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

by Elle Keaton

  S. FERREIRA: I’m gonna tell on you.

  C. WEIR: Knock it off, kid. I’m checking in.

  S. FERREIRA: Not supposed to.

  C. WEIR: Fill me in, otherwise I’ll find another way.

  S. FERREIRA: That doesn’t sound like a threat at all. Also, not a kid. Older than you.

  Was he really having this conversation? In an arena where the exchange would be saved for at least ninety days? He groaned. In the end, he convinced Sammy to come over to Micah’s and bring him up to speed. Sammy hadn’t had much more luck with the geoduck angle than Weir. Moreover, much to Poole’s dismay—not to mention Sammy’s—Sammy had lost his dinner all over the cabin of Poole’s precious boat.

  As for the Matveev case, they had lost the money trail in the Cayman Islands. Weir hated it when they lost the money trail. The problem, as always, was rules. Once he had committed to work for the government, he had protocol he was required to follow. Rules weren’t exactly meant to be broken, but Weir generally approached them more as guidelines. Guidelines had more wiggle room. Unfortunately, international banking institutions didn’t like it when he poked around in their private information. They acted like he was lifting their proverbial skirts. In his experience, those skirts were usually hiding something the general public would be furious about.

  They had no leads on who had sent Weir to the hospital. No clue if it was an accident or related to one of his cases. SkPD didn’t even know what kind of car hit him. The rain had been heavy, all traces of the car erased by the time anyone thought about tire tracks. The first SkPD on the scene had taken pictures, but nothing was of much help.

  He’d been so focused on Sammy and the details of the cases that he didn’t realize it was after seven p.m. until his stomach rumbled. Sammy packed his things and left, promising to let Weir know if anything happened.

  Raven wasn’t home yet. They usually ate dinner together when Sterling was at work. She had pinky-promised Sterling she would be home every day and check in if she was going to be late. He texted her, asking when she was getting home.

  Twenty minutes passed with no answer.

  Sterling was going to flip his lid. He would have told Weir if Raven had plans to be late. Weir briefly considered waiting longer, but Sterling was going to freak out as it was. It was kind of adorable how protective Sterling was of his sister.

  Oddly enough, Weir had mostly enjoyed the past couple of weeks. Maybe not the healing-from-being-hit-by-a-car part, but the rest. He had never spent enough time around someone, or someones, to learn their habits, their likes and dislikes. He could look at Sterling now, when he walked in the door in the early morning, and tell whether he’d a good night or if customers had been assholes. He knew when the guy was cranky by how he held his shoulders.

  He’d learned that Sterling was a terrible cook. Like certifiably awful. The attempt at mac and cheese would have been funny if Sterling hadn’t been so sensitive about it. Even though he refused to admit it, the pasta had been cooked for just a few minutes. It had been like trying to eat cardboard. No amount of cheese in the world would make that taste better. Weir would have eaten it without saying anything, but Raven opened her big mouth. Sterling had snatched the plates from them and dumped everything into the trash before picking up his phone and ordering pizza. It was a little like being a family.

  Before his bio family went to hell he’d had a pretty nice life, although he didn’t have much memory of it. More like a shadowy black-and-white film that played in his head, the details becoming less clear as the years passed. Life with his dad had been a lesson in learning to live with ghosts. His mom, his sister, the family they had once been, haunted his father. Eventually Carroll Weir Sr. had lost his way completely.

  Drunken rants in the evenings accusing Weir of being a fuck-up, of being the reason his sister disappeared and his mother left. In the mornings, if he wasn’t too hungover, there would be tearful apologies. The apologies were worse than the rants. A person could only say “Sorry” so many times before it became meaningless.

  Living with Ben had given Weir some better memories, but their time as a family had been cut short. After Ben died Weir was on his own again, and that was how it had remained, until now.

  Sterling was skittish, but around his sister he allowed himself to relax a little. Weir learned that he couldn’t function before coffee. That early was ten a.m. He had a terrible diet, living primarily on sliced sandwich meat and potato chips. Weir was reasonably sure he hadn’t ever seen a vegetable pass Sterling’s lips except when they ate dinner together. Sterling tried cooking things off Weir’s menu, which was really nice, though always an adventure.

