Accidental Roots The Series Volume 1: an mm romantic suspense box set

by Elle Keaton

  Micah seemed to realize. “What’s going on? Why are you here at”—he looked at the clock—“3:15 a.m., Jack?” he asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

  “Ah, yeah. Well. The lieutenant needs Adam to come down to the station. She couldn’t get you on your cell.”

  That’s because he’d turned it off while he was having a temper tantrum. The hour indicated an emergency of some kind. Adam hoped no one else had needed to get a hold of him.

  “Right. Well. I guess I can tell you we have another body. But Nguyen will need to fill you in.” While Jack was talking, Adam found and turned on his phone. In addition to the earlier ones from Ed, the message indicator showed three unheard. From a number he knew too well and SkPD. Fuck. And not the good kind. At that thought, his ass sent him a reminder of what he and Micah had been doing earlier. He smiled. Micah saw him and smiled back.

  “You guys are disgusting,” Jack muttered.

  “You keep it up with that attitude, Jack, and you’ll learn why you are stagnating in a rural police force and I am a federal officer,” Adam bit out.

  He felt kind of bad running down Lieutenant Nguyen and her force, but Jack Summers was a farce, a tarnished example of everything wrong with law enforcement. Adam grabbed Micah and planted a big, sloppy kiss on his lips, ignoring Jack’s “Ugh.”

  “I’ll see you later, baby; get some sleep. I’ll be back, and I, uh, need to do some laundry soon.” Micah chuckled, and Adam led Jack out of the motel room and toward his waiting squad car.

  During the short ride, Adam listened to his messages. Although the guy was probably awake, he sent Mohammad a text confirming he was going in and that it was official, there was a case. As he’d expected, the call back was immediate. Mohammad coughed up a little more information than Jack had. The most recent victim had been identified as Jennifer Verdugo from the Center House. Well, fuck.

  Several grueling hours later, an officer dropped Adam back at the motel so he could grab his car. Micah had texted that he should come to his house with laundry, finishing with some emoticon that looked like a dirty thought. Adam crammed all his dirty clothes into his duffel and tossed it into the back seat. With a groan, he slid into the driver’s seat and put his key in the ignition. He hesitated before starting the car. There was so much in his head.

  The SkPD had called because of similarity, connection, proximity, and the fact that the investigation into Jessica Abrahams’s death had been so fucked up and Ms. Verdugo worked at the center where Jessica had been known to hang out. Jennifer had been discovered, coincidentally, by eagle watchers a few miles from where the first victim had been found, close to where Micah had taken Adam. She had been strangled, although she wasn’t stripped nude like Jessica. Adam learned that she had been the first to come forward suspecting Jessica’s identity. That raised a red flag bigger than the state of Texas.

  It was December, but could it stop fucking raining for a day or so? Rain fucked up crime scenes and made Adam grumpy. While he wasn’t wearing his trademark suit and dress shoes, he still managed to get miserably wet and cold. His good mood from the fuck Micah had given him hours earlier dissipated the longer he spent out in the rain with SkPD’s barely competent crime scene crew. Mohammad promised he was sending a team, but their flight had been delayed due to weather; they were still sitting on the tarmac somewhere.

  Deep-breathing tactics could only do so much. Adam was trying hard to be patient and understanding, neither a trait he was known for.

  A knock on his car window startled him out of his funk. A young kid was kind of hovering, looking like he’d flee at any moment. He was skinny and had to be colder than Adam, with just a sweatshirt and a beanie to keep him warm. Adam opened his window.

  “Yeah?” He sounded like an asshole. Sighing, he tried again. “What can I do for you?”

  “You’re that cop, right? The one that’s trying to figure out what happened to Jessie?” Wow, the information hotline was working overtime. The kid was seriously fidgety; any second he was going to bolt. He had kind of a pointy face smeared with freckles under the beanie and was clearly not getting enough to eat.

  “I guess I am.” The rain, which up until that point had been a kind of polite mist, turned into a deluge. Adam motioned for the kid to come around and get in the car.

