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

by Elle Keaton

  Becoming an investigator had been part of his journey as well. Helping victims and their families find closure healed him a little, too. Selfish? A bit, but it worked for him.

  “Are we knocking, or do you have a key?”

  Sterling shot him a look that said everything. There was no chance either of his parents would give him a key. If Weir weren’t halfway through recovery he would be tempted to do something stupid like kick the door in.

  The door opened before Sterling had a chance to knock, and a petite, fiftyish woman stood before them. It was impossible to miss the resemblance. The black hair and pale skin, as well as the shape of her face. She dressed in all black, like Sterling did.

  “What are you doing here?” she hissed, her face twisting in disgust.

  “Lovely to see you as well, Sybil. And you know perfectly well why we are here. Where is she?”

  Weir leaned forward, pulling his badge out of his pocket and flipping it open so Mrs. Bailey could read it.

  “Carroll Weir, ma’am, federal investigator. I’d like to ask you a few questions.” He’d ask forgiveness later if the boss found out.

  Two pairs of intense blue eyes blinked at him in shock. Tucking his badge back into the inner pocket of his jacket, he motioned inside. “May we come in? My leg still bothers me sometimes.”

  Finally noticing Weir was using a crutch and she was overlooking her hostess duties, Mrs. Bailey waved them in. The foyer was immense, thirty feet high, gleaming under the transient April sunshine. She led the way toward another room, her high heels clicking against the marble tile, the sound echoing across the open space.

  “Your leg really bothering you?” Sterling whispered. Weir shook his head. He had taken the risk that Mrs. Bailey wouldn’t want an injured officer of the law collapsing on her massive front porch. What would the neighbors think?

  On second thought, in this neighborhood, they would probably rally to hide the body.

  Mrs. Bailey didn’t offer, but Weir sat anyway. His leg was tired, not sore as he had implied. It didn’t hurt to make himself comfortable when she probably hoped to get rid of them quickly.

  The room she’d led them to was a library. There were hundreds of books lining the walls. At a glance, most of them looked to have been ordered from the same catalogue. The spines were somber hues of brown and black, with a few dark-red bindings strewn amongst them. In a far corner, several shelves harbored brightly colored mass-market titles. Weir couldn’t see what the titles were from where he was sitting, but he bet that was someone’s personal collection.

  “I assume you know why we are here?”

  She wrung her hands, trying to come up with a reason that didn’t include her missing daughter.

  “Do you know where Raven is, Mrs. Bailey?”

  Her eyes, so like both of her children’s, stared at him with something akin to horror and, Weir thought, a touch of fear. Sybil’s gaze skittered away, ending up somewhere over his left shoulder.

  “Surely, as her mother, you understand that Sterling, to whom you gave the task of watching over her for the past few weeks, would be concerned when Raven did not return to…” He stuttered to a stop, having no idea whether Mrs. Bailey knew where her daughter had been living: in a house owned by a gay man, currently inhabited by two different gay men. “Where she was staying,” he finished lamely.

  Sybil’s body language was conflicted. She was wringing her hands, that was unconscious. It was the lack of eye contact that bothered him. He’d only been in the field for a little over a year, but families of missing people looked you in the eye earnestly. They wanted you to find their wife, daughter, sister. In his limited experience the missing had all been female.

  “He promised he wouldn’t do anything.”

  “Who promised? Your husband?” He refused to call Stephen Bailey a father. The man had failed both of his children.

  Sybil nodded. “As long as Raven behaved.”

  “Behaved.” The word sounded depraved, dirty, bestial.

  “Behaved.” Her hands fluttered. He and Sterling were supposed to understand the inherent definition of behaved. Weir was pressing her to say the words out loud.

  Sterling opened his mouth, and Weir held up a hand to silence him. Sybil Bailey needed to hear how her words sounded out loud. How they echoed across the cold marble tile, vicious promises piling up like dead leaves, invisible against the cream-colored walls of her prison. He wondered what malicious words already poisoned this room.

