Authors: RJ Scott
“Well, that’s good news, right?”
“Today,” Jack said. “He’s willing to meet me today.”
Riley shrugged philosophically. “You’ve been waiting a long time. You should go.”
“What will you do?” Sunday was their day, their time.
Riley leaned over and kissed him. “Sit here an’ pine for my man,” he slurred with his best cowboy impression.
Jack shook his head. “You suck at that,” he teased.
Riley sat back in his chair, picking up his Kindle. “Not the only thing I suck at.” He smirked.
Hayley joined them, flopping dramatically into the chair next to Riley. “If I have to do one more history essay, I swear I will die of boredom,” she announced.
Riley patted her knee. “I feel your pain.” He caught Jack’s eye and cleared his throat. “Go get the questions and your books, and we’ll talk,” he told her. Only when she left did he send the pleading puppy-dog eyes to Jack. “You’re leaving me to postwar reparation essays. I’m divorcing you.”
Jack huffed a laugh, kissed Riley, and jumped the porch steps. “Going to see if Liam wants to come with me.”
He walked away still smiling. Everything in his world was in balance.
At Liam and Marcus’s place, he bounded up the steps and checked his watch before banging on the door. It was 11:00 a.m., and he hoped to hell he wasn’t interrupting anything. He knocked, then stood back a step. The door opened with a flourish. Marcus looked wild-eyed and red in the face.
“Sorry,” Jack said. He wasn’t sure what else he could say.
“Jack! Save me from pushups,” Marcus said.
Liam came up behind Marcus, looking way fresher than Marcus did. “Hey, Jack.”
Jack cleared his throat. “Sorry to interrupt, guys.”
Marcus gripped his chest melodramatically. “You saved me.”
Liam rolled his eyes. “You only had five more to go. Anyway, boss, can we help you with something?”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Me?” Liam asked.
“Please.”
Marcus looked from Jack to Liam and held up his hands. “I’m going back to finish my five. If you don’t hear from me, send for the paramedics.”
Liam moved outside the door and shut it behind him. His expression changed from teasing Marcus to looking nervous and way too serious for Jack’s liking. It wasn’t Jack’s place as a boss to worry about Liam’s insecurities. Liam was good at his job, and Jack didn’t regret one minute of hiring the man, but he hated that every time they were alone, Liam’s defenses went up. He wasn’t stupid; Liam hadn’t had the best start in life. People in authority had abused him, but Jack wished he could find that magic moment where Liam saw him, Jack, as something different.
Jack leaned back on the railing, Liam against the closed door.
“I heard from the PI I hired,” Jack said.
Liam nodded as if he’d been expecting this. “He found the other two men?”
“No, but Kyle said he will meet me.”
Liam’s eyes widened in surprise. “That’s a good thing. Something you said to him must have gotten through.”
Jack shook his head. “Not sure what, but he wants to meet today. Look, I know it’s your day off and you’re here with Marcus, but would you feel like taking a couple hours to come with me?”
Liam looked him directly in the eyes, his expression wary. “I won’t talk to Kyle about what happened, what we went through. Just because it happened to both of us doesn’t mean we’re going to be braiding each other’s hair and swapping stories.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Jack reassured. He wouldn’t. He would never put Liam in that position. Liam was working through what had happened to him with a therapist and Marcus. Jack didn’t need to know any of the details or get Liam to share them with Kyle. “I’m happy to go on my own, only, I’d kind of like you to be there, for me.”
“For you?” Liam looked surprised. “Really?”
Jack filed away the reaction for later. Liam appeared shocked that Jack would ask him for support. Maybe the way to get closer to Liam was to show the vulnerable bits that Jack only exposed to Riley. The fear and uncertainty that dogged him on some things.
“Yeah,” he said as plainly as he could. “I could do with the backup.”
Liam opened his door. “Hang on.”
In a few minutes, he was back, Marcus catching him inside the threshold at the last second and hugging him close. They exchanged words, but none that Jack could hear if he wanted to, then Liam was beside him.
“Let’s go,” Liam said.
Marcus sketched a wave, a smile on his face. He didn’t look too pissed that Liam was going off on some kind of fact-finding visit with Jack on a Sunday.
“He’s cool with it? He could come with you if you….” Jack trailed off as they walked to where most of the D cars were parked.
