The Parable of the Mustard Seed

Lisa Henry

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

Written and published by Lisa Henry

Cover by Natasha Snow Designs

Edited by No Stone Unturned Editing Services

Copyright © 2020 by Lisa Henry

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Kindle Edition.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. No persons, living or dead, were harmed by the writing of this book. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Contents

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Afterword

About When All the World Sleeps

An excerpt from When All the World Sleeps

Also By Lisa Henry

About the Author

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

The past never stays buried forever.

John Faimu is an Australian-Samoan police officer who deals with hurt kids every day. He loves what he does, but he’s tired of the grind of shift work, and of trying to find a balance between his job, his family, and the young man who straddles the increasingly blurry line between both.

Caleb Fletcher was the teenager John saved from a cult eight long years ago, and he’s now the young man John wants in ways that neither of them should risk.

Eight years after his rescue, Caleb is still struggling with PTSD and self-harm. John has always been his rock, but now Caleb wants more. Can he convince John to cross a line and love him the way they both crave? And when the monsters from Caleb’s past come back seeking to silence him for good, will John’s love be enough to save him?

The Parable of the Mustard Seed is an mm gay romance featuring hurt/comfort, first times, found family, and angst with a happy ending.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Sylvia and Kat, who pushed me to get this written even though I wanted to take a lot of naps instead. And thanks, as always, to everyone in the day job who served as inspiration for these characters whether they knew it or not.

Chapter One

John was in love with Caleb Fletcher.

He had been since the day he’d met him.

Caleb was fifteen and John was twenty-three. Caleb was covered in blood, delirious with pain, and when John unwound the rope from his wrists the first thing he did was try and punch him in the face.

Holy fuck, John thought as he dodged it, this kid’s a fighter.

So it was his spirit he fell in love with.

All of the rest came later.

* * *

The alarm sounded.

John snaked his arm out and found it, thumped it into silence, and hauled himself upright. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat blinking in the darkness while his brain caught up. He squinted at the clock and waited until his bleary eyes translated the stark red digital lines into something tangible: 9:00.

The sheet had twisted around his hips as he’d slept, so John tugged it free and rose to his feet. Nine p.m. That was good to know. The day of the week eluded him as he headed naked for the bathroom, but that was okay. It was either Thursday or Friday, and it would come to him sooner or later.

He showered quickly, and shaved under the jets.

When he came out of the bathroom, his towel wrapped loosely around his hips, he spotted his phone where he’d dropped it on the kitchen bench and checked it for messages while he dripped onto the tiles.

A text from his sister Mary, warning him that Jessie was up to her usual tricks.

A text from his mother, asking him to call about Jessie.

Another text from David, telling him that Jessie was fine and staying at his house for the night.

And three texts from Jessie, telling him that she’d run away from home because Ma was being a bitch and not letting her do what she wanted, and she meant it for real this time, and John better not come looking for her.

John closed his eyes and willed the germ of his headache away.

Jessie was a pain, a fucking pain. She was a teenage drama queen. She needed a kick up the backside, and the whole world knew it. She was sixteen, entitled, a smart-mouthed little bitch. She was also the baby of the family, and their father’s death had hit her the hardest.

No, that wasn’t fair. Shit, even John couldn’t think of it without feeling crowded by a sense of unreality, but it had only been eight months and they were all still feeling their way through to the other side, to the new world none of them had been prepared for, and Jessie was still a kid. A frightened, heartbroken kid.

John carried his phone with him into the bedroom and held it awkwardly while he dressed. He didn’t have time for this, but he also couldn’t ignore it. Otherwise his mother would stay awake all night worrying.

“It’s me, Ma,” he said when she answered.

He rummaged through his drawers searching for some clean underwear. The fact that he was down to a pair with dodgy elastic and a hole in the crotch meant that it was high time he threw on a load of washing.

“John, I just don’t know what to do with that girl.” His mother’s voice was pitched higher with worry. “She won’t go to youth group, and last week her principal called and says she’s wagging school again, but she won’t talk to me! And she won’t talk to her teachers, or the guidance counsellor, or even Pastor Ian!”

“Yes, Ma. I know.” He pulled the briefs on, only half-listening. They’d had this conversation a thousand times. John knew it by heart. So did his mother, but it didn’t stop her from worrying. John felt a stirring of guilt, and frowned. No, he was being sensible by not getting sucked into Jessie’s drama. He knew that.

Except for the part of his brain that was sure he’d be struggling to recall this entire conversation one day for the missing person’s report, he knew that.

“…even listening to me?”

John shrugged his shirt on, sandwiching the phone between his shoulder and his ear. “Yes, I’m listening, Ma.”

And now you’re going to hell for lying to your mother.

John fumbled with the buttons of his shirt. “Did David call you? She’s with David.”

“Yes, David called me!” his mother said, and followed up with a predictable request to go and fetch Jessie. His mother had a licence but didn’t drive, not that John would have wanted her to. Not even the short hop from Woodridge to Yeronga. At night, without her glasses.

God, he must have been eight or nine that time she’d tried to drive to the shops. She’d loaded David, John and Mary into the back of the station wagon, screwed her courage up as she turned on the ignition, and, flustered by the three kids bouncing excitedly in the back seat, reversed straight into the rubbish bin.

“Well, we needed a new bin anyway,” their dad had said when he got home. He hadn’t commented about the broken taillight or the ruined paintwork, just made the repairs quietly over the next few days.

John closed his eyes for a moment. His quiet, patient dad.

“No,” he said. “I can’t go and get her tonight. I’m on nightshift. I start at ten.”

His mother’s quiet sigh worked better than any plea. John heard the truth in that sigh: she was worried, worn out, and, just like all of them, lost.

“John, will you go and see her, please? And come and see me too?”

“I’ll see if I can stop in, Ma,” John said. “I can’t promise. If it’s not too busy I will.”

“Thank you, baby.”

Her gratitude made him flinch with guilt.

“If you can’t, will you at least call David?”

“Yes, I’ll call David.” He stepped into his pants. “And, Ma, you know you can’t force her to go to youth group with Pastor Ian if she doesn’t want to. I know it would help her, but she’s sixteen.”

Sixteen was still a baby to his mother.

The shit she didn’t know… Sometimes John resented her naivety. Sometimes it embarrassed him. Other times he wanted to move mountains to preserve it.

“John, can’t you make her come home? You’re a policeman!”

John made a face. “No, if she’s sixteen the police can’t force her to come home.”

“But she’s your sister! Of course you can!”

“I can’t, Ma. I already told you that.” He shook his head “Jesus!”

He had to hold the phone away from his ear before she reached through and ripped it off for blaspheming.

“I’m sorry, Ma!” he said, when he could get a word in. “I have to go. I’ll call you from work. Bye.”

John’s headache was definitely anchored in his brain now, throbbing gently.

His bedside clock told him it was 9:28.

John put on his shoes and socks, shoved his tie into his jacket pocket, and was out of the front door in under a minute.

* * *

John didn’t mind working nights, but he didn’t have a partner or kids. He could sleep for eight hours a day without interruption. Most of his colleagues didn’t have that…was it a luxury? The single life was feeling less like a luxury and more like loneliness lately. Maybe that was because of his dad’s death. Maybe it was because he was staring down the barrel of his thirty-first birthday. Thirty hadn’t bothered him, but thirty-one felt a lot bigger than thirty, more than twelve months’ difference. Thirty-one felt like if he hadn’t found someone yet, then maybe it wasn’t going to happen for him.

And shift work sure as hell didn’t help.

Friday night, for fuck’s sake. The rest of the world was busy getting laid, and John Faimu was walking into work with a takeaway coffee in one hand and his phone in the other.

A text from David: J is very upset you haven’t replied.

And another one a few minutes later: J thinks you don’t care. Text her pls.

A text from Mary: I want to wring her neck! Call me. I need to vent.

John made a face. He and Mary were usually on the same page when it came to Jessie, but that wasn’t always a good thing. Often it meant they just went around and around in circles.

On nights. Talk soon. He sent the same text to both of them and shoved his phone into his pocket. He might have guilted Mary and David into leaving him alone, but Jessie wouldn’t be as easily dissuaded. She hated to be ignored.

John sighed as he swiped his security pass at the back door.

He had absolutely no idea what to say to Jess. He dealt with messed-up kids on a daily fucking basis, and didn’t know what to tell his own sixteen-year-old sister.

Maybe that was the problem. John had dealt with so many kids in so many horrible situations that all he could feel for Jessie was frustration. Their dad was gone, and that sucked, but didn’t she know how good she had it? Didn’t she realise how fucking lucky she was?

He headed up the stairs to the office.

He hated that she made him this angry. It wasn’t her fault that other kids had it worse. It wasn’t her fault that other kids didn’t break under the same pressure. And it wasn’t her fault that John couldn’t separate her from every other kid who walked through his office door. Or was hauled through in cuffs.

“Senior Constable Faimu,” Liz said in a too-serious-to-be-real tone.

John fought down a smile. He snapped out a salute instead. “Acting Senior Sergeant Grant, good evening.”

Liz laughed. “Very respectful. I could get used to that.”

“You’d better not,” John said. “It won’t last. I can feel it slipping away already.”

Liz’s laugh ended with a snort.

John headed for his desk and sat down. He sipped his coffee, ignored the newest message notifications on his phone, and logged into his computer. He had three statements he’d intended to get typed up, but it was unlikely he’d get a chance to do those on a Friday night. Liz had said something last night about trying to get a few plainclothes crews together to execute a warrant, but they’d ended up with a rape instead. The investigation was a nightmare. A house full of underage kids, no supervision, a shitload of alcohol, and a couple of boys who thought that passed-out-drunk equated to consent.

John scrolled through his emails.

It felt vaguely parasitic sometimes, like living off other people’s misery. That feeling was symptomatic of night shift, a side effect of fatigue. John fed it with coffee, sugar, and takeaway food. He wasn’t like Aaron, the office gym junkie, with his wheatgrass-detox-no-sugar-spirulina-wholefoods-protein-shakes bullshit. Or whatever.

“I cycle nineteen kilometres to work every day,” Aaron always said. He said it every day as well, until Liz had threatened to take his bike pump and shove it somewhere that would make sitting in the saddle a physical impossibility.

“I love you,” John had told her. “Marry me.”

John craned his neck to peer over his computer monitor. Clare was packing up her bag to leave and Aaron was still working over at his desk. Liz hadn’t mentioned any big jobs, so John doubted it was official overtime. He was probably finishing up a few things in his own time. They all did that. Asking for overtime was like asking for the boss’s firstborn child. It wasn’t worth the lecture on budgetary restraints, time management, and personal responsibility. Sometimes it was just easier to work on that court brief after your shift ended and hope to get an early mark further down the track.

Aaron glanced up and caught John’s gaze.

“Hey,” John said. “How’s the training going?”

It was a broad target. Aaron was always training for something.

“Great thanks, mate,” Aaron beamed. “Only six weeks to go!”

“Cool.” John ducked back down behind his monitor. Six weeks until what? John might have asked, except Aaron didn’t know the difference between polite conversation and unbridled enthusiasm. Ask him if those were new running shoes and before you knew it you’d be signed up into doing the Bridge to the Bay marathon. Or the Kokoda Track.

“You ought to come with me one morning,” Aaron said, right on cue.

“That’d be good,” John lied.

Running. Bullshit. Who would do that for shits and giggles?

Aaron rose from his desk and crossed the office as the printer began to whir. Hopefully, he’d leave before they locked in a time, a date, and a comprehensive training schedule and diet plan.

John stared at the screen and tapped the mouse. Delete. Delete. Delete. Most of his emails were crap anyway. So-and-so was retiring, someone else was running a charity auction, someone who’d last served in 1992 had passed away, and if anyone wanted to order any lamingtons they had to have their money to Judy downstairs by Friday.

His phone buzzed as it received another message and John frowned at it.

“Everything okay?”

He looked up to find Liz leaning on the corner of his desk.

“Family,” he muttered.

“Want to talk about it or is it none of my business?”

That’s what he liked most about Liz. No bullshit.

“None of your business.” Except they both knew that Liz would be fully appraised by the end of the shift.

“Okay.” She flashed him a smile. “In that case, do you want to kit up and go for a drive?”

“Hell, yes.”

* * *

“And then he told me that he’d read it was hard for women to get back their pre-pregnancy bodies, but since Harry is eight months old now, shouldn’t I at least be trying?”

“Wait, what?” John was driving, and had been distracted by a white Ford Falcon whose driver thought the sign read Stoptional. Idiot deserved a ticket, except John didn’t even know if they had a ticket book with them, and he sure as shit couldn’t remember the code or penalty. “Craig said that?”

“God, no! If Craig said that I’d smack him in the head.” Liz made a face. “Aaron said that.”

“Aaron?” John shook his head. “Fucking Aaron?”

“I know!” Liz wrinkled her nose. “What a cunt!”

John burst out laughing.

“What?”

“You just lost all your insulted new mother credibility right there. Right there.”

“‘Insulted new mother credibility’,” Liz muttered. “You talk shit, Faimu.”

John turned into Lyndale Street. There were a few parks around the area that usually attracted kids on a Friday night. Drunk and stupid, and likely to get themselves into all sorts of shit.

“Big party in Timor Avenue tonight,” Liz said. “It’s all over Facebook.”

“Great.” John frowned. “Timor runs off Bryant, right?”

“Yep.”

Nice and close to the Hyperdome shopping centre. The party would be overrun with gatecrashing teens full of alcohol and wanting to fight.

“The uniforms are keeping an eye on it,” Liz said. She checked her text messages, her face illuminated by the screen. “Craig says it’s no problem now, but there are about seventy kids there already.”

John hoped to hell that Jess was still at David’s, and hadn’t sneaked out.

“Is Harry with Craig’s parents?”

“Yeah. I thought one benefit of being an acting senior sergeant would be fewer night shifts. More fool me.”

“The money’s alright though.” John’s attention was caught by a group of four kids wandering along the road—hoodies, baggy shorts and backpacks.

“Our first customers of the night,” Liz said, brightening.

John pulled the car over to the side of the road and watched the kids approaching in the rear-view mirror. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but he thought he recognised one of the faces.

They got out of the car.

“Reggie!” John called out as the kids began to veer away. “Reggie, get over here.”

The boys exchanged glances.

“Reggie Noble,” John said. “You still living at your uncle’s place?”

The boy in question sighed, rolled his eyes, and walked toward them. His friends followed, muttering.

“What’s in the backpack, Reggie?” John asked, pulling on some gloves.

Reggie scowled and handed it over.

A bottle of Bundaberg Rum, and another of vodka. An iPod, and —bingo!—a screwdriver.

“What’s this for?” John held it up.

Reggie mumbled something.

“Where’d you get the iPod?”

“Some kid.”

“Some kid? Some pretty generous kid, hey?”

Reggie shuffled his feet and shrugged his skinny shoulders.

“Did he give you the alcohol as well?” The seals on the bottles were already cracked. John unscrewed the lid of the rum and turned the bottle up. Rum poured out onto the road.

“Fuck, man!” Reggie said. “That was for the party!”

John did the same with the vodka, all four boys groaning in disappointment.

“Uncool, man, uncool!”

Fourteen years old, and they thought they could drink alcohol straight from the bottle. Not that any of them would be thanking John for saving them from alcohol poisoning—not once the other boys’ backpacks turned up a pretty good collection of house breaking tools, a set of car keys that belonged to an Audi, and an iPhone in a glittery pink case.

“Either you can tell us where you’ve broken in,” Liz told the scrawny little redhead who’d been carrying the phone, “because you know we’ll find out in a few hours anyway, or you can stick to the story that this pink sparkly Barbie phone is yours.”

The boy blustered for a second, then wilted under Liz’s scrutiny and gave them the street name.

John kept an eye on the boys while Liz called for a van to transport them all back to the station. He checked his watch. It was just past eleven, and they’d already made four arrests.

That was okay. The busy nights went the fastest.

* * *

It took two hours to get the four boys processed. A uniform crew took the complaint for the break and enter, leaving John and Liz to deal with the boys. All of them except Reggie were released into the custody of their parents. Reggie’s uncle wasn’t answering his phone. In the end they drove to his address, pounded on the door until he woke up, and told him to get to the station to collect his nephew.

