The Sullivan Gray Series Box Set

by H. P. Bayne

  Sully suspected any complaints levelled against Forbes wouldn’t hold much water, given his father’s position as mayor and head of the police commission, but the threat seemed to be doing some good anyway.

  “I’ll give you some time tonight,” Forbes said. “But I need to speak with Sullivan tomorrow.”

  He turned once again to face Sully. “I expect to see you at headquarters. Call me first thing to arrange a time.” He glanced back at Mara, bowing his head as he spoke. “I am very sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

  Then he walked off, disappearing out the doorway at the end of the hall.

  “Smarmy little bastard,” Mara muttered.

  Were this situation anything other than it was, the comment would have drawn a laugh from Sully; few people were less inclined to swear than Mara Braddock. That said, it was unlikely anyone in this ER was more entitled to it than she was at this moment.

  She glared between Lowell and Sully, reserving her remaining fire for them. “I don’t know what the hell was going on out here, but it ends now. Whatever happened this evening we will deal with later. Right now, this is all I can handle, and I’m not even sure I can do that. Sully, I need you to drive me over to Aunt Lyndsey’s and then you need to help Eva find Dez. You can take my car and I’ll have Lyndsey drive me around. If you or Eva find him before I do, you bring him to me so I can talk to him. Everything else can wait, you hear me?”

  Sully nodded. No arguing with his mother when she looked at him like that. And no way he wanted to argue the point anyway. In his anger about Flynn’s death, he’d lost momentary sight of his brother.

  He wouldn’t make that mistake twice.

  20

  It was close to eleven at night and the bars were in full swing.

  Sully had talked to Eva and learned she was checking out a few pubs where she and Dez sometimes went for a drink on their date nights. She’d left Kayleigh with a neighbour who babysat for them and, like Sully, was operating under the assumption the little girl would be staying there tonight. None of them wanted her to have to see her father drunk, which was the state both Sully and Eva presumed Dez had put himself in by now.

  He wouldn’t be dealing with this well. Even a rudimentary knowledge of Dez would tell a person that much. For his part, Sully knew his own breakdown was waiting for him in the wings, standing there silently until the Dez-related drama was over. He was delaying the inevitable, using the drive and worry for his brother to keep him free for now of acceptance of the night’s events, of all that would mean going forward.

  Part of the problem—a huge part—was how to deal with his suspicions Lowell had caused his brother’s death. Sully knew Mara, Dez and Eva would believe he could see Flynn; the biggest question was whether they’d be in any state right now to accept it. Sully and Lowell had next to no relationship, but Lowell was very much a part of everyone else’s lives. They were devastated enough just coping with the death. They didn’t need one more thing. Not yet.

  At least not until Sully had something more solid than suspicion and a ghost.

  It was too much to deal with now. It would be too much later as well, so he’d have to figure out a way to deal with it one piece at a time. The grief wouldn’t wait long; soon, he would find somewhere private, somewhere no one would find him, to let it out.

  But it would have to wait until Sully found Dez. He came first.

  Sully had tried a few spots he and Dez had been for drinks when they’d wanted to avoid the Black Fox but, so far, he was coming up empty, no one having seen Dez for quite some time.

  Sully thought through his brother’s friends—most of whom were his work buddies—and wondered whether Dez might be with any of them. But he tossed the idea out the window pretty quickly. Dez was a social guy and, as a general rule, was not one to drink alone. He liked the company of friends, to be the centre of attention as he shared crazy stories from work or boasted about his daughter. But there would be nothing he’d be eager to share tonight, and he’d know he’d be lousy company.

  Dez’s buddies were people he enjoyed sharing the good times with, but Sully didn’t think he’d take the bad to them. He had just a handful of people he trusted well enough for that. Sully was one, Eva obviously another. But Sully considered there was a third person Dez might not mind going to, a guy who wasn’t likely to judge should Dez have a tearful breakdown in the midst of round seven.

