Chapter 27 The Brave Kind of Broken
The Brave Kind of Broken
“I made you coffee.” Nico stood in the open door as if he’d never set foot inside Jack’s den. He held Jack’s largest coffee mug and the aroma wafting into the room told Jack what it held.
“Much appreciated.” Stepping away from a hunt to work on something around the house was as natural to Jack as ferreting around online while paint or plaster dried.
He’d spent the Sunday morning painting the back hallway before wandering upstairs to check on the search he’d started after quizzing Daniel about feeling watched.
They all tiptoed around each other as if invisible hazards littered their paths, but at least Daniel and Nico were home, and Daniel’s nightmares had taken a step back and let him sleep for a few hours in a row.
Jack laced his hands together and stretched his arms towards the ceiling, groaning in relief when his spine cracked. Despite the ergonomic setup he’d taken so much time over, sitting for hours in one position wasn’t doing his back or neck any favours.
Nico handed the mug over as soon as Jack had straightened his back out and Jack inhaled the fragrant steam and took a first careful sip while Nico curled into a corner of the sofa.
“Are you okay?” Jack asked as he set his mug down.
“I don’t know. You said I needed to get used to doing lots of jobs in parallel, but my head’s still all in a tangle.”
“With everything going on right now, I’m not surprised. Let’s see. What’s tangled?”
“Mrs McTavish,” Nico counted subjects off on his fingers. “Manville. The break-in. Daniel. Aidan saying that we don’t need to bring proof, just evidence of a problem, and that a hunch or bad feeling is evidence enough. It goes on and on.”
“That is a lot.”
“Right? I can’t work on all these things at once. How do I know what’s important?”
“Who screams loudest?” Jack pulled a face to show Nico it was meant as a joke, even though it often wasn’t. He sipped coffee to give himself thinking time and Nico didn’t interrupt. “Tell me about Daniel. I noticed you’re a bit cagey with each other. Are you arguing?”
Nico shook his head. “I went with him to Aidan’s, and I kept his secret. Mostly. But he doesn’t want me to watch out for him,” he said, sounding lost. “Even when I can see he’s scared.”
“Ah.” Jack pushed out of his chair and settled himself beside Nico on the couch. It said much about Nico’s state of mind that he curled into Jack as soon as Jack wrapped an arm around him. “Daniel is protecting you,” he said.
“What?” Nico tried to straighten, tried to argue, but Jack held him firm.
“Let me explain, okay? I assume you’ve told him you want to hunt with me?”
Nico nodded.
“Daniel knows better than anyone what that means, and he’s afraid what it will do to you. He didn’t tell Gareth about feeling watched, because he didn’t want to worry him. How do you think he’ll feel about you deliberately putting yourself in harm’s way?”
“But it’s important. And you won’t let me go anywhere dangerous.”
“It is. And I won’t, and Daniel knows that. But fear isn’t reasonable.”
“You think giving him time will help?”
“Maybe a little? Right now, the attack is colouring his reaction, but Nico, think about the way you two act. When there is a threat or a danger, you will try to remove it. Daniel? He’ll do his best to avoid it. Neither one of you is wrong. You just use different methods to keep each other safe.”
“So… he doesn’t want me to help you.”
“Not in his heart of hearts, no. He’s too worried what it might do to you to wait and see if it will.”
Nico deflated, close to giving up on his plans. It should have pleased Jack, Nico not stepping onto the thorny path he himself was walking, but—perversely—it did the opposite. It made him search for options. And options were close at hand.
“There’s one thing you can try,” he said.
“You could show Daniel that not everything you do with me—very little, in fact—will bring you into contact with your old life and people like Goran and Pavel. Online investigations cover a lot of ground and different cases. Aidan said you’ve done a bunch of work on Mrs McTavish’s case. Daniel didn’t object to that, did he?”
“He helped me. He was the one who realised Mrs McTavish had a twin sister.”
“A… what? I think you should catch me up on your progress.”
“Oh, of course. You were nodding off when we told you.” Nico launched into the tale, glad to put his Daniel-shaped problems aside for a while.
“So that’s where we got stuck,” he summarised.
“I found the twins’ birth certificates, but I don’t know how to find Valerie Franklin.