“So, Jess has run away again,” John said as they were driving away from the address. “She’s at David’s.”

“You mother must be pretty upset.”

“Yeah.” John sighed. “She’s probably still up, worrying.”

Liz looked at him for a moment, then she smiled. “Does she still make that slice with coconut on the top?”

John couldn’t stop his smile. “That won’t help you get your pre-pregnancy body back, will it?”

“Fuck you,” Liz said, jabbing a finger into her belly. “This is my pre-pregnancy body.”

John laughed and took the exit for Woodridge.

It was one-thirty when they pulled up outside the modest brick house. The light in the lounge was on, glowing from behind the closed curtains. It still amazed John how his parents had raised four kids in the tiny two-bedroom place that had been all they could afford when they’d arrived in Australia from Samoa. It had been a point of pride for his dad that they’d never gone on welfare. Never on the dole and never in prison, unlike most of their neighbours.

“That’s all we need, more fucking Māoris!” the man next door had said when the family had moved in. Bad teeth, bad mullet, and he couldn’t tell the difference between Māori and Samoan, but he’d only been there a few months before Housing threw him out.

Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen had been there ever since, and they were good people. Mrs. Nguyen and John’s mother went to the same church. Mr. Nguyen slept in on Sundays and ignored his wife’s harassment on the subject.

The Nguyens’ house was dark.

The wire gate squeaked as John pushed it open. Liz followed him up the path. They didn’t even make it to the front door before his mother opened it.

“You’re late.”

John held up his hands. “I’m working, Ma.”

“Hello, Mrs. Faimu,” Liz said. “How are you?”

“Liz!” Sepela Faimu’s face split with a smile. “Come in, and show me some pictures of that sweet little baby of yours.”

John made a face as they went inside.

It was a small house, but it felt too large without his dad’s presence. John glanced into the living room as they passed: his dad’s recliner was still in front of the television. John would bet everything he had that his mother didn’t sit in it. He wondered if they should have got rid of it when his dad’s clothes went to charity. Maybe that would have been better than to have it just sitting there, conspicuous, drawing every gaze to its emptiness.

They went into the kitchen.

Liz sat at the table. John leaned in the doorway, watching his mother fill the kettle and rattle around with mugs. She was wearing the maroon dressing gown he’d bought for her last Mother’s Day. Her dark hair, shot through with twists of gray, hung in a thick braid down her back.

“David said Jessie’s okay staying at his place tonight,” John said.

Her back stiffened. “She should be here at home!”

“She’s sixteen, Ma,” John reminded her.

Ma huffed and turned around to face him. “You can make her come home! You’re her brother, and a policeman!”

At six-foot-two John towered over his mother these days, but as soon as she got that determined expression on her face he felt like he was a little kid again. “Shit, Ma, that’s exactly why I can’t make her!”

“Language!” Ma said.

John looked to Liz for backup. She shook her head at him, as though she was deeply disappointed. Hypocrite.

The boiling kettle saved him from having to make any reply. His mother turned back around to the bench, and John took the opportunity to mouth a rude word in Liz’s direction before he crossed the floor to help his mother.

“There’s chocolate cake in the orange container in the pantry,” she told him.

By the time John had found it, his mother was sitting beside Liz at the kitchen table scrolling through photographs of baby Harry on her phone.

“Such a fat little baby!”

Nothing wrong with fat babies according to John’s Samoan mother. Fat babies were healthy babies.

Liz knew it. She laughed. “Look, in this one he’s got at least four knees!”

John ate his cake and listened to them talk about Harry for a while, knowing that sooner or later the conversation would turn back to Jessie. It was sooner.

“Will you go and talk to her, John?” Ma asked. “Just talk?”

Lucky for Jessie she wasn’t in the room right now, because if she had been John would have frogmarched her to her bedroom and stood guard to make she never left again. The grief that passed over his mother’s face was only a shadow, but it was so genuine that John’s throat ached.

He’d seen it on her face too often lately.

He reached his hand across the table and closed it over hers. “Yes, Ma, I’ll go and talk to her tomorrow.”

Ma didn’t reply. She pressed her lips together tightly for a moment, and then nodded. She was close to tears, John realised.

Fucking Jessie.

Jess was their dad’s little princess. She’d been born when Mary was already at university and the boys were both in high school. And their parents, who should have been looking forward to a time when all the kids were out from underfoot, were suddenly elbow-deep in nappies and tiny, tiny socks. It was crazy. They loved it.

Their dad had spoiled Jess. And Jess had worshipped him.

You couldn’t calculate grief, John knew, couldn’t put a value on it. Couldn’t say her grief is worse than mine because our circumstances are different. Jessie didn’t hurt more than John—couldn’t—but she hurt in a different way. John was thirty-one. He had a job, his own place, knew where he was in life. Questioned the hell out of it sometimes, but he knew. Jess was sixteen, and she’d lost the ground underneath her feet.

John knew that. He also knew she needed to get her shit together. Yeah, life wasn’t fair. That wasn’t an excuse to put their mother through hell.

Liz’s phone began to ring, some catchy pop song that John didn’t know. Neither did Liz, probably. She and Craig often stole one another’s phones and sabotaged the settings.

“Sorry,” she said, standing up. She walked out into the hallway to answer the call.

“Thank you for coming,” Ma whispered.

He squeezed her hand, and smiled. “I couldn’t stop Liz. She wanted some of that raspberry jam slice with the coconut on top.”

Ma put her free hand on her breast. “I don’t have any made!”

“It doesn’t matter, Ma.”

Ma fixed him with a stern gaze. “You come by and visit tomorrow night, and I’ll make sure there’s enough for you both to take some back into work, ioe?”

“Ioe, Ma,” John agreed. He looked up again as Liz stepped back into the kitchen. “Was it work?”

Liz nodded. “Comms has been calling you.”

Jessie, he thought, fumbling at his belt for his phone. He’d left it on silent. Shit. What trouble had she gotten herself into?

Liz read the expression on his face and shook her head. “Darren Fletcher has been trying to get through to you,” she said. “Caleb’s in hospital.”

Chapter Two

A hospital. A locked room.

“My name’s John,” John said to the kid. “What’s yours?”

The kid swiped his tongue over his cracked lips. “Caleb.”

John wrote that down. “What’s your last name, Caleb?”

“Gray,” the kid said, his dark eyes large.

John wrote that down as well. Then he looked at it, anger burning low in his gut, and crossed it out roughly.

* * *

John hated hospitals. He’d spent too much time in them. He hated the cold air, the florescent lights, the scuffmarks on the floors, and the pervasive stink of antiseptic. He hated it when the staff didn’t pull the curtains around the patients’ beds in the emergency room. He hated it more when they did.

John flashed his badge at triage. “Where’s Caleb Fletcher?”

The nurse raised her weary gaze from her computer screen. She frowned. “I think there’s been a mistake. The paramedics did the E.E.A.”

John ignored her, pushing through the doors into the emergency room and leaving Liz to explain, or apologise, or whatever.

He found Caleb in the fourth bed from the door, lying there fully dressed with his eyes closed. His dark lashes rested on his pale cheeks. His arms were bandaged wrists to elbows. His shirt was stained with dried blood.

John’s guts twisted, and he didn’t know if it was anger, fear, or if it was relief: He’s okay. This time, he’s okay.

Except there would always be a next time with Caleb.

John had stopped believing there was a power in the universe that could prevent it.

A doctor—young, probably too young—was bending over Caleb’s bed. She straightened as John approached, her eyes widening at the Glock on his belt, at the badge. “Can I help you?”

“How is he?” John asked.

The doctor might have been young, but she was no pushover. “Who called you? This isn’t a police matter.”

“I’m a friend of the family,” John said. Even after eight years it sounded wrong. Friendships weren’t made like that, but he didn’t know what else to call it. “How is he?”

The doctor eyed him for a moment before she relented. “Most of the cuts are superficial.”

Attention-seeking, one of Caleb’s first therapists had called his attempts once. A cry for help, another one had said. John had never doubted the intent behind them. John had long ago stopped questioning what sometimes drove Caleb to this point. He just thanked fuck that something had so far held him back.

Caleb wanted to live. He was a fighter but, like all fighters, sometimes he took a hit.

The doctor’s expression softened. “The paramedics did an Emergency Examination Application. We’re just waiting for the psych registrar.”

John nodded. A weekend in the Mental Health Unit wasn’t ideal, but at least they could medicate Caleb there, keep him too doped up to think about cutting. Keep him treading water until he could go back to his regular psychiatrist on Monday.

“He was doing okay,” John said. “Was he drinking tonight?”

The doctor nodded.

“Shit.” John sat in the chair beside the bed.

“Do you know where the coffee machine is?” the doctor asked.

“Yeah, thanks.” John checked his watch. Almost three in the morning. He’d stay until Darren got here, which shouldn’t be too long. Darren was in the Gold Coast hinterland, but the traffic would be light at this hour.

He’d called Darren on the way here and they’d talked. No, not talked. That implied conversation, an exchange of ideas. The only thing they’d exchanged were the basics: Where is he? How is he? How far away are you? Everything else went unsaid, because it was unnecessary. They were practised at this.

John looked at the screen of Caleb’s monitor, but the readings meant nothing to him. In the next bed over, a woman was crying.

Fucking hospitals.

John scrubbed his knuckles over his scalp. He felt more tired now than he had for a long time, and it wasn’t just the shift work. It was Caleb, and this place, and the knowledge that they’d been here before and they would be here again. Different hospitals, different beds, different scratchy blankets and too-cold air conditioning, but all of them stuck in the same old cycle.

Eight years of this.

It wasn’t always this dramatic. Most of the time it didn’t end in a hospital. Most of the time it was increasingly erratic behaviour. It was risk-taking. It was subtle and pervasive, but John knew how to read the signs. He’d talked Caleb down from plenty of metaphorical high places before. Enough to wonder every time if he was only delaying the inevitable. If Darren was, and the psychiatrists and psychologists were, and the pharmacists.

John sighed.

Of course it felt hopeless. It was almost three in the morning and he was sitting in a fucking hospital. Shit always felt dire in the middle of the night.

John reached out and brushed his fingertips against the back of Caleb’s right hand. His skin was cold to the touch, his fingers white and bloodless. Several of his knuckles were grazed. The wounds weren’t fresh.

Darren had said last week that Caleb had punched a wall. Out of nowhere. No warnings signs, no meltdown, just a sudden, furious burst of anger that had broken over him. And afterward, Darren said, when Caleb was sitting on the floor nursing an icepack, he’d refused to talk about it.

Sometimes even Caleb didn’t know what the fuck was happening in his head.

John’s fingertips brushed the wrinkled edge of the tape that held the canula in the back of Caleb’s hand. The plastic tape was dry and rough.

“I bleed and you’re here.”

Fuck.

John straightened and turned his face toward Caleb’s. His face was pale, his lips colourless. Dark circles carved out hollows under his eyes.

“Your dad called me,” John said. “He’s on his way.”

Caleb’s gaze dropped away.

John leaned closer and frowned. “What the fuck are you doing, mate?”

“Bad night.” Caleb pressed his lips into a thin white line.

“Were you clubbing?” John gestured at his clothes: dark jeans, a tight shirt, and—what were the kids calling them these days?—expensive kicks.

Caleb inspected the bandages on his arm. “Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Caleb.” John was always there to pick up the pieces, but he didn’t coddle Caleb. He never had, not even at the start. “You think I drove all the way here to listen to you lie to me?”

“I was with a guy.” Caleb flinched as he said it.

“Were you safe?”

Caleb’s gaze faltered. “I was with a guy.”

“So you said.” John wondered what reaction Caleb had been expecting. “Were you safe?”

Caleb nodded, turning his face away.

John studied him for a moment, unsure how to react. A part of him was afraid to react at all in case any reaction was an overreaction. Caleb wasn’t coming out as gay—he’d done that at nineteen—but by admitting to a sexual encounter he was coming out in another way: Caleb was coming out as human being who wanted to be touched. A human being with sexual needs. This was a big step. The biggest in a long time. Nobody had expected him to remain celibate forever; nobody thought that was remotely healthy. But fuck, this big step had turned into a hell of a stumble, hadn’t it? Caleb was in freefall.

John reached out and squeezed Caleb’s shoulder. “Did this guy try something? Something you didn’t want to do?”

“No.” Caleb shifted. His worried gaze found John again. “No, it was me, not him.”

John nodded.

“We went to a hotel.” Caleb’s gaze slipped away again. “He said I was a slut.” His voice hitched. “Said I was bad.”

John moved his hand from Caleb’s shoulder to his cheek. Caleb was still so cold. “If you tell me he was being a prick, I’ll track the fucker down.”

“The way he said it, I was supposed to like it. Wasn’t his fault.” Caleb closed his eyes. “I didn’t even mind, not much, not when he was there.”

John sighed. “What happened when he left?”

Caleb shuddered. “When he left, all I could hear in my head was Ethan.”

John tensed, and tried not to let Caleb feel it.

“So loud,” Caleb sighed.

John withdrew his hand. “Look at me.”

Caleb opened his eyes.

“Next time you hear Ethan Gray in your head, you don’t listen to him.” John shook his head. “You call you dad, or your doctor, or you call me, doesn’t matter what time, you call me and I will be there. You understand me?”

Caleb jerked his chin in a nod.

“You don’t cut yourself, Caleb.” John frowned. “You understand me?”

“Okay,” Caleb murmured.

The worst part, John knew, was that Caleb meant it, and would go on meaning it right up until the next time he was holding a blade against his wrists.

You’ll break my heart one day, Caleb Fletcher, I know you will.

John forced a smile. “Okay.”

Caleb sighed and closed his eyes.

John watched him until he fell asleep, then got up and hunted down a blanket.

* * *

Darren Fletcher was Caleb in thirty years. It wasn’t just genetics; Darren’s face was etched with just as much tired misery as Caleb’s.

Darren leaned against the wall outside Accident and Emergency and lit a cigarette, ignoring the signs that said it was a non-smoking area. And the one pointing to the oncology unit.

“I’ve got to head off,” John said.

They didn’t bother with small talk. They were both too practised at this.

It had been a while, but they fell back into the routine easily enough. Was it nine months or ten since Caleb had last ended up in hospital? Ten, John thought, but the maths was impossible in the middle of the night. A long time, anyway. Long enough that John had started to think that maybe it wouldn’t happen again, that maybe Caleb was better.

Stupid dumb hope, because Caleb wasn’t going to get better. He had no baseline of good mental health to try to reclaim. Caleb had been broken for too long, into too many pieces, and there wasn’t a doctor or a medication in the world that could plaster over all the cracks and pretend they didn’t go bone deep.

Caleb couldn’t go back. None of them could.

“Jason’s never coming home,” Darren had said to John eight years ago in another fucking hospital. “I’ve got Caleb now.”

Not the same son he’d lost.

A cuckoo in the nest.

A changeling.

“You right?” John asked Darren.

Darren exhaled, breathing smoke into the air. “Yeah. I’ll call you when we’re finished with the psych registrar.”

John knew exactly how things worked on a busy night: Caleb’s mental health assessment would very much depend on whether or not the hospital had a spare bed. “If they try and push him out the door, call me straight away.”

“I will.”

John looked across to where Liz was waiting. She was leaning on the car, talking on the phone.

“Did he tell you what happened?” Darren asked.

John hesitated.

“Yeah,” Darren said, and flashed him a wry smile. “He told you.”

John nodded.

Darren flicked his cigarette butt onto the concrete, the ember flaring brightly for a moment in the air. “I wish he didn’t try to do everything on his own.”

“He doesn’t want to tell his dad he’s going out to find a guy and get laid,” John said. “It’s understandable.”

“That conversation,” Darren said, “would have been a shitload less awkward that the one we’re going to have now.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean I know I can’t hold his hand.” Darren lit another cigarette and shoved the packet back into his shirt pocket. “He’s twenty-two. The last thing he needs is his dad sticking his nose in his sex life but, Jesus, what the hell am I supposed to do?”

John looked up, but the glare of the lights in the car park hid the stars.