  Her gaze drifted back from over his shoulder, and he saw her surrender. She couldn’t say the words. Whether it was because of him or that her son was standing there as witness, Weir didn’t know. This time he let Sterling speak.

  “Sybil, Mom, what do you know? Where is Raven?”

  Sybil sat on an uncomfortable-looking Louis XV–style chair with pink-and-gold upholstery. The thing was hideous but matched the unfortunate décor. “Stephen threatened to send Raven to boarding school.” Looking down at her hands, she continued, “My husband has very strong beliefs about how people should be… be together.”

  Weir nodded to keep her talking.

  “Raven refused to give up her lifestyle. That school club she went to, she continued to go there over her father’s command. But he promised me,” this time she did look him in the eye with the earnestness he had come to expect, “promised me he wouldn’t send her away.”

  “Where is your husband, Mrs. Bailey? I’m surprised he isn’t here with you today.” He was surprised she had let them inside the house, much less met with them without her overbearing husband present. From what little Sterling had shared with him, Stephen Bailey was a bully as well as a bigot.

  Again, she looked everywhere but his face. Her hands fluttered restlessly, and she shifted in her uncomfortable chair. “He had a business meeting.”

  “Does he know Raven is missing?”

  “Raven is not missing!” She almost shouted the words.

  “If Raven isn’t missing, Mrs. Bailey, where is she?”

  Unexpectedly, she leaned toward Sterling, hissing, “Why did you bring the police here? We don’t need the police.”

  “Mrs. Bailey. What are you not telling us?” Something was going on in this house, something that had Sybil Bailey lying her ass off. The tension rolling off Sterling was palpable. They needed straight answers, not this bullshit runaround. Normally, Weir didn’t have trouble with his temper. Compared to Adam, he was a paragon of patience.

  A door opened and closed. Footsteps sounded in the foyer, and a man called out, “Sybil?” Before she could respond, Mr. Bailey entered the room, coming to a stop when he saw Weir and Sterling with his wife.

  “What is that faggot doing in my house?” Stephen Bailey had an unfortunately nasal voice; it grated on Weir’s nerves instantly.

  Weir stood, pulling his badge out of his jacket pocket again. “Two faggots, Mr. Bailey, but I’m a federal faggot so you have to be polite to me or I’ll have you arrested for obstructing an investigation so quickly you won’t know your ass from a hole in the wall.” He limped closer to Mr. Bailey. “You know, in prison they don’t care who you are.”

  An ugly vein bulged along the side of Mr. Bailey’s forehead, his face flushing an unhealthy scarlet. Bailey looked nothing like his son, or his son nothing like him. Lucky Sterling. Weir was trying to see what part of himself Bailey had donated to Sterling, but nothing jumped out at him. It was as if Sterling and Raven had popped fully formed from Mrs. Bailey’s forehead, like Athena.

  “Why are the police here?” Storming over to where his wife sat, Bailey grabbed her thin shoulder with a tight grip. “Why… did… you… call… them?” Each word was ground out separately.

  “I didn’t—”

  Stephen shook her violently, making her head rock backward. Weir started to move, but Sterling was way ahead of him.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you? Get your hands off her.” Sterling knocked Bailey’s hand off Mrs. Bailey’s shoulder, inserting hims
elf between her and her husband. Mrs. Bailey blinked, in shock, Weir thought; they were both shocked. She, probably because someone she had epically failed as a parent was protecting her. Bailey, because his “faggot” son was standing up to him.

  Bailey lifted a hand; whether for a slap or punch, Weir didn’t know.

  “If you so much as touch him, I will have you arrested for assault.” For a charged moment Bailey considered ignoring Weir. He saw it in the man’s eyes. Then Bailey stepped back, conceding to Weir’s power.

  “Who is going to tell me what is going on?” Weir asked. As glib as he had been, telling Sterling they would find his sister, a very, very, bad feeling was beginning to claw its way into his chest. He could see that Sterling was starting to feel the same thing. This was no simple case of Raven running off or being sent away to “boarding school.”

