The Way Things Are (27 page)

“Are the police looking for him?”

“I….” Patrick glanced down the hall where Ken was engaged in a frantic, whispered conversation with his older brother. “They’ve got to.”

“You need help looking for him? I can call some of the guys from our crew, see if they can help.”

Patrick pressed his lips tight and took a deep breath.

Ethan’s expression turned grim and he nudged Patrick in the shoulder. “Do you want help looking for your kid?”

“If Jay just took off, this is where he’ll come back to,” Patrick muttered, trying to convince himself as much as his boss. “He’s slipped out through his window in the middle of the night quite a few times, and the first few times, I went nuts trying to find him. I drove around the entire night looking for him. And in the morning, I got home and found him in his room asleep. Once, in New York, I locked his window and the front door before I went to look for him, and I found him asleep by the front door when I got back.”

“He does this shit a lot?”

Patrick shrugged. “If he’s just out goofing off, I’m not going to find him. If not….” Patrick didn’t want to list all the horrible possibilities that had been running through his head, as if giving voice to them might somehow make them real.

“Well, if you change your mind, if he doesn’t find his way home soon, give me a call, and I’ll round up some of the guys.”

“I appreciate it,” Patrick said, desperately trying to convince himself it wouldn’t come to that. If he hadn’t come home to a trashed apartment, if the last week had been anything like normal, Patrick would have put money on Jay hiding in an alley and working on another damn painting before Patrick expected him home.

Patrick glanced down the hall where the argument between Ken and his brother had evolved into a shouting match.

“How the hell could you think
that
was what I meant when I asked you to talk some sense into him?” Malcolm shouted. His narrow-eyed glare flashed from Ken to Patrick, then settled on his brother.

Ken was facing away from Patrick, but he saw Ken run his fingers through his hair, tightening his fists around the brown strands. “Would you get your head out of your ass and listen to me?”

Malcolm glared at Patrick again, then lowered his voice.

Patrick turned away and smiled miserably. He should have known. Every time people found out he was gay, Jay got hurt. The first time had left Jay in the hospital and bearing emotional scars that would never fade, and now the police were arguing about his relationship with Ken instead of looking for Jay. Patrick dropped his head back against the wall behind him, letting his exhaustion and fear wash over the sting of resentment and regret burning in the pit of his stomach.

Fifteen years ago, Patrick accepted he would have to live his life for his son. But life as a single father left him solely responsible for Jay’s life, his happiness, and his future. And he’d let Jay develop an obsession that would only get him in more and more trouble as he grew older. He’d given up any claim to an individual existence. He’d dedicated his life to taking care of and worrying about Jay. He was nothing beyond being Jay’s father, and he’d failed so miserably in that role it was pathetic. It had been naïve and selfish to hope moving back home to Seattle would magically let him step back into a life of his own.

“Keep me posted, okay?” Ethan asked, slowly climbing back to his feet.

Patrick opened his eyes and looked up at his boss, nodding. He settled his gaze on the stairs. Any minute now Jay would wander out of the stairwell, lugging his backpack as if it weighed a ton, happily oblivious to everything except whatever sketch was consuming his attention at the moment. He had to.

Chapter 12

K
EN
GROANED
.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Malcolm leaned close, whispering despite the rage dripping off him. “I could say the same thing to you. I ask you to keep an eye on the man, to talk some sense into him, and you sleep with him? What the hell?”

Ken draped his arm over Malcolm’s shoulder, trying to keep their conversation from drifting into Patrick’s apartment. “My personal life has nothing to do with you.”

“An idiot could see the way you look at him,” Malcolm growled. “Everybody I work with knows you’re my brother, you shithead. You can’t just announce that you’re screwing my witness like it’s no big deal.”

Ken wanted to convince himself that the disgust on Malcolm’s face wasn’t there, that it wasn’t real, but he knew better. Whether it was because of Ken’s lack of discretion or because he was sleeping with another man, Ken didn’t want to contemplate. “I don’t care if he’s your witness. This didn’t have anything to do with you or your precious case, you dick. It’s not fucking relevant. His kid is missing. Can you help me or not?”

“I already told you: we’ve put out an alert. Finding him is going to take time.”

“Fine, we’ll look for him ourselves too.”

“You can’t just leave,” Malcolm said. “Especially not with my witness. I need to take his statement.”

Ken tightened his fingers in his hair, trying to resist the urge to grab his brother and punch him. “Mal, his son is missing. You can’t really expect him to sit around waiting for your crime scene unit to finish up.”

Malcolm glanced down the hall to where Patrick was sitting on the floor, his legs sprawled out in front of him. There was a six-pack of beer between his outstretched legs. “Looks like he’s fine waiting where he’s at.”

“Really?” Ken shoved his hands into his jacket pockets to make damn sure he didn’t try to pick his brother up by the collar and throw him into a wall. He couldn’t believe his brother could be such an ass, writing off the shock and fear in Patrick’s eyes as if they weren’t there, and putting his own paperwork over the very real possibility a kid was in danger.

“Yes, really. I think you’ve gotten a bit too close to Mr. Connelly to stay objective here, Kenny. You need to leave before you make things worse.”

“You know what, Mal? Jay Connelly is a minor, remanded into probationary supervision by the court, and he is my responsibility. The fact that I’m too close to this case to be objective doesn’t absolve me of my responsibility. When you get your shit together and are ready to interview Pat, call.”

“Call?” Malcolm scoffed. “So he’s what, exactly? Staying at your place?”

“It wouldn’t really be your business if he was,” Ken growled. “But I meant his cell phone.”

Malcolm seethed and glared at Patrick again. “It sure as hell is my business,” he whispered. “You know how stupid this is, I know you do. You think I want to watch you throw away your reputation, your career, for a quick fuck with the muscle-bound caveman father of one of your juvenile delinquents?”

