Jack was having a similarly difficult time with Roy—difficult in that Roy clearly wasn’t going to stop struggling against Jack’s arms any time soon, even though Jack had immobilized him easily. “Roy. Shut up and listen for a minute. Are the police coming?”
A knock at the door answered the question. “Jack? Julian? Is Roy here?”
Julian stilled for a minute, trying to judge whether it was safe to let go of Patrick’s arms.
“Behave yourself, all right? I’m going to get the door.”
When he was reasonably sure he wasn’t risking anyone’s immediate personal health, he let go and went to the front door. The woman waiting for him was petite, about five-three, with short, wavy brown hair and blue eyes, dressed in police blues. “Roxanne. Come in.” Julian stepped back to let the petite woman inside.
“I’ve got two patrol cars with search lights out and a K-9 unit sniffing the area.” She took out a digital recorder. “I’m just here to take statements.”
“Roxanne’s here,” Julian said unnecessarily, walking her back into the front room. “Let’s let her have the kitchen.”
Jack and Patrick followed him out onto the front porch. It was still drizzling out, and the sky was an inky blue. Julian curled up on the porch swing, pulling his legs under himself. Jack sat down next to him, staring blankly out at the night. Patrick stood, feet bare on the wood porch, hands curled around the rail. “I need a cigarette.”
Julian didn’t even have the heart to yell at him. A police car drove by slowly, lights sweeping the area. In the distance, a dog barked. Julian leaned his head on Jack’s shoulder and watched the rain come down.
Chapter 12
“It’s your turn,” Jack said, an interminable amount of time later. Patrick stopped consciously thinking of having a cigarette and turned around.
He’d thought Julian had looked haggard when he came out from giving his statement, but Jack looked worse. He’d seen it a hundred times before from the other side—giving an official account of something somehow made it real to people. “Thanks,” he nodded, trudging back through the living room.
The officer sitting at the table looked up as he walked in. With his experienced eye, Patrick could tell she was just as shaken as Jack and Julian, but she was better at hiding it. “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.”
“Patrick Hawkins,” he said, shaking her hand.
She was tiny, but her grip was firm. “Roxanne Keyes. Please, have a seat.”
He took the chair across from her and lowered himself into it. Patrick was tired. His body hurt more or less everywhere. This was the least relaxing vacation he’d ever been on. Well, except for the Brad part, but that didn’t really count.
Officer Keyes checked the remaining memory and battery strength on her digital recorder and then put it back in the middle of the table and pulled out a blank statement sheet and pen. “Mr. Hawkins, the purpose of this interview is just to help us establish a timeline. When was the last time you saw Hallie Klein?”
“Just after five, I guess.” Patrick rubbed at his eyes, trying to keep them focused. “Jack dropped me off at the complex for dinner and physiotherapy with Roz Piet. I talked to Hallie before she and Jack left, just to say hello.” She’d asked him where his boyfriend was, and he’d laughed at her. “It was just… normal.”
“You didn’t notice anything unusual? No one who could have been watching her and Jack leave? No one there who shouldn’t have been?”
This was the problem with being on unfamiliar turf. “I’ve barely even been here for two weeks,” Patrick explained. “I’m at the complex almost every day, but it’s just for physio. No one stood out.” There had been gym-goers, soccer moms, kids, instructors. Patrick searched his memory again and again, wondering if he had missed someone or if he was losing his edge. “I didn’t see anyone or anything suspicious.”
This obviously jibed with what Jack had told her, because Officer Keyes was nodding unhappily. “Okay. Around what time would you say Jack and Hallie left?”
Patrick thought for a second. He’d met Jack in town about ten after five, and the drive to the complex was about five minutes. As usual, Jack had spent a few minutes chatting with Roz and a few of the parents before leaving. “Maybe twenty after, five-thirty?”
Keyes made a note on her sheet and rubbed a hand across her forehead. A wisp of curly brown hair was sticking up funny on top of her head. “That matches what Jack and Mr. Klein have said. That would put dinner at just before six, and her disappearance somewhere around six-thirty.”
