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

by Elle Keaton

  Micah had told Mohammad how Adam had basically broken down that morning; how he’d learned about Seth, his supposed but probable younger half-brother. He and Mohammad had talked for almost an hour. It had been clear that Adam had already kind of mentioned Micah to his boss. Mohammad had expressed his sorrow about the loss of Micah’s family. Mostly it had been Micah worrying about Adam. Mohammad had finished the phone call with, “You’re good for him. He never lets anyone care for him. Ida, my wife, has come closest, but even she . . . well, keep doing whatever you are doing.”

  “I told Mohammad about Seth. I was, am, worried about you. And, look, we haven’t known each other that long. I figured your boss might know something.”

  Adam sighed. “Come on, let’s go take a shower.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah—heh, Mohammad hates it when I say that. Yeah, I’m okay. Right now, I just want a shower. Later I want you again. In between that, I need to figure some shit out.”

  Forty

  FORTY

  The reality of calling Seth proved to be more difficult than Adam anticipated. He ended up putting it off, claiming he needed to think about what he wanted to say. Micah wasn’t fooled, but he didn’t call Adam out on his avoidance tactic.

  Really, what was he going to say? The lawyers had confirmed Seth’s identity and verified the father’s name on his birth certificate was Gerald Klay. It was freaking Adam out to think that all the time he had considered himself alone, he’d had a brother only a few years younger than him. He wondered if he would remember Seth’s mother.

  The person to talk to would be Ed. Adam didn’t think he was ready for that either. He sighed, tightening his grip on Micah, who had tucked himself into Adam’s side and fallen asleep with remarkable ease. Morning light was just starting to peek around the bedroom curtains. He could hear the rain pounding on the roof and gurgling down the rainspouts.

  “I can hear you thinking,” Micah murmured, his voice raspy with sleep.

  “Didn’t mean to wake you.” Adam couldn’t help rubbing circles on Micah’s back, still awed it was his to touch and caress. Micah stretched, mirroring his evil cat’s liquid movement. Frankenstein did not like Adam. Before they’d gone to bed last night, Frank had tried to shred Adam’s ankles at every chance. When he was thwarted from that activity, he lay splayed out on the couch and hissed when Adam went to move him so he and Micah could sit there.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  No, not really. He kind of just wanted to hide in Micah’s bedroom, away from prying eyes and loose tongues.

  “I guess I’m trying to find my new normal. Ugh, I cannot believe I used that phrase, but I feel a little off balance with,” he waved a hand around, “everything. In a way, I’m not who I thought I was.”

  Micah sat up next to Adam against the headboard, pulling the covers up with him.

  “It’s a lot of change. Um, are you okay with us? I mean, I don’t want to come between you and your long-lost brother, or the other stuff you have to do here. I don’t want to assume anything.”

  Micah was looking at him intently, as if by looking he could see inside Adam’s brain and figure out what the hell was going on in there. Adam kind of wished he could, because even Adam didn’t know.

  “So far the best thing to happen to me in Skagit has been meeting you.” Adam wasn’t good at this kind of stuff. Fuck, he’d never wanted to pursue a serious relationship with anyone before. Too complicated, too many factors, more effort than he was willing to put in.

  Looking into those complex green eyes, full of trust and something probably pretty close to love, Adam took a deep breath.

  “Look, I’m not good at this. I’m gonna mess up; I admit I’m a little overloaded right now. But the one thing I do know is that you are the best thing that has happened to me in years.” He was trying to figure out how to articulate what he was thinking. “You know, when I came up here, I put all my stuff in storage and let my apartment go. At the time my reasoning was, coming to Skagit was going to take a while, and I was tired of wasting money on an apartment. In the last few months I don’t know if I’d even spent an entire week there, what with all the travel I do. I still don’t know where I’m going to end up. I think I want to sell Gerald’s place, but I’ve also found a family here in Skagit that I didn’t know I had, and now that I do, I want to be here as much as I can. I think. I’m sorry I’m so messed up.”

