Chapter 9

Don’t talk to me about your God

I don’t need your broken bread

Not for my soul

Not for my heart

Not for my countless sins

You want to give me something?

Something to save my wicked soul?

Give me the same as you’ve got

Loving who I want, and leaving me alone.

—Freedom Torn

“SOME STUFF isn’t any of your business, Kiki,” Connor responded. “Do I want to find out who’s fucking with Forest’s life? Yeah. Do I think the shootings and this van are connected? How can they not be?”

“Random fuckery is never random,” she agreed with a nod. “They’ve got to be connected. I just don’t know how, and the only common denominator I’ve got between your raid and my cases is Forest Ackerman.”

“The property?” Connor mused. “But it’s not like anyone’s going to try to drive him out. It’s not like it’s on the bay. It’s Chinatown.”

“Chinatown’s stepping up its game there, Con,” Kiki replied. “All of the old-world flavor but with Wi-Fi and boba shops. Your boy Forest is sitting on a big chunk of property, and most of it is a parking lot where someone left his father’s shot-up body, then blew up the man’s RV. You don’t think that could be a big Get-The-Fuck-Out sticky note? It could be they didn’t know Marshall had a son, or they figured Ackerman could be forced out easily enough.”

“He hasn’t gotten anyone offering to buy the place.” He made a face, remembering they’d never really talked about the corner lot. “Shit, it’d be a way to drive the price down, but Keeks, it’s Chinatown, not Rock Ridge. The drugs, yeah. I can see that, but who the hell would kill a guy for a half block of property?”

“That’s why I get paid the big bucks—to dig this shit out while you break down doors and take names.” She studied her brother for a moment, and Connor definitely saw a bit of their mother in her assessing stare. “I just feel like I’m not getting the whole story out of you, and that pisses me off, Con. If it’s anything about the case—”

“It’s not about the case,” he promised. “And the biggest problem is that you’re my little sister, the same brat who spent most of her life digging up shit on me so she could tattle to our parents. It’s hard for you to break a lifetime habit of sticking your nose into my business.”

“Promise me you’ll tell me if you find out something about the case,” Kiki pressed. “And that you’re not going to go break someone’s head in because they’ve messed with your friend.”

“I can give you the first, Keeks,” Connor rumbled. “But the second? I don’t think that’s a promise I can keep.”

“I’ll take what I can get,” she conceded.

“Mr. Morgan?” The bespectacled, balding doctor barreled out through the ward doors, his coat flapping behind him. “Sorry, Lieutenant, isn’t it? I’m Doctor Wyatt.”

“Morgan’s fine,” Connor replied softly. “Forest? How is he?”

“He’s awake and doing well. We’re just going to do some blood work to rule out some things, and then he’ll be set up in a room.” The man flipped through a sheet of notes on his pad. “You’ll need to have yourself named his domestic partner on his paperwork, but just so you know, we’re keeping him overnight just as a precaution. He’s got a linear skull fracture, nothing overly serious, but still, a fracture is a fracture. He’s young and strong, so he’ll heal up in a couple of days.”

“Fracture? Skull fracture?” Connor chewed on his lower lip. He kept quiet about not being Forest’s partner much less boyfriend, and he shot Kiki a telling look before she could butt in. “How bad?”

“Very slight. Nothing deep, but still, just something we want him to let heal up with rest. You’ll have to watch him for any signs of dehydration. He might want to get out of bed and do laps around the block, but don’t let him. A week of rest would do him good. One of the nurses will let you know when you can see him. For right now, sit tight and maybe get some coffee down at the cafeteria. It’ll be about an hour and a half before you can see your partner.”

“We’re not—” The doctor was gone before Connor finished his sentence, and behind him, his younger sister suppressed a snorting giggle. Relief flooded through him, and a tightness he didn’t know he’d built up in his chest suddenly deflated, unraveling with the doctor’s prognosis, but his sister’s chortle annoyed him. “Shush it, Kiki. You’ve got nothing to be laughing at.”

“I can’t see you in any kind of domestic partnership, man or woman. You’re too much of a hardass.” She gave in and barked out a short guffaw. Her phone chirruped from her pocket, and Kiki glanced at it, moaning when she recognized the number. “Shit, it’s Mom.”

