Forever Promised (41 page)

“Yeah. I’ll be listening for you too.”

He would be too. Since the heart attack—hell, since he’d come back from Iraq—Crick had learned to worry.

“Get some sleep. Call ya when I can.”

And Deacon pulled away from a warm man in his bed one more time to help a friend in need.

Mikhail
:
Unsuccessful
Heart Transplants

M
IKHAIL
had been caught blindsided. He’d heard the girls quarrelling and had stepped in. Usually Missy was the aggressor, but this time he actually had to pull Sweetie off of her.

Given that the girl didn’t have any warnings on her record, Mikhail didn’t bother with the “this is how you stand in the house” speech.

“What in the holy mother of hell is wrong with you!”

He glared at the two of them, not sparing any sympathy for the hanks of strawberry hair hanging from Sweetie’s shaking fingers or the scratches that patterned Missy’s face.

“I don’t know what happened,” Missy snapped, folding her arms in front of her. “She just went crazy. You know how those people—”

“Shut up,” Mikhail snarled, suddenly far angrier than he had ever imagined being at one of the children at Promise House. “You will go to your room and we will hear your story then.”

“Well, fine,” the girl hissed. “You stay here and talk with little Miss Perfect here. I’m gonna go pack.”

Mikhail turned his back on her with a flounce, because she didn’t own the franchise on that dish, and looked at Sweetie, unhappy and confused. “Sweetie, I—”

“LeLauna,” she said, her jaw mutinous. “When you all call me Sweetie, I can’t hardly breathe for fear of fucking that shit up.”

“Yes, of course,” he said, uncertain. “LeLauna. I… I don’t understand. You are smarter than this. I know you are. What did she say? What would make you so mad—”

“I’m not a saint!” She realized she had big hunks of Missy’s hair in her hand, and she threw them down on the carpet. “Stop treating me like I’m smart or I’m better than something! We both know I’m just a ragged-ass whore!
You
know what I am! I offered to blow you for a fucking sandwich!”

“Yes, but you declined to bend over, which shows that even then you had sense.”

“Aw….” For a moment the girl’s lower lip wobbled, and Mikhail was relieved. She would cry. She would cry, and then he could get Shane and Kimmy, who dealt best with tears, and it would be better. But she was tough, Sweetie was. For five months she had been quiet and self-contained, and she wasn’t going to let him in now. “Aw, fuck you,” she said in disgust. “You’re not cute, and neither am I!”

He was suddenly very afraid for them both. “I don’t understand—you have friends here who think much of you—”

“Well, don’t! I’m trash, and we’re all gonna know it!” And with that, she stalked off to her room.

She was sullen and uncommunicative during dinner—Mikhail and Shane exchanged glances when she stood up and dropped what amounted to a full plate of food in the sink. Missy refused to come out of her room and had flat out ignored everybody who’d knocked on her door. At one point she’d screamed, “Sweetie’ll squeal on me. That bitch loves to kiss your asses!” but after that, they heard nothing but silence.

After dinner cleanup, Shane looked at him and said, “You know it’s got to be you.”

Mikhail frowned at him, uncomfortable. “I am not great with baring my soul,” he said. “She will need me to do it.”

Shane snorted. “You’re
awesome
at it when it’s needed. And yes. She
will
need you to do it.”

Except she was gone. Her covers were untouched, her drawers were open, and her few possessions all gone. Shane remembered she’d had one of the reusable grocery bags in her room, and Mikhail was stricken.

“A grocery bag? She could fit all of us in a grocery bag and just walk away?”

Shane… the look in his eyes was too terrible to see, so Mikhail turned away. It was Mikhail’s fault. He had handled it badly. He had thought to let them cool off, thought to talk about it later, thought to give himself some time before he spilled all of his stupid secrets in front of this girl. This girl was not Kimmy—Kimmy knew all of the bad about Mikhail, and they were equals. This girl—she was his
charge.
It was his job to help her grow, not to tell her the bad things he had done.

Unless, of course, those things would help her heal.

“We must find her,” he said, not sure where to walk or what to look at. He was wringing his hands, and he didn’t know it until Shane took them both in his. Shane’s hands were startlingly warm, and Mikhail recognized the iciness of his own shock.

“We’ll do our best,” Shane said, and even then, when Mikhail needed reassurance the most, he recognized his cop’s inability to lie. He did not say,
We will find her
. He said,
We’ll try.

“She is out there all alone, and… and she is so
stupid,
she did not know we cared for her!”

Shane pulled him in for a brief, hard hug. “Did you know I cared for
you?
” he asked.

Mikhail was mashed against his hard chest, but he still tried to answer. “Yes,” he mumbled. “But I did not think I was….”

“Yeah,” Shane sighed. “Now excuse me while I call Calvin. He’ll tell his guys to keep an eye out.”

Shane called Calvin, and while he was doing that, Mikhail called Deacon. Deacon would help, he thought numbly. Deacon was the man they all depended on. Deacon could help make things right.

Shane had to take the phone away from him, because he was ranting, but when he was forced to listen to them talk, he found some peace and a moment to think. It was when Shane repeated something about getting Jeff to help that Mikhail suddenly understood.

Martin.

Shane had the same idea too, but not in time to keep Mikhail from storming off to Missy’s room to
drag
an answer from the girl, willingness to talk or no.

“
What
did you say to her!” Mikhail snarled, yanking the door open. He worked out constantly, danced in the fall, and still, he should have been surprised at how easy it was to break the lock on the door.

“None of your goddamned business!” Missy screamed.

Later, details would hit Mikhail. The small trinkets she kept on her dresser, and how they were things Benny and Crick had mentioned giving her. The fact that her pillow wore the day’s makeup, including the dark mascara, where she’d been crying, escaped him then as well. All he knew was that she had hurt someone important to him, and she needed to pay.

