The Sullivan Gray Series Box Set

by H. P. Bayne

  Dez didn’t spare the details, hitting Sully with full truth. “I fell apart. I hit the bottle hard, and everything else took a backseat. My job was the first thing to go. I narrowly avoided losing it for helping you escape, but I got canned after Raynor caught me at a bar during shift and confronted me. I narrowly missed being hammered with a criminal assault charge over that episode. My marriage tanked not long after. For damn near a full year, Eva tried to see me through it, but I was too far gone. She finally hit the breaking point and kicked me out, said she wasn’t going to let Kayleigh know me like that. I didn’t argue. I knew she was right. I was a crap husband and a crap father. I wasn't good to anyone anymore, not like that. So, you want to tell me again how you playing dead was supposed to be okay for me?”

  Sully’s mouth had dropped open slightly and he shut it, looking down at his knees in a way that allowed Dez to see the guilt as easily as if the younger man had voiced it. And as angry as Dez had felt a moment ago, it faded fast as his own guilt took its place. There were things he knew about Sully, things he’d learned over the years, and it had made him plenty protective of his foster brother and continually vigilant about his physical and psychological well-being. When the two of them were kids, Dez had blackened the eye of a kid who’d put that expression on Sully’s face, so even now, years on, he couldn’t handle being the one to put it there.

  His chair creaked under him as he sat forward, closing a hand over Sully’s forearm. “Hey, Sull. Forget it. I’m talking out of my ass. I’m sure you had your reasons.”

  “I thought it would keep you safe. I didn’t mean to ….”

  “Keep me safe from what, Sull?”

  “From exactly the sort of thing that happened tonight.”

  “That had nothing to do with you.”

  “So what then? Why would someone do that to you?”

  “You know Raynor.”

  “Sure. He’s a jerk, but he was never homicidal.”

  “He’s gone off the rails recently, man. I guess we all have. Let’s get back to you. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing’s changed. There are people who want me, people who won’t stop if they know I’m alive. I thought maybe they’d gotten to you tonight.”

  “People from Lockwood, you mean?”

  Dez saw the flinch, the muscles in Sully’s face jumping involuntarily under the name as if it had come with a physical impact. Dez chastised himself inwardly and gave Sully’s arm a little shake to draw him back.

  “Hey, you’re not going back there, all right? You didn’t belong there and you still don’t.”

  “Not everyone believes that.”

  “They don’t know you. Hey, Lockwood probably does some good work for the people who need it, but—”

  “There’s nothing good about that place. It’s hell. The things they did ….”

  “You don’t have to remind me. I know it was hell for you. That’s why I got you out. You didn’t have to fake your own death to escape it, man. I would have protected you, still will.”

  “If the rest of the world thinks I’m crazy, it’s going to take more than you to convince them otherwise.”

  Sully had yet to meet Dez’s eyes, but Dez was convinced his overly intuitive brother had to know he was being carefully scrutinized. Sully had left Lockwood Psychiatric Hospital on a pass in Dez’s care to attend the two-months’-delayed burial service for their father. He’d been due back the next day but Dez, having spent the time observing his brother, took matters into his own hands. He’d gathered just enough information about Sully’s experience at the institution to ensure staff would have to crawl over his dead body to get his brother back.

  Instead, two weeks later, it was Sully’s dead body he’d been standing over. Or so he’d thought.

  Sully had gone to extremes to fully escape the place, but his physical salvation clearly hadn’t equated to mental freedom as Dez watched the thoughts play out over his face, his memory taking him unwillingly back through the rooms and corridors of Lockwood.

  Or maybe there was something else, something Dez had yet to learn.

  He broke into Sully’s thoughts carefully, quietly. “There’s more to it, isn’t there? This was never just about you going to extremes to hide from a mental health warrant and the likelihood of going back to that place. There’s something you haven’t told me.”

  Sully at last lifted his eyes to Dez’s. “I’m really tired, Dez. Can we do this tomorrow?”