  “Look, kid. What’s your name?” Adam asked after the kid had pulled his door shut.

  “Uh, Kevin. Kevin Whittman.”

  “Look, Kevin. I’m tired, wet, and really, really, hungry. My boyfriend is waiting for me with a hot shower, clean clothes, and, I hope to god, a grilled-cheese sandwich. How about you tell me what’s up so I can return to my nicer half?”

  The kid, Kevin, looked at him for a half beat. The first thing out of his mouth was, “You’re gay?”

  “You got a problem with that?” This conversation was already too long.

  “No. Um. Me, too. I mean, I’m gay.” The kid had turned bright red with his admission.

  Adam had an epiphany or whatever. He started the car and pointed it toward Micah’s house. “How about we both go and see if Micah will feed us, and you can tell me what’s on your mind. If it will make you feel better, I can show you my badge. You can even have a chat with my boss—who is much nicer than I am—and then decide what you want to do. Does that work?”

  “Grilled cheese sounds really good.”

  Adam smiled because, yeah, grilled cheese sounded really good.

  Micah was surprised but not put out that Adam had brought along a guest. He took a long, thoughtful look at Kevin and came to the same conclusion Adam had: This kid had nowhere to be. Micah grabbed some dry clothes and gave them to Kevin to change into, saying, “These are a bit too small for me. I was going to give them away.” Adam knew that for a lie, as his boyfriend had been wearing the sweats and T-shirt just the other day.

  When had Micah made the transition to boyfriend in his head? And how had it managed to escape his lips? His inner self shrugged from the corner while he watched Micah in the kitchen chatting with Kevin about video games and the scarcity of decent jobs in Skagit. Even the cat warmed up to the kid. The cat Adam had barely been able to wrestle into the carrying case before delivering it back to Micah. Fucking cat.

  Wearing dry clothes and feeling the warmth of the house seep into his bones made the short wait for grilled cheese and tomato soup bearable. Adam tried to make Kevin feel at ease, but Micah was the master.

  Kevin’s story was one Adam had heard too many times. His ultra-religious-conservative parents had forced him to leave the house when he had come out to them. One day he’d been the middle of three kids, and the next he’d been living on the streets. His older brother tried to help him, but he didn’t have much money of his own. Kevin seemed still shell-shocked by what had happened to him. It was painful to hear him describe his life as “before” and “after.” He’d discovered Center House during the summer and had spent as much time there as he could, but until he was eighteen he was afraid to apply for help. Micah seemed to think Washington had laws allowing seventeen-year-olds to act as emancipated minors and promised to look into it. And by that he meant right that minute. He disappeared into his office.

  Kevin’s information about Jessica was vague but more than anyone else had come forward with. She’d been a regular at Center House and had been nice to him. As the summer and fall had wound down, she had spent less and less time there, and when he did see her she seemed “off.”

  “Off, like what?” Adam asked.

  Kevin shrugged. Adam wondered if young adulthood required the shrug.

  “Well, she seemed weird. I dunno, maybe nervous. Kind of like she was looking over her shoulder all the time. She coulda been on something, maybe.” He stopped for a second, clearly trying to use the right words. “She was nice to me because she remembered me from church. Not like we were friends or anything, and I know her folks kicked her out a long time ago; she was like thirteen. She told me she’d left town for a while. I dunno w
hy she would want to come back here.” Adam couldn’t agree more.

  Micah came back into the room. Kevin and Adam looked at him expectantly.

  “Yep. I was right. You need to be over sixteen and have a court-appointed guardian,” he held up a hand at Kevin’s groan, “or a family member or friend who is eighteen years or older petition the court.” Micah was clearly pleased with himself. “Why didn’t they tell you this stuff at the center?”

  “I was afraid to ask. Mostly I’ve been couch surfing and stuff. It hasn’t been too hard until, uh, the weather changed and stuff.”