“No, I need to do this thing on my own.”
Jack nodded. Liam was a stronger man with every day that passed, and Jack put that squarely with Marcus and the quiet, supportive love the two men had. They stopped next to Riley’s silver Land Rover, and Jack quirked a smile when Liam’s eyes widened.
“We’re taking Riley’s Land Rover? I love this car.”
On impulse, Jack tossed the keys to Liam, who fumbled but caught them. He looked from them to the car then to Jack. “You want me to—”
“You drive.”
Liam looked down at the keys. “What will Riley say?”
“It’s a ranch vehicle. You’re insured,” Jack said. Actually he wasn’t entirely sure what Riley would say, but seeing the smile on Liam’s face was worth it.
Liam settled in the driver’s seat, started the engine, and melted into the leather with an audible sigh. He was a good driver, calm, and not at all scared of the fact he was driving eighty thousand dollars’ worth of SUV off the ranch. If Riley looked surprised as he sat on the porch, staring at his baby being driven off with Liam at the wheel, then Jack could understand that. As it was, Riley and Hayley waved, and Riley was grinning like an idiot.
Gotta love that man.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They drove for around three hours including traffic to Round Rock, outside Austin. Kyle lived a mile from the center of town, according to Jack’s PI, but the address he’d given was to Memorial Park, not a house. Wide open spaces, families with kids, plenty of people walking and enjoying the sunshine. Liam parked up in the far corner of the parking lot, fussing about being right up close to the fence and muttering about how Riley would kill him if the car got scratched.
They climbed down, and Jack and Liam looked around them. They’d been told to wait in the parking lot, but there was no sign of Kyle. Jack recalled what Kyle looked like: dark hair, skinny, sharp cheekbones. He realized he was categorizing Kyle from what he recalled of the court case, not what the man might look like now.
“Jackson Campbell-Hayes.”
The voice was to one side of him, and there was no question in it, merely a statement. Jack turned to face the owner of the voice. Kyle hadn’t changed. At nearly six foot, he still looked too skinny, his dark hair falling over his eyes. His posture was straight, but he was so damned wary.
Liam moved to Jack’s side, and Kyle took a step back.
“Only you,” Kyle said. “It was supposed to be only you.”
“I can go,” Liam said. He wasn’t talking to Jack, he was talking directly to Kyle.
Kyle appeared to consider Liam standing there. Then he shrugged one shoulder. “Doesn’t matter to me, I guess.”
“You want to get coffee and go sit?” Jack inclined his head to the coffee cart by the kids’ playground. Without waiting he began to walk that way. He stood next to the cart and ordered his coffee strong and black. Jack knew Liam would want black with two sugars, and then he waited for Kyle. “What do you want?”
Kyle shook his head. “I can get my own drink.”
Jack wanted to argue; he didn’t. He took his coffee, and he and Liam sat at the wooden table close by. Deliberately they took opposite sides in an unspoken agreement that they wouldn’t form some kind of brick wall for Kyle to stare at.
Kyle joined them, sitting next to Liam with the biggest gap between them he could manage. He hadn’t bought coffee but a bottle of iced water, which he rolled over his forehead before placing it on the table in front of him. Jack noted Kyle’s reddened eyes, his pale skin.
“You feeling okay?” he asked, concerned.
Kyle looked far from okay. He looked like he was about to keel over. Kyle didn’t answer; he pressed on with whatever agenda he had in his head.
“What do you want? Why won’t you leave me alone?” He lifted startlingly green eyes to Jack and stared at him directly.
“I wanted to know how you are.”
Kyle huffed a laugh, which turned into a cough. “Oh yeah, I’m good,” he offered finally.
“You have work? And a place to live?”
“What is this, a Social Services interview?”
“No, we wanted to check you were okay.” Liam placed a hand on Kyle’s arm, but Kyle pulled it away abruptly.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” he snapped.
“I have a proposition for you.” Jack tried to get this back on track. “I want to start a project where—”
“Fuck you. You’ve seen me, now stop fucking calling me, and tell your cop to stop following me.” Kyle stood up, grabbing at his water and missing. “I’m fucking fine, okay.”