  “Does that mean you’ll stick around without me having to resort to force?”

  Sully smiled. “Yeah. For now. You’ve got a right to some truth here.”

  “Tell me one thing. These people looking for you, the ones you said weren’t going to stop. We are talking about Lockwood, right?”

  “If I had all the answers, I could probably find a way to stop running.”

  Dez gave his arm a solid pat and released him. “Then we’re going to find those answers.”

  3

  For a few hours, it was like coming home.

  There had been many nights in the past two years—more if he counted the hellish months he’d spent at Lockwood—Sully had managed sleep only by conjuring up memories of his years growing up in the Braddock house, imagining he could hear Dez’s snoring nearby.

  As he awoke in a darkened room to the sound of his brother’s noisy breaths, Sully had to remind himself of the reality of the moment, to wait until his brain fully cleared of sleep. Only then could he grasp that Dez was a solid form next to him and not merely a conjured image standing guard against the loneliness in which he’d been forced to dwell.

  He could barely make Dez out in the darkness, a large, black shape outlined in the orange glow filtering in through the window from the streetlight outside. But there was no mistaking the sound or the feeling.

  Sully had never known a home until the Braddocks had taken him in, and it had been the hardest thing to give up. He hadn't intended this reunion, had planned on staying away forever if need be. But the tiny vision of Aiden with panic in his eyes and a radiating pain based in the present and not the past, had brought Sully running straight back to his old life. Now, here he was, all but trapped between his brother and the wall, between the life he wished he could have and the one to which he needed to return.

  There would be no way to explain it to Dez, none he would accept anyway. He had promised to stay until morning, to provide Dez with the explanation he wanted, needed and deserved, despite the difficult situation it would create. Because the longer he stayed, and the more he shared, the smaller his chances of getting out. Settling back into any vestige of his old life would make it increasingly difficult to leave it behind once again.

  At this point, he knew his best means of escape were either to leave now while Dez was in the midst of deep sleep or wait until tomorrow night and hope the truths laid at Dez’s feet wouldn’t be enough to keep him awake and prevent Sully’s leaving.

  Then the decision was made for him.

  He felt her before he saw her, a feeling almost as familiar to him as Dez’s presence. She stood just this side of the window, but though she should have been backlit by the streetlights, she was fully visible as if bathed in a glow from within.

  Her image had once terrified him, the blood soaking the side of her pale, teenaged face and caked in dyed-purple hair around a wound near her left temple. And it hadn’t been lost on him that each time he saw her, something bad was sure to follow. He’d formerly blamed her for the traumas of his earlier years. But age and wisdom had helped him see the truth; she was simply a harbinger foretelling the imminent approach of something terrible, allowing him—once he learned to listen to her wordless warnings—to take steps to avoid the fall.

  So after years of sporadically encountering the nameless ghost he knew only as the Purple Girl, Sully was left in no doubt as to what he needed to do.

  He had to leave. Now.

  Sully fell back on years of experience and sleepless study to take him,
with stealthy, practiced movements, out of his spot next to the wall, had him up and out with more ease than he suspected most could have managed. He’d been careful to study the floors last night, had paid careful attention to the creak at the juncture of kitchen and living area, and so avoided that spot as he stripped off the loaned pyjamas and exchanged them for his own street-scented clothing.

  A wave of guilt crashed over Sully as he studied the shadowed form of Dez, still sleeping hard. Judging by the dark circles under his eyes last night, the guy hadn’t managed a proper sleep in quite some time, and there was little doubt Dez’s current state of comfortable slumber was thanks in large part to Sully’s return.

  Sully struggled to ignore the inevitable turmoil morning would bring for his brother as he placed the borrowed PJs onto the dresser. He turned, forcing his gaze past Dez’s face to Pax’s, signalling to the dog with a hand flattened toward the floor.

  Pax heeded the silent command, lifting slowly to his feet and staying low as he padded across the floor to Sully’s side.

