by Aiden Bates
Pat swallowed and met Elias' gaze. He didn't have to think about his answer. He just had to get past his own emotional blockage enough to be able to get the words out. "I'd have started my car and driven down to Newport. And I'd have walked into that hospital room. I'd have chased away anyone who tried to make you feel bad about it.
"After they released you? That would have been up to you. If you wanted me to go away again, I'd have done that. If you wanted your space, but wanted me around, I'd have done that. If you'd wanted to pick up where we left off—I'd have been confused as hell, but whatever. I'd have given it to you. And hell, Elias, if you'd wanted me to claim you, I'd have done it."
Elias paled. "What did you just say?"
The words came more easily this time. "I would have claimed you. If you wanted."
Chapter Eight
Elias pulled away. "You—you don't get to say that. You don't get to say that you would have claimed me when I was young and healthy. Not now, when I'm old and useless to anyone." He couldn't breathe. He felt like he'd been punched in the stomach. It wasn't all that different than he'd felt when the contractions had first started, when the world had ended.
Pat was at his side in less than a second, ginger scent surging. "I won't hear anyone talking about you that way. Not even you." He grabbed Elias' wrist. His strong fingers sent a wave of need through Elias' body, something he didn't want right now but was powerless to stop. "You don't have to believe me, and it's not relevant anymore anyway, but I don't want to hear you thinking of yourself as 'useless' to anyone. Do you hear me?"
Pat's gray eyes burned into Elias', and in the end Elias bowed his head. He still couldn't breathe, but this time it was because of the tight bands of emotion that constricted his chest. "I hear you, Alpha," he murmured.
Pat let him go and huffed out a little laugh. "Speaking of things no one gets to say." He leaned back against the car. "Christ, we're a minefield, aren't we?"
Elias had to chuckle. "I guess we are." What kind of alpha didn't want to be addressed that way? Of course, Pat had always shied away from everything attached to his status. "No wonder we're both still alone. Or sort of alone, now."
"Less alone." Pat's shy grin warmed Elias through.
Ryan returned with coffee, and they all headed back to Framingham. Elias couldn't help but feel grateful that Ryan hadn't witnessed the charged confrontation between the lovers. Elias didn't mind Ryan knowing about them, and wouldn't have minded getting his advice, but having anyone else right there for something so private would have been terrible.
When they got back to headquarters, Ryan's alpha stuck his head into the team room and asked if he could borrow Pat for a few hours. "I've got an interview with a suspect that's likely to get dicey, and I need backup. Everyone else is out doing other things. Do you mind, Tessaro?"
"If you guys can write up the report without me, I'm okay with it." Pat shrugged. "I'm better at playing muscle than writing reports anyway." He glided away behind Nick.
Elias started working with Ryan on the incident report, and then Ryan turned to Elias. "Okay. Spill."
"My coffee's empty," Elias told him without missing a beat.
"I can see why the two of you were together so long." Ryan rolled his eyes. "Come on. I don't know what that witness said to Tessaro, but I saw the look on your face. You were shook."
Elias sighed and slumped in his chair. "It was more about what he said to her. She said he must be a good dad."
"Cute." Ryan chuckled. "I mean he's good with DJ, but that's in the short term. He doesn't have to do feedings or diaper changes at three in the morning."
"He said that." Elias swallowed. "He said that after he said that the guy he loved can't have them, and he loves him more than he loves kids."
Ryan's face fell. "Oh. I'm sorry."
"It's hard, you know? I mean I never told him, back then. That's what I told him, when we went to dinner. What I was hiding from him." He gave Ryan a wry grin. "That's what made him pass out, actually. Why we didn't want him driving the next day. I thought he was having a stroke. But I mean he's been great. He just… I don't know how to react to him right now. I just… He told Monica that he loves me. I think. Maybe he was just covering. I don't know."
"I've never heard Tessaro use that word lightly." Ryan scratched his chin. "But he's… I mean, I don't think he'd mess with you. He's been mourning your loss for years. I'm not sure… I mean, I can see the two of you together. You seem to have settled some things between you. But I mean, Tessaro's a mess, he's messy. I don't really know what to tell you. If you push too hard, he's likely to bolt."
"And I'm not really sure what I want here. Or what I need." Elias rested his head on the table. "When I'm around him, if I'm not angry, all I want to do is to stuff myself under his arm and have him make everything okay. When he's not around, it hurts even more. Like an old wound just got re-opened."
Ryan put a hand on Elias' back. "It's got to be hard. I wish I could do something for you."
Elias went home and tried to think of something else, someone other than Pat. It didn't work. After all, tomorrow night Pat would be here. Tomorrow, Pat would spend the night here. If everything went well, he would spend the whole weekend here.
Maybe Elias should focus on that, instead of on speculating about the future, or moping about the past?
He didn't have a lot to do to get ready. He paid someone to keep the place clean, and there wasn't a lot of clutter. He made sure that both beds had fresh, clean sheets before he left for work the next morning and that was about it.