As if those words were dead weight in him, he fainted away, falling in a heap half on the bench and half on the floor before rolling the entire way and hitting the ground with a
thud
. Liam tried to catch him but missed and nearly toppled over trying to get to him. Jack was at Kyle’s side in an instant, checking for a pulse and somehow yanking out his phone in one go. He connected with emergency services and explained. Paramedics were dispatched with an ETA of five minutes. Jack took off his light jacket and balled it up, placing it under Kyle’s head.
Liam sat back on his heels. “What the fuck, boss?”
Jack shook his head. Like he knew anything. Maybe he had diabetes like Hayley did? Maybe he was just exhausted? He promised the unconscious man on the floor one thing, he would do his damn best to find out, then fix this.
“I hate hospitals,” Liam said. He’d found coffee and was now slumped in one of the impossibly hard chairs that were common to all hospitals.
Jack nodded. He’d already had Eden and the baby, then Hayley and her diabetes, he wasn’t sure he could manage any more of these places after today. Kyle had still been unconscious when the paramedics brought him in. Jack and Liam had followed and were now waiting along with other people in the outside room. Jack and Liam weren’t family. They were nothing to Kyle except people that knew him a little but Jack wanted to stay and Liam agreed.
“Me too,” Jack admitted a bit lamely. His head was too full of
what the fuck do I do now
. They’d been here two hours. There was no next of kin, nothing against Kyle’s name about family, and they only knew that because one of the paramedics took pity on them. The only thing they found in his wallet was an address for a hostel, written in careful, tidy handwriting. “I’m phoning Ethan,” he said.
Jack left, and as soon as he was outside the main building, he put in the call with the PI who had led them this far.
Ethan Farrell was on call 24-7, it seemed. He answered on the second ring. “Jack? How did it go with Kyle?”
“I’m in the hospital with him now. He collapsed. What can you tell me about his… situation?”
Ethan cursed down the phone. “I told him he should see a doctor. He didn’t look well on Friday.”
“You’d better fill me in. How did he let you know he wanted to see me?”
Ethan had been deliberately evasive about how he’d contacted Kyle and got him to agree to a meet-up.
“Long story,” Ethan began.
Jack settled against the wall outside the ER. “I have time.”
“He saw me and basically lost his shit outside the pharmacy near his house.”
“How do you mean he saw you? I thought you’d talked to him.”
Ethan huffed. “Clearly six years as a cop didn’t prepare me for subtlety and undercover shit. I was checking in on him, and he saw me. That’s beside the point. Kyle was being shown the door at the pharmacy. I don’t know why, I wasn’t close enough, but he looked right at me, and he crossed the road, through the traffic—nearly got hit—and he stood there and shouted in my face. Told me he’d be in the park on Sunday and could I leave him alone. Only his version had a lot more cuss words.”
“Okay.” Jack had to think about that later. “So the hospital are having difficulty tracking down next of kin. Do you have anything I can give them?”
Ethan was quiet, and Jack checked the phone. Was he still connected? “Ethan?”
“Sorry. Look, Jack, this isn’t easy. The kid, who isn’t actually a kid but turned twenty-six on the fifteenth of May, has no one. Mom tossed him out at fifteen. Kyle used to live in Austin, moved to Laredo and the ranch, then back to Round Rock, after his mom OD’d two years back. Dad unknown. No siblings or extended family. I’ve been checking in on him every so often without him knowing. Or at least I didn’t think he knew. He has about five different cash-in-hand jobs: cleaning, handyman-type stuff. As far as I can see, the address he uses is a room in this block where you literally pay cash for the night. He has no one.”
“Well, that’s not true now,” Jack said firmly. “He has me.”
As soon as Jack finished the call, he phoned Steve, who answered on the second ring.
“Jack, hey.”
“Steve, I’m with one of the kids I told you about, Kyle Braden, from the trial I was at with Liam. I need some information from you.”
“Shoot.”
“If I text you the details I have, could you recommend some local places and people, just to be a support network for him until he gets back on his feet.”
“Can do, send it over.”
“I need some advice. He’s in the hospital—dehydration—and he doesn’t have any kind of permanent residence. I want to give him some money. What do you think?”
“How much money?” Steve had a note of caution in his voice.
“Couple thousand, enough to get a deposit for a room or something.”
“No, Jack.” Steve sighed down the phone. “All you’re doing is paying your way out of this. I’m sorry if that seems harsh.”