The Foster Family (23 page)

Kerry sat back on his heels again as the front door banged open, and Charlie’s calls echoed through the house.

“Here,” Malcolm called, relieved he didn’t sound nearly as tense as he felt. “In the kitchen.”

But Charlie was already at the door, then across the floor and crouching beside the chair.

“What the hell happened?”

“Someone threw a couple bricks through the window,” Malcolm explained. “I was an idiot and walked through broken glass in bare feet.” He smiled crookedly. “Ouch.”

“No shit,” Charlie breathed. He turned to Kerry. “You hurt?”

Kerry’s gaze remained on the floor. “No.” His voice was subdued, strained.

Maybe he wasn’t hurt, but neither was he over his fright.

“Let me look,” Charlie said, moving to Malcolm’s feet and gently maneuvering Kerry out of the way. “There’s a first-aid kit under the bathroom sink. Go get it, please.”

“Yes, sir,” Kerry said, obedience automatic and sincere. He hurried out of the room and Charlie immediately looked up at Malcolm.

“This could have been—”

“It wasn’t.” Malcolm touched his face, felt the sweat under his fingertips. “The police have been called. We’re both fine.”

“It could have been,” Charlie insisted. “And I left without—”

“You’re here now.” Malcolm leaned down and kissed him, as fierce and controlling a kiss as any he’d ever given, until he felt Charlie relax under it. “I need you, Charlie. Stay with me.”

Charlie nodded but still nestled his forehead against Malcolm’s cheek.

A throat clearing drew them apart.

“You called?” The male voice was that deep, resonating-with-reassurance kind that vibrated bone and smoothed over roughened nerves. Malcolm took his time gazing into Charlie’s eyes, making sure he had his lover back before flicking his attention briefly to the police officer in his kitchen doorway.

“That was fast,” he observed.

“Flashing lights and all that,” Karl said. “What happened?”

“I was in the other room for most of it. Kerry is really the one you need to talk to.”

“And he is where?”

Charlie rose. “I’ll get him.”

I
WAS
stuck in the bathroom clutching the first-aid kit in shaking hands. My mind had gone to white noise, and I forgot for a moment what I was supposed to be doing.

“Hey.” Charlie touched my shoulder.

My heart jolted out of rhythm. The plastic box fell and popped open as it hit the floor. The sharp crack drove through my brain, and I jumped back a step. A tiny sound snuck up my throat and out.

“Kerry.”

“I can’t….” I blinked and shook myself. “Can’t focus. What’s wrong with me?”

“Shock, probably.” Charlie’s light touch got firmer. “You’re safe. We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”

I nodded. “I know.” I knew that. I was here because it was safe. Because they’d keep me safe. “I know,” I whispered.

“Officer Karl is here. Come out and talk to him. Explaining what happened will help, I promise,” he said as he removed his own suit jacket and laid it over my shoulders. “Come on.”

The jacket was warm and smelled like him. Like the night before, when he’d been in my bed, and I managed a nod and crouched to pick up the first-aid supplies. Malcolm needed that stuff. When it was all back in the box, I let Charlie lead me back to the kitchen and sit me in a chair. Officer Karl sat opposite me, small notebook out in front of him on the table, and he took notes as I talked.

“I was making coffee. Pouring. Fixing Malcolm’s how he likes it.” I smiled, but it felt weak and small so I let it fade. “Milk and no sugar.”

The officer made a noise and I glanced up at him. “You don’t need to know that.”

“It’s all right, Mr. Grey. Continue, please.”

I nodded. “I was pouring. The shattering was so loud and I had no idea what it was, where it came from. Something hit my leg.” I felt the sore spot on my calf, and a shiver ran through me. I pulled Charlie’s jacket closed. “This foster home I was in once, it was… pretty terrible. I mean, the neighborhood. You always heard shots, right? Off in the distance. But when they’re close, you hear the glass first, because the glass is close, and you never even know where the bullet is. It’s the weirdest thing.” That sounded mixed-up. Something about the memory twisted out of shape, and it slipped my grasp.

Officer Karl nodded and made a soft noise that brought my attention back to him. For an instant, he didn’t look like I expected. He was younger, meatier, and then he was himself again, and I blinked. “This morning, Mr. Grey,” he said. “What happened this morning? Was it a bullet that shattered the window?”