  Sterling clearly loved his sister, and Weir admired him for going to the lengths he had to protect her. Privately, Weir thought Sterling could use a little TLC himself; Raven was spoiled rotten. They hadn’t brought up their late-night activities at the bar again. Their history could have made things uncomfortable, but somehow Sterling made it simple. It was easy to enjoy his company and not worry about expectations, his or Sterling’s. He didn’t think either of them had any.

  The fact of the matter was, Weir liked Sterling. He was surprisingly okay with that. At least when it was only the three of them and their pretend family unit. Having Sterling in the same house and liking him was kind of weird, but it also allowed Weir to see the parts of Sterling that were hidden from most other people. It was a secret all his own.

  Dragging in a lungful of air, he tapped in Sterling’s cell number. It rang a few times before going to voice mail. Weir decided not to leave a message. Sterling would call back anyway.

  His phone rang about ten minutes later.

  “Hey, you called? It’s been weirdly busy in here tonight. I thought everyone would be saving their energy for the weekend, but apparently they’re all in training for Friday.” Sterling sounded frazzled but happy.

  “Yeah, um.” Fuck. “Hey, Raven isn’t home yet. I texted her but she hasn’t answered.”

  “Goddammit. Fuck. I’ll be right there. Gotta find someone to close for me. I’ll text you.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Weir replied, but Sterling had already clicked off the call.

  Weir maneuvered himself into the kitchen before Sterling arrived home. He tried texting Raven again, but she continued ignoring his messages. He fervently hoped she was ignoring them. Sterling pounded up the front steps and burst into the house. The cat, which had snuck downstairs to complain about its empty tummy, fled in the face of Sterling’s anger and fear for his sister.

  “I tried Pony, too. No answer there, either.” Sterling pulled off his coat and flung it over one of the kitchen chairs.

  Pony was Raven’s friend. Weir had not met them, but Raven talked about them all the time. Raven had appointed herself Pony’s protector. From the sound of it, they lived in a very toxic household with no way to escape, no other safe family or friends.

  “Have you tried their hangouts? Do you know where Raven goes when she isn’t grounded for the rest of her life?” he asked. Weir had been through this. Sterling needed to focus, not panic.

  “No. Shit. Okay.” Sterling started to grab his coat back off the chair.

  “Hey, wait.” Weir stood gingerly, using the chair for support. “We need a plan, not to go running around. Think about it. What resources do you have here in town? Who knows her and would help you find her? Do we call your parents? Most likely this is nothing; she forgot or lost her phone or something.”

  Sterling looked at him like he was crazy. Weir understood. There was virtually no way Raven would go against Sterling’s wishes. His requirements for her to stay with them were very clear, and she had agreed to them.

  “Take a deep breath and let’s think clearly. Approach this as logically as we can.” Weir tugged Sterling’s chin toward him with his injured hand. The rough stubble felt delicious under his fingertips. “Look at me.” Sterling did, and Weir saw the panic and fear welling in his eyes, threatening to overwhelm him. “We will fin
d her. She’s a smart girl. We both know something has happened, because she promised, but we will find her.” How he could put such strength and conviction behind those words, when he had never been able to find even a trace of his own sister, Weir had no idea.

  Leaning closer, he pressed his forehead against Sterling’s; let their breaths and heartbeats mingle. He felt it when Sterling relaxed. Instead of pulling away as Weir expected, Sterling pressed his cold lips to Weir’s warm ones.

  They had never kissed before. This quiet press of lips was terrifyingly intimate, and unnerving. The kiss didn’t last long, nothing more than a moment’s assurance, a promise, a suggestion between them. Unthinking, Weir let go of the chair he was propped up with, touching his lips as if to reassure himself it had happened. Sterling caught him when he lost his balance, grinning through his stress.

  “Whoa there, cowboy, don’t get too excited.”

