab tech, Oliver. He'd been at ease and had enough of a relationship with the young omega that someone had trusted him with Oliver's welfare. Whatever Pat's words had been in that hallway, the people he worked with cared about Pat. And Pat cared about them.
There was a disconnect somewhere. If the conversation that Elias had with Pat in the corridor had been any indication, the disconnect started and ended with Pat.
