A moment later, Nova appeared in the door, his gun gone, but his face somber. “Get in here.”
I was moving before I knew it, sliding past Nova to search the open living/kitchen for Zeus. I moved on autopilot through the first floor, desperate to have physical confirmation of his safety even when I could hear him murmuring in one of the rooms at the back.
I found him in the small mudroom at the back of the house, his broad back obscuring whatever he’d found in the far corner, his big frame squatted down on his heavy motorcycle boots. King stood just behind and to the side of him, his expressive face creased with concern.
We made eye contact, and he nodded slightly, giving me the go-ahead to move to my husband. I sensed the other women arriving at my back, but ignored them as I walked to Zeus.
I didn’t know what I would find, maybe an injured wild animal curled up and dying or evidence of a break-in.
Not a single part of me was prepared for the sight that awaited me over Z’s broad shoulder.
A young boy was curled up so tightly, his frame so painfully thin, it seemed his bones would burst through the skin. He wore a tattered sweatshirt covered in mud and something that was probably old blood, given the wounds at his wrists. His face was obscured by dirt, his hair a dark, matted tangle over his forehead, but his eyes…his eyes were the most beautiful brown eyes I’d ever seen. More beautiful even than Nova’s famous gaze. Ringed with a heavy tangle of lashes and punctuated with spears of pure black, they were gorgeous and utterly terrified as they stared at us gathered between himself and his only exit.
I wanted to pick his bony frame up off the floor and drag it onto my lap so I could stroke his filthy hair and coo to him the way I would if I found an injured and abused stray dog.
But this wasn’t a dog.
This was a boy, and his terror filled the crowded room like the acrid smoke from a plastics fire. We were all paralysed, suspended in it and trying to see a way through the smog so that we could reach him.
Unsurprisingly, it was Z who tired of inaction first.
Slowly, he held up his big, scarred hands and carefully shifted from his deep crouch to the wall beside the boy, sinking gracefully to his ass despite his bulk. The boy watched with those beautiful, big eyes unblinking.
“Get a blanket from the car,” Cressida whispered to someone behind me.
The boy’s eyes skittered from Z to us, and he curled even smaller.
“Now, don’t mind them, kid,” Zeus mumbled in that low, smooth purr like a luxury engine. “Look at me, yeah?”
He did as he was told, licking lips so dry and chapped they bled.
“You cold?” It’s like hell frozen over up here on the mountain. You need to get warm or you’re gonna be sick. ’S almost Christmas, can’t be sick for Santa.”
The boy frowned at the mention of the holiday, and then blinked rapidly as his eyes filled with wet.
Zeus hunched even lower, shoulders rounding, so that he was almost eye level with the boy, and when he spoke, it was in a voice so achingly kind, it made me want to cry. His entire demeanor reminded me all too much of the enormity of his heart and how deftly he’d handled me, terrified and trapped, that day so many years ago in the parking lot of First Light Church.
“You got somewhere to be for Christmas, boy?”
More wet, pooling in the troughs of his lower lids.
“’S okay. You don’t got somewhere else to go, you can do Christmas with the Garros, yeah? This is my family. And me? I’m Zeus Garro.”
The boy stared at him with his tear-filled eyes, lips compressed like a closed zipper to hold back his sobs. But there was a shift in the air around him, as if Zeus had unwittingly unlocked one of the many doors barring this child from communication and comfortability.
“You need help,” my husband continued, speaking quietly but somberly as if to an adult. “We’re the ones that’re gonna help you. Now, can you answer some questions for me?”
The child bit his chapped lip and a bead of blood formed, then slid slowly down his chin. Z reached out slowly and brushed it away with his thumb, leaving the boy trembling but silent.
“You got parents somewhere?”
A slow blink, then a slight shake of the head.
“You sure? They aren’t lookin’ for you right now?”
The first tear slid free of his lid and streaked through the dirt on his cheek.
“They dead?”
A flash of hesitation so brief, I wondered if anyone else saw it and then just as quickly decided they all did.