Patrick looked at the clock on the wall. It was a quarter to nine, still raining and starting to get cold. Hallie had been missing for over two hours. “Anything on the radios?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. I’ll keep checking.” Sighing, she switched off the digital recorder and slid the statement sheet across to him along with her pen. “If that’s everything you can think of that might be helpful, you can sign. Anything you want to add, just pencil it in.”
Patrick read over the brief account and picked up the pen. It was complete, concise, and to the point. It was also, as far as he could tell, utterly unhelpful. He uncapped the pen and signed it, for all the good it would do.
“Here.” He handed it back.
Keyes put it in a pile with the others and turned off the recorder. “You’ve been in the service, am I right?”
He motioned to his shoulder. “I mentioned the physiotherapy?”
“Bullet wound?”
“Through-and-through at point-blank range,” Patrick confirmed. His shoulder twinged in recognition.
“You sound almost proud of it.”
“I had it tattooed in commemoration.” He stood up, scrubbing at his hair. “I take it this doesn’t happen often out here.”
Keyes shook her head. “I haven’t had a case like this in the ten years I’ve worked here. I hoped I never would.”
“If you need any help, you can call me.” Patrick fished his wallet out of his back pocket and flipped through until he found a card. The idea of sitting on his ass while a little girl was in danger chafed.
“Didn’t they send you out here to recover?”
“Technically.”
She smiled a little. “I’m starting to see why they had to do that.” She picked up her attaché case and set it on the table, flipping it open and putting the signed statements inside. His card she put in her breast pocket. “I’d say you should stick to your vacation, but the truth is, we could probably use all the help we can get. Thanks.”
“Sure.” He walked her to the door. “Keep me posted?”
“If anything happens, the whole town will know about it. You won’t need to hear it from me.”
She had a point.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hawkins. I wish it had been under better circumstances.”
“It’s Detective, but you can call me Patrick.”
“Roxanne.”
They shook hands again, and then she was gone. Patrick closed the door. He wanted to sag against it, but he was afraid if he did, he might never stand back up again. It seemed like the day had gone on forever. All he really wanted was to—
“Here.”
He turned around. Julian was behind him, hair ruffled, eyes tired, holding out his hand.
Patrick accepted what he offered automatically. “Car keys?”
“Go,” Julian said.
“What?”
“To Brad, you idiot. You do want to go, right?”
He did. He wanted to go—badly. He was actually twitching; he needed to go so badly it terrified him. The keys were jingling in his palm. “I….”
“Go!” Julian said again. “Stay late. Hell, stay over. I don’t think either one of us is going to work tomorrow.”
Patrick grabbed his arm and pulled him close, wrapping his arms around Julian. “Thanks.”
“Are you gone yet?” Julian asked into his shoulder.
The shoulder twinged aga
in. Damn, Patrick was really going to have to start favoring it. At least it was less sore and more mobile since Roz had started treating him. “I’m going,” he said, and he went.
Twenty past nine on a Thursday night. Brad would still be at the bar. Patrick climbed into the truck and put it in gear.
Five minutes later he was walking into the bar. There weren’t many patrons on a Thursday night—someone had put curling on the televisions, which was a bit of a dead giveaway.
Brad looked up as he walked in, all smiles, and Patrick couldn’t resist. He didn’t even want to. He sidled up to the bar, straddled a stool, reached across, and pulled Brad into a deep, probing kiss.
Someone wolf-whistled. Patrick could practically feel the heat radiating off Brad’s face, but Brad didn’t pull away. Instead, he threaded his fingers into Patrick’s hair, pulling him closer. Patrick flicked his tongue across the seam of Brad’s lips, moaning happily as they opened for him. Brad was just closing his teeth around Patrick’s lower lip when someone sat down next to Patrick at the bar.
“Hey! Can’t a lady get some service around here?”
Roz. Hearing her voice reminded Patrick of why he was there in the first place. Reluctantly, he pulled back, releasing Brad’s shirt. “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself,” Brad said. The blush didn’t stop at his face, Patrick could see; it went all the way down his neck under the collar of his shirt. He wondered exactly how far down it went. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re going to want to sit down,” Patrick sighed.