  The Purple Girl was by the door now, eyes directing him where voice could not, and he followed as she passed through the wall. Sully opened the door wide enough to allow Pax to slip into the hall before him.

  The hinges caught as he sought to accommodate his own exit, creaking noisily until he stilled the door in his grip. His breath hitched as Dez, mere feet away, released his own and rolled over on the pullout. Sully studied his brother’s form long enough to realize he was no longer watching for signs of waking, but rather memorizing this scene, one he expected would both shelter and curse him in times to come.

  At last, Dez once again still and peaceful in unknowing sleep, Sully slipped into the hall and eased the door shut behind him.

  Sully’s earliest memory of the Purple Girl dated back to the year before he started school, and he wouldn’t be surprised if she predated even that, if she’d been a part of his life even before he had the capacity to recall. She’d been a terrifying presence to him back then, pallor and blood and a set of huge, kohl-rimmed eyes staring at him with such intensity, he was convinced she could see rather than simply hear his heart thumping against his chest wall.

  As the first ghost he’d encountered, her silence had been nearly as frightening as her appearance, leaving him cowering beneath his covers while his brain spun with unasked and unanswered questions. And, although his fear had dwindled with age and better understanding, he had yet to learn what she wanted from him.

  Except, if he were to guess, erring on the side of hope and experience, she wanted him to live and to stay safe.

  Looking back, the turning point had come during his stay at a foster home in McCoy Falls, a small community downstream from Kimotan Rapids. He’d lived there nearly a year, his last placement before he’d been blessed with the Braddocks.

  That foster home had been a nightmare, Mr. Blake a man slow to show compassion and patience but plenty quick with a belt, while his horny teenage son practiced his skills on the girls the family took in. Only Mrs. Blake was decent, although Sully had never fully forgiven her tendency to turn a blind eye to her loved ones’ sins.

  So Sully had felt remarkably little on the night of the fire.

  To this day, he had no idea what had woken him, but he recalled snapping his eyes open to the sight of the Purple Girl hovering over him. The intense expression of dread on her face had probably rivalled his own.

  He smelled smoke, saw it seeping beneath his closed bedroom door. Sully woke Brennan in the next bed, the only other foster kid staying there at the time, and began to tug the sluggish teenager toward the door.

  The Purple Girl blocked his path, materializing so suddenly he fell down on his backside. The room was filling with smoke, so Sully, regaining his feet, dared to take another step toward the door. But she wouldn’t budge, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to try to move through her.

  He took the only other path he could, towing a panicked Brennan toward the window.

  The two boys took shelter beneath an elm tree in a park across the road as fire crews fought the blaze. Sully watched as Mr. Blake stepped through the front door, untouched by flame, and stared down at his own smoke-blackened corpse, pulled from the living room by firefighters. Sully averted his eyes, hoping Mr. Blake would not notice him, would not realize Sully saw something no one else could. Thankfully, Mr. Blake was too busy watching his house burn, staring down in disbelief at his own body and running back and forth like a madman as he yelled wordlessly at crews to save his wife and son. But the men couldn’t hear him and, regardless, there was nothing they could do, no way they could attempt to re-enter that inferno.

  Sully heard later they’d found the other two Blakes inside the next day, once the scene had cooled enough to do a full search. By then, Sully and Brennan had been thoroughly questioned as suspects, seven-year-old Sully reduced to tears by a particularly enthusiastic interrogator until then-Staff Sergeant Flynn Braddock came down to the interview rooms and put a stop to it.

  They later charged a teenager with the arson, a disturbed girl who claimed to have suffered abuse at the hands of both Blake males. Sully never learned what had happened to her, although he’d heard rumblings she spent some time at Lockwood.

  Looking back on it now, what really stuck with him wasn’t the arsonist, or even the charred body of Mr. Blake or his frantic, confused ghost. It was the presence of the Purple Girl, and the suspicion that had she not blocked their path to the door, Sully and Brennan would have joined the Blakes.