  Adam was lost in thought. Jessica had been nice to Kevin because she remembered him from church. Yet when Jessica’s home life had gotten so unbearable that she ran away, or was tossed out, she didn’t approach her church for help. He supposed a rebellious young teen might not choose her parents’ church as sanctuary, but still, in a community as small as Skagit, where church presence had dominated since time immemorial . . . He wasn’t sure where he was going with this train of thought, but something wasn’t meshing. The team needed to have a chat with Karol Abrahams.

  Micah broke into his grim musings, informing Adam he was calling Brandon.

  “What? Why?” Adam irrationally still disliked the guy, even though he had kept Micah safe until Adam had found him.

  “Brandon is the local lost-soul collector.” Micah chuckled. “I’m not his only project. Stephanie runs their farm and distribution of produce; Brandon has his degree in sociology. He acts as a resource for a lot of people in the area. Anyway, he and Steph will put up Kevin for the night, under the radar, and we’ll go from there. As a single, out gay man, I am not the best choice while Kevin is under eighteen.”

  Kevin frowned.

  “True, it sucks, kid. Lucky for you, you’ll be eighteen soon even if we can’t get the emancipation through,” Adam said.

  Brandon arrived twenty minutes later and swept Kevin away with him, promising to touch base in the morning. Adam reluctantly admired the man’s dedication and drive, and wondered aloud why he didn’t run the teen center.

  “Brandon prefers to, um, operate outside the strict confines of the law. The way he sees it, the center is busy with kids who can be helped there. Think of Brandon as Skagit’s own Underground Railroad for abused teens and young adults. The last resort for those with no safety net.”

  “Do you think Jessica ever reached out to him? How do kids find him?”

  “Brandon operates much like people who try to get the homeless into shelters. He takes the van around, offering to drive them to shelters and doling out food from the farm. He has informants who call if they think someone is in serious trouble. He works with a couple of young lawyers who offer their services pro bono.”

  Damn it, Adam was going to have to start liking the guy.

  Thirty-Seven

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Three o’clock in the morning was never the time to be awake, thinking.

  He’d left Micah’s the night before with excuses about work, then sat in his pathetic motel room missing being at Micah’s. With Micah. He refused to admit to himself that leaving was the wrong thing to do. He was perfectly happy on his own. Always had been.

  He twisted around again, and the ceiling swam into focus, sheets wrapping suffocatingly around his lower legs. Adam’s stupid brain had used the word again: boyfriend.

  He wanted so badly to reach out and grab what Micah was offering. He’d never understood that desire before. But he couldn’t have it. Micah would eventually grow tired of Adam’s emotional constipation. There was nothing three a.m. could change about that.

  The truth was he had a job to do, one that didn’t involve falling for someone from his hometown. If he was going to focus on the Skagit case and follow up on a tip the team had received about Rochelle Heid’s disappearance, Adam needed to act like the professional he was.

  Several hours later, when the sun finally dragged itself over the horizon, Adam packed his bag with the rest of his belongings. He’d left the majority of his laundry at Micah’s, but fuck it. By eight-thirty he was ready, except for a last-minute visit to the lawyers’ office on the other side of town. Soren Andersen had called and left a message. That reminded Adam about the stack of letters he’d found at Gerald’s. They were still sitting in the glove compartment, unopened. He’d meant to look at them, but with everything going on, the letters had slipped his mind.

  He sat brooding in the chill of his car outside the staid offices of Andersen and Meiier until it was time for his appearance. Appointment. When he had been here before, the visit had been short and sweet; he’d hardly had time to warm the seat cushion before he was being handed several sets of keys and being escorted to the door.

  Their office was sterile, with white walls, and smelled vaguely of cinnamon. He spotted a bowl of those scented pine cones sitting on a side table. The receptionist was in her fifties and looked pretty damn good.

  Monica was her name. Monica said to have a seat and Mr. Andersen would be with him in a moment; sorry for the delay. Adam was, too, because he needed to get to the motel where the team was going to be staying. He would wash his hands of everything and have Gerald’s house taken care of by a restoration/cleanup company he’d looked up.