  In the end, after Stephen Bailey spent a little more time posturing and essentially pissing a circle around his wife, the story emerged.

  The night before, a package had been delivered to the house. Mrs. Bailey assumed it was for her husband so had waited for him to return. When Mr. Bailey opened it, he found a picture of Raven, a lock of dark hair, and a demand for several million dollars or they would never see their daughter again… although first they would see little parts of her, like fingers. As well as all the usual stuff: don’t call the police or she will be dead and you will never know what happened to her. Standard kidnapping ransom note.

  “Now you’re here—you’ve ruined everything. I’ve spent hours trying to round up funds.” Bailey dragged both hands through his salt-and-pepper hair. Definitely not a bowl cut. As Sterling had said, Bailey senior had his hair cut somewhere fancy.

  “First of all, I came here as Sterling’s friend. I am a federal investigator, though; this badge is not fake. Now, I am here as an investigator. Second, do you have this kind of money, Mr. Bailey?”

  “I can get it. I don’t have it lying around in a safe, if that is what you are wondering.” Weir did wonder. Skagit wasn’t a big city, but there seemed to be a lot of money floating around.

  The kidnappers said they would be back in touch in three days, which meant Weir had about sixty hours left and a lot of work to do. So far, the Baileys were being cooperative. The entire conversation didn’t last much longer than a half hour. Weir took the note and the padded envelope it had arrived in, hoping he would be able to glean some information from them.

  As they all headed toward the front door, Sterling hung back a moment, murmuring to Mrs. Bailey. She answered and he nodded, then hurried to catch up with Weir.

  On the doorstep, Weir turned around and asked the question that had been troubling him since they had found out about the ransom demand. “Mr. Bailey, I understand you were considering sending your daughter to conversion therapy. Why would you want to spend millions of dollars to get her back? If the way she is is so abhorrent to you, why would you bother?”

  Bailey slammed the door in their faces.

  “That went well, I think,” Weir remarked.

  Sterling glanced at him, sharp eyebrows raised in astonishment, while they navigated the steps down toward the parking area. He kept a hold on Weir’s arm to keep him from stumbling. Perversely, Weir enjoyed the warmth of Sterling’s palm heating his skin in front of the Bailey mansion. He hoped Mr. Bailey was watching them leave from a front window. Leaning closer, he turned so he could brush a kiss across Sterling’s cheek.

  “You are a menace.” But Sterling didn’t move away from him until they reached the car.

  Nineteen

  “A federal faggot?” Sterling’s mind was reeling. Of all the words that had been said inside that house, those stood out.

  “It had to be said. I’ve been waiting to say it for years. It felt gooood.” Weir chuckled.

  “You’re twenty-five, how long is ‘years’?”

  “Twenty-six. My birthday was last week.”

  Sterling whipped his head around to look at Weir. “What? Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Dude, eyes on the road. I’ve never celebrated my birthday. Why start now?”

  Sterling had a love-hate relationship with his birthday, especially since he turned thirty, but at least he acknowledged it. He usually spent it at work. Mac would make some obnoxious special named after Sterling, and there would be cake. He’d forbidden them from singing “Happy Birthday” ever again. Threatened them all with firing, in fact. They laughed and sang anyway.

  “Quit worrying about my birthday. Get us home in one piece so I can call Adam and Mohammad.”

  “Is that a good idea?” Maybe he’d read too many thrillers, but it seemed like getting authorities involved always went sideways.

  “Yeah, it’s a good idea. Adam’s been involved in one of these before.”

  Sterling was hit by another sideways thought. “Uh, what are you going to do when they get back? Micah and Adam?”

  “The hotel will have a room. Same place I was before. Why, you offering?”

  Weir’s phone buzzed before Sterling could answer, and he found himself listening to one half of a conversation: Weir filling Adam in on what had happened, a lot of nodding and uh-huhs, before he clicked off. Sterling spent the intervening moments freaking out about whether or not he should offer to put Weir up at his apartment. Despite the fact that it was two stories up, had no elevator, and was only five hundred square feet.