  Micah tugged Adam closer, his hand on the back of his neck. He pressed their lips together, a promise and an invitation. Adam accepted.

  Forty-One

  FORTY-ONE

  Micah eyed the ruined house skulking amongst the evergreens on the unkempt five-acre lot outside of town. Adam hadn’t been joking when he said it wasn’t a pretty sight. It had been a gorgeous log home at one point. Adam said that most of the logs had come from trees on the property. Now the roof was enveloped in a thick coat of clinging moss, and the logs making up the north and east walls were dark and streaked with water damage. Log houses needed to be treated with oil regularly to keep them from rotting, especially in the Pacific Northwest. Clearly that had not happened for a while.

  He kind of couldn’t believe that Adam had brought him out here. When they had left the house after their very separate showers, Micah thought they were going to the lawyers’ offices. When Adam had pointed his little SUV toward the outskirts of town, Micah guessed they were going to Gerald’s but was still surprised. Adam had been quiet during the drive but hadn’t seemed pensive, just quiet because there wasn’t much to say.

  Micah didn’t know too much about Gerald Klay, but it was hard to live in Skagit and know nothing. His artwork was everywhere. The shops that couldn’t afford the real thing sold every print available; the few fine-art galleries showcased anything they could get their hands on. Aside from tulips, Gerald Klay’s art was the biggest tourist attraction Skagit had.

  “Let’s go inside. Ed told me not much trash is left. Even though I dropped the ball, Ed, Don, Tim, and a couple others have been working on it.”

  “You trust them?” Micah knew that Klay hadn’t done much in recent years, but buyers would pay for anything, any scrap from his scandalous life.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do. Come on.”

  The house smelled like cleaning solution. Micah couldn’t see any trash or stacks of ephemera like Adam had told him about, but there was an underlying scent of mold, dust, and rot. The guys had left the things they thought Adam needed to decide on. Stacks of canvases leaned against any free space along the walls, two, three, even four deep. Many of them seemed to be half started or rejects. Even the rejects demonstrated Klay’s talent. Landscapes of the Skagit Valley in all its majesty, depicted in all seasons and weather. He’d been painting for so many years that some of the views had been destroyed or swallowed by urban sprawl long before Micah was born. Klay had been a master of the ethereal, a flowing, Asian-influenced style. The art was hard to look at, knowing what he did about Adam.

  They were there to pick up things Adam might want for himself. Adam had arranged for one of the gallery owners he trusted to come to the house with Ed and give estimates on the pieces that still hung on the walls. Apparently, some of those had been there as long as Adam remembered, and he figured they would be worth more. The ones on the floor were evidence of Gerald’s slow slide into despair.

  “I’ll have Paige look at these, too, I guess.”

  They’d brought several moving boxes for what Adam would keep, and worked in separate rooms to save time. Adam was in his childhood room packing up a tattered comic-book collection and had directed Micah to “take care of the shit in the living room.” There wasn’t much; a few delicate wood carvings in the native Northwest style. They were dusty, and the wood under the paint was cracked and stained. Into the box they went. Adam didn’t want any furniture, but Micah checked all the cabinets and shelves just in case.

  The bottom drawer of a built-in piece that looked like it was
supposed to hold china and crystal was packed with ratty dime paperbacks from the ’40s and ’50s (into the box they went) and random decks of cards from tourist spots around the world. Adam had never said anything about travel. Coasters from defunct restaurants and bars; the Moose Crossing had been closed as long as Micah could recall. It wasn’t until the recent economic boom that someone had taken the plunge, tearing it down and putting in a quick-mart.

  The drawer also held three battered photo albums, a shoebox stuffed with snapshots, and two yellowed envelopes with what looked like documents.

