Prodigal

by TA Moore

  “He might have, though,” Boyd said. “I’ll take point—”

  Harry grabbed Boyd by the shoulder strap and dragged him back. “You’ll do as you’re told. Charge the hose.”

  When Boyd didn’t answer immediately, Harry gave him a shake. “I vouched for you to the disciplinary board,” he said. “Told them you were a good firefighter, kept a cool head in a crisis. Do not prove me wrong. Charge the hose.”

  It felt wrong, but Boyd clenched his jaw and nodded. If he didn’t get Shay out, someone else would. He knew that. That should have made it easier.

  “Danni! Tom!” Harry barked as he turned around. “Get to the roof. Vent on my call. Jessie, get the deluge gun hooked up. I want you to cool down the ground floor. We have cars and gas in there, and I do not want this fire to spread. Boyd, you’re with me. We breach the building once the vent is made.”

  Relief washed through Boyd at the order. If he had to, he could have waited, done his job out here and put his trust in the others, but he was glad he didn’t have to. While Harry snapped orders to the second crew, he hooked up the hydrant, locked the hose in place, and the slack ribbon that was stretched across the tarmac fattened as the water flowed into it.

  “Got it, sir,” he said as he loped back. Jesse tossed him the hooligan bar out of the rig and then hitched the hose up onto his hip. “Ready when you are.”

  Harry grunted, ax dangled from one hand, and watched the roof for Danni and Tom. Water battered against the side of the building as Jessie and the other fire truck turned on the hoses. It turned to steam and hung in a damp cloud over the building. Boyd bounced on the balls of his feet and chased the still calm that usually turned up before he went in. This time it stayed just of reach, and Boyd grimaced to himself as he cracked his neck from one side to the other.

  It was fine.

  The crowd behind them was as on edge as he was. “I think I see her!” a woman yelled. There was a low mutter of worried excitement from the crowd as they strained to see.

  A yellow helmet appeared over the edge of the roof, and then Danni pulled herself up. She walked, one foot in front of the other and her hand gripped around the axe near the head, and raised one fist in the air.

  “We’ve got a hot spot at the rear of the building. No skylight, so we’ll vent a hole,” she said over the radio. “Eyeballing it, fire was set back there. We’re ready when you are.”

  Harry nodded and pulled his SCBA into place. He waved his hand at Boyd.

  “Get the door,” he ordered. “Jessie, surround and drown.”

  Boyd still had the jitters. His brain was full of a dozen fractured timelines where he’d done something differently last night, this morning, ten minutes from now. That was fine. He just had to work harder to focus through the chaff.

  He jogged across the forecourt to the dented steel doors and swung the hooligan bar in a short, hard arc. The flat wedge hit the door and lodged with a thunk of impact that jarred up into Boyd’s shoulders. Harry stepped up to the side, slid the handle of the axe through his hands, and hammered the hooligan in like a nail. Three strikes, and the wedge sank deep enough to deform the door around it.

  Boyd threw his weight against the handle, arms braced. The door creaked, bent, and the lock finally gave way. He caught it as it flew open and felt the sting of hot metal against his hand. It startled him for a second, but then he remembered the soft thump of the reinforced gloves as he tossed them down at the last call.

  He snatched his hand back.

  Two in, two out. He could swap with one of the other crew and grab a spare pair if he needed. Except… some things you can’t take back.

  “We’re in,” he said to Harry as he stepped back to let the captain go first.

  Once Harry’s back was to him, he tucked the hooligan under his elbow and fished in his pocket for the black extrication gloves he carried as backup. He pulled them on—not safety rated, but better than nothing—and stuck to Harry’s heels as they went inside.

  The smoke was dense in the garage, a greasy, heavy gray that seeped in through the walls, but only a few flames flickered under the door and thin and blue on top of spills on the floor. It was hot enough to blister the paint on the cars and crack brittle zits of metal into the custom hoods and door panels. All that metal creaked and popped as the heat built.