“Better answer it. I left the dinner early. She probably wants you to swing by and take home part of that fatted calf she had slaughtered for Damien and Miki.” Connor grinned at his sister’s wrinkled nose.

“I’m just going to head there.” Kiki pointed her finger at her brother. “Don’t think this is over. I’ll tell Mom you’re okay. I bet the phone call wasn’t so much about if I ate dinner as it was making sure you don’t need anything.”

“I think she already sent that cavalry,” Connor murmured with a slight grin. A familiar Morgan-shaped man ambled out of the elevator and spotted Connor. Waving as best he could while holding two large cups of steaming coffee, he headed over to the siblings, his attention flicking from side to side as he took in his surroundings. Con punched his brother on the arm when Quinn got within reach, scoffing at the younger man’s dramatic gasp of pain. “Look who the cat dragged in.”

“Mom’s cats wouldn’t drag anything in without chewing it up first,” Quinn murmured, leaning over to kiss their sister on the cheek. “Hello, Kiki.”

“Hi, Qbert.” She hugged Quinn, then tugged at the oddly striped long scarf wrapped several times around his neck. “Hate to tell you this, but this looks a little gay.”

“Really? I was going for very gay. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m wishy-washy about it.” Their soft-voiced middle sibling looked at the knitted wrap trailing down his long body, its tassels brushing his thighs. “Next time, I’ll wear the celery brooch Ryan gave me.”

“And on that note, you’re on your own with the family freak, Con,” Kiki said, slipping around their brother. “I’m going to go fight bad guys—right after I grab some dinner at the ’rents’ house.”

Connor caught the flicker of discomfort in Quinn’s green eyes as she passed. It was gone before Kiki turned to wave at them, but he’d seen it just the same. Unlike the rest of the Morgan clan, Quinn strayed from civil service and went straight into academia, riding on the glory of his doctorates and steel-trap brain. Still, there was no question he was a Morgan. He shared their father’s dark hair and bone structure, but his face and enormous emerald eyes leaned toward their mother’s ethereal beauty. His lanky body was muscular under the loose clothing he liked to wear, but in a clan of giants, Quinn was their runt—a six-foot-tall, lean poet amid battle-scarred, thickly built warriors.

He was also one of Con’s favorite siblings—and not just because he brought Con coffee.

Next to Kane, Quinn was the brother Connor simply liked. A curiosity of being an unobtrusive thinker in a strong-willed and loud family, Quinn watched and dissected, sometimes taking a well-honed word and using it to pierce through a family discussion. He was the cat among the wolves and one that wasn’t quite right in the head for most. Still, Connor was fond of his younger brother, amazed at the beat he marched to and the world only Quinn seemed to live in. He also knew the incredible darkness Quinn fought off at times, and had been there during the steepest of his brother’s malignant depressions.

Quinn was their most fragile Morgan—and yet the strongest, living life on a slant but refusing to slide down its hill.

Still, Kiki’s careless words found their mark.

“She didn’t mean to call you freak,” Con said softly.

“Sure she did,” Quinn refuted calmly. His voice didn’t waver, a simple acceptance of the label plastered on him by another sibling. “It’s one of the better F-words I’ve been called. Coffee?”

“God, I love you. Thank you. The swill downstairs is like drinking battery acid.”

“It’s so you don’t get comfortable staying. This isn’t a place someone should let become home. It makes leaving the dead harder.” Quinn’s attention was already wandering, taking in the people and conversations around him. “How is your friend doing?”

“Good. I’m waiting for them to let me go see him.” Connor eyed his brother. “The question is, what are you doing here? Mum send you to shake me loose?”

“Nope, Da did.” Quinn sipped his coffee. “Said you probably needed someone to talk you down off the walls.”

“And he sent you, huh? Good choice.”

“Kane probably wanted to go home and fuck Miki,” he remarked. “Second string.”

“You’re never second string, Q,” Connor replied softly. “I’ve got about an hour to kill. Want something to eat?”

“If I won’t drink the coffee here, what makes you think I’ll eat something? Coffee is just beans and water. They don’t even touch it. Why would I risk them actually making my food?” He shuffled, running a hand down his thigh. The black corduroy squeaked slightly under his fingers, and Quinn looked up at Connor. “Remember when I tried to convince you ghosts lived in my corduroys because they moaned?”