Darren exhaled heavily, and said again, “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

John didn’t answer.

There was nothing to say.

They stood there in silence for a few minutes more.

“I’ve got to head off,” John said at last.

“I’ll call you later.” Darren shook John’s hand and headed toward the doors of Accident and Emergency.

* * *

“You okay?” Liz was driving.

The lights on the freeway slid up the windscreen.

“Yeah,” John said. He squinted at his notebook. “Did those car keys for the Audi come from the break at twelve or fourteen? I wrote down twelve, but I thought the occurrence said fourteen.”

Liz didn’t answer.

“What?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Is that really what we’re doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re going to pretend that didn’t happen, are we?” She snorted. “Caleb only slashed his wrists again, but you’re fine and dandy? Really?”

John shrugged.

Liz took the exit for Logan.

“Not much I can do about it,” John said at last. “Can’t fix him.”

You’ll break my heart one day, Caleb Fletcher, I know you will.

“No,” Liz agreed. “But are you okay?”

“Is this because you went on the Peer Support Officer course last week?”

“Fuck off. I’m asking as a friend, not a PSO.”

“Okay,” John said. “I’m tired, and I’m pissed off, and I want to fucking slap him around the head for doing something so stupid.” He struggled to draw an even breath. “And every time he does something like this, every time he thinks he’d be better off dead, a part of me wonders if he’s right.”

Shit.

“I get that,” Liz said, her tone soft.

John closed his notebook. A second later he closed his eyes. “So what’s your advice?”

It was an unfair question, he knew—unanswerable—but he couldn’t help asking. Maybe some part of him hoped that she’d actually have the solution.

“A vanilla thickshake,” Liz told him. “And a cheeseburger with fries.”

John opened his eyes and flashed her a smile. “Did you even pass that PSO course?”

“Everyone passed. It was that sort of course.” Liz stopped for a red light and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “If I order a large fries will you help me eat them?”

“Sure.” His stomach rumbled.

“I’d better order two then,” Liz said.

There was a crowd of kids at the nearest McDonald’s, hanging around outside and yahooing at cars using the drive-through. Probably stragglers from the party in Timor Avenue, John thought. That was fairly close.

Liz parked the car and they got out.

“How’s it going?” she asked the nearest bunch of kids, flashing her badge. The others melted away like magic. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

They took names and addresses and checked backpacks and pockets.

“What’s this?” John asked, holding up a can of deodorant. “You been sniffing?”

“Nah.” The boy didn’t look high. “I don’t do that.”

“That will fuck you up, yeah?” John shone his torch in the boy’s eyes to check his pupils. “It can kill you or give you brain damage.”

The boy mumbled something.

John passed him his backpack. “Keep out of trouble.”

The boy squinted at him. “Can I have the deodorant back?”

“No,” John said. “Get out of here.”

The boy trailed away.

John and Liz went inside and ordered, and John dumped the can of deodorant into one of the bins. When they walked back outside to the car, the kids had gone.

They’d hardly left the car park when the radio blared: “Three-oh-six, urgent!” A blast of static. “—hit with bricks. At least two armed with knives.”

John recognised the voice: Craig, Liz’s husband.

“VKR to any units able to attend Timor Avenue. Code One authorised.”

John reached for the radio as Liz hit the siren, waiting for a break in the suddenly frantic radio traffic. “Five-forty, VKR. Show us proceeding from Bryants Road.”

So much for dinner.

* * *

They didn’t make it back to the office until a quarter past five.

Timor Avenue, the surrounding streets, the watch house, then back to Timor Avenue when it all kicked off again. Then the watch house again, then back to the office to write up the log.

The sky was softening to grey in the east. The birds were awake, swooping through the car park as John cleaned out the car: their vests, their gear, and the congealed, cold fries.

John went inside, leaving Liz on her phone talking to Craig: “Have you seen a doctor yet? How’s your newbie?”

John made a coffee and inspected the red marks on his forearm. Lucky for both of them the drunk girl hadn’t drawn blood. Lucky for her because otherwise John would have charged her for assaulting police instead of just resisting arrest, and lucky for John because otherwise he’d be facing months of disease testing.

John sat at his desk and drank his coffee. There was nothing like a street brawl to get the blood pumping, but the adrenaline dump had hit while he was waiting in the long queue at the watch house. Now he was just tired.

“Is Craig okay?” he called out as Liz came back into the office.

“He’s fine. A bit sore, but nothing broken.” The relief in her voice was palpable.

“Are you okay?”

She flashed him a shaky smile. “Yeah.”

Things could go to shit in seconds. Not just in the job, but in every aspect of life. John had felt that acutely of late. His dad’s death had brought so many fears into sharp relief: You could lose them all in a heartbeat. You will die alone. You have no-one.

He thought again of Caleb.

Again. Always. Same thing.

John opened his drawer, just to check the discs were there. Nothing written on the cracked plastic case but the crime report number that John knew by heart. Nothing on them but a total of six hours and thirty-seven minutes of recorded interviews with a scared, skinny kid who called himself Caleb Gray, that John knew word for awful word.

John had been there for most of them. For one, he hadn’t. He’d had court, and couldn’t shake it.

“Where’s the other man?” Caleb had asked.

“The other man?” Brian was retired now. He’d bought a place up at Maroochydore. Went fishing.

“The big one.” Caleb had traced his fingers over his skinny upper-arm and up his neck, following the path of John’s tattoo on his own skin.

“John. He’s in court today.”

“John,” Caleb had repeated. “Yeah, John.”

Then he’d curled his arms around himself and stared at the laminate tabletop and refused to talk. The next time, Brian had made sure John was there.

Eight years later and John still was.

He rubbed the raised scratches on his forearm, and sighed, and checked his phone for messages.

One from David: Footy at 9 if you’re up for it. Can use you on the BBQ.

John doubted he’d stay for the game or the barbecue, but he needed to catch up with David, and with Jess. And see if he could convince Jess to head home without starting World War Three. He’d never hear the end of it from his mother if he made it worse.

It was either too late or too early to message back.

There was a message from Darren as well: Caleb in MHU til Monday. Thanks.

Darren would still be awake so John sent back: Good. Talk to you in the week.

So at least something had gone right tonight.

John rubbed his arm again and wondered how long his luck would hold.

Chapter Three

“Holy shit!” John dropped the bolt cutters. “Boss!”

It was so dark in the old tank that he couldn’t see much. Dark, and hot as hell. He saw enough though. Saw the kid lying there, covered in blood and filth and blowflies.

John went down onto his knees. New trousers—fuck ’em. He stuck his fingers against the kid’s throat, searching for a pulse and half-doubting he’d find one. The kid moaned.

“Boss!” John yelled. “I need help in here!”

Oh Jesus. Oh fuck. The stench was so bad he thought he’d vomit.

“You’re okay, mate,” he told the kid. “You’re okay.”

The kid’s wrists were bound together with thin rope. John pulled out his pocket knife and sawed at it, then pulled the rope free.

The kid’s eyes flickered open, widened in sudden shock, and then he did what shouldn’t have been physically possible: he made a fist and tried to punch John in the face.

The kid was a fighter.

* * *

John didn’t sleep.

At nine a.m. he met his brother David at the oval where he coached the local Under Tens Rugby League team. David loved the game. He’d played all through school and been on target for the A Grade until he’d busted his knee. It was a credit to David’s easy-going temperament, inherited from their dad, that he hadn’t become bitter. He still loved the game, and he fostered the same love of it in the kids he coached.

“Where’s Jess?”

“Shopping,” David said, easing himself down into a crouch to help a boy with his laces. “You lace ’em up tight and tuck the ends in, okay, mate? You don’t want to trip over like last week.”

The boy scratched his scabby knees. “Thanks, coach!”

He skipped away.

David’s infinite patience was the same as their dad’s.

“She’s with Tee,” David said. “They’ve gone to get their nails done, and buy a dress for Jessie’s date with a boy in her class, and look at earrings, then they’re going to get sushi for lunch, and I’d better not leave muddy footprints all through the house again while they’re out.”

“What?” Sleep deprivation and bright sunlight was doing John no favours. “Jessie’s got a date?”

Not after pulling this stunt, she didn’t.

“Apparently.” David shrugged his massive shoulders. “What can you do, hey, bro?”

John rolled his eyes.

“Tee’s gonna take her to Ma’s after shopping.”

David’s girlfriend had gone from Christina to Tina to Tee in a matter of weeks. Even their mother called her Tee.

David had met Christina at the car dealership he worked at when she was temping. He’d told her the first time he met her that she was the girl he was going to marry. She’d told him to piss off.

That was two years ago.

John still wasn’t sure how the hell David had done it. He had an easy-going charm that worked on everyone, from small children and animals all the way up to cranky sports-mad parents.

Shrieking and laughing, the kids began to gather near the shelter shed. On the sidelines, parents and family were unfolding chairs or putting down blankets.

David raised his voice. “Get out there and practice kicking, kids! Mark! Have you got your puffer?”

A freckled boy gave him the thumbs up.

The kids hit the oval in their black and white striped jerseys, and John couldn’t help smiling. Go the mighty Magpies. It was the same team he and David had played in when they were kids.

“Are you ever sorry you didn’t make it?” he’d asked David once.

David had shrugged. “Nah. Look at all the footy players on the news, being drunken dickheads. I would love to have a Maroons jersey with my name on it, but if I’d gone A Grade I wouldn’t have met Tee. No football jersey is worth that.”

There was nothing missing from David’s life, and he was lucky enough to realise it. John envied his brother that.

“You look tired,” David said. “Have you even been to bed yet?”

John shrugged. “I’ll catch a few hours this afternoon.”

Unless work needed him, or Ma did, or Darren and Caleb. Mostly Darren and Caleb.

“You work too hard, bro.”

John shrugged again.

What was the other fucking option? You either worked at some place where they ground you slowly down, or you sat on your backside on the dole and got nowhere in life. Except right now, getting nowhere in life seemed like a pretty sweet option.

Shift work and sleep deprivation. It fucked his head up sometimes.

David cast his gaze out over his team. “Ma said you visited her last night but you had to go.”

John nodded.

“Something about Caleb.” David’s shrewd gaze said a hell of a lot more than he did. Sometimes he was too bloody smart for a meathead footy player. “Is he okay?”

“He will be.”

How much of that was a lie?

“Okay,” David said. “What about you?”

“What about me, what?” John was too tired for this.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Another lie. “Yeah, just tired.”

Down on the field, the kids were lining up.

“You’d better get down there,” John said.

“You want to stay and watch the game?” David asked him. “We’re having a sausage sizzle after.”

Some things never changed.

“I should head home.”

“Drive safe.”

John was halfway back to his car when he heard the whistle blow.

Go the mighty Magpies.

* * *

The alarm went off at 8 p.m., jolting John out of sleep. For a moment he struggled to remember where he was, what day it was, what time it was, then it fell into place. Saturday night. He was on night shift. He had two hours to get himself showered, shaved, fed, and into work for another night of chasing shithead fucking teenagers around Logan. Kids who didn’t know how good they had it, and wouldn’t until they turned seventeen and suddenly realised that prison was a whole lot different to juvenile detention. By then, most of them had left it too late to turn themselves around but there was no good telling them. John told them anyway, because for every hundred smartass know-it-all fuckers, there was one who listened. And he had to pretend that one made it worth it, or he’d go mad.

Shit. John hoped he’d wash away his bad mood in the shower. Nothing made a shift go slower than really not wanting to be there.

He showered, he changed, he ate, and picked up a coffee on the way into work. When he walked into the station, every light was still on in the office, and there were people there who should have finished at 2 p.m. Fuck it. That was never a good sign.

“What’s going on?” he asked Aaron.

“We’ve got a homicide.” Even Aaron looked worn out, but that was probably because he’d trekked the Himalayas during his lunch break.

“What’s the go?” John asked, setting his coffee down. He saw Liz heading into the inspector’s office and gave her a quick wave.

“Six-year-old victim,” Aaron said. “Foster mother’s in custody.”

“Shit.” So much for getting rid of his bad mood.

Aaron nodded wearily. “Yeah. We’ve been interviewing the other kids for most of the day. Me and Clare got the four-year-old.”

No wonder he was wrecked. Nothing like interviewing little kids who couldn’t understand what had happened, let alone articulate it.

What did Daddy say then?

Where did the man touch you?

How often does Mummy fall down?

It’s okay if it’s a secret. You’re allowed to tell me secrets.

Sometimes John wanted to get the hell out of Child Protection, but what else was there? Criminal Investigations? That was just more of the same, with a higher age bracket of offenders or victims. Something in HQ? No, as much as he sometimes hated shift work, 9 to 5 in an office would bore him to tears. Back to General Duties? Yeah, right, because getting vomited on by drunks in the Valley every Friday night sounded like fun.

Sometimes emails came through about vacancies in places John had never even heard of: tiny one-man stations in the middle of nowhere, population two hundred, not including the cows, where you were never really off duty, but you were also more than just a number. You got to be a part of a community in those tiny towns, except John couldn’t leave his family. If he left, Mary and David could probably handle Jess and her dramas for a while. But it wasn’t just John’s family. He was Caleb’s cornerstone, wasn’t he? And Darren’s. He was needed here.

John sat at his desk and read his emails. A few minutes later Liz came and found him.

“How’s Craig?” John asked.

“He has some very unattractive bruising,” she said. “He’s got the night off, he thinks.”

“He thinks?”

“Harry’s teething.”

John grinned at that. “Hey, what’s going on with this homicide? Does the boss want us for anything?”

“They’ve got it covered,” Liz said. She wasn’t quite frowning, but a tiny vertical line had appeared above her nose.

John knew that look. “Spit it out.”

“Yeah,” Liz said. “Let’s not do this here. Bring your coffee into the lunchroom.”

Shit.

John followed her out of the office and down the hallway. The lunchroom was empty. Magazines and newspapers sat piled on the long table. There were dishes in the sink that could have been there for days.

John pulled up a seat. Liz sat down opposite.

“Come on,” John said. “What’s going on? Have I fucked something up?”

“No,” Liz said. She sighed. “The boss wanted to see me because he got an email from Corrections about the latest bunch of parolees.”

“Oh, fuck,” John said. “Which one?”

“Ethan Gray,” Liz said. “He’s out at the end of the month.”

Fuck. No fucking way could that asshole be out. Not with all the good behaviour and rehabilitation in the world.

“Gray, and Leon Harrison, and Ben Quartermain, and Analise Fletcher.”

“Fuck. Were they having a fucking throw-out sale?” John raked his fingers through his short hair. “This is fucking bullshit! Bullshit!”

Liz didn’t even flinch as John sent a pile of magazines to the floor. “Yeah, it is.”

John clenched his jaw and waited for his rage, and his shock, to pass. And wondered in the meantime how the hell he was going to break it to Darren and Caleb.

“So they’re not allowed contact,” Liz said. “With Caleb, or with each other. If they breach their conditions, we’ll come down on them.”

“I don’t think Caleb will be able to deal with this right now,” John said numbly. He didn’t think he could either. How the fuck could you do what those people had done and be out in eight years?

Mostly, John knew, because the investigation hadn’t been able to prove half of what they’d done.

“Where’s Simon?” Caleb had asked him in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. “What happened to Simon?”

John stared down at one of the magazines on the floor. It had fallen open at some celebrity’s new bikini body. “This is fucked up.”

“I know,” Liz said, regarding him steadily.

John closed his eyes. He’d known this day would come, of course he had. It just couldn’t have come at a worse time for Caleb. Not after last night. When he opened his eyes again, Liz was still watching him. “So, what now?”

“I can talk to Darren if you want.”

“No.” John sighed. “I should do that. Maybe we’ll run it by Caleb’s shrink before we break it to him.”

Liz smiled.

“What?”

“You and Darren,” she said. “You’re a team, aren’t you?”

“I guess we are. He’s got no-one else to help, you know?”

“Yeah.”

All of them, John thought, had at least one case like that. One case they never really walked away from. Liz’s, he knew, was Amelia. Two months old, dead in her cot, a meth lab in the room next door. Liz had been trying to fall pregnant at the time, and thinking it would never happen for her and Craig. After the investigation and the autopsy and all of that shit was done, she’d gone shopping for a pretty pink outfit and a teddy bear for Amelia’s burial. There was an older sister as well, eighteen months old when it had happened: Ella.