  They arrived at Micah’s as the call ended, and Weir seemed to have forgotten Sterling’s question. Thank god. He did not need to add drama to the drama. The focus right now was figuring out where Raven was and getting her back.

  “Adam’s going to send Sammy Ferreira around to talk to the folks at Patty’s. See if he can get any more information out of them. We have to hope your parents are going to cooperate and not fuck everything up by going rogue on us. It’s still early days.”

  “I think Stephen knows more than he is saying.” Sterling didn’t know why he thought that, but he did.

  “Yeah, I think so, too. Sammy’s good. He’ll check in after he’s talked to them.”

  This time it was Sterling’s phone buzzing. He glanced at the screen. “I’ve got to take this.” It was the bank. They needed him to come in and go over some details of the loan he was applying for. That didn’t sound terribly ominous, and he agreed to be there in an hour.

  Weir cocked his head at him. Weir had no idea Sterling was trying to buy the Loft. That he had been saving and planning for years, that this meeting could make or break his dream.

  He parked in the lot between two monster pickup trucks and tried to calm his nerves before heading inside. Both trucks were splattered with mud. One had mud flaps adorned with the silhouette of a naked big-breasted woman; the other prominently displayed a rainbow sticker in the back window. Chuckling, Sterling opened the door to the bank and went in.

  It was difficult for him to distinguish whether his nerves were from the situation with his sister or at finally finding out if he had successfully jumped through all the hoops for the small business loan application he had begun last fall.

  The current owner of the Loft had moved to Seattle several years ago and floated the idea of Sterling buying him out when he could. Rick Daniels trusted Sterling, leaving him in charge except for the few times he dropped in on his way to Vancouver. As long as the books were balancing, Rick was happy. Rick was a good friend. Sterling often wished he hadn’t moved away, but he had, and now Sterling had a chance to fly on his own. He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans.

  Sterling had worked his ass off to get to where he was now. He had enough savings and business experience to qualify for the loan he needed for full ownership. He wiped his clammy palms on his jeans again before shaking the hand of the bank representative who called him into his cubicle.

  “What?” Sterling was shattered. And furious. And wanted to hit something.

  “At this time, we are unable to approve the loan you have applied for.” Vijay Mandyjam, the bank�
��s small business loan officer, repeated himself slowly, like Sterling was an idiot for not understanding in the first place. He’d been nervous coming in, sure, but he hadn’t been prepared for rejection.

  “Why?” His voice came out reedy, fucking pathetic. Vijay, as he had asked to be called when Sterling sat down, seemed to realize that Sterling was very close to the end of his rope.

  “Mr. Bailey, Sterling, the documents are all here in this file. I suggest you take it home with you and review them.” Vijay had kind brown eyes—nothing like Weir’s, though, which seemed to hold promise and hope. “I suggest you check your credit report. If there are errors, have them corrected, and then the bank may reconsider its position.”

  Rather than argue, Sterling allowed Vijay to hand him the file and escort him out of his cube. He stood for a moment in the bank lobby trying to get his bearings, embarrassed to discover he had not been at all prepared to be turned down. That all the hard work and sacrifice had come to nothing. Saving money by living in a shoebox and taking a minimal salary so he could put the difference back into the bar had been worthless effort.

  Back outside, he hazily noticed that both pickups had gone, leaving his car alone in the tiny parking lot. His car was listing oddly to the left. He walked over to it and saw that he had a flat tire. Not a slightly flat tire, but one so flat the rim was sitting on the pavement. Was the universe trying to tell him something? Should he drive to the nearest cliff and fling himself off it?

  The spare was flat as well, and even if it hadn’t been, Sterling couldn’t have changed it because the jack was missing. Tossing the file of fucking bad luck onto the passenger seat, he called the only person he felt like talking to.

  “How’d your appointment go?” Sterling hadn’t told Weir what it was for, only that he’d had to leave.