“What?” I stared at him and struggled with the memory of him as another person as I tried to curl deeper into Charlie’s scent.

“Was it a bullet that came through your widow today?” the policeman asked.

“Malcolm’s window.” Was he confused? This was Malcolm’s house.

“Yes. Malcolm’s window,” Karl agreed, and abruptly the situation jolted back into focus. “Was it a bullet that came through Malcolm’s window?”

“No.” I got up and searched the floor, eventually spotting the stone and picking it up. “It was a rock. See?”

“Please put that down,” Karl said evenly, and I knew I’d done something terrible by the flat, even tone of the policeman’s voice.

I set the stone gently on the table. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. You didn’t know.” He pointed to the chair I had been sitting in. “Have a seat, Mr. Grey, and let’s hear the rest of the story.”

“Okay.” I sat and reached back in my memory to the morning, careful not to go too far this time. “I guess maybe I thought… for a minute, that it was something else. I panicked and”—heat flushed up into my face—“I hid under the table.”

“He called me,” Malcolm interjected. “I heard the first rock come through from the bedroom, then Kerry called me and I came running. The second one came in before I got here. I ran into the room and he was under the table. He tried to stop me walking through glass, but I was a bit… slow on the uptake.” He lifted the foot Charlie had finished disinfecting and covering with spray-on bandage. “I got a look out the window, though, and saw a blue sports car speeding away around the corner. It was newish, I think. Kind of big and boxy.”

“License?” Karl asked hopefully.

“Sorry, no,” Malcolm told him.

“Make?”

Malcolm looked a little bit chagrined. “I’m not really a car guy. Sorry.”

“Too bad.” He turned back to me. “Anything you’d like to add?”

The heat of humiliation coursed through me. “I hid under the table,” I managed. Even to myself, I sounded small and wounded and weak.

“Nothing wrong with that,” Karl said, tone still as matter-of-fact as always. “Logical thing to do. I’m going to go call this in and see if we can maybe get some sort of information from the stones or the ground outside.” He took a moment to study me.

His look was so devoid of anything other than professional curiosity, and yet sweat collected and dripped down my sides under my T-shirt. “What?”

“You don’t know who might have done this?”

“I don’t know.” I wished I did. If I knew they could
stop it. “I just—”

“Officer,” Malcolm said, pushing himself upright and ignoring Charlie’s protests that he should keep his feet up, “you and I know this has to be his ex. Andrew Bishop. We filled out the paperwork for the restraining order—”

“Shelton,” I interrupted. “Andrew Shelton-Bishop. His mother remarried. They moved to a better neighborhood.” I looked up and everyone was staring at me. “When we were nine,” I explained, “his mother got married and they moved, so I didn’t know him anymore. ’Til high school when he came back….”

Malcolm frowned, then turned back to the police officer. “The restraining order,” he said again.

“It’s been filed. Your attorney has been contacted, and as soon as a court date is set and all the parties notified, you’ll have your piece of paper.” He closed his notebook and set his pencil neatly across the black cover. “Between you and me, a guy who tosses rocks through a window is not a guy who’s going to pay any attention to a piece of paper.”

“Andrew walks up to a guy and punches him in the face,” I interjected. “And laughs.” I touched the side of my face. “He doesn’t throw rocks through windows and run away. The court order is a waste of time. He won’t ignore it. His stepfather’s lawyers will make it go away so his spot on the football team doesn’t. He wouldn’t go to this much trouble over me. He tried to get me to go back, and I said no. He beat me up and walked away. He’ll find some other shmuck to be his bitch.”

“Kerry,” Malcolm said softly.

“It’s true,” I said, not looking at the other man, though I was perfectly well aware that tone of voice had been a command to do just that.

“You are no one’s bitch, Kerry.”

“Whatever.”

“Kerry.” Charlie’s tone forced its way through the fog like Malcolm’s had not, and I lifted my gaze to meet his eyes. “What did Mal say?” Charlie asked.

I swallowed and tried to climb out of Charlie’s deep, chocolaty, warm gaze, out of the sense of him surrounding me, from the smell of him and the look in his eyes and the control. I couldn’t. “I’m no one’s bitch,” I replied finally.

“Not Andrew’s, and not ours.”