There was something wrong when a kid that age didn’t cry, even in the middle of the night, even getting passed around by strangers. Ella had a good foster family now. Liz was still in contact with them.

There were just some cases that didn’t let go.

They sat in silence in the lunchroom for a while.

“So,” Liz said at last, “while I’m wearing my PSO hat, want to tell me about your love life?”

“Shit, no.” John couldn’t help his smile.

“Well, you know I’m getting no action.”

“I’ve seen the living proof you got laid at least once not that long ago.”

“Immaculate conception,” Liz told him.

“You are so full of shit.”

“You are so full of shit, Acting Senior Sergeant Grant,” she corrected him sternly.

He laughed, despite himself.

That was the best thing about Liz. She could always make him laugh.

* * *

“You know I was joking about the coconut slice,” Liz told him two hours later as they pulled up in front of his mother’s house. The lights were still on.

“You were not,” John said, killing the engine.

His mother was still awake. John wondered if she’d even slept properly at all since his dad had died.

“Is Jess home?” John asked once he was inside, peering down the hallway.

“She’s asleep,” Sepela said. Her tired face split with a smile. “David and Tee brought her back after lunch.”

His mother might have been glad, but John wasn’t done with Jessie yet. As soon as he was off night work, they were going to have a talk and she wouldn’t like it one bit.

“I’ll put the kettle on,” Liz offered, heading through to the kitchen.

Sepela wrapped her arms around John. She didn’t even come up to his shoulder. “Thank you, baby.”

“It was David and Tee you should thank, Ma.”

“I already did.” Sepela let him go and cast a critical eye over him. “Are you eating? You look skinny.”

John snorted. His mother had a strange definition of skinny. “I’m fine.”

“How is Caleb?”

“He’ll be okay. He’s in the hospital.”

Sepela clicked her tongue. “Poor boy. It’s good that he has you.”

John sometimes thought it didn’t make a difference. Caleb was unreachable in so many ways.

They went into the kitchen.

“You remember when we first came here?” Sepela asked him. She took a container out of the pantry and put it on the table. She batted Liz’s hand away. “No, those are for you to take to work. I’ve got more here.”

Liz beamed.

“There was a boy in your class,” Sepela continued. “A skinny little boy. Tyrone.”

“I remember.”

“Well, one day you asked me to make more sandwiches, so you could share them with Tyrone.” Sepela set a plate of coconut slice onto the table. “I asked you why. Do you remember what you said?”

“Because Tyrone’s mother didn’t give him anything for lunch.”

Sepela nodded. “And you’d been giving him yours and going hungry instead. Did you know that when I told your father that story, he was so proud of you that he cried?”

A lump rose in John’s throat. “No, you never told me that.”

“You were always like that,” Sepela said. “Always looking out for the smaller ones, always making sure nobody got hurt. Like a mama bird, a little fafa.”

“Ma,” John said, and shook his head.

Liz looked at him curiously.

John ignored her and ate his slice.

Was that why he was still working in Child Protection? Because there was some part of him that still needed to watch out for the smaller ones? Maybe it was. And maybe, just like with Tyrone, he couldn’t walk away from Caleb until he’d fixed the problem. Except it would take more to fix Caleb than some spare sandwiches.

Jesus, he still couldn’t believe they’d got parole. Why did that have to come now, on top of everything else?

Sepela set a coffee down in front of him and patted him on the shoulder. “You work too hard, John. You too, Liz.”

Right on cue, John’s phone rang. He went into the hallway to answer it. “Faimu.”

A chink of light appeared under Jessie’s closed door, then vanished again. She was still awake too, and obviously didn’t want to see him.

“John, it’s Aaron.”

“What are you still doing there?”

Aaron sighed. “Yeah, we’re about to knock over a search warrant for a secondary crime scene. Want to help us out?”

“Where do you want us?”

“We’ll meet you at the Hungry Jack’s on Wembley Road and go in together from there.”

“Okay,” John said. “We’re about ten minutes away. See you there.” He ended the call and leaned in the kitchen doorway. “Liz, we have to go. Search warrant for the homicide.”

“Thanks for the slice, Mrs. Faimu,” Liz said. “I’ll get the container back to John.”

Sepela gave her a quick hug. “You be careful, both of you.”

John kissed her on the top of the head. “Try and get some sleep, Ma.”

They headed outside to the car and hadn’t even made it to the main road before Liz asked what she’d been dying to ask inside.

“What’s a—” Liz made a face. “I want to say falafel.”

John kept his eyes on the road. “Fafa. It’s short for fa’afafine. It’s a Samoan thing.”

“Well, durr.” Liz snorted. “Seriously, don’t make me Google it because I would never be able to spell it.”

John sighed. “I don’t consider myself fa’afafine.”

“What is it?” A serious note had crept into Liz’s voice. “If you want to tell me. You don’t have to.”

“A fa’afafine is a boy who is like a girl,” John said at last.

“Like trans?” Liz asked.

“No,” John said. “Not necessarily trans, or even gay, though they can be. Mostly these days I think they are. Traditionally, it was a boy who was raised to do girls’ work, and who acted like a girl. It’s like a third gender. There’s not really a word for it in English, but I guess it corresponds best with non-binary.”

“Huh.”

John could almost hear her brain ticking over. “It’s not like it’s Samoan for camp.”

“Lucky,” Liz said, “because you are so far from camp we’d have to send out a search party.”

John snorted. “My dad’s cousin back in Samoa is fa’afafine. Six days a week he dresses like a woman, and on Sundays he smashes heads together when he plays footy. It’s not like he wears drag, though, because he’s not a man wearing a woman’s clothes, he’s fa’afafine. Some wear women’s clothes, some don’t. Some sleep with men, some don’t.”

“Is he gay?” Liz asked. “Wait, scratch that. He’s a fafa…shit.”

“Fa’afafine,” John said. “He doesn’t identify as a gay man, even though he lives with a man, because he’s not a man who is attracted to men. He’s a third gender.”

“But you’re not?”

“I’m a man who sleeps with men.” He shrugged. “Maybe if I’d been raised in Samoa I would think differently, I don’t know, but I’ve always felt like a gay man.”

“Well, at least I can spell that one.”

John shook his head at her and rolled his eyes, and concentrated on driving.

One search warrant, one cold cheeseburger and six hours later, John finally fell into bed and slept like he hadn’t for days.

Five nights down, two to go.

Chapter Four

One of the nurses had given Caleb a radio. John had to take it off him to get his attention, and even then his gaze kept fixing on the radio instead of John.

“Caleb. Look at me, mate.”

He lifted his face. Sticking plaster, bruises, and a knot of black stitches in the corner of his lip.

“Caleb, your dad is here to see you.”

“My dad?”

John put a hand on Caleb’s arm. “We talked about this, remember?”

Jesus, Darren Fletcher would have broken down walls to get here, but he’d waited. Twelve long days he’d waited for a moment he’d never really believed would come.

“He’s just going to come in and say hello,” John said.

The door, left open a fraction, squeaked as Darren came in.

“Hello, Caleb.” Darren’s voice shook on that unfamiliar name.

Caleb grabbed for John’s hand. “I don’t know who that is. Don’t make me go with him.”

“It’s okay,” John told him. He couldn’t look at Darren. “Nobody’s going to make you do anything.”

* * *

On Tuesday afternoon John drove down to the Gold Coast hinterland to visit Darren and Caleb. Their house was a large renovated Queenslander relocated from Brisbane and raised to legal level. It was built in downstairs with a bar and entertainment area that Darren rarely used. The upstairs was hugged by a wide veranda. Wooden plantation shutters let the light and the breeze into the house from the veranda. It was a hell of a nice house, way out of John’s budget even if he lived a dozen lifetimes at his current rate of pay, and the views from the front veranda reached all the way to the coast. It was somewhere John usually liked to visit but he wasn’t looking forward to it today, and not just because Caleb was always so off-kilter after an episode.

Darren met him at the front door and put a beer into his hand.

“I shouldn’t,” John said, but it was a weak protest.

“You can crash in the spare room, John. You’re always welcome here.”

“How’s Caleb?”

“Sleeping,” Darren said. He frowned slightly. “You okay?”

Shit. There was no good way to say it, so John dived right in: “Ethan Gray is out on parole at the end of the month.”

Darren blanched. “Where?”

“He’ll be living in Toowoomba,” John said. “I can’t tell you where.”

“No,” Darren agreed, his face slack with shock. “He was supposed to get ten years, John.”

“I know.”

Gray’s good behaviour behind bars counted for shit as far as John was concerned, in comparison to the behaviour that had got him sent there in the first place.

“He’s recanted,” John said. “Renounced, whatever. And if he tries to make contact with anyone who gave evidence against the group, or anyone from the group, he’s straight back in prison.” He sighed. “And it’s not just him.”

“Who else?”

“Leon Harrison,” John said. “Ben Quartermain. And Analise.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Darren said.

“Yeah,” John said, and followed him inside, because what else was there to say?

They walked quietly through the sunlit house. The casement windows were all open, letting in the breeze, showing off the view down the hills toward the distant glittering sprawl of the Gold Coast.

Caleb’s door was shut.

They went out onto the back deck.

John had spent a lot of time on Darren Fletcher’s back deck; a lot of long days that had stretched into afternoons and then into evenings. It was almost dusk now. The late afternoon light was golden, burnishing the back lawn and painting the narrow eucalypts in a glowing haze. As John looked down toward where the lawn gave way to brush and scrub, searching for the narrow track that cut through to the creek that ran along the bottom boundary of the property, a flock of rainbow lorikeets wheeled across the pink, cloud-streaked sky.

It was tranquil here; close enough to the city that Darren could still commute comfortably to work, but far enough away that it was a sanctuary.

John thought of Caleb, asleep inside.

“I don’t like him on the sedatives,” Darren said, leaning on the balustrade and staring out at the view.

Evidently they were both thinking of Caleb.

John didn’t answer. He lifted his beer, wondered idly how many he’d drunk on this deck over all the years, and waited to Darren to say something more.

“He calls them his zombie pills,” Darren said. He sighed, and came back to sit at the table. The canvas chair squeaked as he settled into it. “It’s like he’s not really in there anymore. I almost prefer the tantrums.”

“It’s been a while since one of those, hasn’t it?” John asked.

“A long time.” Darren scrubbed his hand over his stubbled chin. “I thought we were finally getting past it all, you know? I want to know that I can go away for a weekend and not have to call him every few hours. I want to let him go out without worrying that he’ll have a drink, or pop a pill, and think it’s a good idea to hurt himself.”

John nodded.

“I just want him to be okay,” Darren said in a low voice.

“Yeah.” John stared out at the light. “Me too.”

Darren sighed, and rubbed his hands over his face. “Can we…can we hold off telling him until after his birthday?”

“Yeah,” John said. “Yeah, we can do that.”

They sat in silence for a while, until Darren’s phone buzzed. He reached for it, and read the message. “That’s all I need.”

“What is it?”

“My foreman’s broken his arm on site. There’s a workplace inspector on the way.” Darren rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What time is it?”

John checked his watch. “Half past five.”

Darren looked longingly at his beer, and then at John. “I should probably go and meet them.”

“I’ll stay,” John said, before Darren even asked.

“There’s steak in the fridge,” Darren said. “I was going to throw some on the barbecue, so you can help yourself.”

“No problem,” John said. “I’ll keep your beer cold.”

“Thanks.” Darren stood and went back inside.

* * *

John wasn’t sure when the line had started blurring with him and Darren. Probably sometime very soon after that first official visit to the worksite just off Cavill Avenue: “Senior Sergeant Brian Keller. Constable John Faimu. We’re with the Logan CPIU. Can we come in, please?” That first meeting, Darren had been too shocked to offer John a coffee. The second, at home this time, he had. By the third, John knew where the kettle was. By the end of those first few months, when John kept stopping in to keep Darren appraised on the investigation and see how Caleb was going, he almost felt like a part of this fledgling, awkward family. The linchpin, maybe. Absolutely the cornerstone. And he’d never really stepped away again.

John walked through the house, glancing at the pictures on the walls. There were no photographs older than a few years. Caleb with his high school Senior Certificate — correspondence school. Caleb on his first day of university. He’d only lasted a few weeks. Caleb at one of Darren’s worksites, grinning out from underneath a hardhat. Darren, an arm around him, beaming. Sometimes John could look at those pictures and imagine Caleb was like that all the time: smiling, happy, normal. And sometimes he was, for months on end.

John walked down the hallway to Caleb’s room and opened the door quietly.

Caleb was curled up on his side in bed, facing the door. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open. His left arm hugged a pillow to his chest. His right arm extended below the pillow and beyond the edge of the mattress. His hand, pale in the darkness, hung there. Like Adam’s, John thought, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, except for the bandages on his wrists. Except there was no hand of God reaching back.

Caleb’s bedroom was dark and cold. The air conditioner hummed on the wall. Caleb had kicked off his blankets.

Shaking his head, John moved into the room. He drew the blanket up over Caleb, letting it drop gently over his shoulders. It was crazy how much he loved this guy. Couldn’t even walk past his bedroom without checking he was sleeping comfortably.

In the beginning it was something fierce and protective. Big, scary John would kill the next fucker who touched a hair on the kid’s head. That was eight long years ago. It was something else altogether now. He loved Caleb. Caleb would break his heart one day, but John would always love him.

He closed the door again and went to the kitchen. He took the steaks out of the fridge, and headed down the back steps to the barbecue. He lit it, and watched the sunset while he waited for it to heat up. He took a seat at the outdoor table, and checked his phone for messages.

“Hey, John.”

John looked up to see Caleb leaning on the veranda rail. He was wearing nothing but his pyjama pants and his bandages. The sunset made his skin glow. His hair stood up at strange angles.

“Hey, mate. How are you feeling?”

“M’okay.” Caleb stifled a yawn. “Where’s Dad?”

“He had to go into work.” John shoved his phone into his pocket and stood. “I’ll put the steaks on. Want to see if you can find some salad or something?”

“Okay.” Caleb padded back inside.

John gave the steaks a few minutes on each side then went upstairs to join Caleb. They ate on the back veranda, as the night closed in. It brought with it a cool breeze, and Caleb shivered.

“You doing okay?” John asked him.

Caleb’s gaze found his. “You always ask me that.”

“Is that a problem?”

“No,” Caleb said. He picked at one of his bandages. “Sometimes.”

“Why?”

“Because I already feel like shit for doing it.”

“I don’t mean to make you feel like that.”

“I know that.” Caleb frowned. “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t.”

“Okay.” John chased a cherry tomato around his plate with a fork, before he gave up and picked it up in his fingers. “So what do you want to talk about?

“I dunno.” Caleb shrugged, and then smiled slightly. “How’s work, I guess?”

John smiled as well. “I could bore you to death if you get me started on work.”

Caleb’s smile grew. “But it’s okay?”

“Yeah, it’s okay.” John tried not to think how he’d sat in the lunchroom while Liz had told him exactly who was going to be paroled. “I finished nights this morning, so I’ve got five whole days off.”

“Any plans?”

John’s gaze fell on Caleb’s bandaged wrists as he reached for more salad. “Not really. I’ll probably catch a movie later in the week. Interested?”

“Maybe.” Caleb picked the crust off his bread.

“What about you?” John asked. “Your dad said something last month about getting you a job with a mate of his.”

“An architect,” Caleb said. “Just office stuff, I guess. He’s okay. He knows about…about stuff, so it wouldn’t matter so much if I needed time off, you know?”

“That’s good.” Guilt stabbed John. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought this up, knowing what he did about Ethan Gray and Analise and the others. Because there was no knowing how Caleb would react, and no telling if he’d be ready to step out into the world again once he found out.

Caleb shrugged again. “I’m thinking about it, but I’ll probably do it.” He flashed another smile. “Dad’s probably sick of me sitting around doing nothing, right? I bet he can’t wait to get rid of me.”

John froze. “Don’t ever say that.”

Caleb’s smile faltered. “It was a joke.”