By the next day, Ryan had prepared a list of potential suspects for them to winnow through. They had ten women who had aged out of the system twenty years ago, and whose experiences with the system could best be described as "checkered." Each case came in a binder, because it was too thick to be kept in a regular file folder.
Pat was late getting to work, but Ryan didn't grumble. "Nick didn't get home until eleven last night. That suspect interview went sideways." He shook his head. "It's a good thing that he brought Tessaro with him or I don't know what would have happened."
Elias stomach clenched. "What do you mean? Is he okay?"
"Nick didn't say he went to the hospital, so he's probably fine." Ryan closed his eyes for a moment. Dark circles ringed his eyes. "I can't fault them, you know? They took all the right precautions. But teething sucks." Then he chuckled. "It could always be worse, I guess."
Pat came waltzing in about half an hour later. He might have been moving a little bit stiffly, but he held his head high and didn't say anything about it. He didn't acknowledge the huge bruise or massive swelling around his right eye, either. The scraped and raw knuckles on both hands might as well have not existed. He glanced at the spread-out binders and smirked. "A little light reading there, Tran?"
"Just what you love, Tessaro." Ryan winked at him and returned the smirk, but as soon as Pat turned his back he grimaced at Elias. Pat looked awful.
They went through each of the binders together. No one wanted to miss a thing. Elias read the files aloud, since he was the outsider. As he read, both Pat and Ryan did what they could to try to track the women through whatever systems they had at their disposal.
Elias didn't feel great about the first one as a candidate. "I've got Eva Jedlichka, originally from Brockton. Looks like she was removed from her parental home at about ten due to the abuse related death of her older brother, and then moved from foster home to foster home until she aged out. During that time, school officials in Brockton, Taunton, Franklin, Millbury, and Sterling made complaints to social services about suspicions of abuse in her foster homes. One of those reports did involve an injury that left a scar over her left eye that crossed over to her right eyebrow."
Both State Troopers fell silent as their keyboards clacked. Ryan came up with her location first. "That would be one hell of a commute to snatch babies," he said with a whistle. "Looks like she's out in Oregon, teaching physics at Reed College."
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"Yeah, probably not her then." Pat clicked out of a window. "Next?"
The next three were also duds. Aphra Bunker had a background similar to Jedlichka's, but she'd died in 2006 under mysterious circumstances. Pat took her file to investigate further; if the circumstances were indeed mysterious, then it could have been murder and might warrant another glance. Eudocia Leone had been returned to her abusive family after six uneventful years in foster care but had moved to Florida when she turned eighteen. Sources suggested that she was working for a bank down there, which would have made sneaking back and forth to Massachusetts difficult. Amalia Jakemann fit the profile, but she had a recent photo from the RMV that showed short hair dyed blonde. That didn't match up with the hair that Monica had seen.
The fourth profile had some promise. Lalita Batori came from the right sort of background, with a series of stays both in foster care and in the juvenile justice system. Her looks fit the profile too, and she'd disappeared from the public record ten years before. Pat shook his head when Ryan wanted to include her as a suspect. "There's nothing in her profile to indicate any kind of mental instability," he said. "Plus, everything she ever did kept her strictly on the North Shore. Our suspect is hiding out around Westfield and Southwick, and she has to have known the area well enough ahead of time that she could have picked out a place to go."
Ryan squirmed. "We'll put Batori to the side for now." He set the binder on a chair. "You're right about location, okay? I just don't think that we can write her off yet. We'll see if we can find someone else who we like for the crime better."
They rejected Cecily Lonesco due to her having moved to Newfoundland with an uncle at twenty. Nina Desmond was eliminated due to the lack of religious background; all three agreed that their suspect had demonstrated a fairly detailed grasp of the Bible. Nevena Derrickson was rejected when a closer read of her record, and a closer examination of her file, revealed her to not be white like their suspect but biracial.
Zavia Nixon fit their profile well. She'd grown up out in Southampton, with parents whose idea of religion would make even the most devoted "spare the rod" advocate cringe. She and her many siblings had been removed from the home on numerous occasions, only to be returned any time that the parents could fulfill whatever requirement the court had set out this time. She had the scar. She had no current address, and her file from her last interview with her caseworkers had indicated a distrust bordering on paranoia of both religious and secular authorities.
She even had the farming background.
"I like this one." Ryan stabbed the binder with his finger. "I think we should start to look for her."
Just for the sake of being thorough, they examined the whereabouts of Rifka Bonomo and Cora Stafford. Stafford had died two years before of an overdose, and Bonomo had left the country two days before Scott Gilbert's little body had been found. Their only real candidate was Zavia Nixon.
They sat back and grinned at each other with relief. Part of the hard work was done already. They knew who they were looking for, and that felt good. It felt beyond good. It was the most real progress that they'd made. "We can get that image out to every grocery store, and every big box store, and every garden center in the state," Ryan said finally. "And we can put her name on it."