“You had some odd ideas as a kid.” He laughed.

“I have odd ideas as an adult.” Quinn’s sharp eyes were back on Connor’s face. “Are you okay? You don’t look okay.”

His gaze pinned Connor in place, and he cocked his head, seemingly digging through his older brother’s defenses with a flick of his eyelashes. Connor waited through Quinn’s silence, wondering what scab his brother would find to pick loose from Con’s psyche. A second passed, then another, and Connor looked away, unable to fight off the feeling Quinn was peeling him apart to unearth his secrets.

Connor wasn’t ready to look at his own shit, much less letting Quinn in, but there his little brother stood, wielding a knife-sharp mind with soul-shattering eyes. After only a few seconds, he was ready to confess all of his sins. If he gave Quinn a minute or so, he’d be begging to be forgiven for taking up air someone else could be breathing.

“Shite, your students probably hate your guts. Peering at them all sphinxlike and mysterious.” Connor shoved his brother’s shoulder, careful not to jostle his coffee loose. “Come walk with me. We can go talk someplace private.”

“They should have a chapel here,” Quinn supposed. “Sometimes those have antechambers. We can look there or just use the chapel.”

“Someone might want to use it to pray in,” Connor retorted.

“Ah, Con. Don’t you know?” Quinn shot his brother a scalding look. “Nobody actually prays at the hospital. By the time they get here, they go straight to begging and negotiating. The chapel’ll be empty as sure as God created the sky.”

“HERE?” FOREST asked the nurse as he was wheeled into the room. “Oh man, this is a mistake. I didn’t ask for this.”

The room was nearly as large as his place above the Sound. It certainly had a better view. Heavy damask curtains were pulled back, showing off a foggy San Francisco skyline. The walls were painted a muted goldenrod, and a tapestry wing chair and its matching love seat were arranged near the picture window, a modern-looking coffee table set between the two for the sole purpose of holding up a bowl of green apples and oranges.

“Fuck the studio,” Forest muttered under his breath and fought an IV cord to get his hair out of his eyes. He was still shaky on his feet, but the room was much warmer than the one he’d just been in, and his knees sang the Hallelujah Chorus in thanks. “This is like a damned hotel. Where’s the fireplace?”

“Nope, just a private room—no fireplace. You do get your own bathroom, but that comes standard. It’s taken care of. No worries.” The fifth or sixth nurse he’d had that day—a cheery dreadlocked woman whose sugary smile made Forest’s teeth hurt. She helped him into the bed and arranged a mound of blankets around his legs, patting his thigh as she reached for his hand. “Here, let me hook up the monitor to track your heart rate, and I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes to take one last draw of blood. Do you want the remote for the television? Or maybe some water?”

“Um sure, either,” he replied, then spotted the phone on the stand near the bed. “Actually, can I make a phone call? It’s local.”

“Hospital, sweetie.” She grinned at him. “Call anyone you want.”

“Oh, and um… there’s this guy—”

“Lt. Morgan?” The nurse paused at the doorway, nodding. “As soon as I get your last draw done and some paperwork signed off, I’ll tell him he can come in. There’s a menu on the rolling table there if you want to pick something for dinner. The cheeseburger’s pretty good, but stay away from the green beans. They cook them to death.”

“Right, no green beans.” He waited until she was gone and then another moment as he gathered up all of his courage to grab at the phone to pull it into his lap.

The last number he’d been given was almost two weeks ago. It was done in passing, through someone who knew someone else’s friend, but she’d at least made the attempt. Of course, he hadn’t actually spoken to her, but there’d been an attempt to keep in touch.

It was more than she’d ever done in the past.

“Not like shit’s gonna change, dude,” he muttered. “Fucking hell, I don’t want to do this.”

The rational part of his brain was still scolding him even as his fingers flew over the number he’d committed to his memory a while ago. It’d been the most recent of a long string of numbers, each only lasting a few weeks, as if they were hothouse roses.

He was taking a chance dialing the number now. It was nearly past the expiration date of most of the numbers she’d given him before it, but Forest wanted something—still and forever something—even if his gut knew it would never be the reality he’d wanted.

Still—that chance. And even greater of a chance that she’d be sober enough to talk—if she picked up at all.

