Here for You (7 page)

Ian hoped Brendan considered him a good boss. He wasn’t the kind of person to say praise out loud, but he tried to make sure Brendan knew he appreciated him. It was only Ian, Brendan, and Katherine, his secretary, in his office day in and day out. Yes, he could be strict about deadlines, and Ian was nobody’s idea of fun, but he always tried to let Brendan know how much he valued him and his work. He knew Brendan thought highly of him, whether he continued to work for Ian or not, but hoped Brendan also considered him a friend. He didn’t have too many of those.

Ian had been so busy building up his firm, although nobody in his old life supported his decision to leave a much more lucrative place to be out on his own. He enjoyed it, and besides, his gut told Ian it had been right to walk away, and Ian trusted his gut. It had failed him a lot less than the people in his life.

Cole had grown unusually quiet, and Ian wanted to reassure him, but he didn’t quite know how to form the right words. He was certain Brendan would be fine. They needed to pursue this thing logically, and soon they’d find him, and Brendan would have some explanation they’d all overlooked. It had only been a few hours since lunch. Ian took out a ballpoint pen and small notepad from his dashboard.

“What’re you doing?”

“Trying to list places Brendan might have gone.” He scribbled a few thoughts down and turned to Cole. “We’re working on an adoption case not far from town, and Brendan felt for the prospective parents. He talked a lot about them—Maddie and Steve. It touched a nerve or something for him, I guess. They had called earlier today, and I wonder….”

“What?”

“If he rode his bike out there to see them in person? I told him I’d handle it, but Brendan was pretty concerned for them. I know that she called again right before lunch.”

“That sounds like Brendan,” Cole said. “Where do they live, exactly?”

“Grove Trails. It’s a new community, just built. It’s away from the beach and your place. Closer to the turnpike and the nature preserve.”

They had sat in Maddie and Steve Kaufmann’s kitchen only last week. After years of infertility, they desperately wanted to adopt. They’d hired Ian to make a private adoption a reality. But they were glum, beaten down from failed IVF treatments and depleting funds. Maddie was three years older than Steve. She was attractive, a good dresser, a bit too thin, maybe. Steve was handsome in a nondescript way, his hair thinning a bit on top, but his expression open and sincere.

“Can you help us?” Maddie asked, stirring her iced tea round and round, then cupping the glass between her palms.

“Yes, can you?” Steve asked with a wary look in his eyes, one that said they’d been burned too many times already and he was tired of hoping.

“Of course! Ian can help you,” Brendan answered before Ian could speak.

Ian had cleared his throat and said, “I’ll do my best.”

Brendan had blushed crimson, no doubt having realized he’d overstepped. In spite of his faux pas, Ian admired his passion. And even though passion wasn’t a prerequisite for being a lawyer, in Ian’s experience, most truly good lawyers had it in spades.

They spent the next hour listing the pros and cons of private adoptions, adoptions of older babies—even toddlers—and the costs.

“It’s so fu—I mean messed up,” Brendan had said to him after they’d left. “There are so many crappy parents around, who didn’t even want kids, and these two….” Brendan sighed.

“I know.” Ian thought of his own parents. Not that they’d been terrible. They’d given him everything tangible he’d needed, even if he’d never had the kind of warm relationship with them he’d wished for.

“We have to help them, Ian. We have to!”

Ian had smiled and squeezed Brendan’s shoulder. “We’ll do everything we can for them. I promise.”

Ian dialed Maddie’s number. “Maddie,” he said, “sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you’ve seen Brendan.”

“Brendan?”

“He’s been missing since lunchtime,” Ian explained, “and I wondered—”

“He was here earlier.”

“He was? When?”

“Before lunch. He came to see me. He is such a sweetie, Ian. He knew how aggravated I’ve been and came to reassure me. He didn’t stay too long, said he needed to head home, but I appreciated his visit more than I can say.”

Ian’s stomach twisted. He glanced at the car’s clock, calculating it all, figuring out how much time was actually missing since he’d left Maddie’s house.

“Is everything all right?” Maddie asked.

“I think so. I’ll have to get back to you on that. It’s probably all a big miscommunication.”

“Well, please do. I’m worried for him now.”

Cole, impatiently tapping his foot, his knee riding up and down, stared at Ian.