  Sully pulled over and dialled the number he had for Bulldog, hoping he’d been able to get his phone charged today. Bulldog didn’t always have the money for bills, but Dez always ensured the guy’s phone was topped up. He wasn’t just his friend, after all; he was also his best contact on the street when it came to policing business.

  Bulldog picked up just before the call went to voicemail.

  “Hey, man,” Sully said. “I’m looking for Dez. Have you seen him or heard from him?”

  “As it happens, Sully, I can answer in the affirmative. I’m with him right now.”

  That would explain why Bulldog was keeping his voice low and why it had taken him a few rings to pick up. Bulldog sounded sober and Sully imagined he was keeping his head screwed on for Dez. Sully decided he owed the guy a steak dinner once things had settled a bit.

  “Where are you?” he asked Bulldog.

  “I was hoping you’d ask. I have no idea how I’m getting back to the city. No way in hell Copper’s driving me anywhere, state he’s in. I’ve never been here before, but I think I’m at your parents’ place.”

  “On my way. I’ll call Eva and Mom and see you in a few.”

  “Thanks. Oh, and Sully? We’re not in the house. We’re out back. Next to a river.”

  Sully felt a shiver run through him. Dez never went down there, not if he could help it. It held too many bad memories. Then again, it made sense in a way that was exactly where he’d go. He’d suffered his first major loss there, the spot they believed his five-year-old brother, Aiden, had fallen in and been swept away. Dez had never fully gotten past the death, had never stopped carrying the burden of guilt that first found footing inside him the day Aiden disappeared. Sully didn’t believe for a moment Dez was there now to finally try to face up to the tragedy and his perceived role in it. More likely, he felt like he was sinking himself.

  “Listen, I’m glad you called,” Bulldog said. “My phone bill needs paid so I can take calls but not make them. Hurry, okay? I’m worried about him. He’s kinda going off the rails here, and I can’t get him to ease up on the drinking.”

  “I’ll step on it, Bulldog. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Sully put his phone on speaker as he called both Eva and Mara, allowing him to drive and talk at the same time. Everyone was headed out there now, Dez’s makeshift intervention group.

  Sully imagined at least one other member of that group was there already. Unfortunately, Flynn was no longer in a state to be able to help.

  Sully got there first, which likely had something to do with his decimating the speed limit.

  He kept up the pace on foot, jumping from Mara’s car as soon as he’d skidded to a stop in the gravelled driveway and dashing around the house toward the waterway that ran on the far side of the expansive backyard.

  The moon was nearly full, allowing Sully to make out the image of Dez sitting slouched on the reedy riverbank while, nearby, Bulldog stood silent vigil.

  Dez’s friend took a few more steps away from Dez as Sully approached, allowing the two to talk so as not to be overheard by the subject of their conversation.

  “Glad you got here before the women,” Bulldog said. “He’s surpassed drunk and has moved firmly into the realm of asshole. I stopped trying to talk to him. Maybe you’ll have more luck.”

  Sully wasn’t so sure. Frankly, he couldn’t remember Dez ever reaching the “realm of asshole” before. What that would mean for Sully’s attempts to reach his brother remained to be seen, but he wasn’t going down without trying.

  Sully patted Bulldog on the arm and
approached his brother’s broad back. Dez sat with arms balanced atop drawn-up knees, one hand propping up his head while the other held a mostly empty forty-ounce bottle of dark rum.

  Sully didn’t bother to stand on ceremony, simply lowering into a spot next to Dez and roughly mirroring his posture.

  “I said I don’t want to talk anymore, Bulldog. Leave me the fuck alone.”

  “It’s Sully, D.”

  Dez looked up and over. He’d been crying—heavily, if his swollen eyes and a nose that looked red even in the dark had anything to say about it. And he was certainly well past pissed at this point if the smell had anything to say about it. But it was the level of torment in his expression that toppled Sully, had him laying a hand against his brother’s back.

  “You know?” Dez asked.