Roz shot him a worried glance.
Brad walked around the end of the bar and sat on his other side. “Patrick?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Roz put in, “but you don’t look so good.”
He didn’t feel that great, either. “I just came from Jack and Julian’s.” Patrick was used to delivering bad news—he had to do it all the time at work—but never to people he cared about. Brad reached across the bar top and laced their fingers together. Patrick squeezed gratefully. “Roy’s daughter is missing.”
Brad let go of his hand. Roz went pale. “What?”
“Sometime this evening, after dinner.” Patrick kept his voice low so as not to disturb the other patrons. “They have three squad cars and a dog team out looking for her.” And no leads, he didn’t add. There was no sense in being defeatist about it, at least not in front of Brad and Roz.
“Oh, my God.” Roz covered her mouth with her hand. Patrick knew how close she and Hallie were. “Oh, my God.”
“Shit,” Brad breathed. “Shit, man, she is in here every Saturday with her dad; the whole town knows her. I can’t believe it—someone took her?”
That was Patrick’s first instinct, but they didn’t know anything for sure. “If they did, it was right out of her yard, practically under her dad’s nose. That’s pretty ballsy. If they were capable of that….” He hadn’t meant to let the sentence hang, but it did. The implications were pretty terrible. If someone was capable of taking such a huge risk to abduct a child, they had to want her pretty badly.
Roz gathered her purse from the back of the stool she was sitting on. “I’m going home,” she announced. The color still hadn’t returned to her face. “Maybe I’ll swing by the complex first, just… see if she’s there, if she went there for some reason. Put it on my tab, okay, Brad?”
Brad nodded, face grim. Patrick reached for his hand again and held onto it this time. He was somehow easier to hold onto than Julian. Patrick didn’t want to think about what that might mean. “Sure. Good luck.”
Roz disappeared into the rain, not bothering with her umbrella, leaving only a handful of patrons in the bar. Brad sighed and fished his cell phone out of his pocket with his free hand.
“What’re you doing?”
“Calling Brenda,” Brad explained, dialing. “I’m going to close up early. Maybe if I send everyone home, someone will see something.”
Patrick thought that was unlikely, but it was something, and he understood the urge to act. Besides, it might sound selfish at a time like this, but he really wanted Brad to himself. This was turning out to be one hell of a day, and he just wanted to curl up beside Brad and go to sleep, hoping that maybe in the morning this would turn out to be a bad dream.
He knew he wasn’t going to be quite that lucky.
A few minutes later, after Brad had quietly explained what was happening to the few men and women remaining at the bar, Brad was locking up, flicking off the lights, and joining Patrick outside. Patrick felt Brad’s arms wrap around him and returned the embrace automatically, Brad’s square chin poking into his left shoulder. It was still drizzling out, but he was in no hurry to move. “How’re you doing?”
“Better than Roz,” Brad admitted, taking his hand and leading him to the parking lot. “Still not great. Did you get a ride here, or did you drive?”
“Julian gave me his keys and pushed me out the door,” Patrick said sheepishly. He held up the key ring. “Not that I wasn’t already thinking about it, I just wasn’t looking forward to the walk in the rain.”
“Good,” Brad said absently.
Patrick didn’t know exactly what that meant, but he opted not to ask for clarification.
“Are you going to follow me home, or do you want to ride with me? I don’t know if you want to leave Julian’s truck here overnight… who knows what’s going on?”
Patrick’s heart skipped a beat. He liked that Brad just assumed he would spend the night, without him having to ask. He pecked the younger man on the lips. “I’ll meet you at your place.”
“Drive carefully,” Brad warned him, leaning their foreheads together for a minute. “These roads get pretty nasty in this weather. They need to be repaved.”
“Thanks for the warning.” They climbed into their respective vehicles.