  All thoughts of packing gone, Micah pulled the first album out and began flipping through it. The black-and-white photos were taken in maybe the late 1940s and into the ’50s, judging from the clothing. Gerald Klay as a young man in a natty suit, his arm around the shoulders of another equally sharp young man whom Micah recognized as George Franklin before his own fame as a preeminent Northwest artist. Another one of Klay standing on a steep street in what had to be Chinatown in San Francisco. Leaning casually against a lamppost, a cigarette dangling from his lip. The photographer’s shadow stretched out behind Gerald’s, the two mingling.

  It was the third album where he hit pay dirt. Adam as a baby, toddler, and young boy. Always surrounded by grubby artists, shadows of people standing behind him in the snapshots. Weirdly amateurish for a bunch of professional artists. In only one was Gerald holding Adam. For the most part he, Gerald, looked on as his son played, built sandcastles, and ate apples; a voyeur into his young son’s life.

  There were a few with Ed in them. He wore a cocky grin and usually had his arm around a pretty girl. Never the same one twice. Lots of cigarettes and empty bottles featured, too. The never-ending party, for real. Micah didn’t find any more pictures after Adam was about seven years old. Nothing. Not even hideously posed school pictures. The shoebox might have more, but Micah just stuck it in the bigger box with the envelopes. He glanced at the papers, but they didn’t seem too important: Adam’s birth certificate (May 4) and some vaccination records. He stuck them in the box just as Adam came around the corner carrying his boxes.

  “I’m done. Let’s go.” His eyes flicked down to the albums. “Oh man, baby pictures?” Micah’s cheeks heated because, yep, he had been caught red-handed.

  “Come on, Mr. Nostalgia, you can pump me for information later.”

  When they pulled up at home, Micah noticed that Mrs. Andersen’s recycling bins had been knocked over by the recent windstorm. He braved the elements to pick them up for her. One of the things he loved best about his neighborhood was that there were still old Skagit families represented.

  Lots of neighborhoods in Skagit had history, but most of the people who were a part of it had moved away or died. Other neighborhoods were unrecognizable because the tiny post-WWII cottages had been torn down and replaced by monstrosities. Micah’s neighborhood, Elizabeth Park, was kind of protected by old Skagit money. Soon enough, though, he figured people like Mrs. Andersen would die, and their children or grandchildren would sell instead of maintaining the huge old houses. She peeked out the window while he was there and gave him a wave.

  Adam was waiting at the front door, holding an armload of boxes. His form made Micah’s own body tighten in response. Micah would never get tired of seeing him, as cliché as that sounded in his head. He had to stop for a minute; he knew his face was an open book. Adam wasn’t here to stay. He had a life, and it wasn’t here. It was all over the United States, going wherever he was sent to investigate, to try to bring closure to grieving families. The man in question motioned for him to hurry up, and Micah plastered a smile on his face and obeyed.

  Micah was amazed at how much the restorers had done on his house in just a few days. Micah would be taking care of the cosmetic work himself. Maybe he would finally paint the kitchen a different color than the one his mother had chosen so many years before. Prints and photographs hanging on the living-room walls had been destroyed, and Micah was kind of looking forward to putting up a few of his own choices.

  They’d only just finished bringing the boxes in from the car when Adam’s cell phone chimed. Micah could hear Jack Summers’s obnoxious voice from ten feet away. He couldn’t quite make out all the words, but whatever Jack said to Adam, his face reverted to the grim no-expression one he had on when Micah first saw him at the Booking Room.

  Micah heard Adam end the call and his soft footsteps as he padded into the kitchen, where Micah was trying to make something to eat and pretend not to be eavesdropping. Adam was wearing his trademark hard expression, but when he reached Micah he pulled him into a mind-melting embrace. Adam’s warm breath clung to Micah’s neck. After a long moment, he stepped back.

  “I have to go. Weir, my partner for now, is meeting me at SkPD headquarters. Jack Summers, of all people, is on to something.” He grinned. “I totally forgot Weir was coming today. I’ll be back as soon as I can. But it’s probably going to be hours.”