  “Fuck off,” Weir grumped. Again, Sterling had taken an awkward moment and made it no big deal. “Let’s find your sister.”

  First they made phone calls. A lot of phone calls. As it was after eight at night on a Tuesday, they were able to reach most folks. None of whom had seen or spoken with Raven over the past few days. Finally, Sterling tracked down Sara Schultz to see if she had heard anything through her grapevine. Nope. She promised to keep an ear out, though, and suggested that Sterling check in with Brandon Campbell, as he seemed to have a finger on the troubled pulse of Skagit.

  Weir respected Brandon. He was a guy who put his money where his mouth was. More evenings than not, he could be found driving around in his van handing out food and sundries to the homeless people who refused shelter or who had nowhere to go when the single shelter in Skagit was full. He knew where the homeless teens hung out. He had, inadvertently, been an enormous resource on Adam’s case earlier in the year.

  “Sure, I know who your sister is. I haven’t seen her, though, or heard anything. Wasn’t out long today because Stephanie has the flu. In fact, I just got back.” Sterling had his phone on speaker so Weir could hear, too.

  “Weir here. Is there any place you’d recommend looking first? If we were to go looking?”

  “I don’t know why she would go to any of those places,” Sterling interrupted. “She’s not homeless.”

  “It’s a place to start,” Weir argued.

  “Hey, guys, let me check in with Stephanie, then I’ll head back out. These kids trust me. They might not tell you anything at all. Even if they know Raven, they don’t know you. And you fall into the ‘adult’ category.”

  They haggled a little while, but Sterling really had no choice except to agree to Brandon’s plan.

  “We should check upstairs and see if there is unusual stuff missing from her room. Maybe she packed ahead of time?”

  Sterling rushed upstairs while Weir organized his thoughts. It wasn’t the same thing as his own sister. Raven was older and wiser. Still, there was a frisson of anxiety forming in his gut. Where was she? Why would she do something like this to Sterling when he had done everything in his power to protect her from their parents?

  “Nothing seems like it’s missing,” Sterling shouted back down the stairs. “Her laptop, but she always takes that. School bag, all the normal stuff.” His voice grew louder as he bounded back down the stairs. “Now what?”

  Fifteen

  Sterling hadn’t planned on sleeping. Once Brandon called back to say he had found nothing, Sterling contacted his mother. Sybil had been no help, answering his questions with a strange forced cheerfulness instead of her usual sharp, barbed speech. He thought maybe she was trying to hide the conversation from his father. Still, she told him nothing.

  Weir said he should call the police. Sterling wanted to wait until the morning. If she was just fucking off, he wanted to try and get to her before his parents. The police probably wouldn’t do anything that night anyway. A sixteen-year-old girl with her own car, a known habit of running off… she could be anywhere.

  He shifted on the bed. Weir had convinced him to lie down in his, Micah’s, room, instead of the couch. Weir was peacefully asleep. Sterling took a moment to really look at him. Weir looked closer to his actual age when he was relaxed into sleep: smooth skin, a dusting of freckles across his nose, a small scar on his temple, his blond hair a tangled mess.

  A remarkably vulnerable person hid beneath the smart-talking federal investigator Weir showed the rest of the world. Sterling would be a liar if he didn’t admit to the quiet part of himself that he felt protective of this facet of Weir that seemed to be his alone. He hadn’t thought he would come to enjoy Weir’s company, but he had and he did. Sterling had been self-sufficient for so long it had been difficult to imagine sharing life space with anyone, so he had quit trying. Also, Weir was great with Raven, which, while not a deal breaker, he appreciated. Most guys he hooked up with had no interest in Sterling’s personal life. Which, he supposed, had been the point of hooking up in the first place.

  They hadn’t fooled around, except for yesterday’s kiss, since the two nights in his office at the Loft. Sterling had never spent the entire night with another man before. He had never trusted a hookup enough to allow himself to sleep with them. It was bam-bam, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out. Or hit his own ass, since he controlled things by never letting them come to his place. Even though they were both dressed, and Sterling was on top of the covers wrapped in a spare blanket, it was oddly comfortable. Something a couple would do.