And we can’t imagine what it is Mrs McTavish can only do as her sister. ”
Gareth ended the call and leaned back in his desk chair, eyes on the images of Jack on the wall in front of him. The joy of seeing them hadn’t worn thin yet and Gareth couldn’t imagine it doing so for a very long time.
He turned his head, contemplating the bare space on the other wall. This room was his space, so why not fill it with memories? They’d cheer him on rather than hold him back, especially when he only needed to raise his eyes from his work to see his future right in front of him.
Gareth wasn’t one to dither once he’d made a decision, and when Jack popped his head around the door an hour later, being found flipping through old photo albums didn’t embarrass him one tiny bit.
“Remember this?” He held up a snapshot, taken while on deployment. A group of young men, their grins bright against the backdrop of sand and dust, with only one serious face in the group.
“I don’t think I knew how to laugh back then,” Jack said, scrutinising the image. “Everything felt like life and death.”
Gareth slid the photo back into its sleeve, swallowing the utterly sappy comment on the tip of his tongue.
“I wonder what it’s like these days, with everyone having mobile phones.
I remember taking photos and having to wait until we were home to have the film developed.
” Seeing the faces of men who hadn’t made it back had ripped open barely healed wounds—and he’d taken far fewer photos during subsequent tours.
“I’ve just spoken to Julian,” he said. “We’re both to work from home while we sort out this mess.
That way Nico and Daniel won’t have to be in the house by themselves. ”
“Guess what I just came to talk to you about? And here you are, having it fixed already.” Jack leaned over and kissed him. A soft peck, acknowledgement more than anything else. “That means I can deal with the insurance in between catching up with work.”
“Work, yes. We had some fun and games on Thursday, just before everything went to shit. I need to tell you about that.”
“That sounds promising. Does it mean there’s one job off my list?”
“Unfortunately, no. We’re just two annoyances down.”
“In that case, yes, tell me later. I want to tackle the painting while I have daylight and fresh air.”
“Are we sticking with the sage or are we changing colour?”
“We’re changing,” Jack said. “I haven’t even asked, but I’m thinking either pale sand or a sunshiny yellow. The sage looked classy, but it didn’t exactly catch the light. We’ll see.” His brows drew together as he thought. “I might take a spin through the arcade and see what else catches my eye.”
Gareth could imagine many less painful things to do on a Sunday. “Are you taking the boys?”
“I thought I’d ask. Get them out of the house.”
“Good idea.”
Jack dropped another kiss on his cheek, telegraphing just a hint of anxiety. Then he disappeared and a short while later Gareth heard three voices in the hall downstairs, before the car started.
He breathed out, listened to the house settle around him, and then went back to flipping through memories. It wasn’t the peaceful activity it had been earlier. His thoughts swarmed like angry hornets. Stung like them, too, and Gareth wished he knew what had triggered the discomfort.
In the end, he set the photo albums aside and headed downstairs to fix himself a pot of tea and a sandwich, idly tallying their to-do lists to keep himself in the present.
His own was sizeable, Jack’s—after his stint away—positively endless, especially with the break-in and the hunt for Aidan’s old lady on top of everything else.
His churning thoughts came into sharper focus, and once he’d eaten his lunch, he took his pot of tea back upstairs with him and phoned Aidan.
“Anything else on fire?” The barrister grumbled, sounding for all the world like a bear with a sore tooth.
“Why did you hand the McTavish case to Jack?”
“Because Skylar had it, and then he swanned off to Japan. So, Jack picked it up.”
“And then you sent Jack after Skylar and Nico and Daniel took the case as far as they could take it.”
“Yes, but Horwood is back now.”
“His to-do list didn’t get any shorter while he was away, and I don’t think it’s fair to expect him to pick up all our slack. Or worse, push Nico and Daniel to do jobs they didn’t sign up for.”
The other end of the line was silent for so long, Gareth checked his phone to see if the call had been dropped.
“Aidan?”
The barrister sighed. “I am sorry,” he said. “My only excuse is that when I give something to Jack I promptly forget about it until he throws it back at me, solved.”
“Yeah, I know how that feels. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s a legal way to find people if you have the right credentials?”
“Of course there is. Tracing agencies.”
“And would you happen to know one who’d be prepared to teach an intern?”
