Prodigal

by TA Moore

  “What’s Boyd short for?” jeered the mockery of a child’s smug singsong between his ears. “Boyfriend?”

  It was an almost physical jolt, like two hard hands against his chest, and Morgan felt a sick wash of shame sluice over him. It almost didn’t feel like his. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that bad about anything, but then it washed away as quickly as it came.

  Morgan shrugged off the moment. He didn’t know what that was about anyhow. It wasn’t news that Boyd was too good for him. Even Boyd knew that, and Boyd love… liked him. Halfway to love was just a fancy way of saying like, really.

  Mac ignored, or missed, that something had left Morgan shaken. He gave him a disgusted look. “You know, I was wrong. I’m glad you’re not Sammy. He deserved better than to grow up to be you. Come on. Get up. I’ll call the judge in Huntington from the station.”

  He gestured impatiently for Morgan to get up. Morgan rubbed his hands down his thighs, wiped his sleeve over his mouth, and slouched out of the chair in his own time. Mac grabbed his arm, dug in his fingers, and tried to march him toward the door. He yanked him forward like a parent with a stubborn kid.

  Morgan balked. The rye-sharp taste of anger cut through the egg and salt-meat taste of breakfast. It wasn’t helpful, but it never was.

  “Get off me.” He yanked back his arm. “If I wanted you to touch me, I’d have told you.”

  Mac hung on to his sleeve for a moment, fabric pulled taut, and then his phone rang urgently in his pocket. He glared at Morgan for a second but then scowled in frustration as he let go to reach for his phone instead.

  “It’s my day off—” he started to protest. Whatever the person at the other end said, it shut him up. Their voice was sharp and spiky with concern, but too faint for Morgan to make out the details. Not that he cared, he reminded himself as he rubbed his arm.

  Fuck this town.

  “Shit,” Mac muttered. He ran his hand over his short-cropped hair and exhaled raggedly. “Are you sure? Right. Give me… shit, ten minutes. I’ll be there.”

  He hung up and stuck his phone in his pocket. Then he grabbed his police bomber jacket from the hook by the door. A Cutter’s Gap Police badge was stitched onto both arms.

  “Stay here,” Mac told Morgan as he zipped the jacket up over his T-shirt to his collarbone. “I’ll deal with you when I get back.”

  “What happened?” Morgan asked. He supposed he cared enough to be nosy.

  Mac hesitated for a second as he tugged his collar straight. “There’s a fire at Shay’s car shop,” he said. “They think he’s inside.”

  A hollow pit opened in Morgan’s stomach where the anger had rooted. Nothing took its place, just that sinking, empty feeling.

  “Oh,” he said. “Right.”

  Mac waited, but Morgan didn’t have anything else for him. After a second, Mac shook his head with a slight twitch of his chin and grabbed his keys. As he left, he slammed the door behind him hard enough to rattle the suncatcher suction-cupped to the back of it.

  What had he wanted, Morgan thought irritably. He didn’t know Shay. Even if he were Sammy, that didn’t mean he’d know Shay. He grabbed the back of his chair and shoved it in under the table in a futile attempt at tidiness when the kitchen was covered with the abandoned remains of breakfast. It wasn’t that he didn’t care—obviously he didn’t want anyone to burn to death; he was a criminal, not a psychopath—but just not enough for Mac.

  What did Mac want from Morgan anyhow? Or Donna. Or Shay. Even Boyd. They all wanted something from him, and it wasn’t fair. He didn’t fucking ask for any of this!

  The weird phantom pain in Morgan’s chest flared. He was angry. He could tell because his chest tightened and his skin flushed with heat and anticipation. But he couldn’t feel it, just that weird hollow in his stomach that shouldered everything else out to a hot pulse against the inside of his skull.

  “Fuck them,” he rasped out. He grabbed the frying pan from the counter and swung it at the waxed wooden table in blank, red frustration. “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want it.”