"We can give her image to local law enforcement out in Western Mass., too. And to the men and women of Troop B. They'll be on the lookout for her." Elias grinned.
"And to the hospitals." Pat twisted his lips. "We can't forget about the whole diphtheria thing. She's going to have to be stealing medicine for them."
That sobered everyone up. "We'll get her," Pat promised. "Not today. But we will get her."
"Not today," Ryan agreed, and closed his computer. "But for now, it's the weekend. Go home. Relax. Clear your minds and see if you can't figure out where she might be hiding out west."
Elias and Pat both nodded, and Ryan headed out.
Elias looked Pat over. "Are you okay?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"Because you look like you went ten rounds with Tyson." Elias folded his arms across his chest.
"I've got both of my ears." Pat waved a hand. "I'm fine. I got a little bit roughed up, sure, but you should see the other guy. For real. The interview went sideways, like Robles expected. On the plus side, he got his collar, and he'll be able to help out with DJ more."
"Mmm-hmm. From the look on Ryan's face, why do I not think that Nick got half as roughed up as you did?"
Pat slouched in his seat. "It's just a couple of bruises, Elias. It's not a thing. I promise." His cheeks darkened. "Are you going to give me the third degree every time I get a little beat up on a job?"
"Maybe." Elias put a hand over Pat's. "I don't like to see you hurt."
Pat looked down. "I'm not used to that."
"Do you want to be?"
Pat went silent for a long, gut-wrenching minute. "Well, it's a weird feeling, no doubt about that. I'm rebelling against it right now, because it's inconvenient and it's making me feel bad for doing my job. That said, I think once I get over that I'm going to think it's actually kind of nice." He took Elias' hand and smiled a little. "Is that a good, honest answer?"
Elias pursed his lips for a moment. "It actually is. I'm not sure why it is, but it is." He stroked Pat's face. It wasn't easy to avoid the bruising. "Are you still willing to come down to my place this weekend?"
"If you are." Pat leaned into his touch, just a little bit. "I mean I packed, but if you've changed your mind or something, that's cool."
Elias gave Pat his address. He was pretty sure that Pat could get it, if he wanted to, but he gave it to him anyway. "Your GPS should be able to get to it. Hopefully, traffic isn't too bad."
"Is there anything you want me to bring?" Pat licked his lips.
"No. Just yourself. We'll be fine for everything else." Elias hoped he was right.
***
Pat got to Elias' building without too much trouble, all things considered. Traffic was a pain, but traffic was always a pain. The building itself wasn't hard to find, looming over the ancient city as it did. The condos inside probably cost a fortune. How could anyone actually pay that much money to live in an apartment and have to hear their neighbors' dramas?
He pushed the thought out of his brain with a mighty mental shove and parked where Elias had told him to park. His Honda didn't fit in with all of the BMWs, Mercedes, and Bentleys in here. Someone would probably call the cops on him, and wouldn't that be hilarious? Would the Providence cops see his skin or his badge?
He let go of the wheel, stepped out of the car, and locked it. He was being ridiculous. He was working himself up into a fit, and he hadn't even gotten into the front door yet. He wasn't some scholarship kid anymore. He was a guy, here to see another guy. There was no reason to bring class struggle into it.
He found Elias waiting for him in the lobby. Elias introduced him to William, the doorman, and guided him toward the elevator. Pat could feel William's eyes on him all the way across the stone lobby. Maybe it was Pat's overnight bag that he was looking at. "I think that William doesn't approve," he said drily, as the elevator closed behind them.
"Maybe he thinks that I'm rescuing you from an abusive relationship." Elias raised an eyebrow at him.
Pat drew his eyebrows together. "Why would he think that?" The elevator kept going up. What was the deal here? Did Elias seriously live on the top floor? He clenched his fists and forced them to release. It didn't matter where Elias lived. They were just hanging out together.
Elias chuckled. "You think the black eye might have given him some ideas?"
Pat threw his head back and laughed. "I forgot about that."
Elias' jaw dropped. "How can you forget? Doesn't it kind of, you know, hurt?"
"Well, yeah, but I don't think about it." Pat couldn't have been more grateful when the elevator finally stopped. Just the scent of Elias was making him hard, and he didn't need that right now. "I've probably given you this hor
rible impression, like I just sit around and angst about everything that's ever gone wrong in my life. Yeah, the black eye hurts. Obsessing about it isn't going to make it hurt less." He tilted his head to the side as they walked down the beige hallway. "I'd probably feel differently if I had to put contacts in or something."
Elias laughed. "You think?"
They reached apartment 3002. Elias unlocked the door and held it open for Pat. "Home sweet home," he announced.
The first thing that Pat noticed was the view. He could see all of Providence from Elias' couch. There weren't any curtains or blinds, just Providence as far as the eye could see. "Do they just send up the bat signal and wait for you to show up or what?" Pat asked, through a dry mouth.
