Tequila Mockingbird (13 page)

Connor couldn’t find his English. Instead, a guttural crawl of Gaelic flowed from his mouth and spread over Forest where Connor’s lips touched his skin. The man’s hands dug into his sides, and Connor loved the sheer strength of them, a tumble roughness he’d never had before. There was a solidity to their touch, a whispering pledge from Forest’s muscular body that he was able—and more than willing—to take anything Connor could dish out. And perhaps even give Connor back more than he could ever imagine.

They’d kissed for only a hiccup of an eternity when Forest drew back and moved his hands out from under Connor’s jacket. He took a breath, then clutched at Con’s biceps, wrapping his fingers around Connor’s thickly muscled arms. As Forest rested his forehead on Connor’s chest, Connor cradled the man to him, thankful for the table Forest found to hide under, grateful for his father’s love and assurance he could love anyone he wanted and still be the man Donal would be proud of, but most of all, astonished at the reality of Forest in his arms.

“By all that is holy, I am in love with you,” Connor whispered into Forest’s tangled blond hair. His mouth stung from their kisses, but his fingers itched to explore. There was so much to discover between them, and Connor wondered if he could bring more than a wisp of a smile to Forest’s mouth.

“Whoa. Did you just kiss me?”

“Aye, I did.”

“Did you mean you’d catch me?” Forest whispered, weaving slightly in Connor’s embrace. “If I fell?”

“Yes.” He frowned at the man. Forest’s brown eyes were blown out to black, and he blinked under Connor’s intense stare.

“Good, good. ’Cause I think I’ve got a concussion.” Forest nodded. Then a green cast spread under the blush of his cheeks. “So I’m going to pass out right now, and I might really need that catch you promised me.”

Working in deep

End of the line

Black river at my feet

Red fire down my spine

Getting harder every day

To hold onto what is mine

—
Working In Deep

“K
IERA
J
OYCE
Morgan, if you don’t get out of my face, I’m going to—”

“Going to what, Con? Punch my face?” Kiki inspected her brother’s scowl, then gave him one just as fierce. “See? I can do Big Bad Connor Morgan face too. Except the difference is I know you’re not going to do anything other than spit and growl at me.”

“I’d risk the suspension,” he snapped, pacing another length of the waiting room to distance himself from his younger sister.

“You might,” Kiki agreed with a nod. “But you won’t risk Da being pissed off about it.”

He couldn’t shake Kiki. Not without causing a scene or earning himself a black mark on someone’s ledger. Rubbing at his face, Connor mumbled through his fingers, “What do you want, Kiki? I told you everything I know.”

“Really? Because I don’t seem to get it.” She rounded on him, poking her finger into his chest. “I want to know why you left a family thing to go down to an old crime scene. And—”

“And it’s none of your business,
Kiera
,” Connor said flatly.

She must have finally realized he meant business, because his little sister took a step back, dropping her hand down to her side.

“I told you I was standing outside when I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t have time to think about what that was, and no, I don’t know what the fuck is going on. I didn’t see who started the van. I didn’t see who locked its steering wheel in place, and I sure as fuck don’t know why someone would do this to Forest. What I
do
know is that it’s none of your fecking business about why I was there or why I’m here now. So step back a bit,
colleen
, because there’s nothing more I can give you.”

The smell of the hospital was making him sick. The not knowing what was going on ate away at Connor’s patience, and he’d locked horns with the doctor in charge more times than he could count. If he pushed the man one more time, Connor was fairly certain he’d be marched off the floor and out the hospital’s sliding glass doors before he could blink.

“How about if you let me decide if you’ve got nothing more to give me?” Kiki stood next to him, her hands on her hips. It was hard to reconcile the gun-toting, badge-wielding inspector with the frizzy-haired little girl he’d once carried on his shoulders so she could see the dragons at a Chinese New Year parade over the thick crowd. “I’m going to do my job, Con. It’ll be nice if you help me with that.”

Kiki was right. Connor knew she was right, but it didn’t mean he liked it. Talking to his sister would mean taking his eyes off the doors, and Con wanted to see the doctor’s face when he walked out, because in that moment before he searched for Forest’s next of kin, the plain truth of the situation would be plastered on his features.

“Make it quick, Kiki.” His sister stood in front of him, and Con was doubly glad she’d gotten her height from their mother, because he could see right over her head. With one eye on the doors and a drifting attention area around Kiki’s face, Connor said, “I don’t know when they’re going to be done with him.”

“I’m not going to talk to you like you’re a civvie, Con. I need to know your impressions—especially about Ackerman. Okay?” Kiki didn’t wait for her brother’s consent, calling up her case notes with a tap of a stylus on her tablet’s screen. “Let’s start off with Ackerman. No past history of drug arrests, although his adopted father was a known pothead. Medical marijuana license issued to Franklin Marshall, and he apparently debated opening up a dispensary but never followed through.”

“And?” Connor frowned. “What’s that got to do with Forest?”

“Do you think there was any validity to the drug tip you guys got on Marshall? From what I can tell, you’ve been around Ackerman a lot in the past couple of months. You’d have had time to observe any traffic.”

“I think the strongest thing he does is booze,” he said, shrugging. “His apartment’s clean of pot stink, and there wasn’t any paraphernalia lying around.”

“So you’ve been in his place? Above the studio? Could something have been hidden there? Maybe you didn’t see it.”

“There’s barely enough room for a flea to turn around in that shit hole.” The door bumped out, and his heart seized on that slight ripple, but it was only the air-conditioning kicking in. “Most druggies will use at home. I came through the door first after the shooting, so he wouldn’t have been able to stash anything from me. Not enough time. There was nothing there, Kiki. Not even a whiff of pot.”

“He’s listed as a professional drummer. You think a musician isn’t going to take something if it’s offered to him?”