“Damn. I really should have thought of that the moment they told me about the twin sister. And if Nico learns legal ways of tracing people first, then maybe Daniel won’t be so scared for him.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Gareth said, relieved it had taken so little effort to get them onto the same page.
The sound of a pen scratching on paper came over the line. “Let me make a call. I may be able to line something up.”
“And I’ll happily pay apprentice fees.”
Aidan didn’t bother with a reply. He just hung up, leaving Gareth with the feeling that Nico would be spending part of his remaining holidays learning legal hunting skills Jack had never needed growing up with Rio.
They settled on paint much faster than Jack had anticipated, picking a primrose yellow for the walls and a soft cream for the ceiling and woodwork. “Such quick work deserves a treat. How about Annabelle’s?”
“Great idea.” Nico held his hand up for a high five. “I’ll have… toasted coconut chocolate chip, I think.”
“Cherry pistachio,” Daniel said, considering. “Or strawberry shortcake. I want something fruity.”
They both turned to Jack.
“Lemon thyme, coffee fudge, cinnamon toast, or coffee and doughnuts?” Daniel ticked options off on his fingers.
“You know me too well. What if I can’t make up my mind?
” Which wasn’t unheard of. The last time Jack had passed Annabelle’s, he’d come home with eight tubs instead of four, and they’d had ice cream for both lunch and dinner.
Not that anyone had complained. Annabelle’s unusual flavours hit all their buttons.
“We should get tubs again,” Nico suggested. “Big ones. They can go in the freezer, and we can share with Gareth when we get home.”
“Fine by me.” That put paid to their trip to the arcade, but Jack wasn’t about to complain. Seeing Nico and Daniel relaxed and chatty was its own reward.
Jack parked the car, and they headed up the street to where a queue of people snaked from an open shop doorway.
“I’ll queue. You sit,“ Nico said and pointed to an empty bench.
Jack recognised a hint when he heard one. He went where directed, settling so he could keep Nico in view and not at all surprised when Daniel joined him.
“I watched the recording from the security system,” he said in a tone that didn’t carry further than the two of them.
“Why?”
“Something bothered me.” Daniel leaned a bit more. “A phrase I thought I’d heard. Do you think Manville had something to do with Pavel finding us?”
Jack blinked. “Manville? How does he fit in?”
“Dunno. But while they went through the house, looking for us, Pavel said something about how he’d not let anyone else take a strap to my arse.”
Daniel shivered, and Jack rubbed his back, offering comfort. He didn’t interrupt or disturb Daniel with questions, though he had a million and four boiling on his tongue. Daniel would continue when he was able. Though when he spoke, what came out of his mouth was unexpected.
“He never did, you know? Pavel. He never used a strap, always a cane. But it’s something Manville kept saying during the dance lessons. ‘Do it like this or I’ll take a strap to your arse’.”
“He threatened to beat you—”
“Not just me.”
“—and nobody said a thing about it?”
Daniel shrugged. “He always sorta giggled when he said it. We all thought it was a joke or a figure of speech. It wasn’t, was it?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel leaned into Jack’s side. “He made me uncomfortable anyway, so the stupid comments barely counted. But you’ve taught us to note coincidences, and Aidan said even a feeling can be evidence—”
“He’s right. And this is good, too. You paid attention, and you connected two things I’d never have put together working alone. I’m going back to ripping Manville’s life apart, and if I find any kind of connection…” He stopped there, not wanting to scare Daniel with more violent imagery.
Daniel giggled. “You’re going to rip his head off and feed it to him?”
“Nah. I have other ways to make him wish he’d never been born.”
“Nico told me he wants to help you hunt, because it’s important to him. He thinks it’s worth the nightmares. I’m… I’m not so brave. But if I tell you what I remember, that’s helping, right?”
Jack wrapped him in a hug. “It’s helping, yes. Massively so. Men like Pavel Mitrovic don’t live their lives on social media for anyone to see. I need a map to find them. And you’ve just given me that.”
“Manville is your map?”
“He is. Remember how you went through Mrs McTavish’s social media and collected the names of people she interacted with?
Same thing.” Jack wanted to say more, wanted to point out that Daniel wasn’t Nico, or Jack for that matter.
That they all fought their battles in different ways.
In the end, he decided to save it for later.
Daniel had risked discomfort to verify a hunch and then shared it with him. That was enough bravery for one day.