  An hour later, Adam was back in his parked car clutching a white business card. He turned it over and over between his fingers. It was the card of yet another lawyer, this one in Seattle. This lawyer handled family issues, including reuniting adoptees with their biological families. Adam honestly didn’t know how much more of this he could take.

  Adam had a brother. A younger brother. A younger brother named Seth, who was trying to find his father. Adam was so fucking fucked up. He started the car, and for some reason, instead of turning left at the end of the block, toward I-5 and the team, he turned right.

  The letters he had left in the glove box had been from the same lawyer, explaining that a young man named Seth Culver was attempting to contact his biological father, believed to be Gerald Klay. The letters had never been opened, as far as Adam could tell. Had his father known about Seth? Had he tucked the letters away to look at another time, but died before he had the chance, thus never knew he had a second son? Both were tragic thoughts.

  Adam had the possibility of some fucking long-lost half-brother. Was he a random by-blow of his father’s ceaseless search for companionship, or had Gerald cared for Seth’s mother? How many more of these fucking guys were going to come out of the woodwork now that Gerald was gone?

  “Fuck!” Adam screamed.

  He immediately felt like total shit. Micah would do anything to have his family back.

  Adam Klay: selfish bastard.

  A drop of sweat from Adam’s temple smacked the back of his hand. Despite the cool temperature, his heart rate kicked up. What the fuck. Adam’s knuckles were white; his hands hurt. It was surprising the steering wheel hadn’t cracked yet. Jesus fuck. He couldn’t stop the panicked pressure that was building up in his lungs. Maybe this was what having a heart attack felt like.

  An insistent pounding dragged his focus from the clusterfuck of his life. Through the fogged-up side window he could see dark hair and a flash of hot pink. Micah was on the other side. With a worried look, he gestured for Adam to open the door. It had started pouring again while Adam careened once more into his personal chaos. Micah’s hair was plastered to his head. He wasn’t wearing a coat, just a bright pink T-shirt with a unicorn and a dinosaur fighting a duel on the front. His lips were starting to turn blue.

  “Get inside, please,” was all he said before he turned and walked back to the porch.

  The inside of Micah’s house smelled like pine and warmth. Micah didn’t say anything, just pulled Adam gently into his house. Tenderly. The way he did everything. A cup of warm something, hot chocolate maybe, was pushed into Adam’s hands. He hunched over it, trying to make his universe shrink to just the scent of chocolate. And Micah. A warm hand rubbing his back, keeping him from flyin
g apart.

  “You want to talk about it?” Micah asked.

  No. He didn’t.

  “I just want to lie down. Can I stay?” What were these words coming out of his mouth? Apparently his common sense had taken a hiatus, because the next thing he said was, “I’d like to lie down with you, maybe talk later. What time is it?”

  “Nearly eleven. You were outside for at least an hour.”

  Adam gulped the hot chocolate greedily, but he was still cold, all the way to his soul.

  Thirty-Eight

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Micah wondered what had driven Adam to the brink of a breakdown. Whatever it was, it wasn’t pretty. He’d seen the overstuffed duffel in the back of the car when he’d finally gone out to see what Adam was doing sitting in front of his house. To ask if he was going to come inside. And maybe to tell him to fuck off.

  He’d seen the panicked look on Adam’s face yesterday evening and known some screws were rubbing the wrong way in that brain of his, but he’d been too tired to deal with it. He’d called Brandon to rescue Kevin and called it a day, letting Adam make his excuses about leaving without comment.

  Micah sighed, running his fingers through his hair. Despite living with his head in the sand for the past decade or so, he knew Adam needed someone to take care of him. The only people he talked about with any affection were his team leader Mohammad and his wife.

  No doubt Adam believed he was the one who should serve and protect. It went along with his career. From their few conversations about his past, Micah had the distinct feeling that no one had ever taken care of Adam. It had always been Adam taking care of others, when the supposed adults in his life should have known better.