  Forty-Two

  FORTY-TWO

  The house felt cold and empty with Adam gone. Even the stupid orange cat rubbing against Micah’s legs and trying to kill him in the kitchen couldn’t push the gloom away. Too much time to think.

  Jack Summers was a loud asshole. He did not appear to have a volume lower than nine, and Micah had heard something on the call that sparked a distant memory. For the first time in many years, he voluntarily went into his father’s study and unlocked the closet where the enormous gunmetal-gray filing cabinet lurked. His dad had brought the thing home from the university when they remodeled the library. His mother had been horrified. It had taken two huge college guys to move it in (Micah had enjoyed every minute). There it still was, holding whatever files and notes his father had thought fit to store at home and not in his office at the courthouse.

  Everyone has a superpower. Micah’s was a weird memory. It wasn’t exactly photographic, but he could flip to a page where information was and find it by recognizing the pattern of the words. He remembered faces, even if he hadn’t seen them for many years. He remembered names.

  Summers had been using his uncontrollable outside voice while talking with Adam. Micah had distinctly heard the name Matveev. It was a Russian name. One Micah remembered his dad saying.

  An hour later, he carefully returned the file and the notes he had found to the cabinet. His hands were shaking so badly he had to shove them into his jeans pockets.

  He needed to call Adam.

  Adam’s cell went directly to voice mail; of course it did. The next best thing was calling the information desk at SkPD. Officer Parks answered the phone. Micah remembered him from when he’d tried to give information about Jessica.

  All these years, he’d never once considered his family’s death being any more than a terrible accident. An accident he wasn’t involved in because he had been down in Seattle longer than expected. By the time he’d finished his classes and turned in his last assignment, it had been too late to drive north, and besides, the weather had been terrible, and he’d been nervous about driving in it. He’d begged off coming to see the gymnastics competition his sister was in.

  A terrible suspicion was washing through his veins, goose bumps sweeping up his arms and leaving a chill in their wake. The SkPD had investigated the deaths as an accident. The minivan had hit a patch of black ice and spun out; it had been traveling over the speed limit and hit a mature Doug fir so hard that the van basically shattered and burst into flames at the same time. Micah’s parents were dead on impact. Shona was thrown clear, but crushing injuries took her life hours later.

  Any other time Micah would have been in that car, too. Even though she was ten years younger than him, he loved his sister and she had him wrapped around her little finger. He would have been going to that tournament. She missed him, so he came home to visit as often as he could.

  He had to talk to Adam. Alone.

  Mitya Matveev. Micah couldn’t keep the name out of his head. His father had been building a case against him
in the months before he died. As far as Micah knew, the case had been dropped upon his father’s death. It seemed beyond coincidence that the name would pop up now, in connection with the break-in and arson attempt on his family home. As a child, he’d read some creepy fairy tale where just thinking the name of a person (or fairy) would call them to you if you had the right magic. Keeping that name out of his head was proving impossible, and the feeling of someone watching him was growing exponentially.

  Adam had been gone for hours. Micah finally locked up, turned off all the lights, and sat in the living room with nothing but his tablet, phone, and the cat. He’d also gotten out one of his dad’s golf clubs and had it next to him on the couch.

  Sleep was no good. He would drift off, only to start violently awake at the sound of a tree limb against a window (needed to take care of that) or a car door shutting down the street. His street wasn’t that far from the strip where college kids hung out watching live music and drinking cheap beer, so cars were not unheard of. He felt foolish.

  A car door slammed much closer. Okay, murderers probably didn’t announce themselves by slamming car doors and stomping up the walk to the front door. Probably. The doorknob shook, and Micah about peed his pants.

  The door rattled again, and Micah gathered his courage to peek out the front window and see, thank God, Adam hunched against the wind and rain with his hands in his pockets. Micah threw the door open, practically dragging Adam inside. The relief he felt at Adam’s presence was overpowering. Micah grabbed him and wrapped his arms around him as tightly as he could.