“Don’t even joke about that, Caleb.” Because the things he laughed about now, John knew, came back to haunt him when he was alone. “You’re the most important thing in his life. You know that, right?”

Mine too.

“Yeah, I know that.” Caleb dropped his gaze. “I know that.”

In the yard, a chorus of cicadas chirped and buzzed. The first stars appeared, blinking in the darkening sky.

“It’s your birthday soon,” John said after a while. “Suppose I’ll have to buy you a present.”

Caleb’s smile came back, shy and tentative. “You don’t have to.”

“I probably will though,” John teased. “Any ideas?”

“Books, I guess.” Caleb’s eyes shone for a moment, and his smile widened. “Guess what? Dad’s getting me a dog!”

“Is he?” John had been sworn to secrecy for weeks on that, but Darren had obviously caved. “What sort?”

“We’re going to go to the shelter and pick one out.” Caleb grew more animated. “I went on the website, and there’s one I want. She’s a red kelpie. She’s seven months old and she’s called Cricket.”

“Sounds good,” John said with a grin.

Is this what you need, Caleb? Another living thing whose love won’t be enough to keep you from falling?

“Yeah, it’s good,” Caleb said. His smile vanished and he stared at his plate. “Yeah, maybe. I suppose it is.”

And just like that the spark was gone.

“If I don’t—if I don’t wreck it, it would be good.”

There had been another dog once, John remembered, when Caleb had come home all those years ago. A German shepherd cross, who’d borne the brunt of one of Caleb’s early tantrums. Darren had dragged it, shivering and whimpering, from underneath his bed and driven it to a friend.

“You won’t wreck it, Caleb,” John said. “You’re different now.”

“What if I’m not?”

“You are.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Caleb wouldn’t look at him. “I think I’ll take my pill now.”

“You don’t want to watch TV for a while first?”

Caleb shook his head. “No, I think I’ll take my pill and go to bed.”

* * *

Caleb was almost twenty-three, but he had a bedtime routine like a child’s. This was one of the things that he’d come up with in therapy. He needed his routines. It was when he disregarded them, like he had on Friday night, that it went to shit for him and everyone around him.

In too many ways it was just like babysitting Jessie when she’d been a little kid.

Shower first. John helped Caleb wrap his bandages in Glad wrap, hating how practiced he was at this.

He washed the dishes while Caleb showered, and stacked them neatly in the rack by the sink. Then he sat at the kitchen bench and flicked through a week-old newspaper. Caleb, wrapped in a towel, headed for his bedroom to get changed. Minutes later he was back again, in fresh pyjama pants, heading back into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

His pills sat on the kitchen bench in front of John.

John felt the heat of Caleb’s body as he leaned past him to grab the bottle. That pale skin brushed against his arm. Caleb murmured an apology, and John stared down at the newspaper instead of staring at Caleb’s lean torso and the way his nipples pebbled from their brief contact.

Caleb unscrewed the lid of the bottle and tapped a pill out into his cupped palm. He showed it to John, so John could see he’d only taken one.

“I’ll get you your water,” John said, standing and putting some distance between them.

Caleb padded barefoot behind him to the sink.

John filled a glass from the tap and passed it to him.

The light reflected on Caleb’s throat and he tilted his head back to swallow.

It never even occurred to John not to go with him to his bedroom, because this was Caleb’s routine. He leaned in the doorway as Caleb climbed into bed, and watched as he drew a book out from underneath his pillow.

“Do you want your light out now, or do you want to read for a while?”

“Read,” Caleb said. “Ten minutes? Be a zombie in ten minutes.”

“Okay, I’ll come back and turn it off then.”

“Okay,” Caleb murmured.

John went back to the kitchen, and flicked through the newspaper again. He stopped at the crossword, recognising Caleb’s handwriting in the answers. He hadn’t finished it. In places the answers had been overwritten several times, and the squares coloured in with black ink. That was Caleb, always not quite managing to make it work. Always not quite fitting.

John wondered what he was reading. Manga, probably. He devoured the stuff. Once, John had taken him to a comic book shop in the Valley, and Caleb had lit up like Christmas. He’d talked for ages with the guy behind the counter and then, in the car on the way home when John had asked him about what he’d bought, he’d shut down again. Shrugged and mumbled, and stared out of the window.

“John?”

John glanced at his watch. It hadn’t been ten minutes yet. Barely five. “Yeah, mate?” he called back.

“Can you turn my light out now?”

John wandered back down the hallway. “Are you finished reading?”

“Yeah.” Caleb ran a hand through his scruffy brown hair. “Do you want to talk a bit though?”

“Light on or off?”

“Off,” Caleb said.

John flicked the switch and sat on the end of Caleb’s bed. “I’m not much good at bedtime stories.”

Caleb smiled slightly in the gloom. “No, I just wanted to say thanks for the other night. For coming to make sure I was okay, I mean. I know you were working and stuff…”

“Do you remember what I said at the hospital?” John reached out and took Caleb’s hand, threading those slender fingers through his own. “If you feel like that again, I want you to promise that you’ll call someone. Me, or your dad, or your doctor.”

“I mean to,” Caleb whispered. “I do, I swear. It’s just stuff gets in the way. Big stuff.”

John squeezed his hand. “I know.”

He didn’t, not really. Nobody except Caleb knew why he felt he was alone in the dark those times. Why there was no way out.

Caleb stared at him. “You won’t give up on me, will you, John?”

“Never.” It was so easy to say, here in this room. It didn’t feel like a lie. He wasn’t as sleep-deprived like on Friday night, wasn’t as stressed. He wasn’t the same person who’d spilled his guts to Liz in the car.

“And every time he does something like this, every time he thinks he’d be better off dead, a part of me agrees.”

Guilt bit at him, and John was glad the light was off. He didn’t want Caleb to see even a hint of it in his face.

“Good,” Caleb said. He sighed, and his eyes flickered shut for a moment before he opened them again. “That guy, that guy from the other night?”

“What about him?”

“We didn’t do anything. I freaked out before we could.” Another sigh, as the drug began to take him. “It was a mistake.”

“It’s okay to make mistakes,” John told him. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be just some guy,” Caleb said. “Not the first time.”

John almost smiled at that. Yeah, but it usually was, right?

“It was supposed to be you,” Caleb whispered, and then sleep took him.

Jesus.

John sat there for a long while, staring at Caleb’s face and trying to reconcile it with the fifteen-year-old kid from eight long years ago. He was a grown man now, except when he wasn’t. He was smart and funny and confident, except when he wasn’t.

Jesus.

Who’d have thought Caleb would have found a whole new way to break John’s heart?

He carefully removed Caleb’s hand from his, drew the blankets up, and went back outside.

* * *

“Any problems?” Darren asked a few hours later, finding John sitting outside on the deck.

Just the one.

“No,” John said. “We had dinner and he took a pill and went to bed. How’s your foreman?”

The canvas chair creaked as Darren sat down. “He’ll be fine. He tripped over the gutter, can you believe that? But at least it’s not a site safety violation. Nothing I can do about council gutters.”

“I guess not.”

Darren unwrapped the burger he’d carried in with him. “He went to sleep okay?”

“Yeah.” John sighed. “Look, you know we don’t have secrets when it comes to Caleb, right?”

Darren froze with the burger halfway to his mouth. “What?”

“He said something weird, that’s all.” John shook his head. “He said the guy from the other night, he wished it was me.”

Silence.

Darren’s chair creaked again. “Well, that’s not a surprise.”

John’s heart thumped wildly. “Isn’t it? It was a bloody surprise to me!”

Was it? Fuck, he didn’t know.

“He looks up to you,” Darren said. “Jesus, John, he idolises you. You saved him. And you’re both gay. In Caleb’s mind, I guess that adds up, you know?”

In Caleb’s mind.

“Yeah,” John said.

“It’s never that simple though, is it?” Darren said quietly.

“No.” John wondered if Darren was asking him, or telling him. It didn’t matter. The answer was the same. He didn’t have the right to think of Caleb that way. Because if he started it, and then it ended…

“I bleed and you’re here.”

He was Caleb’s cornerstone.

Maybe it was still night work. He was still tired, his body clock was out of whack, and he wasn’t thinking straight. Couldn’t be, if even in the tiniest corner of his mind he’d added it up the same way as Caleb had. He loved Caleb and Caleb loved him. It should have been perfect, but it wasn’t. There was too much at risk, and not just the friendship and trust he’d cultivated over the years with both Caleb and Darren. Because if he started it, and then it ended…

Might as well rip Caleb’s heart out and leave him to die.

Might as well take a knife and slice open Caleb’s wrists himself.

All these years John had made a strange deal with the voice in the back of his head. It was okay to love Caleb. It was okay to need him like oxygen. It was okay to want him in a way that could never happen. All of that was okay, as long as Caleb didn’t know. Love like that, you carried like a burden. You wore it like a hair shirt. You hid it like a secret. You didn’t let it out in the open, because it was too dangerous. Love like that, it could destroy everything.

It could destroy Caleb.

John didn’t give a fuck about his own heart, not really, but he couldn’t risk Caleb’s.

John stared out at the trees. It was too dark to see them, but he could hear the rosellas squawking in the branches. They were like bad neighbours, coming home late, drunk and obnoxious, screaming and laughing until they finally settled down.

“Another beer?” Darren asked, standing up.

“Yeah, thanks.”

What he had with Caleb was enough. It was more than he could ever have hoped for when he’d seen that broken kid in the tank. He would never have thought that one day he’d be grown, one day they’d be friends, that Caleb would even survive. John had been there for every painstaking step. He’d seen how far Caleb had come, and how easy it was for him to stumble. He had no right to want more.

Darren came back with the beers, and John shook his mood away. They sat together in the darkness, and planned in low voices how to break it to Caleb that his tormentors were being released on parole.

Chapter Five

“What happened next, Naomi?”

The girl shrugged her skinny shoulders and twisted her fingers in her lap. “Caleb and Simon were wicked, so Ethan put them in the tank. That’s where you go when you’re bad.”

“Did you ever have to go there?” Brian exchanged a glance with John.

“I’m not wicked,” Naomi said.

“I know you’re not.” Brian’s voice was calm. “But maybe someone made a mistake?”

Naomi leaned forward across the desk and lowered her voice. “Once, I took some bread from the kitchen, and Brother Ben put me in the tank. It wasn’t nice in there. I had to stay the whole night.”

“Is that what happened to Caleb and Simon? Did they have to stay the whole night?”

Naomi drew circles on the desk with her finger. “No, they were there a long time. I could hear them crying.”

“Did you hear anything else?”

Naomi wrinkled her nose. “Screaming. I heard them screaming. But then I could only hear Caleb.”

* * *

John arrived early for Caleb’s birthday party, ostensibly to give Darren a hand setting up, but mostly to catch up with Caleb and see how he was going. He hadn’t even made it halfway up the front stairs before the door was flung open and Caleb stood there, smiling.

“How do I look?” Caleb asked. Gave him a twirl, even.

John felt a smile spreading across his face. “Not bad, for a skinny white boy.”

Dress pants, a shirt and tie. Black shoes polished to a shine.

“I feel underdressed,” John said, in his jeans and a T-shirt.

Caleb’s gaze raked him up and down. “You look good.” A blush crept over his face, and he turned away quickly. “Anyway, I’m not wearing this for the party. This is for work.”

He stepped back from the door to let John in.

John closed the door behind himself. “Is anyone else here yet?”

“No. Dad’s gone to get some ice,” Caleb said. “Do you want to see the rest of my work clothes?”

“Okay.” John followed Caleb through to his bedroom.

Caleb showed him his wardrobe: dress pants and different shirts, and at least eight different ties. A suit jacket for winter, as though Caleb would still be working there then.

No harm in planning for the best, John chastised himself as he admired it. “These look good. You’re not turning into a yuppie, are you?”

Caleb snorted, and raked his fingers through his hair. “No! Besides, that’s so outdated!”

John laughed and rearranged one of the ties on the rack. “Yeah, well, I’m old, remember?”

“You’re not old,” Caleb said.

John became aware that their shoulders were touching as they stood together in front of the open closet. He stepped away and pulled the wrapped present out of his bag. “No, you are, aren’t you? Twenty-three today.”

Caleb smiled shyly and took the present. “Thanks, John.”

He sat on his bed and unwrapped it.

DVDs, a book voucher, and the necklace. A small boar’s tusk necklace, with a traditional design cut into it. Caleb picked it up and looked at John inquiringly.

“That was my dad’s,” John said.

Caleb’s eyes widened. “John...I think...” He sucked in a nervous breath. “I think maybe this should stay in your family.”

O le fogavaʻa e tasi.

One family.

Because you’re my family too, Caleb.

John forced a smile. “Hey, you never refuse a gift from a Samoan. That’s bad manners, you know.”

Caleb clamped his mouth shut. He closed his hand around the necklace and stood, abruptly stepping forward to embrace John. “Thank you. I’ll look after it, promise.”

John held him back. It felt good to hold Caleb so close, to splay his fingers on his back, to have him breathing against John’s throat. “I know you will, mate.”

A perfect quiet moment. If they could stay like this forever, it would be okay. Caleb would be okay.

John wasn’t sure which of them became aware of it first: the press of Caleb’s hardening cock against John’s thigh. But then Caleb was wheeling away, red-faced, rifling through the shirts in his closet again, pretending nothing had happened. John pretended too. Pretended that for just a second he hadn’t felt a jolt of want go through him. Of need. Of sheer fucking wonder. That in that second he hadn’t suddenly seen what he could have with Caleb. What they could both have, if only it hadn’t been the most dangerous idea in the world.

“I like the green,” he said as Caleb pulled out a shirt. “That will look good on you.”

Caleb couldn’t look him in the eye.

A few minutes later John heard Darren’s car, and escaped to help him set up.

* * *

By dusk, all the guests had arrived. John didn’t know many of them—friends and colleagues of Darren’s. The small circle of people who knew enough about Caleb’s history not to say the wrong thing. Not that Caleb got close enough to offer them the opportunity. He retreated to the veranda as soon as people began to arrive.

John joined him there, and Caleb pointed out a few different people. The architect he was going to work for, his wife, Darren’s foreman with his arm in a cast.

For a while it was okay.

And then it wasn’t.

“See that woman down there?” Caleb leaned his elbows on the veranda rail, dangling his hands into space. “The one in the blue dress?”

John saw the woman. She was in her forties, maybe, with brunette curls and a nice figure. If you went for that sort of thing. “Yeah.”

“I’m ruining her life,” Caleb said.

John turned his head to look at him. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s Emily,” Caleb said. “Emily Corrigan. She works at the council, in the planning department, and Dad goes in to see her at least once a week to lodge plans. They’ve known each other for years. She’s divorced, and she has two kids.” He lifted a hand and pointed. “That’s them. Alex and Kate. Twelve and ten. I’m ruining their lives as well.”

“How are you doing that?”

Caleb withdrew a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He lit one, inhaled, and then held it loosely between his dangling fingers. The smoke curled off it and vanished. “Dad’s been dating her for six months. She likes him, her kids like him, and he’s put everything on fucking ice because of me.”

“What your dad does with his relationships has nothing to do with you,” John said.

“Of course it fucking does,” Caleb said.

Of course it did.

“You smoking again?”

Caleb shrugged, and inhaled again. “So?”

So don’t be such a brat.

So less of the attitude.

So I’m worried.

John didn’t say anything.

Caleb shook his head. “Just him and me, and this big fucking house that was built for a fucking family, and they could all live here and be happy if it wasn’t for me.”

The cigarette fell from his fingers and onto the boards of the veranda. John stepped forward and crushed it under his shoe.

“That’s not true.”

Caleb reeled back from the rail. “Of course it’s fucking true!” he shouted.

From the yard, people turned and looked. John saw Darren hurrying toward the house, the barbecue fork still in his hand. Emily in the blue dress stepped forward to say something, and Darren brushed her off.

Of course it was fucking true.

They were all stuck in limbo with Caleb.

“Look at this house, John! Look at this fucking house!” Caleb kicked at the rails, turned, stalked to the door into the kitchen, and smacked the wall with his fist. “Could put a pool in. A treehouse. Are they too old for that? I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. It’s a fucking waste.”

“Take a breath, Caleb.”

