Page 49 of Torch Songs

Sisters, he thought, and the thought was followed by another: that he’d never really known his mother, or a sister—or even an aunt—but that he’d been lucky in his choice of friends, because he seemed to be surrounded by them.

Guthrie was watching the last of the lights go off when he felt the pull, the absoluteneed,to tell Tad about that. About loving women. Not as lovers but as humans, because they had a unique energy and for no other reason. Strong women, fragilewomen, melancholy women, extroverts, Guthrie adored them all.

But not as much as he… adored Tad.

Way to chicken out.

And suddenly he needed to say the real thing too. But he couldn’t because Tad was way down on the side of a canyon, being tended to by, all accounts said, two of the best father figures a boy could have, while Guthrie had nothing to do but gnaw his nails and worry.

Or there was the other thing he had that soothed his nerves.

As Elton and Kirby were setting out the eggcrate and sleeping bags for what promised to be a cramped but cozy night in the bed of the truck, Guthrie reached into the lockbox and pulled out his guitar case. Ignoring the other men’s surprise, he made himself comfy on the tailgate and cradled his baby, tuning it with his brain on autopilot, his emotions swelling up, blocking rational thought and turning on his fear, his grief, and, oh God, Goddamnyou Tad Hawkins, the hope that he couldn’t seem to shake.

Suddenly he knew which songs he wanted to play.

The beginning chords of an old Coldplay tune thrummed through the air, and he opened his mouth and began to sing.

I Will Wait

TAD’S ASShurt—ached with poison fire—and therewasno good way to joke about his ass hurting, because a gunshot wasnever foreplay, dammit,ever.

His day had put thegawdin gawdawful.

One minute, he and Undersheriff Aaron George had been peering over the edge of the canyon, following a blood trail from somebody who had escaped from the drug raid that had been conducted the night before. The raid had been a disaster. Tad and Chris had been doing their parts, riding behind SWAT, when suddenly shots had rung out in the ungodly darkness, and Chris’s friend and old mentor had fallen. The resulting mess would go down in the history of goatfucks, and not only had they lost track of the kid they were looking for in the first place, but there had been nobody to step up to the plate of this small town to tell them what came next.

He and Chris had been milling about the hospital, ready to call the California Bureau of Investigation in pure frustration, when Aaron strode in, his partner, Larx, at his heels.

Watching Aaron order about the other men in the department, organize watch for Eamon, his boss and friend, direct averycompetent investigation,includingtargeting one of his own men partially responsible for the mess, and ask respectfully for SAC PD resources—because with Eamon shot, shit had gotten suddenly big—had been fucking a-ma-zing. Chris and Tad had jumped at the idea of working with the man, getting shit done was the best of drugs in their line of work, and doing it without bullshit or ego was like an aphrodisiac.

Still, he and Aaron had been tired bordering onexhaustedwhen they’d come to check out the original scene of the raid that morning. Aaron hadn’t been called in till 3:00 a.m., and nobody had gotten any sleep. And there they’d been, poking around at the base of a tree, when the slug had landed in Tad’s ass, followed by the thunder of the gun almost immediately.

The “almost” was important, Tad had thought as the day had slogged on. The “almost” meant the shooter had been far enough away to not justexplodeTad’s entire leg into flesh-and-bone shrapnel. A basic shotgun didn’t havethatgreat a range, and this wasn’t a hunting rifle or a sniper rifle. After the bottom had dropped out of their world, Tad and Aaron had gone sliding down the side of the canyon in the world’s worst sled ride, and they’d come to rest against this old, practically petrified tree, lying horizontal to the canyon’s incline. The back of Tad’s upper thigh had felt like a nuclear explosion, particularly after Aaron’s first try to clean it out with half a bottle of water and his ripped-up khaki shirt. But it hadn’t been fatal, as much as Tad might have yearned for a long, soft nap after they’d establishedthat.

But they had a companion already trying the dirt-nap thing. The kid they’d been searching for had taken the same route they had—off the cliff and under the trees. Except he’d gone one better and was currently hiding under thereally bigtree, near the base where the root system elevated part of the bole just enough for him to have wriggled in. Tad wasn’t sure—and didn’t have the mental energy—to figure out why the kid had done that, and hereallydidn’t know the triggers to get the kid out. He’d managed to coax April out from under a figurative tree by using… well, he hated to think about that time, and he wasn’t going to now.

He was saving all his energy for what they had to do.

And it was alot.

They’d barely gotten themselves situated against the tree when Aaron’s partner, Larx, had driven down the service track, probably looking for a way to help them all get to safety. When Larx’s SUV had been forced off the track (more shooting—God, so much shooting—that Aaron and Tad had fended off with their service weapons), Tad had needed to brace against a leaner part of the tree, shielding himself behind its bulk while he used the trunk to steady his shaking hand as he fired.

The firefight stopped, and Tad didn’t know how to feel about that because it stopped when he and Aaron hit their targets. Some officers worked their entire careers without drawing their pieces, and he and Aaron George had not only pulled their weapons but had wounded—possibly killed—suspects, but Tad had no idea how to process that. He couldn’t even put a face to the person he’d wounded. He’d fired at the gun in the trees.

He didn’t have time to process it anyway. The SUV had tumbled down the hill, and Aaron needed to venture down to the lower part of the canyon to help Larx get back up. For an interminable,broilingafternoon, Tad sat, back against the tree, trying to establish contact, any contact, with the mostly unresponsive kid suffering withdrawals in the shadows, with no luck.

He could no longer fight off those horrible days with April. He remembered her handcuffed to a shitty bedframe in a No-Tell Motel where he’d washed her and shaved her licey hair and sedated her through the worst of her withdrawals. Kidnapping. It had been kidnapping. He knew it. He should have been arrested—he should have beenimprisoned—and April had hated him, bitterly. She’d screamed at him until her throat bled. She’d begged him. She’d kicked, she’d bitten, she’d cursed.

In the end, she’d simply lain there, broken, her body wasted from the drugs, an IV trickling nutrients into her arm, as Tad spoke to her, softly, telling her every moment he couldremember of her and their mother and their childhood. Every good thing he could summon, every hope he’d had for her, every beautiful thing he’d seen in his sister, whom he’d die for.

On the fifth day, she’d vomited water.

Then she’d asked for food.

After a few saltines, she’d fallen asleep, and he’d sat in a corner of that shitty room and sobbed. The next day, of her own free will, she’d requested rehab, and he’d needed two days in a clean motel, treating himself for all the things he’d picked up from her—scabies, lice, fungal infections—while he’d eaten and slept.

And grieved, because the things he’d done to haul his little sister from hell weren’t things he could just wipe off his soul with some medicated lotion.

And now, his ass on fire, his body shaking with fever and aching fiercely in every joint, he could only whisper to the kid under the tree, not knowing the things that would helphimfind his way home and in no shape at all to find out.

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