It rang, and before Forest’s brain could pull the plug on his nonsense, a woman’s husky voice tickled his ear, her tongue stumbling over her words as she spoke. He closed his eyes, willing the tremors in his bones to go away before he responded.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Forest? That you, baby?”

“You got any more kids?” He snorted. “’Sides me, anyway?”

There was the sound of a lighter being scratched on, then a familiar suck of a cigarette. As if on cue, she coughed, a raspy boom into the phone, and his mother cleared her throat. “Always such a fucking smartass. Should have slapped that mouth off of you when you were still short enough for me to reach.”

“Yeah. Probably,” he agreed, despite sitting under a swaddle of blankets hoping to leech the cold out of his badly healed bones. “You got a little time? To talk, you know?”

“What time is it? Hold on. I’ve gotta go take a piss.” More noises, a rattling, then she came back to the phone. “Shit, not even seven yet. Whatcha calling for? Frank’s still dead, right? Fucker didn’t come back like he’s all Jesus or something?”

His mother laughed, and Forest once more felt the stab of her sour personality into his guts. Sighing, he ran his fingers through his kind-of-gritty hair as he tucked the phone under his chin. He didn’t laugh. He just waited for her to finish righting herself before speaking.

It was always the same. No, he corrected, sometimes it was worse. At least this time she knew who he was. There’d been a very uncomfortable call once when she thought he was someone she’d hooked up with before, and nothing said Merry Christmas like your own mother describing how she could suck a cock down into her throat. Of course, since it seemed to be a talent she’d passed onto him as well, Forest really couldn’t complain.

“No really, why’re you calling?” she rasped.

“Things have kind of been shitty the past couple of weeks. Okay, maybe a bit longer than that,” he confessed softly. “Guess I wanted to hear you. See how you were doing. Someone drove a van through the Amp’s wall. Kinda got a bunch of it on my head. So, I’m in the hospital. And I was wondering—”

“Um, honey, don’t take this wrong, but…,” she hedged, grumbling a bit under her breath. “Don’t think I’d be able to make it over there, you know? I mean, I get up early to get some stuff done, so there’s money in my pocket, right?”

She didn’t even know where he was, and his mother was making excuses. The hospital could have been right fucking next door to whoever’s place she was crashing in, and she couldn’t be bothered to poke her head out the window and spit in his general direction.

Forest blinked, hating she could drive him to tears without even being in the same room. Wiping at his face, he shuddered in a breath, for once thankful of the hospital’s cold air. It helped freeze his lungs a bit and still his heart, deadening him enough to talk.

There were angry words he wanted to spit at her—hot, foul leaden darts that might penetrate her skin and lodge into her already dead heart. Instead he said what he always said whenever she turned away from him. “Sure, no problem. I know you’re busy.”

“You’re okay though, right?” Another raspy drawl and she barked a laugh through the phone. “’Course if you’d died, I wouldn’t have to be working any more, would I? How much did old Frankie leave you? Everything, right? That coffee shop and shit.”

“The coffee shop’s a mess, Mom. That’s where I was when the van came through the wall. It’s going to cost a bit to get it fixed.” The insurance would handle the repairs, but he didn’t want her to know that. “But I’m doing okay.”

Even if the insurance didn’t cover the new damage, Frank’s death left Forest decently off, and that made his mother dangerous. For all his hippie radical leanings, Frank’s family liked making money, and he’d banked most of everything that came his way over the years, letting it build up under investments and properties. Giving his mother that kind of information would be like releasing a shark in a kiddie pool filled with bleeding minnows. Nothing would survive her rapacious appetite, including the pool keeping them alive.

“Tell you what, when you get out of there, drop me a line and we can go party.” She sounded cheerful, as if recalling a better time. “’Member when we worked down off the Tenderloin that one time? God, that was a good week. We were like an all-you-can-eat buffet—something for everyone. One stop and we had everything you could want, remember that?”

They’d done a lot of things together during the times he’d run from Franklin—most of which he didn’t remember. The Tenderloin crawl she began to rhapsodize on was a memory he couldn’t shake if he wanted to. Whatever he’d been on during those few days seemed to have taken a chisel to his brain and then cold-flashed the whole time with thick cement, immortalizing every single moment he’d spent in his mother’s company.

It’d been the last time he’d run from Frank. The very last time he’d had to crawl back to the man he knew was going to toss him away and beg for another chance.