  Weir slept on his back with his good arm over his head resting against the pillow, neck exposed, pale lashes delicate against his cheeks. He looked good. He had gained a few pounds and no longer appeared like he’d spent a week in the wilderness with only a granola bar. From what Sterling knew, the guy might actually do something like that. Sterling shuddered. The woods were for bears, and not the fun kind of bears, either.

  “I can hear you thinking.” Weir’s voice startled him, and he blushed because… He had no fucking idea why, but he blushed. He’d been caught ogling Weir while he was asleep and vulnerable. Gah, bears. Sterling rubbed his face with his hand, trying to pretend he was getting the sleep out of his eyes. When he looked back, Weir was smirking at him. Asshole.

  His sister was missing and he was blushing over a guy in bed? Sterling’s brain was more messed up than he had realized. With a groan, Weir sat up, abs flexing under his T-shirt. Sterling rolled his mental eyes at himself for noticing how sexy Weir was, even after sleeping in his clothes with a mending leg and arm. Maybe Sterling should think about getting laid. The only problem with that was, when he thought about getting laid, Weir popped into his head.

  “What’s the plan this morning?” Weir asked, his voice husky from sleep. They’d only managed a few hours. Sterling had been too wound up. Which was how Weir had eventually convinced him to lie down on his bed instead of the couch, claiming he was keeping Weir up with his muttering and restlessness. He’d surprised himself by dropping off within minutes.

  “I don’t know.” The helplessness he’d felt last night flooded back. His own memories of living on the streets haunted him, waking and sleeping. The thought that his baby sister, as fierce and smart as she was, could possibly be sleeping out on the streets, cold and hungry… he could not go there.

  “Would you please stop with the worst-case-scenario stuff you’ve got going on in your head? It’s not going to help find her. You need to clear your head and really think. Think about where she could be, and why.”

  Okay. “Okay.” He could do this.

  Weir grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “How about if I make a couple phone calls to the team. See if maybe Sammy can come up with something, a different angle?”

  Looking down at their clasped hands, Sterling took strength. He could do this. They would find Raven.

  By midmorning, Sterling was a mess.

  They’d stopped by the high school. He hadn’t set foot inside the building for fifteen years, and he’d planned on keeping it
that way. Weir stayed in the car. Although the administration was aware he was more Raven’s parent than Sybil or Stephen, they were not allowed to tell him anything.

  Pony’s mother slammed the door in his face.

  The kids holed up in one of the abandoned warehouses in Old Town didn’t know anything, but asked if Sterling could give them some money.

  Sterling gave them twenty bucks.

  Weir called him a sucker, nicely, when he got back to the car.

  By afternoon, Sterling was certifiable.

  They had been to every coffee shop or drive-through in the city. The amount of caffeine they had ingested, well… no sleep for the wicked.

  They’d visited both public libraries, St. Joe’s as well as the hospital associated with the university, and stopped by the teen center.

  There was no sign of her.

  Finally, Weir asked, “What’s going on with Pony? Raven never said. Claimed it was their story to tell.”

  “Pony is one of Raven’s special projects. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean as soon as Raven figured out that they had no support at home, no one in their court for who they really were, she took it on herself to be there for them. They’ve known each other since seventh grade. Pony came out as trans last year, and their parents did everything but dig a shallow grave for them.”

  Weir sighed.

  “Yeah.” Sterling agreed.

  “I’m hungry.” Weir was borderline whiny, but Sterling realized that, aside from coffee, he hadn’t fed his patient all day. What a great caretaker he was proving to be.

  Because it was one of the few spots they hadn’t stopped by already, Sterling took him to Patty’s. In honesty, Sterling hated the restaurant/dime store. It was fucking creepy, with weird headless or torso-less mannequins and decades-old stock mixed in with the scattered tables diners sat at eating their scrambled eggs and hash. But Weir was hungry, so they stopped at the creepiest café in Skagit.