Caleb stared at the sliding glass door, and raised his fist again.

“Enough!” No way in hell was John going to watch him put himself in hospital. He was behind Caleb in a heartbeat, catching his fist, getting his other arm back, and restraining him just like he’d done countless times to angry drunks in the Valley on a Friday night back when he was in uniform.

Caleb struggled at first—they always did—but John was a wall of solid muscle behind him. Like any skinny white boy had a hope in hell of winning this fight.

“Okay, now take that breath.” John stepped forward, sandwiching Caleb between his chest and the wall. Caleb whimpered, swore, but the fight was gone. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

Caleb sucked in a shaking breath. “Let me go, John.”

“In a minute, mate.”

Caleb tensed at that, but there was nowhere to go. After a moment his shoulders sagged again and he leaned his forehead against the wall.

John held him there, turning his head as Darren reached the top of the steps.

“I’ll get his meds,” Darren said.

“I’m sorry,” Caleb whispered to the wall.

“I know you are,” John said.

Caleb was still saying it a few minutes later as John walked him inside to his bedroom. The blinds were closed, the room sunk into comfortable gloom.

“I’m sorry. I ruined the barbecue.”

“No, you didn’t.” John slid his hands down Caleb’s arms. “Take your shoes off.”

Caleb toed them off.

“You okay to sleep in those jeans?”

Caleb fumbled with the fly and pushed the jeans down his legs. He kicked them off and sat heavily on his bed. His shoulders slumped and he picked at a thread in his boxer briefs. “I’m sorry.”

John squatted in front of him, the way he did when he was talking to small kids who found his size intimidating. “You’ve got nothing to apologise for, okay? Have a rest, and I’ll save you a piece of steak.”

Darren entered the room. He held out a cup of water to Caleb, and a pill. Caleb took the pill, made a face, and put it in his mouth. He swallowed it down with the water.

John rose to his feet.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I ruined it. I ruined everything.”

“Caleb, it’s okay.” Darren helped Caleb settle, and pulled the covers over him. “I love you.”

“It would be easier if you didn’t.” Caleb’s gaze flicked to John as he said it, then back to Darren.

“Don’t say that,” Darren said, his voice cracking on the words. “Don’t ever say that, Caleb.”

John’s throat ached.

“Dad,” Caleb whispered as he slipped away into sleep, “I’m sorry. Do I still get my dog?”

“Yeah,” Darren said, his voice tight. “Yeah, you do.”

They sat with him until he was gone.

* * *

A party without the guest of honour—there had been a few of those for Caleb over the years, because he so often got overwhelmed. So often stumbled. The guests ate and left early. The birthday cake was left in the fridge. The candles sat unopened in their packet on the kitchen bench.

Darren rinsed the dishes and John loaded them into the dishwasher.

“So, now Frank’s seen it,” Darren said.

The architect, John remembered. “He knew, though?”

“Knowing and seeing aren’t the same.” Darren scrubbed at a plate. He sighed. “What if...what if Analise finds us? What is she turns up on our doorstep one day?”

“She’s not allowed to contact you,” John said. “If she breaches her parole, she’ll be back inside. You said yourself that she wiped you.”

No letters from prison. She hadn’t even turned and faced her husband at her trial. The only contact they’d had, from what John knew, was the divorce papers sent through their respective solicitors.

“I know,” Darren said. “I look at her picture sometimes. Wonder how the fuck it got like that. She was never...” He frowned, as though searching for the right word. “Religious. But she was spiritual, I guess. She was always looking for something. When she started talking about this Christian group she’d met, I was glad for her. She was a bit lost, I think, home alone with Ja—with Caleb.”

John had seen the photo album before. Darren had showed it to him. The son he used to have, the one he had now, and the unbridgeable fucking gap between them.

A baby photo. A little baby, new and tiny, red and wrinkled, so damn ugly, was lying cradled in his dad’s arms. Darren was young, ecstatic, shell-shocked, and full of pride. Caleb had a face like one of those troll dolls.

Except underneath the photograph it said Daddy and Jason, not Daddy and Caleb. Every single photograph in the album was of Jason Fletcher, before he was broken. Before he became Caleb.

“Jason’s never coming home,” Darren had said once. “I’ve got Caleb now.”

There were photographs of Analise and the baby as well: Mummy and Jason.

Fuck, John hated that bitch Analise Fletcher. It was so hard to look at her and see just what the photograph showed: a beaming new mother, exhausted but elated. John wondered what that woman would say, if he could have told her what she would do to her precious son. Bitch.

John sometimes wondered what Caleb thought of her. If he thought of her at all.

“She was so happy after she met them,” Darren said, staring out of the window behind the sink and into the darkness outside. “I never even saw it coming. Just came home that night to an empty house.”

“How could you see it coming?”

“I know.” Darren sighed and rolled his shoulders. “Did you see that program on TV last night? It was about Downs Syndrome.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“About the people with it, and their parents,” Darren said. “This one woman, she was old. Like in her seventies. And frail. And she kept saying she wouldn’t live forever, and worrying about what her daughter would do when she was gone. And that’s me, isn’t it? There’s gonna come a time when he’s alone. How’s he going to manage then?”

What was there to say to that? That it was a long time away. No counting on it. That Caleb would be stronger then. No counting on that either. Sometimes John thought that both he and Darren were too close to see Caleb’s progress objectively. Sometimes when his psychiatrist said Caleb was progressing, it felt like they were all going backwards instead. And sometimes when the psychiatrist warned Caleb was at the top of a downward spiral, they didn’t see that either. They lived every pitch and trough with him. Didn’t see the pattern of the tides when they were struggling against every fucking wave.

There was nothing to say, so John didn’t say it. Instead, he said, “I’m off tomorrow. I’ll take him to the beach if he’s up for it.”

“The animal shelter opens at nine,” Darren said. “You can go and collect the dog if you want. I was going to do it on the way home from work.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll find you the paperwork,” Darren said. For a moment he froze, hands held above the dishwater, droplets raining down into the suds. When he spoke, his voice wavered between hope and caution. “Maybe the dog will help.”

John reached over and fished a plate out of the sink. “Maybe it will.”

But, of course, dogs didn’t live forever either.

* * *

Lights slid up the windscreen as John drove toward home. He was tired, and worried about Caleb. Worried about Ma and Jess as well. He’d intended to go straight to his place, but instead he found himself heading for the Beenleigh Cemetery. It was closed, but John hopped the fence. If anyone called it in, he’d flash his badge to whoever responded and say he’d followed some kids over the fence or something.

The night was quiet and cool.

John hadn’t been here since his dad’s funeral, and everything looked different at night. It took him a while to find the headstone. Took him even longer to stand in front of it and get out the words that were stuck in his throat.

“I miss you, Tama,” he said. “We’re falling apart without you.”

His eyes stung.

“I gave Caleb his present tonight,” he said. He closed his eyes, and tried to imagine his dad’s careworn face, his easy smile and those dark eyes that always saw more than he let on. “Your ula nifu pua’a. It’s for strength, you told me once. The best hunters wear them. And Caleb is the strongest person I know, but he’s hurting so much, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. And soon we have to tell him that they’re getting out of prison, and I’m so scared for him.”

He wiped his eyes and cleared his throat.

“Ma misses you. I don’t think she’s sleeping. And Jessie is going off the rails. She’s sneaking out at night, and not coming home when she’s told.” He huffed out a bitter laugh. “And I haven’t seen Mary in weeks. All we do these days is text about Jess. I think David’s the only one of us keeping his shit together since we lost you, Tama.”

David, always so calm and level-headed. John wondered if that was what was keeping him afloat now, or if it was more than that. Because David had Tee, didn’t he? He had someone at his side, someone who loved him, someone holding his hand when he stumbled. What did John have to go home to except a silent, empty apartment?

“I love him, Tama,” he said to his dad’s headstone. “I love him, and I want him, and I know he wants me too, but we can’t. We can’t. Because if it went wrong, it’d hurt him too much. I can’t give him that, and then maybe one day take it away from him. I can’t risk it. I can’t risk him.”

He closed his stinging eyes, and reached out to run his fingers over the top edge of the headstone.

“We can’t.”

A lone curlew cried mournfully from somewhere close by, invisible in the darkness, echoing John’s heartache.

Chapter Six

Naomi slid the unopened chocolate bar into her sleeve. John gave her another one. She liked to be bribed, this skinny little girl. Made it easier to deal with her than Caleb. She was younger than Caleb, sharper and more suspicious than she was scared, but nobody had ever beaten the shit out of her and killed a boy in front of her.

“Brother Ben is in charge of the new people,” she told John. “When they come, he gives them robes and takes their old things away.”

Ben Quartermain.

“What about Brother Leon?” John asked her.

Leon Harrison.

Naomi unwrapped her chocolate. “I don’t like him.” She lowered her voice. “He has a stick.”

“A stick?”

“For hitting people.” Naomi demonstrated with her chocolate, raising her arm and bringing it down in a swinging arc. She was careful not to smash the chocolate bar on the desk.

“Did he hit Caleb and Simon?”

“They’re sinners,” Naomi announced. “They’re bad. Simon ran away. Except you can’t outrun hell, Ethan says.”

“And what is Ethan in charge of?” John asked her.

She opened her mouth, and then frowned. She tilted her head to the side and looked at John as though he were simple. “Ethan is God. He’s in charge of everything.”

* * *

Caleb was subdued when John picked him up the next morning, but it didn’t last for long. As they got closer to the Gold Coast, he grew more animated. He fiddled with the radio, changing stations and turning the volume up when he found a song he liked. He jiggled his right leg impatiently.

“When I was a kid,” John told him, “there was nothing between Logan and the Coast except scrub. Heaps of gumtrees, then the theme parks, then gumtrees again. You knew you were getting close when you could smell the sea from the top of Brisbane Road. We used to go to the beach every weekend.”

“Not the theme parks?” Caleb asked.

“No. Dad was a council worker. We couldn’t afford that. I remember we got a coupon from the paper one school holidays. Twenty percent off. Dad said we still couldn’t afford it, so David and I lugged his lawnmower all over the neighbourhood for a whole week. Five bucks a lawn.” John smiled at the memory.

“You still didn’t go?”

“Nah. David left the lawnmower behind some guy’s car, and he backed over it. Everything we made, we had to spend on a new mower.” He laughed. “And Dad could never start it first go. Every time we heard it spluttering as he tried to get it going, we felt bad.”

“You could go now,” Caleb said suddenly. “You could afford it now.”

John considered that for a moment. There was still a part of him who was that eager, desperate kid, willing to believe that because he wanted to go so much it just had to happen. It had to. But he knew there was nothing behind those gates that could in any way match the expectations of his childhood. “Nah. I’d rather spend my money on other things now.”

Caleb eyed him curiously. “Like what?”

“Like rent,” John said. “And groceries.” Shit. He sounded like he was middle-aged. He needed to cultivate more vices. “And video games and beer.”

Caleb laughed. “I approve.”

He leaned forward to change radio channels again.

John always felt that bittersweet bite of nostalgia when he came to the Gold Coast. Not that he could really recognise the place much from when he was a kid. It was always changing. Always a new high rise on the ever-expanding skyline. Not that his dad had headed for the glitter strip of Surfers Paradise when he’d brought them down on weekends. They’d gone to Southport instead, where the beaches were less crowded. And the kids had begged money for ice creams while their parents had walked arm in arm along the beach. It wasn’t until John was older that he realised it had been his parents’ unspoken homesickness that had called them to the beach every weekend. That need to feel sand under their feet, and to breathe the salt air.

It was a homesickness that their children had inherited, John thought. None of them remembered much about Samoa, but it was in their blood. More than that, it was in all the stories that the families in the community told. John felt the strange ache of it sometimes. The pull of it.

He’d go there one day. Take Ma back so she could walk her beaches again.

Caleb finally settled on a song he liked and nodded to the beat.

John flashed him a smile as he drove.

The animal shelter was in Broadbeach Waters, on a large half-acre block only a few minutes from the waterfront, that John was sure would be worth millions. On either side, high rise units had been built where modest holiday houses used to be.

Caleb was out of the car before John had even turned off the ignition, clutching the paperwork.

The woman behind the counter was expecting them. “Hi, you must be here for Cricket. She’s a lovely, friendly girl. Very sociable.” She smiled at Caleb’s obvious excitement. “Would you like to meet her?”

“Yes, please!”

Fifteen minutes later, with an armful of dog food, treats, toys, and Cricket’s favourite blanket, John pushed the door open with difficulty. Caleb and Cricket followed him, Cricket tangling herself on her leash.

“Hope she doesn’t pee in my car,” John said.

“Can I sit in the back with her?” Caleb asked him, wearing a smile bigger than any John had seen on him in months. Maybe longer.

“Sure.”

They drove to the beach, and John laughed while Caleb paddled in the shallows with a very dubious Cricket. Dainty little girl didn’t like to get her paws wet. Not at first, anyway, but it didn’t take her long to change her mind.

John sat on the beach and watched as Caleb and Cricket splashed around. It was good to see Caleb happy. Carefree. His hair shone in the sunlight. The water glittered.

Afterward, they found a tap up on the grass, and Caleb washed his feet then cupped his hands so Cricket could drink. He was still smiling.

“Thanks, John,” he said. “Thanks for doing this.”

“It’s my pleasure,” John said. “Do you want to grab some takeaway on the way back?”

On the drive home, Cricket fell asleep in the backseat with her head resting on Caleb’s lap.

“Will she cry, do you think?” Caleb asked. “On their first night pups cry, don’t they?”

“Maybe,” John said. “How old did you say she was?”

“Seven months,” Caleb said. “She’s not really a puppy, I guess. More like a teenager. But she might still be scared, her first night in a strange place.” He was silent for a moment. “I’m not going to lock her up in the laundry or anything.”

There was a sudden stubbornness in his voice.

“I’m sure your dad won’t tell you to lock her up,” John said.

“She can sleep in my room,” Caleb said. “I don’t want her to be locked up. I don’t want her to cry.”

“Caleb, your dad won’t tell you to lock her up,” John assured him. He glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw the set of Caleb’s jaw, and the way he stroked Cricket’s head protectively. “He won’t.”

A part of Caleb would always be in that tank. Always locked up and screaming in pain. Waiting for someone to come. Waiting for days. And John could still remember what Brian had said: “We’ve got that warrant for the Children of Galilee or whatever the fuck they call themselves. We were going to knock it over today, but there’s some protest outside Parliament House so all our uniforms have been sent there. We’ll get to it after the weekend.”

Meanwhile, Caleb had been waiting. Screaming and crying until he didn’t have the strength anymore. But they hadn’t known that. They’d been going in to investigate claims that there were children on the property who weren’t going to school. No fucking way had they been expecting to find what they had. No fucking way.

They couldn’t have known. But it still bit at him. At all of them who’d been there, John guessed. Could they have made it in time to save Simon? Nobody was sure. Nobody wanted to look too closely, even if there was no way they could have known.

So, no crying in Caleb’s house, no scratching at locked doors. No ignoring the howls and whimpers of a frightened little animal.

“So what do you want for lunch?” John asked him. “Burgers or pizza?”

“Sushi,” Caleb said.

“Pretty sure I said burgers or pizza, mate.”

Caleb laughed. “If you stop at that place just before home, you can get a burger or a pizza, and I can get a sushi roll.”

They both got sushi.

* * *

Cricket was in love with the wading pool. It was one of those large plastic seashells that could be filled with sand or water for toddlers to play in. Or for dogs. Cricket had splashed in it for a while, gnawed the hard edges, and finally lay down in it with her head resting over the side.

John and Caleb sat together on the back deck. Caleb read through the reams of paperwork from the shelter. He’d taken the calendar off the kitchen wall and was writing reminders on the days when Cricket needed her worming tablets and her flea treatments.

He set the pen aside at last. “How’s your family going, John?”

“Pretty good.” John sipped his drink. “Mary and David and Tee are good. Ma has her good and her bad days, and you’d better not get me started on Jess. Teenage girls.” He shook his head. “They never stop.”

Caleb smiled. “If you can’t handle teenage girls, you might be in the wrong line of work.”