  Sully nodded. Neither of them was going to say it out loud. They didn’t need to. Dez nodded his own reply and turned back to face the water. The moon was overhead, not at its peak yet, but far enough that it cast its sparkling glow on the water of the Kettle-Arm. It would have been beautiful were tonight’s reality anything other than what it was, compounded by the drowning of a young boy at this location seventeen years ago. As it stood, there was little right now strong enough to pull either of them from the edge of this cliff. Sully could only pray he’d be able to give Dez something to hold onto.

  “Eva and Mom are on their way,” he said, hoping that would help, the reminder there were others left in this physical world who meant something.

  “Fucking great,” Dez muttered, the words slurred under the weight of alcohol. “That’s fucking great, man. You call them?”

  “Course I did. They’re worried about you. We all are. We’ve been out looking for you for the past hour.”

  “I didn’t need to be looked for. I just want to be left alone.”

  “So why drag Bulldog out here?”

  Dez shrugged his response, and Sully dared to provide an answer to his own question. “You don’t really want to be alone, Dez. You fear it. You always have.”

  “If I say I want to be alone, I mean it.”

  “You've got people who love you, and all we want is to see each other through this, okay? That’s what family’s for.”

  Dez turned on him and, this time, there was more than pain in his expression, lowered eyebrows and lips twisted into a snarl telling Sully he’d taken a bad step somewhere without knowing it. Whether it was intended or the result of intoxication, Dez’s voice was a slurred bark. “Maybe I don’t want to get through this! I’m sick of getting through losing the people I love! I’m done with it, okay? I can’t do it anymore. I can’t fucking do this anymore.”

  Sully tried to pull Dez into a hug but was shoved back, hard. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

  “I’m not going to leave you alone, Dez. I’m your brother. That means you’re stuck with me when bad stuff happens. I know everything is really dark right now, but we’ll get through this together, just like we’ve gotten through other stuff.”

  “Other stuff? What other stuff? There was nothing like this before with you and me. Nothing even close.”

  “There was for me,” Sully said. “My whole life was black before I met you guys, before you took me in. All of you got me through, and you’ve been doing it ever since. You’ve always had my back, Dez, and I hope you know I’ve got yours. I’m not going to let you fall.”

  “It’s too late for that.” As if to prove it, Dez lifted the bottle and took a long pull.

  “Dez—”

  “I mean it, Sully, leave me alone. I don’t want anyone around me right now.”

  That was too bad because Eva, Mara and Lyndsey had arrived, were standing with Bulldog now, a few feet away, as they allowed Sully a chance to try to get through to Dez.

  “Listen, D, I know what you’re going through right now. I—”

  Dez turned back to face him, the moonlight exposing a humourless smile twisting his face and a sheen of tears pooling and spilling from his eyes. “You haven’t got a fucking clue what I’m going through.”

  “I lost Dad too.”

  Dez turned away, staring back at the river, at the spot where they suspected Aiden had slipped into the current. “Yeah, well, he wasn’t your real dad, was he?”

  It was like being clubbed in the gut by a baseball bat, and it pushed a gush of air from Sully’s lungs in the same way a physical assault would have. Dez had never, not once, reminded Sully of the fact he hadn’t been born a Braddock, had always been prepared to go to battle with anyone who suggested any different.

  Hearing those words from Dez hurt almost as much as learning Flynn had died.

  There was nothing more he could say, so he stood and walked away. He knew the others had heard, felt it in Eva’s sympathetic embrace before she went to fold Dez into one he was unable to fight.

  “He didn’t mean it,” Mara said. “You know that. You’re a part of this family, every bit as much as blood.”

  Sully nodded, the verbal answer he’d intended caught up behind the lump that had formed in his throat. Any attempt to speak right now would come out a choked sob, and that wasn’t something he was willing to do. Dez needed people around him when he broke; for Sully, that would be added torture.

  And Mara knew it, so she let him walk away. He knew she’d regret it the moment she saw him drive away in her car. But, right now, there was nothing else he felt he had the power to do.

  He waited until he was out of the yard and on the gravel road leading to the highway, the house’s exterior lights fading into the distance in the rearview mirror.

  Only then did he allow the sob to tear from his throat.