“Okay. … Yes, thanks. … Sure, I will. … I’ll let you know.”

Cole stopped tapping his foot and froze. “Well? It’s not good, is it?” It was odd the way Cole could see the shift in Ian’s mood without words.

“He did go see them. Maddie said Brendan came by before lunch. And….”

“And?”

Ian quickly filled Cole in on what Maddie had said.

“So what do you think we should do?” Cole asked. His face looked pale, and he was tapping his foot again.

Ian flexed his hands on the steering wheel and fought the sinking sensation in his gut. “We’ll head to the Grove and circle the area. There has to be a reasonable explanation. I bet Brendan’s phone is just out of juice and he’s running late.” He turned the car north and hoped he’d sounded more optimistic than he felt.

C
OLE
AND
Ian learned that Brendan had biked into the gated community, talked to Maddie and Steve, and left, but nobody had actually seen him leave. Since the community backed up to a nature preserve, one with walking trails and bike paths, Cole agreed with Ian that they should look there. It made sense that Brendan might have biked through the preserve as it still led to the highway on the other side and then back to Ocean Vista’s downtown.

There were many small nature preserves in the area as if to make up for creating strip plazas and shopping malls. The county preserved these tiny pieces of land, ones that still had a few birds and the occasional alligator, to prove that Florida hadn’t changed all that much.
Bullshit, right?
Cole disliked having his “nature” squared off and measured. At times he longed for his boyhood home in Massachusetts, where the hills were green, the neighborhoods never gated, and he’d roamed freely through his town’s thick woods—except he’d also wanted to get as far away from his family as possible. Six years later, when he remembered why he left Massachusetts in the first place, Cole had accepted Florida as his home, flaws and all.

Cole rubbed his hands over his face as Ian parked.

“Brendan’s phone might be damaged or out of juice here,” Ian said. “He could have twisted his ankle or something, but be unable to call us. But we’ll find him soon.”

Cole nodded. The bike trail was fairly smooth, but some teenagers liked to party there or on the golf courses, leaving behind their bottles. It was possible Brendan had ridden over some broken glass.

Ian reached out and patted Cole’s shoulder. “It’s okay. There are still explanations.” Ian’s voice was warm, kinder than Cole imagined he would ever speak to him, and for a second he got lost in Ian’s reassuring gaze.

“Yeah, I’m going to kill him if he simply didn’t charge his phone.”

Ian smiled briefly. “That’s the spirit. We can both read him the riot act for worrying us.”

“Yeah.” Cole would kill Brendan and then hug him close.

Although it was really himself Cole wanted to smack. He wished he’d spent more time with Brendan and less time pursuing meaningless one-night stands.

In silence, they got out of the car and headed for the path. There mangrove trees sheltered them from the heat somewhat, although it grew hotter with each passing hour, and egrets cawed to one another as they flew overhead toward a water source. They passed one lone person, an older man with a camera and binoculars, who said he hadn’t seen anyone. The path twisted and turned alongside the fenced-off, swampy areas, where other creatures—turtles, ducks, possibly gators—lurked in the water. The area was beautiful and desolate, and for some reason, every step weighed on Cole’s heart.

Cole didn’t look at Ian, but he was superaware of his presence, striding beside him. They hurried along the trail, shouting Brendan’s name.

“Maybe he isn’t here, after all?” Cole was still unsettled, and he wanted Ian to reassure him again, but Ian was quiet. “What should we do, Ian? Turn back to the car? Call Marc and Tomas again?”

Ian looked at him. “Let’s go to the end of the trail. Let’s be sure he’s not here.”

“Right.” There were unspoken words hanging between them. Words too vulnerable to voice, to push out into the world. Words that once spoken out loud, could never be taken back.

They continued on, the air muggy, the afternoon sun shining strongly, keeping the joggers and bikers away so that it was only the two of them, moving onward. Cole ignored the sun beating through the trees, he ignored the pebble in his shoes, and he ignored the rattled feeling that persisted in his gut.

It wasn’t until they had run the entire bike path and gotten to the other side, where the trail curved sharply and some debris lay from a storm days earlier, that they viewed the bike. Its front was mangled at a sharp angle.

