Page 103 of Penny For Your Thoughts
“You kept it?”
“Yeah. I don’t know why. A lot of good it did me. The phone number goes right to a messaging system, and the address was some fucking run-down building six blocks from here. Some rando opened the door and told me to fuck off.”
Shit. I’d given Darcy that card before Tallus and I had relocated the business, and since it was technically after office hours, our landline kicked over to automated answering, so clients could leave messages. Tallus had insisted we didn’t have the system reroute the calls to our personal cells because we were entitled to nights off.
I hadn’t given Darcy my cell.
“It’s an old address.”
“Obviously.”
“That’s not my fault.” But his being taken was, so when he confirmed I was still an asshole, I didn’t get angry. Iwasstill an asshole. Nothing would change that.
I had a million questions about everything that had happened between the café kidnapping and Darcy’s Evil Knievel escape from a moving vehicle, but not before he saw a doctor, and his pain was managed enough that he could have a conversation without spitting curses and crying.
Tallus rode in the back with Echo since Darcy couldn’t contort his body well enough to fit behind a retracted seat. At one point, Darcy’s tears grew obnoxious. My patience thinned, and I yelled for him to chill out because his arm was broken, not fucking amputated, and did he hear himself?
“Shut up,” he sobbed.
“You shut up. Christ. You aren’t dying. Stop acting like you are.”
Tallus kicked my seat, and I scowled in the rearview mirror, snarling, “What?”
Tallus said nothing, but he didn’t have to. His expression was enough to remind me I was supposed to be the grown-up. Did I sound like my father when I yelled? Christ. I took it down a notch and let the kid whine.
In truth, I wasn’t angry at Darcy. I was angry at myself.
At the hospital, it took forty minutes before Darcy was called into an exam room. A nurse had him change into a gown before shipping him off for X-rays. I was not invited to join them. When he returned, the same nurse tended to his superficial wounds, including the intense road burn along his left hip and cheek and the scrapes on his palms and knuckles. He sported a nasty bruise on his elbow and knee.
Thirty minutes later, a doctor arrived with the diagnosis. A distal radius fracture to his left arm. It would require a cast.
Getting the full story out of him was impossible since Darcy’s wounds earned him a lot of attention. Nurses were in and out constantly. At one point, they gave him a hefty dose of pain meds that knocked him out. He wouldn’t get to nap long since they had yet to apply the cast, but at least it stopped the blubbering tears.
By ten-thirty, Tallus offered to take Echo home. “This is taking forever, and I’m starving and tired. We aren’t getting any information out of him tonight anyhow.”
I glanced at Darcy, who looked years younger than nineteen under the harsh overhead lighting. His slack face and parted lips gave him an innocence he usually hid behind an attitude.
“Hopefully, we won’t be much longer.”
I tucked Tallus into my arms and hugged him, rocking us side to side and absorbing the solidity of his presence.
“Go easy on him, D. You’ve been…”
“An asshole?”
“You said it, I didn’t.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know. Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s not your fault. He came back. He’s not as mad as he pretends. He trusts you.”
I hoped Tallus was right.
“I caved tonight,” I said, remembering my adventure to the liquor store.
“I know.”
“Not just cigarettes.”