  Crockery cracked into white shards, ground into dust on the scarred wood and bounced against the floor, and half-congealed grease splattered over everything. Mac’s ketchup was batted into the front of the fridge, where it smashed in a bloody splatter of tomatoes and glass. For a second Morgan imagined it was Boyd, imagined the flash surprise on his face as Morgan’s bony knuckles caught on his cheekbone and knocked Boyd on his ass even though he was taller.

  The shock of that image made Morgan recoil, and the hollow pressure inside him deflated. His temper tried to hang around, spluttered excuses for what he’d done—thought about doing—but for once, Morgan wasn’t in the mood for it, and it slunk away.

  He let go of the pan—the edge of it was sunk deep enough into the table that it stood up on its own for a second before it tipped over—and stepped back. His hands shook as he looked down at them. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Boyd. Ever.

  But he would. It was all he knew.

  Morgan pressed the heel of his hand against his temple hard enough to ache. It felt as though he were on a carousel, too dizzy to work out when to jump off. He hadn’t lied to Mac, had he? That was twenty grand down the drain because he’d flinched at the idea of Boyd’s disappointment in him. He wasn’t even going to be here to collect the sex for that debt, so what more could Boyd want from him?

  The heavy growl of a police interceptor engine coughed to life in the attached garage. Morgan wiped grease and egg off his hands on a towel, and he supposed he knew the answer.

  Maybe Morgan didn’t care about Shay, but Boyd did. He’d want to know if Shay was all right, or if he wasn’t. Morgan could do that for him, and…. Hell, Shay might have been a tool to Morgan, but it was only because he cared about his family. Morgan couldn’t hold that against him.

  By the time he got outside, Mac had reversed out of the garage and screeched away down the road. Morgan ran out into the street and waved his arms in the air. For a moment he thought Mac hadn’t seen him, but then the car fishtailed to a hard stop at the corner. The driver’s-side door swung open, and Mac climbed halfway out. He waited as Morgan loped toward him.

  “What?”

  “I’m coming with you,” Morgan said.

  “Why?”

  Morgan shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  It took a second, but Mac shrugged. “I guess not,” he said. “I can keep an eye on you. Get in.”

  FIRE TRUCKS blocked the street, and water ran down the road in grubby, sooty streams. Smoke belched out of the roof, black and heavy, and flames spat up in erratic, hungry licks around the windows. Bystanders had been pushed back from the road, cordoned off behind cop cars and hastily strung tape to keep them out of harm’s way.

  Unless Cutter’s Gap was a lot different than the places Morgan grew up in, there would be kids in the shops with their hands in the tills and merchandise stuffed in their bags. Fires were always a good distraction because nobody wanted to miss anything.

  Mac drove up, and the cops pulled the tape aside to let him roll through. He parked behind the trucks and killed the engine.

  “Stay here,” he ordered. “You could get hurt, and I don’t want to get sued.”

  He scrambled out and was immediately surrounded by people. Cops milled as they waited for orders, and a firefighter in a smoke-grubby uniform wiped char from his hair as he waited to fill Mac in. At the same time, people shouted questions from behind the tape.

  “Was it arson?”

  “Did Calloway do it because he knew you had new evidence?”

  “Is there anyone inside the building?”

  Morgan ignored Mac’s last instruction and got out of the car. It was hot and damp, water from the hoses blown back in a light spray from where it would do any good. He watched the flames and remembered the white scars on the inside of Shay’s arms, from wrist to elbow, and wondered. It wouldn’t be because of any new evidence—there was
none—but maybe all the shit had just gotten to be too much for him—the just-in-case suspicion that followed him around town, fifteen years of people thinking there were even odds on you being a monster. If, Morgan thought with a flicker of uncertain guilt, he’d realized Morgan didn’t want to tell the Hill lie….

  Morgan turned to check that Mac was still busy and then headed forward through the trucks for a better look. He stepped over the taut line of a hose and pressed in against the truck to let a firefighter jog past.

  “Get back,” they ordered sharply but didn’t have time to enforce it as they headed into the building.