  “Apartment’s upstairs,” Boyd said. He pointed with the battered head of the hooligan toward the door that led into the fire. “Through there.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  MORGAN SLOUCHED against the streetlight, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched under his borrowed hoodie, and watched as Mac, in a pair of old jeans and nothing else, walked his boyfriend to the Jag parked in the drive. They kissed goodbye over the driver’s side door. It was the sort of dry-lipped kiss Morgan would shove Boyd against a wall to do over, but Mac wasn’t a spring chicken. At his age, maybe you wanted affection more than your tongue down your lover’s throat.

  But Mac trailed his hand along the other man’s arm as he stepped back so the guy could get in the car. And he stood in his bare feet on the cement to watch the Jag reverse—badly—into the street.

  “… halfway in love with you.” Boyd’s voice repeated the casual declaration in the back of Morgan’s brain. And even ten years from now, Morgan would bend Boyd backward over the hood of that car so that wherever he was going next, he’d have Morgan’s smell on his skin and the taste of him in his mouth.

  Morgan looked away from Mac’s drive and down at his feet. He swallowed hard, his mouth sticky and throat dry. Fuck this town. He’d been fine until he got here and Cutter’s Gap paraded all this stuff he didn’t even want in front of him just so he’d know he couldn’t have it.

  What did halfway in love even mean? Who got halfway to anywhere and decided they had to tell you about it? Did it mean they were on their way, or that they could still turn around and go back without losing too much time? Just pick one.

  There was a crack in the pavement full of chalk dust. Morgan kicked at it with the heel of his boot and twisted his mouth bitterly. He was about to tell a lot of lies; he should try to be honest just once on the way in. Where Boyd was concerned, he’d take what he could get.

  The Jag peeled past him. Behind the tinted windows, the boyfriend was already preoccupied with the radio. He didn’t bother to look back.

  Morgan’s new hero.

  A sharp wolf whistle jerked his attention back to Mac, who crooked a finger to wave over the street. Habit made Morgan bristle resentfully at the order, but he was there to talk to Mac, so he squelched it. He pushed himself off the metal pole and jogged across the street.

  “I’m starting to feel stalked,” Mac said once Morgan was within earshot. “What do you want, Morgan?”

  “To talk,” Morgan said. “Off the record.”

  Mac rubbed his hand over his face. “It’s my day off.”

  “Fuck it, then,” Morgan said with a jerky shrug. “If you don’t have time—”

  “I didn’t say that,” Mac said. “Come in. Make Mrs. Bailey’s day.”

  He lifted one hand over his head to wave at something across the street. Morgan turned and saw a fluffy white head and pink face disappear behind hastily drawn curtains. When he turned back, Mac had already gone inside.

  Halfway worked out better, Morgan supposed. It wouldn’t take so long for Boyd to fix his mistake.

  “WHY DIDN’T you tell me this before?” Mac asked over his shoulder as he cracked an egg into a pan. He cooked, apparently, but only breakfast and burgers, so you took what you got. Thankfully he’d pulled on a T-shirt before he started. Morgan didn’t mind a pelt, it turned out, although maybe it was just on Boyd—but he didn’t want it in his food.

  Morgan fiddled with the salt cellar on the table. “It’s not exactly something to boast about, is it? ‘Do you know how many families took a hard pass on keeping me around? This many!’” he singsonged bitterly as he held up one hand with all his fingers spread. “Hell, it coul
d have been more. Apparently I was an unlovable bastard even then.”

  If he’d hoped Mac would argue with him, he was out of luck.

  “Some people aren’t cut out to be parents. They try anyhow and fuck more people up.” Mac scraped the eggs, fluffy and yellow, with dashes of red pepper sprinkled through, onto a plate and grabbed some oven gloves to pull the sheet of bacon from under the grill. “Do you remember any names?”

  “Dad. Father. Daddy. Mom. Mama. They all really wanted that, for a few weeks. Sometimes I went to school for a couple of months. Mostly they homeschooled,” he said. “My mom—the last one—her name’s on the social worker’s papers, but even that Graves wasn’t her married name. It was Fox or Faulkner or something.”

  Mac brought two plates of food over to the table. He handed one to Morgan and then sat down opposite him. The smell of hot bacon and fried potato made Morgan’s mouth water. He’d just picked the scab off his childhood and let the pus out. He shouldn’t be hungry. His stomach disagreed, apparently.

