Dark Child (Wild Men 5)

“If you’re not staying with Jasper, then where are you staying?” I ask him.

“Wanna keep tabs on me?

“Just curious. Where do you sleep?”

Another undecipherable look. “Here and there.”

“Fine, don’t tell me. I’m honestly here just to see you’re okay.”

And strangely, I realize that’s true. Nobody deserves to be stabbed to death by their bully dad, not even bully children.

Right?

I’m staring at the bandage. Some blood has started to seep through, a darker shade, a red haze.

Ross follows my gaze to his bandaged shoulder. “He was going for my heart,” he says dully. “He missed.”

“How did he miss?”

He shrugs and winces, face paling, hand going to his shoulder.

“Maybe he didn’t really want to kill you,” I mutter.

A strange thought crosses my mind. Of all his kids—us three, and any others we don’t know about yet, he only kept Ross close.

As if he really loved him. His favorite son.

But Ross is shaking his head. “He was drunk off his ass.”

“And yet he got you good.”

“I let him get too close. Listen…” His throat works. His hands curl and uncurl on top of the covers. “Tell the police to look in the garden shed. Dad… he used to be member of an MC. I found a blood-spattered jacket in the garden shed, right there with the ax. The logo is a circle with a skull in the middle. Kinda looks like an eye from the distance.”

Possibly. Looks like I’ll never know what exactly I saw that night. Memory is tricky like that. It’s a miracle I remember as much as I do, and so much of it turned out to be real.

“I’ll let them know,” I mutter, and turn away to call John Elba with this information. My phone call seems to speed up things, and Elba tells me they’re heading to the house right now.

“Just in case,” Elba tells me, apparently concerned about getting it through my thick dreamer’s skull that evidence is probably lost and not to expect anything. “And we won’t let him walk out of jail, if we can help it.”

Good man.

I return to Ross’s bedside to find him listening to Cos tell a story of how she and her sister went home once to find her mom had invited friends for a party that lasted into the morning hours. They ate all the food, and took the girls’ beds, so she and Sophie ended up at the neighbor’s house.

Their dad had been locked up in his ‘studio’ painting and didn’t notice anything until he surfaced two days later to forage for food in the kitchen.

Goddammit. I want to go back in time, grab her mom and shake her.

Instead I settle for putting my arm around my Cosie, kiss her cheek. “I didn’t have your back then,” I tell her, “but I do now.”

She smiles at me, and from the corner of my eye, I catch an odd expression on Ross’s face. Looks like wistfulness, and misery, and hope all rolled into one, but when I turn toward him, it’s gone, replaced by the familiar sneer we’ve all come to love and cherish.

Not.

“So the police arrested my old man,” he says, reaching up and punching the pillows stacked behind him into place. “Your work here is done. Go home.”

That’s all I wanna do, but I hesitate. “You’ll be okay here?”

“Peachy. It’s five-star service, and tomorrow I’ll be out of here. Don’t give yourself an ulcer over me, little brother.”