“Too late now!” John laughed. “And it’s different, when they’re family. Anyone else’s kids, and I can put the fear of God into them. But Jessie? No way. She’s immune.”

“You never put the fear of God into me,” Caleb said, his smile fading, and John immediately castigated himself for saying something so fucking stupid.

Never needed to. That was all you had.

“I think you’re immune too,” he said. “You count as family.”

Caleb lifted his hand to the neck of his shirt, and John realised he must have been wearing the boar’s tusk necklace underneath. “Really?”

“You stopped being my job a long time ago,” John told him.

Caleb looked suddenly shy. “I thought maybe I did.”

“You did.”

They watched Cricket for a while, as she lolled happily in the pool. Caleb began to gather up the rubbish from their lunch. He rose and headed inside to the bin, and John realised he’d left a soy sauce container behind. He picked it up and followed him inside.

John stood behind him at the bin, and Caleb turned.

Before John had even registered what was happening, Caleb’s arms were around him and Caleb’s lips were pressing against his. He tasted like soy sauce. Sudden heat, sudden need, and the man John loved in his arms.

“Wait.” John said it to himself as much as to Caleb. Caleb stiffened, but didn’t drop his arms from around John’s neck. He stood there, his head bowed, breathing against John’s shoulder. He was shaking. John’s throat ached. “Oh, Caleb. We can’t.”

Caleb’s voice was a whisper. “Why can’t we?”

Why can’t we? the voice in John’s head echoed. Why can’t we? Why can’t we? Why can’t we?

“I’m your friend,” John said. “But I’m also your dad’s friend. And I worked on your case, Caleb. I can’t be your boyfriend.”

“Because you worked on my case?” Caleb whispered.

“That’s a part of it.” John closed his eyes, and struggled for what to say. Because professional distance hadn’t counted for shit for years, had it? Not with Caleb or Darren. And Caleb knew it. “But it’s mostly because I’m your friend. I don’t want to lose our friendship.”

I’m scared it would destroy you.

Caleb still didn’t move.

John lifted an arm and stroked his hair. “You’re my friend. I love you.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Caleb murmured.

“Like what?”

Caleb reeled away suddenly, his face flaming red. “Like it’s a fucking consolation prize!” He kicked at the bin, sending it onto the floor. Rubbish tumbled out of it: sushi containers, potato peels, an empty blister pack. “Fuck you! I want you, and you say you love me, but I can’t have you!”

Because look at you, Caleb. Look at you.

How could I promise never to hurt you?

Everything fucking hurts you.

“I do love you,” John said, struggling to keep his voice even. “But I can’t be your boyfriend. I’m sorry.”

Shit. Caleb was crying. Tears streaked his pale face.

“Please, John,” he said, his shoulders sagging as the anger rushed out of him. “I just want to have something normal. I just want to be like other people.”

“I know you do.” Fuck. How long until Darren was home? John was out of his depth here, and completely aware of how cruel he sounded. “Listen, we can talk about this, that’s okay, but maybe it should wait? Maybe you need a rest. Or a pill. You’ve had a big day.”

“I’m not a child.” Caleb looked wounded. He hunched over, hugging his stomach. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry, John. I wreck everything.”

“Hey,” John said. He stepped through the rubbish on the floor and tugged Caleb into an embrace. Tried not to register how good Caleb felt in his arms. How right. “You don’t wreck everything. You don’t wreck anything, okay?”

Caleb was still shaking. “It’s not fair. I love you and I want you, and it’s not fair.”

“I know it’s not,” John said. His breath hitched. “I know.”

“Every time I touch someone, I fuck it up.”

“It’ll happen for you.” John didn’t know if he was lying or not. “When it’s the right time, when it’s the right guy, it’ll happen.”

Just don’t fucking cut yourself in the meantime.

Caleb nodded and sniffed, his face still hidden against John’s shoulder.

“It will happen,” John repeated. “You’ll be okay.”

And he wondered if Caleb was thinking exactly what he was: What if this was the right time, and what if John was the right guy? How would they know unless they tried?

Yeah. That was the voice he needed not to hear.

John was relieved when Caleb stepped away and threw him a smile that was equal parts apology and shame. Caleb crossed to the sink and filled a glass with water from the tap.

No, it wasn't fair that Caleb wasn't like everyone else.

Wasn't fair that he couldn't throw himself into love like everyone else.

Wasn't fair that he couldn't risk heartbreak.

John could, and did. Every single day for years.

He forced an answering smile when Caleb turned again.

Don't turn this on you, John wanted to tell him. Don't let my words, my voice, be the ones you hear telling you you're worthless. Telling you to die.

He wanted to say something, anything, but when every awkward overture came wrapped in rejection, what was there to say?

“You want to try and teach Cricket to fetch?”

“Yeah.” Caleb was still subdued, still embarrassed and unwilling to hold his gaze. “That would be good.”

John followed him back outside and down the stairs to where Cricket, dripping wet, greeted them happily.

* * *

When Darren got home, John didn’t tell him what had happened. He told himself he wasn't hiding anything, it was just that he didn't know how to say it. But maybe that was a lie. Maybe he was worried about how Darren would react. Maybe he figured Caleb deserved to keep some things secret. Or maybe he was just guilty.

A lot of time had passed in that kiss before he told Caleb to stop. Time counted out in breaths, in heartbeats, in hope.

So John said nothing about it when Darren arrived. Neither did Caleb. John stayed around and played with Cricket for a while longer, then said his goodbyes and headed back up the motorway toward home.

He didn't realise he'd taken the exit to Woodridge until he was almost at his mother's house.

He pulled up in her street.

There was junk mail fluttering in the sagging chain links of the Nguyens’ fence, shoved right in between the letterbox and the No Junk Mail sign.

John got out of the car and waved to Mr. Nguyen, who was working in the garden. He waved back.

John’s parents didn’t approve of gambling, but Mr. Nguyen next door had played cards with his friends every Thursday afternoon from the time he moved in. And he’d seen those curious Samoan kids staring over the fence at him.

“Gambling is bad,” he’d told them. “Bad for kids.” And then he’d taught them anyway. “You never gamble more than you afford to lose. Ten dollar, one hundred dollar, one million, same thing. Never more than you can lose.”

Caleb. Caleb was more than John could afford to lose.

“And you not tell your father!”

He went and knocked on his mother’s door.

The door was flung open instantly, and Jessie’s face went from a wide smile to a scowl in a heartbeat. “It’s you.”

“Who’d you expect?” John asked her. “Santa?”

No, not Santa. Jessie was wearing low-cut jeans that did nothing to flatter her broad hips, a sparkly top that showed off way too much cleavage—since when did Jess have cleavage anyway?—and a face full of cosmetics.

She huffed at him and turned away.

“Not so fast,” John said, and she turned back, rolling her eyes. “Why have you been giving Ma hell?”

“What do you care? And I have not!”

“Jess,” John said, spreading his hands, “what are you doing?”

She scowled at him. “Nothing!”

“You need to pull yourself together, you know,” he said. “I mean that. Or one night they’re gonna find you under some bridge with a needle in your arm.”

“Oh my God!” Jessie screwed up her face. “So suddenly I’m a druggie? You are such a prick to me, John!” She raised her voice. “Ma! I’m going out!”

She elbowed past John and stalked toward the front gate.

John sighed and stepped inside. Sepela stood in the hallway, her arms folded.

“Okay, so I could have handled that better,” John said as guilt stabbed him. He wondered why their mother hadn’t commented on Jessie’s language when she was still liable to take after John or David or Mary with the wooden spoon for the same offence.

“You think so?” She shook her head and smiled wryly. Wearily.

Shit. Why did Jessie drive him to distraction like this, when he dealt with far worse kids every day at work? Why couldn’t John find the same patience with her, when she was family?

“Come in, baby. You look tired.”

“Thanks, Ma.”

They sat around the kitchen table while the kettle boiled.

“Is it work?” Sepela asked him, and then raised her eyebrows. “Is it Caleb?”

She was too fucking intuitive, his mother.

“It’s Caleb.” John fiddled with the tablecloth. “He kissed me.”

“Ah.”

John smiled despite himself. “That’s it? ‘Ah’? Ma, I drove straight here from his place, and that’s all you’ve got?”

Sepela smiled as well. “What else do you want, baby? That boy loves you and you love him.”

“Can’t go there,” John said. That same voice in his head was still echoing Caleb’s: Why can’t we? Because Caleb was strong, the strongest person John had ever met, but it wasn’t enough. Because you never gambled more than you could afford to lose. “It’s wrong for him.”

“Love is never wrong,” Sepela said. She reached out and laid her hand over his.

“It’s not that simple, Ma,” John said. He swallowed with difficulty. “I want to believe it, but it’s not that simple.”

“You can believe anything you want to, John,” she said. “That’s what believing means.”

“It doesn’t make it true.”

She shrugged, and patted his hand. “Who says?"

And she left it at that.

Chapter Seven

"Get me a body and you can charge them with murder," the suit from the DPP said.

"This is bullshit," John said.

The suit looked at Brian to get his mouthy constable under control.

"It's bullshit," Brian agreed.

The suit raised his eyebrows. "Yeah, well it's not your decision. What do you want here?"

John wanted the lot of them to rot in hell.

"We won't get a conviction on murder," the suit said. "Juries like bodies. So we charge them with what we know will stick. We only get to play the murder card once. Find me the body, or we won't get a conviction."

It was bullshit.

John stared at the map on the board. Lot of bushland there. Where was Simon?

* * *

Court ran late. It was past three by the time John was called. He sat in the witness box, thoughts of Caleb whirling through his brain, and gave his name, and affirmed that the statement he’d submitted as evidence was true and correct. That should have been it, but the defence barrister wanted to nit-pick every little detail. He kept asking for the video interview to be paused.

John hated watching him and Liz in the video. Hated the way they both nodded sympathetically when the creep complained about how unfair this was. Hated pretending that he understood. Hated suggesting that a kid wearing swimmers could be provocative. Hated agreeing they’d asked for it. Because you had to do that sometimes. Had to get the sick fucks onside so they’d talk.

Sure, it was satisfying once the tape had been turned off and he could look the bastard in the eye and tell him he was scum and he deserved to rot in hell—not like that exchange had made his statement, or the courtroom—but the process always made John’s skin crawl. It made him feel ill for hours afterward. And it made him worry that smiling and nodding while someone like that spilled out his most vile confessions was the kind of stain he could never completely scrub away.

Eventually, he’d burn out in Child Protection. Most people did. Maybe it was time for a stint in uniform again. Hauling vomit-stained drunks out of the gutter and hosing shit out of the back of the vans had to be cleaner work than this.

John resisted the urge to check his watch while he was cross-examined, but proceedings were dragging. Even the magistrate was looking annoyed by the time John was finally dismissed.

John made it to Caleb’s psychiatrist by four-thirty. He was running half an hour late, which meant Caleb was already inside. So was Darren, John guessed, since he wasn’t in the waiting room.

John nodded to the receptionist and took a seat in the waiting room.

“Would you like a coffee, John?” the receptionist asked him. She was an older lady, bottle blonde with a warm smile, and John could never remember her name even though he was often the one who brought Caleb to his appointments if Darren couldn’t.

“No, thanks,” John said. “They’re already inside?”

She nodded. “They shouldn’t be too long.”

John flipped through a magazine while he waited, listening for any sounds of a disturbance from Dr. Harper’s office. Shit. He was supposed to have been here at four so that Darren didn’t have to break it to Caleb on his own.

The door to Dr. Harper’s office opened twenty minutes later. John stood, not knowing what to expect.

Caleb shuffled out, pale-faced and hunched over, his hands stuck in the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie.

“Hey,” John said, his mouth dry.

“Hey.” Caleb’s slate-grey gaze met his, and his mouth quirked slightly. “Guess you were supposed to be here for this clusterfuck too, huh?”

“Court ran late,” John said. “Sorry.”

Caleb shrugged, and pushed his way through the heavy glass door outside into the car park.

John followed him.

Caleb straightened up in the sunlight and drew a deep breath as he turned to face John. “How come they’re getting out, John?”

“I don’t know,” John said. “Fucking parole board.”

Caleb’s mouth tightened briefly into a thin line. “I’m not a kid. I’m not. I mean, I knew it’d happen one day, right?”

“Right,” John agreed cautiously.

“I’m not a kid,” Caleb repeated. “I can handle it.”

Except John didn’t know if that was really true. He didn’t know if Caleb knew it either. Because nothing about dealing with Caleb was easy. Sometimes you got calm and rational Caleb. Sometimes you got the Caleb who withdrew into himself and refused to engage. Sometimes you got Caleb’s panic attacks and tantrums. And sometimes you got them all in the space of minutes.

And this was big.

Caleb was strong. Most people didn’t get that. The ones who saw the bottles of pills, the scars on his wrists, the public tantrums, they didn’t get that. Thought he was some kind of fragile, hysterical thing when he was like that. But that was because he’d been pushed further than most people ever were. If some tiny thing sent him over the edge—a new job, a party where he was expected to talk to people, once, spilling sauce on his shirt—it was only because he was so consumed with dealing with the big stuff, so worn out with it already.

Even John had been guilty of it in the past. “What are you worried about, mate? It’s just a stain. It doesn’t matter.”

“No, it’s everything, John, it’s fucking everything!”

And then there were the people who thought the meds should fix him, as though mental wellness was just a pill away. As though dark thoughts and self-hatred and patterns of behaviour could be killed with a shot of antibiotics like a virus. A magic pill to make him better.

Well, it wasn’t like that at all. The meds were a constant balancing act. Caleb’s prescriptions and dosages changed, sometimes month by month, depending on how he responded to them. Depending on how quickly his depression and anxiety and PTSD regrouped and fought back.

Caleb was strong, and he was always fighting, but people didn’t get that. Didn’t get that just because he was fighting something intangible, something invisible, that the fight was as deadly as if it had been a physical disease. People understood cancer. Didn’t attach a stigma to it. But mental health, well, why didn’t they just pull themselves together?

Caleb was strong, but this was so big.

“I can handle it,” Caleb repeated.

“They can’t come near you,” John said. “They can’t have any contact with you. If they even try, they’ll be back in prison in a fucking heartbeat, mate. I promise.”

Caleb’s mouth quirked again. “I know.”

But it wasn’t that simple. They both knew that too.

Darren approached them across the car park, his face drawn. He nodded at John.

“Sorry I was late,” John said.

Darren shook his head. “It’s fine. Thanks for coming. You want to join us for dinner? We figured we’d have an early one. Maybe go to that new Indian place in Beenleigh before we head home.”

Beenleigh wasn’t exactly on John’s way home, but it was on Caleb and Darren’s way home, and not too much of a detour for John. Funny how all those middle-of-the-night runs between Logan and the Coast when Caleb was in crisis put everything into perspective. A drive to Beenleigh for dinner was nothing.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sounds like a plan.”

“Can I go with John in his car?” Caleb asked.

“Yeah,” Darren said. He smiled, but there was something wary in his gaze when he glanced at John, something new, or maybe it was all John’s guilty conscience. “I’ll see you guys there.”

* * *

Three hours later John was letting himself into his apartment, shrugging off his suit jacket and unfastening his tie. He didn’t usually wear the tie and the suit jacket, but, well, court days. He was expected to look professional for those. Caleb had teased him a little about it over dinner, and the memory of it sat warmly in John’s chest. The Indian place hadn’t been busy, but the tables were small so John had spent the meal with Caleb’s knee pressing against his under the table. How pathetic was that? Taking those little moments of contact between them and spinning whole fantasies out of them. Fantasies where he and Caleb were in a relationship, and every casual touch was imbued with deeper meaning. With love, or some bullshit.

And it was bullshit, because John already loved Caleb, and Caleb loved John, so it was already there but at the same time it wasn’t enough. Or it wasn’t the right sort of love, or something. Or, worse, it was exactly the right sort of love, but they still couldn’t go there because the risks to Caleb’s happiness, to his health, to his life, were too great.

John had seen Caleb lying in too many hospital beds with his forearms bandaged up to dare imagine it would never happen again or, if they fell into a relationship, that he would never be the cause of it in some way.

He couldn’t do that to Caleb.

John hung his jacket up on his bedroom doorknob and then looped his tie over it.