  Morgan compromised and stayed where he was. “Fuck,” he muttered as he watched the fire rage. Windows had shattered from the heat, and black char marks trailed up and down the building. Shay’s car was still parked outside, covered with soot and still-red embers. The windshield was cracked too, by a chunk of something that looked like it had fallen from the roof. So it looked like Morgan’s outbreak of conscience hadn’t cost him quite as much as he’d thought.

  Even in the privacy of his head, that left a sour taste that made him grimace.

  The cars inside would be worse off, and Morgan sighed in relief as the guilt let go. Shay loved those cars. He might have done this to himself—Morgan didn’t know—but not to them.

  “Hey!” someone yelled. “You. Sammy. Morgan. Whatever your name is.”

  Morgan looked around. One of the firefighters, hose braced against his hip as he traced shapes in the air with the spray, caught his eye and jerked his head back toward the cordon.

  “Get back, out of our way,” he yelled. “I don’t want to have to explain to Boyd when he gets out that I let you get charbroiled.”

  Morgan went cold, and a wet chill itched in his ears and still left his mouth dry. It was obvious—he’d watched Boyd get dressed for his first day back this morning—but somehow Morgan still hadn’t put the pieces together. He’d known Boyd was a firefighter, he’d thought it was hot, but who’d actually send Boyd into a fire?

  Some impulse pushed him forward toward the flames, but he didn’t know what the hell he thought he was going to do. The heat hit him as he got closer, dried his eyes and stung his face like an open oven, and he’d have probably given up there. Someone grabbed his arms and dragged him back before he had to make that choice for himself.

  He still struggled and swore at them until Mac grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Mac demanded. “I told you to stay in the car.”

  “Boyd’s in there,” Morgan spluttered. “He could be…. He went into that.”

  “That’s his job,” Mac said.

  “That’s a stupid fucking job,” Morgan said as he craned his neck to look over his shoulder. His chest hurt worse than before as he heard something crash inside and two firefighters staggered out. They coughed and pulled their masks off, and neither of them was Boyd. “He could be…. He could get killed, Mac.”

  Morgan had thought he couldn’t live with the thought that Boyd didn’t, at least halfway, care about him. But this would be worse. He’d rather Boyd hate him than that he be gone. Panic battered at Morgan, and he knew he was being hysterical, but who the hell ran into a fire?

  “It’s his job,” Mac repeated, a bit more sympathetically this time. “He’s good at it. Okay?”

  “No.”

  “Huh,” Mac said. “Okay, but you have to stay back here. If you get in the fire crews’ way, you make it worse for everyone. You’ll put them in danger.”

  Morgan made a face—because Boyd was currently in a fire, how much worse could it get?—but nodded reluctantly.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll stay out of the way, but—”

  The scream cut through all the other noise. It was wet and raw, like something had torn, and everyone flinched. Morgan had let one firefighter pull him back from the fire, but it took two to lift Donna Calloway off her feet. She struggled against them, one shoe kicked off to lie shabby and sad in the muddy road.

  “No!” she wailed as he manhandled her away. “Shay! Shaayyyyy! It’s my son. My son’s in there.”

  The phones in the crowd shifted from the flames to Donna. A few had the decency to turn away again, to film the fire or put their phones away now that they were reminded there were real people inside.

  “New plan,” Mac said. He closed his hand like a vise on Morgan’s arm and shoved him across the road. “You get to keep her calm.”

  The flicker of anger was almost comfortable. Morgan’s hatred of being dragged or marched, that grip on your arm that pinched the skin underneath, was an old, familiar trigger. He was used to it and knew how to ride it out.

  “What do you think Boyd would want?” Mac asked in a harsh whisper. “He’s always done his best by Donna, always tried to be kind even when she’s cruel. You know he’d want you to help her.”

  Morgan scowled. It was never a good idea to let someone know what you cared about. Then they knew what to use on you. Too late to worry about that now, though.

  “Go fuck yourself,” he told Mac as he pulled his arm free. “And next time you push me around, I’m going to lay you out and fuck the consequences.”

  The thing was, Mac was right. Boyd wouldn’t want Donna to be left alone like this. Morgan gave Mac the finger and then stalked resentfully over to where Donna still fought the two firefighters.