“I’ll be sure to ask Kane and Sionn that next time I see them. They might want to be on the lookout for Miki and Damie’s stash,” Con shot back. “What are you leading around to, Kiki? That he’s involved in some shit Marshall left for him? Because I haven’t seen it.”

“Let’s talk about the van, then—stolen from a Canadian couple who drove it down from Vancouver.” She consulted her notes. “Talk to me about the first thing you thought when you saw it.”

“Truth? I thought someone couldn’t park.” He stopped to recall what was on his mind when he’d seen the van jump the curb. “I didn’t think it would keep going. There’s a cash machine across the street from the Amp that’s got a camera. Did you get any footage from it? It’s not a lot of street between the building and the corner. Maybe they got something on a feed?”

“It’s been requested. Hopefully the bank manager won’t be a douche, and their legal department will just hand it over. I’ve got a witness saying they saw a person—maybe a man—but he had on a hooded sweatshirt, so she didn’t get a good look at his face. That’s why I was hoping you’d spotted him. Maybe you remember him? She said he was walking with his shoulders hunched over—like he’d been scolded.”

“Probably busy hiding his face.” Connor didn’t want to admit to Kiki he’d been more focused on Forest than paying attention to the surrounding area. Not yet. It was too
new
. He wanted to soak in his feelings first, and then there was the terror of Forest’s injuries. He was worried too sick to focus. “No, I didn’t see that guy. Could have been hidden by the van. Depending on the angle. That thing was huge and skewed at the right angle; it took up a lot of the open visual.”

Talking to Donal was one thing. Sharing his intimacies with his siblings would have to wait. He had no idea when and how he was going to tell his family. Although, considering he’d spent a good amount of time exploring Forest’s mouth after the wall collapse, he probably should give it some thought—like what the hell to say to his mother.

“How about someone from his past? Maybe someone he knew from the system?” Kiki tapped through her screens. “He was in eleven homes before Marshall petitioned to foster him. Mom’s got a sheet longer than a California King, mostly soliciting but a few drug busts. Kid was on track as a repeat, but I guess Marshall put an end to that. Maybe she got into something and it’s coming down on him?”

“I’ve not—” Connor stopped himself. “You opened his juvie?”

“Yeah, I opened his juvie, Con,” Kiki sniped back. “It’s my damned job. I do things like open files and dig into people’s shit so I can figure out why someone’s killed innocent bystanders, and here’s a news flash, even if they
aren’t
innocent bystanders, I dig around in the shit anyway, because no one deserves to be murdered, including your friend, Forest.”

“Look, I don’t know what the fuck is going on, Kiki.” He scraped his hands through his hair, suddenly realizing it’d grown out long enough to tug on. “Forest—he hasn’t done anything to get this kind of shit left on his door. Anything he did as a kid? It’s gone, water under the bridge.”

“Really? What the fuck aren’t you telling me, Con? Why the hell are you circling the wagons around this guy?” Height wasn’t the only thing his sister’d inherited from their mother. No one in the family could shake Kiki off something once she’d gotten her teeth into it, and usually it was a quality Connor admired in her. At that exact moment, it wasn’t her most appealing trait.

Stepping in closer to her brother, she whispered hotly, a low hiss only loud enough for the two of them to hear. “Give me one damned good reason why I shouldn’t ask you what you’re doing with a guy who by all accounts is a piece of trash more than a few guys fucked, balled up, then tossed away? Because it doesn’t make sense to me, Con. Not one fucking bit of sense.”

H
E
HURT
everywhere.

Well, Forest amended, not in some places he’d normally hurt after waking up feeling like he’d been beaten half to death, but it was pretty close. No, he thought as he blinked away the sting of tears in his eyes, he felt more like the times he’d been shoved in a dryer and endured the tumble after his foster father turned it on.

But for the life of him, he couldn’t remember which one had done it.

“Can you hear me, Mr. Ackerman?” A man spoke. Then a bright light flashed over his eyes, and Forest tried to shut them, only to find one of his lids was pressed up by someone’s cold finger. “Pupils are responsive. Forest, can you—”

“Yeah, I hear you.” He tried blinking again, wresting away the control of his eyelid from the man’s finger. “Roger, Roger.”

“Do you mind if I call you Forest?” The man continued his examination, probing at Forest’s hips and side.

“Sure,” he said through his chattering teeth. “It’s too fucking cold.”

It took Forest a moment to realize where he was. A hospital. One that didn’t seem to mind also doubling as a meat locker. He didn’t just hurt, it was also cold, and more than a little of the room’s iciness crinkled pain through his bones. Shivering, he tried burying himself under the blankets but found he was lying pretty much bare to the breeze, draped only in a hospital gown that left his naked ass stuck to the sheets.

“I’m sorry. I promise I’ll make this quick,” the man said.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” Forest muttered to himself. “Usually they were the ones doing a dip and dash.”

Forest could make out the man’s face, and then the fuzziness around his vision cleared enough for him to see. A name tag pinned to the balding man’s blue scrubs declared him to be Doctor Wyatt, and Forest nearly jumped out of his skin when the man’s almost too warm hands pressed down into his abdomen. Someone stood to the side, just out of Forest’s cloudy field of view. The grizzled older man flashed a smile at Forest when they made eye contact. Forest couldn’t tell if he was a nurse or another doctor, but it didn’t really matter. He needed to find his clothes and get the hell out before they charged him five hundred dollars for an aspirin he never swallowed.

If he could only get his legs to work.

“I can’t move—” His knee jerked up, and Forest nearly nailed the doctor in the chin. The other man—an attendant according to his hospital badge—moved in to help Forest get his limbs under control. His leg muscles had another spasm, and the older man massaged Forest’s shins, his fingers working to get Forest’s blood flowing.