Don’t let him be dead
, Cole prayed, finally giving in to the words.
Don’t let him be dead.
Cole wasn’t religious, but he would believe in God from here on out if Brendan was all right. Cole swallowed the bitter, metallic taste at the back of his mouth. The bike was there, but not Brendan.

“What the fuck?” Ian’s voice was tight, deadly. “Where is he?”

The sharpness of Ian’s voice and his sudden profanity startled Cole. He wanted the other Ian back—the cool one, or the one who would unexpectedly smile that reassuring smile—not this Ian, looking as angry and pinched as Cole felt. Cole stood there, frozen with horror.

As if he understood, Ian drew a big breath and said, “We need to concentrate on finding him.” He took Cole’s hand for a second and squeezed. Releasing it just as quickly, Ian cupped his hands to his mouth. “
Brendan
!”

They scrambled past the crumpled bike and started searching. Cole was no longer aware of feeling anything but blankness. His brain had kicked to autopilot, like when he was a little kid and hiding from all the ugliness in his life. Finding Brendan, that was the urgent thing. The rest didn’t bear thinking about yet.

“Brendan!” Cole cried, looking right and left.

“There.” Ian pointed to a nearby bush and then broke out into a run.

Brendan was pale, his bike helmet still on, but knocked sideways. The vulnerable part of his head had landed on a sharp rock, and dark blood stained the stone. Cole dropped to his knees and clutched the hem of Brendan’s shirt. He fought back tears. Brendan didn’t move, but Cole felt a pulse at the side of his neck.

“Thank God! Brendan? Hey, buddy. It’s Cole. Hey.” He wanted to take him in his arms. “Talk to me.”

“It must have been the curve back there,” Ian said. “Maybe he took it too fast? Went head over heels on the bike and landed here?”

Cole didn’t reply. He didn’t care in that moment what had caused Brendan’s injury. He expected Brendan to blink, focus a little, and maybe say his name.

Brendan’s body was rigid, hands curled oddly. Cole’s initial wave of relief turned to ice. “What’s wrong with him?”

Ian shook his head, his eyes riveted on Brendan’s. “Look at his pupils. They’re blown. I don’t….”

“Should we try to move him? Get him to the car?”

“Jesus, no.”

“But the ambulance will take too long out here,” Cole mumbled, even though he knew Ian was right. He wondered if he looked as white-faced as Ian did. The blood congealing on the lower part of Brendan’s head and neck filled him with terror. But it was nothing compared to what the fear that looking into Brendan’s eyes was doing to Cole… looking into his beautiful eyes and seeing nothing there.

Ian punched the number for emergency and began to talk to the operator.

“Yes, we found a bike rider at the Wakodee Nature Preserve off Lucana Road.”

As Ian spoke, regaining his more normal lawyerlike voice, Cole was too afraid to cradle Brendan’s head in his lap the way he desperately wanted to do, since it was caked with blood, so he stroked Brendan’s shoulders instead. Brendan’s face was empty. His eyelids were swollen and dark.

“You’re going to be okay, Bren. Hear me? You’ll be fine. We’ll get you to the doctor’s.”

A
T
THE
hospital, they took Brendan in at lightning speed. They ran CAT scans and hooked him to an intracranial pressure monitor. Cole stood helplessly, Brendan’s cracked helmet in his hands.

None of it mattered. Although he had worn his helmet, it had failed to fully protect him, and Brendan had hit that rock with enough force to cause major head trauma. If he’d landed only a little to the right or left, he might be in a better situation. Cole worried the reason his body was so tight and oddly arched was due to brain damage.

Nobody would tell them a thing, since they were not family, but from what he could piece together, Brendan had experienced a massive seizure.

Cole listened and picked up a little more as the day wore brutally on. “It’s amazing he didn’t go into cardiac arrest too,” Cole overheard one nurse comment to a second at one point.

“Yeah, he’s stabilized right now, and we’re going to take him into the OR. But I doubt there’s any brain activity. I noted the extent of the damage, the hematomas—”

The nurse abruptly stopped talking as she realized they had an eavesdropping audience, but it didn’t matter anyhow. Cole could no longer hear. A loud buzzing was in his ears. He stared at the leads and IV pumps, trying to breathe. Ian was speaking in a low, soft voice, but Cole could only look at Brendan. He looked normal from the neck down. If he simply stared at Brendan’s chest and torso and legs… none of this was real.