Julian needs new windshield wipers, Patrick noted as he pulled up behind Brad’s car. He’d been too distracted on the way to Brenda’s to notice. That wasn’t a good sign. He probably shouldn’t drive if he was distracted. It was a good thing he was staying at Brad’s tonight, because Patrick knew he was in no shape to be on the road.
Brad was waiting for him in the doorway. He opened the door as Patrick approached. The rain had been steadily increasing as he’d driven home, and now it was pouring again—not good news for the police dogs attempting to catch Hallie’s scent. Trying not to think about it, Patrick ran inside and stood dripping on the welcome mat, shaking water droplets from his hair. “Sorry.”
Brad tugged down the zipper on his sweatshirt. “Don’t worry about it; just get the wet stuff off. Roz will not be happy if she hears I let you get pneumonia or something.”
“You’ll have to keep me warm,” Patrick agreed. “Roz will kill you, and Julian will kill me, and that wouldn’t be any good for either of us.” He squelched out of his shoes and socks and then unbuttoned his jeans—they were wet enough to fall to the floor of their own accord—and stepped out of them. At least he was wearing boxers this time.
“I think I can handle that. Why don’t you go upstairs, and I’ll throw these in the dryer?”
That sounded like a plan to Patrick. He planted a lingering kiss on Brad’s lips before taking the stairs up to the bedroom.
The bed was still unmade, probably because Brad hadn’t been expecting him. Patrick spent a few minutes straightening the sheets, just for something to do, before climbing in and pulling the blankets up to his waist, smelling Brad on the pillows. He could hear Brad puttering around downstairs, presumably in the laundry room putting his clothes in the dryer. Shifting onto his side, Patrick put an arm under his head and waited for Brad.
He didn’t have to wait long. A minute or so later, Brad appeared, minus socks, shoes, and jeans. He closed the door behind him gently and then crawled into bed next to Patrick, lying on his side, facing him. Brad traced a finger down his cheek. “Are you okay?”
“This is the strangest vacation I have ever been forced into,” Pa
trick sighed, closing his eyes to enjoy the touch. Bullet wounds, physiotherapy, missing children, ex-lovers.
New lovers.
Putting the thought away before he could dwell on it, Patrick pressed a kiss to Brad’s finger.
“They send you away often, do they?” Brad asked. There was something in his tone that Patrick couldn’t quite put a name to.
“Not as often as they’d like to, I’m sure.” He put his right arm around Brad’s waist and decided to risk the pain of forcibly pulling him closer. “But in response to your question, I’ll be okay. I can take it. I’ve been through worse.”
“I don’t like to think about it,” Brad confessed. His eyes were soft and very blue this close up.
Patrick smiled at him softly. “That makes two of us.” He ran his fingertip gently across Brad’s lips and then down his chin, which he tapped.
For some reason, the simple motion made Brad flush dark red. Patrick would never get tired of watching that. He reached down and lifted the hem of Brad’s shirt, pulling it up until he could see Brad’s pale chest.
“What are you doing?”
“Research,” Patrick told him, dragging the finger from his chin down his neck, over the bunched T-shirt to his rib cage. “I’m checking how far down that pretty blush goes. I forgot to check on Tuesday.”
“Oh.” The color deepened. Patrick knelt astride Brad’s body so that he could lean over and press a kiss to the fading line of red. “Can this experiment maybe wait until later?”
Patrick looked up and met his eyes. Brad was still blushing, but there was something besides embarrassment in his expression. Patrick reached up and pulled the shirt the rest of the way over his head before bending down and brushing his lips lightly over Brad’s.
Sighing into the caress, Brad chased his mouth, finally sinking both hands into Patrick’s hair to hold him still when Patrick continued to tease. Smirking around the kiss, Patrick let Brad take the lead, opening to allow the younger man’s tongue to explore his mouth.
Shifting to lean closer, Patrick put his weight on his left arm, sliding his body down to press more of it against Brad’s. The movement caused Brad to break away from the kiss, gasping, as Patrick’s barely clad ass brushed Brad’s hardening cock. Patrick dove down for another teasing kiss, fluttering his tongue lightly over Brad’s lips as he writhed purposefully on Brad’s erection.
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