  The last thing he’d had to eat was a couple of slices of cheese pizza at the Calloways’.

  “You didn’t tell the social worker any of this?” Mac asked.

  Morgan pierced the egg and let yolk run out over the plate, around the hash browns and bacon. “Why would I?” he asked. “What were they going to do? Take me back to the family before that one? Track it back to whoever gave me away in the first place? At least in foster care, no one pretended to love me, and I got to stay in a city instead of being sent back to some… place like this.”

  The plate in front of Mac stayed untouched. He braced his elbows on the table and laced his fingers together in front of his mouth.

  “Why tell me now?” he asked. “Did something change your mind? Do you think you are Sammy now?”

  Morgan’s appetite faltered and soured with the question. The past couldn’t hurt him anymore, but apparently the present could at least put him off his food. He swallowed the mouthful of bacon and potato and wiped his lips on a napkin. Nothing he’d said so far had been a lie. He’d just let Mac come to his own conclusions.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t want to be. I mean, how the fuck didn’t you find me? It was like pass the parcel. I was sent to school and to the dentist. People saw me. Fifteen years, and maybe I didn’t have to go through any of it if someone had just found me? So if I’m Sammy, why did no one come to get me? Because nobody did.”

  The crack in his voice—anger and pain wedged into his throat—caught Morgan off guard. He stopped, cleared his throat, and rubbed his hand roughly over his mouth as though he could get rid of the hurt along with the words. The taste of egg coated the inside of his mouth and threatened to choke him.

  It was stupid. He wasn’t Sammy, so why the hell did it suddenly feel so raw?

  “You’re right,” Mac said. “People let you down.”

  Morgan snorted and took a drink of juice to wash the bad taste out of his mouth. He picked up his fork and pushed a bit of bacon around the plate. Even if he wasn’t hungry right now, who knew when he’d get his next cooked breakfast.

  “You mean Sammy?”

  “I mean you,” Mac said. He wiped his hands on a dishcloth and got up to grab a notebook from the desk shoved into the corner of the room. There was a picture of Sammy on there, pinned to the wall like an accusation, and a handful of photos and clippings. It didn’t look new. “Can you tell me anything about these people? Anything I can use to track them down?”

  “There was a church. We all went to the same church. It had a bible with its name in it. Fire on the Mountain, something like that,” Morgan said without meaning to. That wasn’t part of the lie he’d practiced. Maybe all police interrogations should take place over bacon. He pushed the plate away from him and rubbed his hands on his jeans. “And I remember the first dad, the one who told me he was my family now.”

  Mac scribbled that down, flicked a page, and looked up at Morgan. “Can you describe him?”

  There was a picture of Deacon Hill on the internet. Actually there were a lot, but most of them were blurred or taken in profile or from behind as he stalked away. He didn’t have any social media accounts, and he didn’t seem like a selfie kind of man. So there was one good photo of him, reproduced and resized on dozens of websites. The more rigorous sites attributed it to the teacher records in the Cutter’s Gap school, grabbed at some point by someone. He looked more like a California surfer than a West Virginia teacher, all blond curls and the sort of face that wasn’t exactly handsome, but when he smiled, people didn’t care.

  He looked like the sort of guy people liked. Even Morgan, who’d never met him, felt the brief urge to smile back at the photo like they were old friends. Not that it meant anything. Some of the biggest assholes Morgan had to live with as a kid—the rubbers, the ones who were free not just with their fists, but their boots—went out into the world with a big, shit-eating grin on their faces.

  So Morgan could describe what Deacon Hill looked like, close enough. Anything he got wrong would be put down to time and trauma. A kid who didn’t really know what was going on.

  “He was tall,” Morgan said. Some of the pictures of him as he walked away made that clear. “Um, he smiled a lot. Even when he was….”

  Halfway in love with you.

  If he did this, that would be over. Right now Morgan could slink out of town with that half love and a promise that he would always be Boyd’s favorite bad idea. It wasn’t enough, but it was something. The minute he lied about it, let Boyd think he was Sammy and that they’d caught who did it? That would be over.