  “Donna,” he half yelled to grab their attention. “They can’t help Shay when they’re stuck here. Let them go, and—”

  She threw herself at him, buried her face in his chest and wrapped her arms around him. Her body shook with the intensity of her sobs. Morgan froze awkwardly at the sudden embrace, his arms stiff and mind blank as he tried to come up with the appropriate response.

  “He’s my boy,” she choked out against his shirt, and snot and tears soaked into the fabric. “My Shay. Oh God, my baby’s in there, and he doesn’t…. He doesn’t know.”

  “Know what?” Morgan asked.

  She looked up at him, her face wet and devastated. “That I love him,” she said, voice broken. “I’m so…. I said things to him, and I didn’t mean them. I never mean them, but I still say them. Because I’ve got time to fix it, to take it back. But they said he’s in there. Sammy, tell me he’s not. Tell me I’ve got time.”

  He let it go and carefully folded his arms around her. There was no softness to Donna. She was all angles and bones. Morgan hugged her anyhow, the way he’d wanted any of those conveyor-belt moms to hug him.

  Like it was real, at least for the duration.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Boyd’s in there. Like you said, nothing bad will happen to him. He’ll get Shay out.”

  Donna shuddered. She brought a fluttering hand to her throat and closed it on nothing. “I never mean it,” she said in a thin, weak voice. “I told God he could take them both if I had you back, but I didn’t mean that. He knew that, didn’t he? God wouldn’t do this.”

  “He didn’t,” Morgan said confidently. If he were Sammy, he didn’t know if he’d have been so kind. He’d always wondered what it would be like to be loved that much. Now he knew, and it was terrifying. “They’ll be okay, D… Mom.”

  She wiped her slick, wet face on her hand. “It’s okay,” she said. She flicked her gaze to the fire and away with another shudder that shook her from shoulders to knees. “You don’t have to call me that. I know you don’t believe it yet. We’ll have time. All of us, we’ll have time.”

  Morgan sat down with her on the curb, his arm around her shoulders, and wished he was as confident as she was… as he’d tried to sound. In his experience, the only time life gave him anything good was so it could take it away again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  SHAY HAD moved into the half-renovated apartment over the garage when he divorced. He always planned to move somewhere else, but he never got around to it. There was always something else that had first dibs on his time and money.

  The
back corridor behind the shop was black with smoke. Visibility was nonexistent. The small kitchen and toilets had already been cleared.

  “I’ll check upstairs,” he said to Harry. “You check the main showroom.”

  “Boyd—”

  “I know where everything is,” Boyd reminded him. “You don’t. Makes sense.”

  “Stay in contact,” Harry warned him.

  The metal railing of the stair was hot enough to scorch Boyd’s palm through his makeshift glove. He grimaced and hung on as he felt his way up and around the landing. A set of racer-red leather chairs, still wrapped in plastic, sagged and blistered where they’d fallen out from under the stairs.

  Boyd climbed over them and scrambled on hands and knees up the last few stairs. He hammered on the door.

  “Shay?” he said. “It’s Boyd. Can you hear me? Shay, answer me!”

  He could have gotten it wrong. Shay could have spent the night in someone’s bed and just not found his way home yet. The only damage, once this was over, would be to the insurance company when the claim was settled.

  Someone groaned on the other side of the door and then coughed.

  “Boyd?” a slurred voice asked.

  “We’ve got someone up here,” Boyd barked into his radio. “They could be injured. I’m going in.”

  He tried the handle. It rattled but didn’t open. Boyd snorted to himself—the one time Shay listened to his advice and closed the door. He tested the heat of the door with one hand. It was good enough, so he wedged the edge of the hooligan into the door and shoved against it. The cheap wood buckled first, but the cheap lock was a close second.

  Boyd shoved the door open and pushed his way in. The floor glowed in spots where the fire had reached the ceiling below, and hot embers were visible through the rippled carpet. Boyd registered and ignored it.

  “Shay?” he called again. “C’mon, man, where are you.”