“What did you say?” Mikhail demanded again. “She was excited today—she was going to see Martin tomorrow because his plane came in this afternoon. She was… she was
talking.
Do you know? You drip venom all day and all night, do you
know
how often that girl talked?”

“Never.” Missy sneered. “Conceited bitch didn’t talk to fucking
no one.
So fucking lonely here, and she was too good to be my friend! She was like the rest of us—nobody here’s a saint, we
all
put out for food and a place to sleep. She didn’t have no cause to be all high and mighty around us!”

Mikhail’s eyes narrowed. He and Shane, they did not think like other people. They did not go in straight lines. They chased conversations around corners and under tables. “Is that what you said?” Mikhail asked, figuring hard. “Did you say she wasn’t worth it? Did you threaten to tell Martin she was a whore?”

Behind him he heard Shane and Kimmy, and probably Lucas and the other counselors there, because he had done the unthinkable and had breached a resident’s room. Mikhail wasn’t even an employee, technically—everybody else had a key, because the children weren’t always safe by themselves, but Mikhail, he was not supposed to be there.

“Her and her damned boyfriend,” Missy muttered, her voice breaking. “Wasn’t that nice for her, when boys won’t give me the time of the day. Prissy bitch. Why shouldn’t I?” She shored up her voice with acid then, and he would not,
could
not, see that her chin was quivering, and she was sorry, sorry and miserable and unable to find the words to grow into any compassion she’d managed to scrape together. “Yeah, I told her she was a whore, and that Martin would fuck her and leave her, or fuck her and beat her, because that’s what men
did
. Wasn’t my fault she was too stupid to know how to use them before they used her. Wasn’t
my
fault she’s fucking gone! She’s probably happy to get the hell out of here too, with the rules and the chores—she’s probably laughing her ass off and getting drunk and getting laid, because God knows that’s what
I’d
like to be doing, and you fuckers won’t fucking let me—”

Her voice was rising hysterically, and Mikhail wasn’t even aware he’d raised his hand to her until Shane caught his wrist midblow. Missy just stood there, grinning in triumph, ready to take the blow, to love it, because it was something she’d done her damnedest to earn, and Mikhail whirled on his cop in fury. His other fist cocked back and was ready to fly, and Shane just stood there, sorrow in his eyes, waiting for the blow to land.

Mikhail’s whole body went still. For a moment, he even stopped breathing.

“I’m sorry,” he said into the hollow silence. “This is not helping. Excuse me. I will get out of your way.”

He did not see what happened next in that room. He went instead to sit on the porch and look out into the night. He couldn’t see anything, just the white face of the fog staring blankly back, daring him to peer any farther to where secrets were rabid, hidden, and dark.

He was still sitting there a half an hour later when Shane came out and laid a blanket on his shoulders.

Mikhail’s teeth were chattering by then, but he tried to throw the blanket off.

Shane clamped his hands down then, keeping it wrapped, and for once, he sounded on the verge of his formidable patience. “Don’t be stupid, Mickey. It’s freezing out here, and you don’t even have a sweatshirt on.”

Mikhail stopped resisting. He
was
being stupid. “I am no better than the damned children,” he said, his jaw tight with cold. “You should not waste your time with me. You should try to find Sweetie instead.”

“Deacon’s on his way,” Shane told him. “If it’s taken him this long to get here, it’s because the fog is insane. We can’t look for her in this. We’ll have to wait until morning.”

Mikhail nodded and thought of the girl out in this cold. “She has a good jacket,” he said randomly. He’d taken her to Wal-Mart and told her to pick one out. She’d shyly picked one with a fur collar, in brown, and he’d told her it was a good choice. “I almost got one in purple,” she’d said, “but that seemed a bit flashy, you know what I mean?”

He thought of that now and wished she
had
gotten it in purple. Or neon pink, or green. “Brown will be hard to spot,” he mumbled, almost to himself.

Shane sat down on the top porch step and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Mikhail murmured. “I almost… I almost… I swore I’d never hurt you again, and you almost let me—how could you let me do that?” he accused, because it was easier than remembering what he’d almost done.

“Because you weren’t lashing out at me, Mickey,” Shane said patiently. “Baby, I’d do about anything if you forgive yourself.”

“When she’s home.” Once upon a time, Mikhail would not have felt any hope at all, only worry. Once upon a time, he would have written the girl off as a lost cause and let her wander into the fog without caring. It was her fault, was it not? For not trusting? For not having faith? But he had been the one who hadn’t trusted, who hadn’t had faith, and someone had believed in
him
until things had worked out. He had a little hope now, didn’t he? He had hope that somehow, this girl would come to her senses. Somehow, she would come home.

D
EACON
arrived, and between Shane’s resources and records and Deacon’s community ties, they had some reassurance that in the morning, a picture of Sweetie would be posted all over town. Megan-the-wonder-soccer-mom had a friend who lived in nearby Natomas, and she’d be posting fliers as well. Jeff had given Sweetie’s description to every hospital in the area, and between Jeff and Shane, they’d managed to get word out to the shelters that Sweetie was
always
welcome home.

Mikhail had nothing to do. He brought them coffee and water, gave them snacks from the kitchen after the first hour, and curled up into a ball on the couch after that. Normally, this would have been his and Shane’s night to go home, but when Mikhail woke up in the morning, Shane pulled him into his big, bear-sized embrace, and Mikhail slept in his husband’s arms.

Much of him was still broken, but that—that gave him hope: it might someday be fixed.

Hope was thin on the ground. He needed all he could get.

Martin arrived that day, and the look on his face when he realized Sweetie had gone and was not coming back—at least not on her own—was something Mikhail would carry with him for maybe the rest of his life.