If only Frank’d let him beg, but all the man did was pick Forest up and clean him up before rolling him into a clean bed—alone. They’d never spoken about anything without Forest bringing it up first, but after he’d spent two days throwing his stomach up against the bathroom walls, Frank finally spoke out.

“She’s going to kill you, kiddo, like one of those animals who eat their own young,” the man said, holding Forest’s hair back from his face as he did his best to toss out the water he’d just gotten down. “Maybe not this time but maybe the next. I’m always going to be here for you, kid, but I don’t want the next time I hold you, it’s to lie you down into a box. That’ll kill me, dude, and you’ve got so much fucking talent in those hands of yours, it’ll be a shame to waste it on a whore—even if it’s the whore who gave birth to you.”

He’d been right. Frank’d always been right.

“So, you up for it?” His mother broke through his memory of Frank’s sad eyes and mournful voice. “It’s been a while since we’ve done that. It’ll be good.”

“Nah, I think I’ll pass,” Forest choked around the lump in his throat.

“Your loss. Unless you’ve gotten uglier since the last time I saw you, you could still pull some in.” Another scrape of her lighter and she’d moved on to her next cigarette. “Not like when you were younger. Shittiest thing that happened to you was getting so tall. It fucking killed you.”

“I’ve had shittier.” He wanted her off the phone. He’d taken in as much as he could handle, and calling his mother turned out to be a trip down a rusty-tack-strewn memory lane. It was never going to change—she was never going to change. It all came down to how much she could get out of people and how much of his ass she could sell—because selling her own tail wasn’t enough. “They’re coming to do more tests on me in a bit. You going to be around later?”

“I dunno. I might change this phone. This one’s crackly.” It sounded fine to him, but reception and hearing was on her list of complaints before she ditched a phone she more than likely stole. “Hey, you got something you can spare? To tide me over. I’ve got a party I’m going to this weekend. Guy’s paying me some bucks to be there. If you can front me, I’ll shoot it back to you.”

Another small part of him died. Not because his mother hit him up for money. He’d expected that. What hurt was that she saw him as another mark to lie to, as if he hadn’t grown up suckling on her lies for sustenance. Hell, her breast milk had been a lethal mix of coke and delusions, and he’d been weaned off that into working the system. To have her pull one on him—a tired old lie at that—angered Forest as much as it saddened him.

He wouldn’t give her anything—he couldn’t—not unless Forest was willing to contribute to her cooking herself to death.

“I don’t have any extra.” It wasn’t quite a lie, mainly because he didn’t know where his wallet was, but she’d suck him dry if he let her. “I would if I could, you know?”

“Maybe they’ll figure out a way you can get some cash off of Frank’s shit.” She laughed right through his lie. “Then we won’t have to worry about anything.”

He almost offered her a place to crash. They’d spent so much time looking out for one another, it was ingrained. He had someplace safe. He was supposed to bring her into it. It was a habit or just how they’d run together, but Frank’d been right then, and he was right now, even in death. She’d kill him if she got the chance—even if it was by accident, his mother would be the end of him if he opened the door to her poison.

“Keep me in mind, okay?” His mother coughed, and someone said something indistinct next to her. “Look, I’ve got to go. Seriously, when Frank’s stuff comes in, hook me up. I did you more than a few solids before, right? I’ll let you know what my new number’s going to be.”

She was gone before he could say good-bye or even deny any solid she might have done. The cold was back, but this time, it burbled up from inside of him, streaking out of his damaged heart and into his fingers. His hands grew numb, and Forest flung the receiver, tossing it onto the floor with a clatter. He let the tears hit, feeling the sobbing break out of him in an uncontrollable wave.

Forest swallowed, unwilling to let her have the last good bit of him, but it was already gone, marred by her greasy touch even as he tried to wrestle back what little hope he had of being loved. Rolling over, he curled up on his side and drew his knees in, making himself as small as he could. Even as the IV needle tugged at its taped-down perch in his arm, he pulled in even tighter, anything to keep himself from shattering apart.

“God, I fucking hate you.” He bit down into the pillow, tasting the cotton and fiber on his tongue. His sobs shook him, and they grew guttural, animalistic as he fought down his pain. “And why the fuck do I even want you to care?”