  It shouldn’t matter. Either way, Morgan would be gone. But it did.

  “Off the record,” Morgan said.

  Mac stared at him for a second, pen poised over the page. After a moment he clicked the pen nib in and set it down.

  “That’s for journalists,” he said. “Hypothetically.”

  Morgan laughed roughly. He knew that. This town had ground the edge off him in a couple of days. He grabbed a bit of bacon off his plate and shredded it between his fingers.

  “Hypothetically, who do you want this guy to look like?”

  Mac sat back in in the white-painted chair. He hooked his arm over the back of it and pulled a sour face. “So you’re lying.”

  “If I were, hypothetically, would you have a problem with it?” Morgan asked. “Or would you be glad to have an excuse to pull someone in—someone in particular—and shake them down?”

  “That’s not how I work,” Mac said bluntly. “And if you mean do I know who did it, but I just can’t prove it? No. I don’t. Not enough to send someone to jail on a lie.”

  His temper slipped, and he slapped the flat of his hand on the table hard enough to rattle the plates.

  “Not enough to fucking torture that family any more,” he yelled, angry color flushed up ruddy over his cheeks. He pushed himself to his feet, shoved his chair back from the table by his thighs, and glared at Morgan. “You’re what pisses me off, Morgan. I actually thought you were being straight with me, but you’re just another con artist. More fool me.”

  Morgan bolted to his feet as his temper washed hot and furious under his skin. He’d been fifteen minutes away from his get-out-of-jail-free card, ready to cruise out of town in a black-cherry muscle car and leave Shay to watch from the sidewalk for once. Instead he’d let Boyd get into his head. And now—

  “You’re so worried about Sad Sammy, but I don’t deserve this shit either,” he snarled at Mac. “I’m going to get put inside because Lo came to sweep me up for you to interview. And maybe my life wasn’t so great to you, but it was my fucking life.”

  Mac grabbed him by the hoodie, fist twisted into the soft black fabric. “You think this is going to help? Do you really think that I’m going to keep you around now? After you played Donna Calloway like a goddamn fiddle? Lied to me? Wound Shay up? You’re going back to Huntington tonight, cop express, and this is on you.”

  He r
oughly shoved Morgan away and jabbed a finger at his face to underline his threat. Morgan slapped it away. His lungs felt too stiff to breathe with, and his knuckles ached to be balled into a fist.

  “Fuck off. If I’d lied, you would have lapped it up. My fuckup was that I told the truth,” he said. “Oh, and who do you think put Hill’s name on the block?”

  Mac inhaled as he absorbed that. He looked disappointed but not surprised. He walked around the table, grabbed Morgan’s arm, and yanked.

  “Sit your ass down,” he instructed. “You’re going back home before you cause any more trouble.”

  Morgan slouched down, legs stretched in front of him, and crossed his arms. He wasn’t about to go back to Huntington, and he’d pick his time. There was a lot of distance between here and the airport. With any luck, he could at least see if he could get some cash off Fernfield before the judge learned his problem was already on the way out of town.

  “Probably a relief to you, right?” he sneered. “If I were Sammy, people would definitely expect you to be able to close the case.”

  Mac grabbed a pair of sneakers from the back door and pulled them on. “You don’t give a damn about any of this, do you, Morgan?” he asked. “You’ve hurt these people. And why? They don’t have anything. You think the Calloways didn’t have enough pain in their life? Or that a firefighter gets paid enough they can just piss away fifteen grand? I told Boyd to stay away, keep his distance, but the boy’s got too much heart. Maybe he’ll learn from this. Next time he’ll give it to someone who’s not an asshole.”

  It was true—not all of it, but enough. Morgan scowled. He didn’t want to think about Boyd with some non-asshole. Happy. Better off. His cock in the mouth of someone who wasn’t fucked-up.

  “Fuck you,” he said. “I could take Boyd for thirty grand, and he’d come back for more. He loves me. He thinks Boyd’s short for boyfriend.”

  That caught Morgan off guard. He’d just run his mouth on autopilot to undercut the sting, but that wasn’t what he expected to say. The idea of it made him good for a second, like a mouthful of warm honey on a sore throat, but then reality slapped him out of it.