I chewed on my lower lip and swallowed, but after a moment more, nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Charlie squeezed my shoulder and turned to the officer. “Now what?”

“Now we take what we have and hope they find something, if the lab ever gets around to working on this case. To be completely honest, the fact you’re gay”—he looked from Malcolm to Charlie—“is a point in our favor. We say this looks like a hate crime, and it gets more attention.”

“This is about Kerry,” Charlie said, laying a hand on my thigh as I began to shake again.

Karl looked chagrined, but he was adamant. “Making it about Kerry makes it a lover’s quarrel. Domestic at the most. It’ll never make it to the top of the list until he’s in the hospital.” Now he looked right at me, and there was real anger in his expression. “Or the morgue. If we want answers and lab work and a chance at actual, concrete evidence, we play both angles and hope for answers before media attention.”

“Here.” Malcolm held out his phone, interrupting the exchange. “It’s not the same car, but the color is right.”

Officer Karl peered at the tiny screen. “Well, it’s not a factory finish, at least.”

“Is that good?” Malcolm asked.

“We can ask around at the body shops and find out if anyone has done a custom paint job on a late-model sports car, I guess.”

“Will that find him?” I asked, heart skipping a few beats.

“Don’t get your hopes up. This is a college town. Kids from around here going to the college are the ones who can’t afford to go elsewhere. They probably can’t afford a custom paint job on any car, never mind a brand-new one. The kids who drive those cars are from all over the country. No telling where that car was painted.”

“Oh.”

“It’s worth asking a few questions,” Karl said, and I heard the attempt to sound reassuring.

“But it probably won’t lead anywhere.”

“We’ll explore all avenues, Mr. Grey. I can assure you of that.”

I studied him for a moment, noticing the lines on his face curling around a mouth more used to laughing than most. “Why are you being so helpful?” I asked.

“It’s my job, Mr. Grey.”

“I know cops,” I said. “They’re all over the system, and they don’t get involved. You’re involved. Why are you involved?”

It was Steven Karl’s turn to study me. “I suppose because my kid brother could have used someone around to have his back, and no one was there. Because my own son deals with this shit every day.”

“I’m not your kid brother.”

Karl smiled. “No. But I can’t help him now. I can help you. I can try and change things, make them better for my own son, before he becomes a statistic too.”

“Say thank you, Kerry,” Malcolm said softly, “and let the man get to work.”

I looked back to the police officer. “Thank you. Sorry to—”

“It’s fine. You’ve done very well. If you think of anything else”—he glanced to Malcolm and back again—“either of you, call my voice mail or my cell.” He handed Malcolm another card. “Number’s on the back.”

Malcolm nodded. “Thank you.”

“I’ll go call this in.”

Charlie walked him to the front door and halfway to his cruiser before coming back to the kitchen. “Kerry, help me move Mal out of the way so the police can do their work when they get here.”

“I can manage,” Malcolm said and set a foot on the floor. He couldn’t hide the pinched look, though, and Charlie glared at him. “Stop being tough,” Charlie admonished softly.

“Fine. Help me up.”

Charlie smiled softly. “As you wish, Master, my Master.”

He bent to help Malcolm up but stopped when Malcolm cupped his face, closed his eyes, and breathed a few deep breaths. Charlie rested his head against Malcolm’s for a moment, and I watched them, aching to have even a fraction of that sweet comfort.

“Come,” Malcolm said, holding out a hand toward me as though he could read my mind.

I gravitated to them without thinking about it, for once not trying to understand them, just reaching for what I wanted. Both of them wrapped their arms around me, and I let the warmth seep into my bones where cold had seemed to have taken over.

“We’ll figure this out,” Malcolm said softly.

I almost smiled. Hadn’t I said that very thing not so long ago?

After a few more steadying breaths, Charlie patted me and backed out of the little huddle. He mostly lifted Malcolm from his chair, and between us, we helped him down the hall toward the bedrooms.

“Put me in the living room on the couch. I am not having those people traipsing all over my home unsupervised.”

“Yes, Sir,” Charlie said, his voice mocking but only partly.

We deposited Malcolm on the sofa, and I fetched for him until he had everything he thought he might need.

He looked up once he was settled with water and a stool, his phone and a book and the TV remote. “You can start cleaning up the glass once the police have finished.”