Ken stared at his brother for a moment, then shook his head slowly. “Caveman? That’s the best insult you can come up with? You’re off your game, Mal. You should get some sleep.”

He shouldered Malcolm aside, sent a threatening glare at the patrol officer who tried to get in his way, and offered Patrick a hand getting up.

“What’s with the beer?” he asked when Patrick waved him off and climbed to his feet, six-pack in hand. “And wasn’t that your boss?” Ken jerked his thumb back toward the elevator where the older man had just been.

“Yeah. We got back on schedule. He came by to say thanks.”

“He looks different during the day,” Ken said, stepping into the middle of the hall to keep himself between Patrick and Malcolm. “Do you want to go look for Jay?”

Patrick shook his head quickly. “If he comes home, I need to be here. Corbin’s on his way, though.” Patrick waved his cell phone vaguely.

Ken stepped a bit closer, suddenly not caring about the half-dozen police officers moving through Patrick’s apartment door. Patrick’s lips were pressed into a tight grimace. His green eyes swiveled, looking anywhere but at Ken.

“Okay. You stay here, and I’ll go drive by the gym and the library,” Ken said calmly. “If I find him, I’ll call.”

“He’s probably hiding in an alley, painting.”

“You don’t think he’d actually go to the library?”

“He likes to read,” Patrick said, his voice a whisper. “He’s smart. But no, I doubt he’s actually at the library.”

“I don’t think he’s at the library either. Not exactly,” Ken agreed. “He draws anything and everything that captures his attention, and the central library is new, artsy, and designed to capture people’s attention. It seems like something he’d get excited about. Plus I don’t think he’d have lied to his friend about where he was going.”

Patrick smiled a little. “He is a shitty liar.”

Ken glanced at the crowd of police officers and decided he didn’t care about their opinions at the moment. He cupped Patrick’s cheek and kissed him softly. “I’ll call you in an hour whether I find him or not.”

K
EN
SPOTTED
Jay the second time he drove around the towering, eleven-story downtown library. He wasn’t inside the building itself, but sitting on the edge of a raised flowerbed in front of a large office building on Fourth Avenue. He was sitting with his legs crossed beneath him. There was a sketchbook open on his right knee and the remains of a takeout lunch on his left.

Ken typed out a quick text message.
Found him, he’s safe. We’ll be back ASAP.

Jay didn’t seem to notice when Ken parked in front of the office plaza or when Ken sat down on the edge of the raised garden bed beside him. Ken leaned over and peeked at the open sketchbook. A detailed pencil sketch of the library itself filled the bottom of the page, its unique angles and windows captured with a level of precision that seemed impossible without a camera. But the building itself only took up half of the page. A teenage boy on a skateboard had been drawn larger than life, using the side of the building as a half-pipe. As detailed as Jay’s drawing of the building was, it looked amateurish next to the drawing of the skater. The skater was topless, captured clutching his skateboard in one hand midjump, and he looked exhilarated.

Ken had seen enough of Jay’s drawings to know he tended to try to recreate excitement with sharp lines, jagged angles, and a lot of contrast. But the skater was shaded with soft, blended shades of gray, and even the skateboard itself looked smooth and somehow sensual. Ken watched Jay blend the shading around the boy a bit more, getting graphite on his fingers as he smoothed the lines and edges even more. Jay was blushing.

“Well, he’s cute,” Ken said, keeping his tone conversational.

Jay froze for an instant, then leapt to his feet, snapping the sketchbook shut and sending pencils, erasers, and paper smudging sticks flying along with what was left of his lunch. “Ken?” he squeaked, clutching the sketchbook against his chest.

“If that’s your model over there”—Ken nodded toward a young black man who might have walked right off of the page in Jay’s sketchbook—“I think you might have exaggerated his physical proportions a bit. He looks shorter in real life.”

Jay scratched the back of his head. “I drew him. I drew the building. I didn’t mean to draw him taller than the building. It’s just… a….” Jay shifted his head from side to side. “I don’t know what it is. They’re just next to each other on the page, and I liked the way they looked.”

“No, not that. I just meant his torso looks too short for his legs. At least in real life. In your drawing, he’s too perfect.”

Jay blushed furiously and dropped his eyes to the ground. “Close to perfect just the way he is. You won’t tell my dad, will you?”

“That you’ve got a thing for architecture? I’m pretty sure it’s not an issue. What are you doing down here? Your dad thought you were going to the gym for class.”

Jay nodded to his backpack. It lay open on the bricks at the base of the flowerbed, and it was overflowing with so many large-format art books the seams were stretched tight. Spilling out around the art books were smaller novels, each with the generic tan cover Ken remembered from cheap editions of classic literature he’d been forced to read in school.

“Going to the library?” Ken said out loud. “What the hell? None of the kids on my caseload actually go to the library. I mean, they say they’re going, but I always catch them doing something wrong when they say they’re going to the library.”

Jay looked like he was torn between being mortified and laughing. “Uh, sorry?”

“You know you’ve got your dad worried sick, right?”

“I do?” Jay looked confused. He dug into his backpack, where an older cell phone was buried beneath still more books. On the city street, there was no way Jay would have heard the phone, muffled by layer after layer of paper and fabric. He fumbled with his phone, grimaced, and shoved it into his back pocket. “Just because I skipped one boxing class? I know it’s important to him, but I just… I needed a break. Michael’s great, but boxing with him….”

Ken watched the boy squirm for a minute, and he had to fight not to laugh. For a moment he wondered if his high school football coach had known exactly why he’d wanted to skip practice so often. “At least no one tackles each other in boxing.”