  He drove the city, aimlessly cruising streets and scanning faces that felt dark and empty.

  He’d stopped crying awhile ago, enabling him to return what had been the fifth worried phone call from Mara. They were all going to stay at Dez and Eva’s tonight to be together as a family, and she’d begged him to join them. And although she’d insisted Dez was sick over what he’d said—and while Dez himself had tried numerous times to call and text—Sully wasn’t ready to be there with them. Not yet.

  He wasn’t sure what he was ready for. Not this. Not this pointless drive through a world where Flynn no longer existed in a physical sense, where he would no longer be available for a visit or on the other end of a phone call to provide help or guidance. And yet, Sully knew how lucky he was. He’d seen Flynn, held within his own visual memory the knowledge he was still here, that he wasn’t completely gone because his body was dead. That was far more than Dez or Mara had.

  And yet, it wasn’t enough. Not when it came to Flynn.

  Waves of grief had intermingled with anger bordering on rage, and a desire to return to Lowell, to confront him, accuse him, maybe even beat him into oblivion. He’d driven past the building in New Town that housed Lowell and Kindra’s condo, had gone so far as to enter the lobby. But the doorman informed him the couple had gone to their country residence. Lowell had been very upset when they’d left, Sully was told.

  If there was any justice on earth, Lowell would feel every inch of whatever it was he’d done to end his brother’s life. Whether unintended or a yet-undiscovered murderous act, Lowell was responsible, and Sully would see justice done, one way or the other.

  But he was never able to hold onto his anger long enough; continual glimpses of Flynn, popping in and out of the car as if trying to be everywhere at once, brought on fresh torrents of grief each time he disappeared.

  The gas tank was riding the one-quarter mark when he finally pulled over on a dark street bordered by rows of brownstone apartment buildings from the turn of the last century. His brain was only half-working, caught somewhere between nightmare and reality—had him entertaining unrealistic thoughts that maybe he was asleep and none of this was real. Exhaustion had become the enemy and, as he looked up and fully clued in to where he was, he realized he’d been looking for a friend.

  Ara Watanabe didn’t turn h
im away, drew him into a warm hug as his attempt at explaining devolved into further tears. She didn’t ask questions, simply guided him to the edge of her bed and held him while he struggled for some sort of control, until he was finally able to say the words. And with those words, spoken out loud like that, came the final nail, the irrefutable proof this was not a nightmare he would ever wake from.

  Instead, she let him find some peace with her, Sully pulling back from the embrace far enough to deepen the needed connection, his lips against hers. She met him there, the two of them sinking back onto the bed. And, for a little while, thoughts of death strayed as Sully sought and found life here, in this temporary joining of bodies and souls.

  She didn’t let go after, warm fingers tracing a soothing path up and down the bare skin covering his spine as his forehead rested lightly against hers on a shared pillow.

  Her voice was soft, the audible embodiment of that gentle hand. “I’m so sorry, Sully. I’m so sorry.”

  He wanted to return the words, to offer his own apology for coming here like this, seeking the emotional safety and pleasure she could give him after failing so utterly, over and over, at returning those gifts. He wanted to tell her she meant more to him than she knew, more than he’d allowed himself to acknowledge. He wanted to thank her and, right now, part of him wanted to beg her to allow him to stay here forever, in this space and time where, for a brief moment, every bad thing had fallen away.

  In the end, she shushed him before he could start, rubbing his back until the impossible happened and a peaceful sleep settled over him.

  When he awoke, sunlight was streaming through the window, and she was gone; a note on the pillow rested where her head had been. “Had to go to class. Coffee’s on. Have some! I picked up your phone last night and talked to your mom so your family knew you were safe. All good. If you’re still here when I get back, I’ll make lunch. If not, remember I will be here if you need me.”

  She’d signed off with the initial of her first name and a series of Xs and Os, leaving Sully feeling both grateful and guilty. Ara deserved better than this, a guy who wasn’t capable of sharing himself with her, who took without giving back, a guy who would be gone when she got home later this morning.