  So even now, Sully suspected she was trying to protect him as she led him further and further from Dez’s, leaving Sully to question what danger she foresaw that he didn’t.

  Which spawned a new question, one that had him turning and running back across Endlin Road, back toward Twenty-Fifth: if she was trying to draw him from danger, where did that leave Dez?

  Sully sprinted down Twenty-Fifth with Pax at his heels, the two of them narrowly avoiding a collision with a delivery van as they dashed across an intersecting street. The Purple Girl wasn’t giving up, positioning herself in his path at virtually every turn, providing an obstacle he was forced to duck around as he worked to close the gap she’d placed between him and his brother.

  No movement was visible at Dez’s building once he arrived, out of breath with a panting dog and a frantic dead girl next to him. Sully was about to head to the back door and the buzzer system he recalled seeing last night when his brain kicked in above his pounding heart. Would he really be doing Dez any favours by returning now? Sully knew Dez, knew if he were in immediate danger, he would be putting up one hell of a fight, one Sully would hear from the street—and a man who towered over most people and packed some incredibly solid muscle on that imposing frame would give anyone a run for their money.

  Sully hung back, deciding the better option was to keep a watch on the place, make sure no visitors to the building triggered his instincts. If any suggestion pointed to Dez might becoming a further target, Sully would go in and provide what help he could.

  Patting his leg as an indication for Pax to follow, Sully jogged across Twenty-Fifth, having spotted an alley he thought would provide enough shadow and cover to keep him out of sight, both to Dez and to anyone who might come calling.

  There, he hunkered between a dumpster and a stack of discarded boxes, and waited.

  When they’d been kids, Sully had often sought refuge with Dez from the horrific memories of his past and the often-terrifying visitors only he could see. Dez had willingly allowed the trembling, wild-eyed kid to climb into bed with him, had spent many a night talking and telling stories until the shaking gave way to sleep, so that when morning came, it wasn’t unusual for Dez’s mom to find the two of them sleeping peacefully side by side.

  Despite the time that had passed and the fact they didn’t fit so easily into a double-sized pullout as they once would have, Dez had found comfort in the familiar. He’d slept more soundly than he had in years without the
aid of alcohol to rock him into oblivion.

  But every silver lining held onto a cloud, and this one covered a sky that had temporarily cleared with Sully’s return.

  Dez had slept on the outside edge of the pullout, having tugged his late grandmother’s patchwork quilt over and around himself, one foot free and braced against the floor to prevent an accidental fall. Though he’d left a space on his other side for a second person, he discovered upon waking there was no longer anyone there to fill it, barely a dent in the pillow where a head should have been.

  Dez fought dizziness as he sat up too fast, a reminder of the blow to his head. He blinked hard twice, willing his sight to still so he could better scope his surroundings.

  But the quick visual sweep of his apartment contained no answers, at least not the ones he wanted. He felt the peace of last night straining away beneath the cold douse of water this morning had brought.

  Sully was gone.

  4

  He gave it an hour, hope fading as the minutes ticked toward seven with no sign of Sully or Pax.

  Dez used part of the time to scour the small suite for clues—a note, missing items, anything to reveal where Sully had gone and, more importantly, whether he was planning on coming back.

  He found the pyjama pants and the T-shirt he’d lent Sully atop his dresser, the grubby clothes the younger man had arrived in no longer anywhere to be seen.

  Dez clicked on his small television, seeking escape in a meaningless reality program until he found he could no longer avoid the one his own life had become.

  Sully wasn’t coming back.

  Dez had been eighteen and fresh out of high school when he’d followed in his father’s footsteps, securing a place on the KR Police Department.

  With many young candidates turned away due to a lack of life experience or relevant education, Dez had been all too aware of the judgmental looks and hushed conversation, the belief he’d only managed it because his father was deputy police chief. Dez had known from the start he’d have to work twice as hard, be twice as good out there, to prove otherwise.