He remembered something, vaguely, about different types of love. The ancient Greeks had a bunch of words for them, but John could only ever remember eros, and he didn’t give enough of a fuck to Google the others. The point was, he supposed, that love wasn’t always romance, and that was fine. Okay, so he felt like that cartoon of the dog sitting at the table while everything around him burned, but it was fine.

His phone rang, and John dug it out of his pocket. David’s name lit up the screen.

“Hey,” John said.

“Hey, John. I know it’s getting late, bro, but is there any chance you can pick Jessie up from her youth group?”

John sighed. “Yeah, I guess. Why?”

“My bloody car won’t start,” David said. “And Tee’s at her sister’s place having a girls’ night, you know? I’m pretty sure they’re already three sheets to the wind. I’m really sorry to spring this on you.”

“It’s okay.” John was already heading for the front door. “Shit happens, huh? You need a new car, David. I’ve been telling you for months.”

“Hey! My car runs like a dream,” David said. “Usually.”

“It’s a shit heap.”

“Yeah.” There was no rancour in David’s tone. “But she’s my shit heap, and I love her.”

“Does Tee know she’s got competition?”

“Please. Tee knows I’d happily set fire to everything I owned if she asked me.” The obvious smile faded from David’s voice. “Thanks for doing this, John.”

“It’s no problem,” John said. “I only just got back from dinner anyway.”

“Oooh! Hot date?”

John snorted. “I was with Caleb and Darren.”

David was silent for a moment. “They doing okay?”

“About the same as always,” John said.

“What about you, bro? Are you doing okay?”

John paused before he answered. “About the same as always too.”

* * *

The church that Ma went to was the Uniting Church in Woodridge. John had been coming here since he was a little kid. Every Sunday back then, plus the kids’ group and then the youth group during the week. He didn’t consider himself a regular now, and hadn’t in a while. First there had been his shift work as a police officer, and his roster didn’t give a fuck if John was supposed to rest on Sundays. And then there was Caleb too.

There was always Caleb.

As John pulled into the car park, he wondered if his stepping away from the church should have come at a much earlier time, the way it did for so many other gay kids. If it should have happened when he was sixteen and had come out to his parents.

Ma had bristled when he’d said he didn’t know if he’d go back to church.

“You listen to me, John Faimu,” she’d said. “Jesus is not a thing you put in a box and forget about! He sees you, smart boy, whether you look at him or not! Loves you, too, though you don’t deserve it most of the time!”

So he’d gone to church and had that talk with the minister, and it was good. The minister at the time had been good, and most of the people were good, and going back every Sunday he could manage even when he’d been working shift work had been good.

Not for Caleb though. He couldn’t share this part of his life with Caleb. Couldn’t even talk to Caleb about God and Jesus and the church, because they meant such different things to Caleb, such horrible, dark things. When John’s mother told him that Jesus was watching he rolled his eyes and behaved himself. If someone told Caleb the same thing, he’d be a mess.

John believed in God. He always had, and always would. Maybe not the same God his mother believed in exactly — hers had all the answers, hers was full of comfort and peace — but he believed, all the same. He’d seen some awful things in his work. He no longer asked how God allowed such things, only comforted himself with the certainty that the perpetrators of evil deeds would burn in hell. And maybe that was flawed thinking, but it didn’t matter. He needed to know that men like Ethan Gray would burn in hellfire forever, and that it was still too fucking good for them. He could never turn from God, because he needed to believe that if there wasn’t justice in this world there had to be justice in the next.

But Caleb had to be an atheist. John understood that.

And John had chosen Caleb over church and would make the same choice every time.

John headed around the side of the church to the hall. The doors were open, spilling light into the night, and John nodded at a few of the waiting parents. The kids were all still inside, scattered around on the floor while the pastor talked to them.

Pastor Ian was a young guy, and John didn’t know him well. He seemed like a decent bloke though, and he managed to walk that fine line of preaching while also being cool enough for the kids not to roll their eyes at him.

“Okay,” he said. “One last thing before you all go back to the Fortnites and the Skyrims and the yeeting and the Tide pods.”

The kids groaned and laughed.

Maybe that was why they liked him. He knew how to take the piss out of himself.

“I want you all to think about parables,” he said, and held up his hands. “I know, I know, you don’t come here for homework. But I want you to think about what Jesus meant when he said, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.’” He smiled at the kids. “So have a think about that this week, and how it applies not to the church, but to all of us. It’s easy to lose hope when we see all the big obstacles in our way, particularly when we’re planting such a tiny, tiny seed, but, to mix my metaphors with my parables for a second, great big oaks grow from tiny acorns.”

The kids murmured in agreement.

Pastor Ian climbed up off the floor. “So with that in mind, I’ll see you guys next week, and yes, Leo, we’re having pizza.”

An obvious in-joke that made the kids laugh.

Jessie was chatting with another girl when she turned and saw John waiting for her. Her animated smile vanished immediately and was replaced by a stone-faced sullen stare. John fought down what was becoming a typical rush of resentment when he saw his little sister and reminded himself that Jessie was hurting right now.

“Why are you here?” she asked when she reached him, narrowing her eyes. “Where’s David?”

“His car won’t start,” John said. “So you’re either stuck with me or you’re walking.”

Jessie rolled her eyes and stalked toward the car park, and John followed her.

“Did you eat yet?” he asked as he pulled out onto the road.

“Yes,” she said, her tone as hostile as though he was asking her for her firstborn child.

“Okay,” he said, and didn’t take the bait by having a go at her about her attitude and giving her free ammunition to return fire with. “We can swing by KFC and get you something if you want anything.”

“I don’t.” She shot him a suspicious look, and then stared out of the windscreen again.

“Okay,” he said again.

He wanted to ask what was going on with her, what was trapping her in this pattern of angry, unhappy behaviour, but maybe it was time he realised he couldn’t be that person for Jessie. He couldn’t force her to open up to him if she didn’t want to. Maybe David and Tee were better suited to dealing with Jessie than John ever would be, but a part of him worried that he was just searching for an easy out, a way to make Jessie someone else’s problem so he could shove her to the back of his mind and concentrate on worrying about other things instead.

Other things.

As though his mind didn’t automatically go straight to Caleb.

Guilt bit him as he glanced at Jessie again.

“How’s school going?” he asked her.

“Fine.” She rolled her eyes again.

They drove the rest of the way home in silence.

Their mother was waiting on the front step when John pulled up. Jessie got out of the car, slammed the door, and pushed her way through the squeaking gate. She muttered something to Sepela as she passed, and then vanished inside the house while John was still making his way up the path.

“Thank you, baby.” Sepela pulled him into a hug. “David said his car wouldn’t start?”

“He needs a new car,” John said.

“Easy for you to say. You earn more money than David does.”

“I’d help him out,” John said, because that’s what family did.

“He’s too proud to ask,” Sepela said. “Just like his father.”

John felt a new tendril of worry uncoil in his gut. “Has he said something? Has Tee? Are they doing okay?”

“It’s fine,” Sepela said. “I’m sure it’s fine, but you could ask him.”

“I will.”

“The kettle’s on,” Sepela said, and let him through to the kitchen. “You look tired, baby.”

“Long day,” John said. He went straight for the pantry and rattled around in the biscuit tins, then found the homemade Anzac biscuits and took two. “I had court all day, then I met up with Caleb and Darren and we went for dinner.”

Sepela poured hot water into a mug. “How is he?”

“He’s good, I think, for now,” John said. “But he found out today that the people who hurt him are getting out of prison.”

Sepela pressed a hand to her heart. “No!”

John had never told her much, but the trial had been in the news. Caleb hadn’t been mentioned by name since he was a minor, but the abuses of the Children of Galilee had been front page news for weeks, and John’s family all knew he was one of the investigators. John could still remember his dad’s grave expression as they’d watched a segment on the news one night.

“Those poor children,” he’d said, and then looked over to where John was sitting. “That poor boy of yours.”

Sepela set a mug of tea in front of him, and then sat down across the small table from him. She wrapped her hands around her mug. “You should invite him here sometimes,” she said at last. “Caleb and his father.”

O le fogavaʻa e tasi, John thought; one family. But his gaze was drawn to the cross hanging up above the kitchen window, and he couldn’t help but think of what it signified to Caleb, and of how Caleb didn’t belong in this house where Jesus was welcome any more than he belonged in a laughing group of young people in Pastor Ian’s church hall. Belief and faith strengthened John’s family, because Jesus, in Sepela Faimu’s house, meant love. But to Caleb the name only meant horror.

“Maybe we could all go out somewhere,” he said. “Us, and Caleb and Darren. Maybe a barbecue at the beach or something.”

Sepela smiled. “I met him before, didn’t I? Oh, a long time ago now.”

She had, John remembered. He’d taken Caleb shopping for some new game at the Hyperdome, and they’d run into Ma and Mary.

“He was such a shy boy,” Sepela said. “So quiet and thin!”

“He still is,” John said. “But he’s not a boy anymore.”

“Well, how am I supposed to know that, if you never bring him here?”

John grinned at that, despite himself. “It’s complicated, Ma.”

Sepela smiled, her gaze as warm and shrewd as always. “It’s not as complicated as you pretend it is, baby.”

John bit into an Anzac biscuit and sent a shower of crumbs raining down onto the laminate tabletop. Tiny crumbs, as small as mustard seeds, too numerous to count.

Chapter Eight

“How are you feeling this morning?” John asked.

Caleb’s slate-grey gaze tracked him as he walked toward the hospital bed.

“It’s okay,” John said. “I’m not here to ask you any questions today. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

Caleb shrugged. “Okay.”

Darren Fletcher, sitting in a chair in the corner, watched them silently.

John upended his grocery bag on Caleb’s bed. “I got you some junk food, because hospital food is the worst, right?” He began to sort through the pile. “Okay, we’ve got a Mars Bar, some Maltesers, some Barbecue Shapes, and some Twisties. Cheese, because everyone knows Cheese Twisties are the best sort.”

Caleb’s mouth twitched slightly.

“And…” John picked up the packet and showed it to him. “Some red frogs. If you don’t eat these, I will.”

Caleb’s skinny fingers played a nervous tattoo across the top of his blankets.

John tore open the packet of red frogs and held it out to Caleb.

Caleb looked at him warily for a moment, and then extended a shaking hand, palm-up. “Thank you.”

John tipped a couple of frogs into his hand. “Plenty more where these came from too, mate. You only have to ask.”

Even back then, in those first few fraught weeks, there was nothing he wouldn’t have done for Caleb.

* * *

Ethan Gray. Leon Harrison. Ben Quartermain. Analise Fletcher.

John knew their addresses, knew the terms of their parole, and had emailed each one of their parole officers to let him know the moment any of them breached their conditions, or their parole officers suspected they might. Ethan Gray was living in Toowoomba. Leon Harrison and Ben Quartermain were both in the northern suburbs of Brisbane, and Analise Fletcher was in Archerfield. Four little pins on John’s mental map, and he wanted to be the first to know if any of them took a step out of place.

But as the days passed into weeks, John began to slowly accept that maybe the parole board had been right: maybe the four of them just wanted to go about the rest of their lives quietly and in peace. But fuck them. They hadn’t afforded Caleb the same luxury.

Or Simon.

John hated them and would never not hate them, but the rage was a simmering heat he’d learned to live with for the past eight years and he kept it locked down. He wasn’t some reckless hothead who’d risk his career to go and harass a parolee. But he sure as hell wouldn’t hesitate if one of them so much as breathed in Caleb’s direction.

Caleb seemed to be coping well. He was working three days a week with Darren’s architect friend. The office was in the CBD, and sometimes John was able to meet him for lunch. Caleb’s shy grin whenever he could swing it always made it worthwhile.

“Always sushi with you, isn’t it?” John asked him one Tuesday when they met at the place a block down from Caleb’s office.

Caleb stole one of his chips. “It’s better for you than a burger.”

John tried to smack his hand, but Caleb was too quick for him. “How’s the job going? What is it now? Third week?”

“Fourth.” Caleb stuck his finger in his soy sauce. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s good, but it’s…” He shrugged, and sucked his finger.

John tried very hard not to notice that. “It’s what?”

Caleb shrugged again. “Boring?” He looked a little guilty. “I answer calls and file stuff. Everyone’s nice. I think Dad and Mr. Gatis are conspiring to get me interested in being an architect or a draughtsman.” Another shrug.

“That’s not something you want to do?” John picked lettuce off his burger.

“I don’t know.” His lips quirked in something that was almost a smile. “I spend so much time thinking about what I don’t want to be, that I kind of forget to think about what I do want to be.”

“Well maybe you could think about that sometimes.”

“I’ll try.” This time Caleb’s smile was a little apologetic. “So, how’s work going?”

It was John’s turn to shrug. “Same old, same old.”

“Being a detective always seems exciting when you see it on TV.”

“Mmm.” John pretended not to notice him steal another chip. “Oh, it’s car chases and shootouts all day long for me.”

Caleb’s smile grew, his eyes brightening. “How’s the family?”

“Good,” John said. “Looking forward to the weekend.”

Ever since John had dropped his idea of a beach barbecue, Sepela had been pushing him to set a date. This Saturday was the first that everyone’s schedules had lined up.

“Dad’s bringing so much steak,” Caleb said. “Everyone eats steak, right?”

“Yeah,” John said. “It’s lucky this is just at the beach. If we were at Ma’s place we wouldn’t be having a barbecue, we’d be roasting an entire pig.”

“Wow. Really?”

“Oh, yeah,” John said. “It’s a whole production.”

Caleb popped a piece of sushi into his mouth. “Sounds like fun.”

And John immediately wondered if he’d been too protective of Caleb. So what if his mother had a couple of crosses in her house and sometimes name-dropped Jesus? But then this Caleb, today’s Caleb, was a very different Caleb to the one who’d had a breakdown at his birthday party, or cut his wrists because a drunken hook-up had gone wrong. It had been weeks since John had even caught a glimpse of that Caleb. What had Caleb said that day at his psychiatrist’s appointment? That he wasn’t a kid. Maybe it was time John and Darren learned to trust that a little more—to trust that Caleb knew where his limits were, at least most of the time. If he wanted to come to Ma’s next puaa umu, and if felt strong enough to attempt it, then who was John to second guess him?

“We don’t do it very often,” he said, “but maybe next time you and your dad can come over.”

Caleb’s face flushed with pleasure. “I’d like that.”

John nodded. “My mother has a bunch of crosses and stuff in her house. She’s pretty religious, just so you know.”

Caleb froze for a second, and then shrugged it off and reached for another one of John’s chips. “Okay.” He chewed the chip and swallowed. “But she doesn’t mind that you’re gay?”

“She doesn’t mind,” John said. “And neither does her church.”

A small crease appeared on Caleb’s forehead, and John wanted to reach out and smooth it away. Then Caleb nodded slowly.

“Okay,” he said, and even if the word sounded a little breathy, a little fearful, a little uncertain in its delivery, John didn’t doubt for a second the strength of will behind it.

* * *

Saturday dawned overcast, but John checked his weather app and it promised the clouds would clear on the Gold Coast by mid-morning, even if they were going to hang around Brisbane for the rest of the day. John was on his way to the Coast by nine, hoping to beat the weekend traffic heading for the theme parks, and at just past ten he was pulling into a parking space at the beachfront at Biggera Waters, right where Biggera Creek fed out into the ocean. There were few clouds here, and the sun sparkled brightly off the Broadwater. Boats dotted the water from the south end of Stradbroke all the way to the Spit. To the south, the curve of the coast bristled with the dazzling high-rises of Surfers Paradise.

A half-grown red dog raced along in the shallows, splashing joyfully and tugging on her long lead. Caleb splashed along with her, his boardshorts hanging off his slim hips, and his pale skin glowing in the sunlight. Jesus. He was a fucking vision. Long, lean lines, dark, tousled hair, and a smile as brilliant as the glittering ocean behind him. The boar’s tusk necklace gleamed against his skin.

“Caleb!” Darren yelled as John made his way over the grass toward the barbecue, dragging his esky with him. “Come and put a bloody shirt on!”

“Morning,” John said.

Darren’s face split with a smile. “Morning. He’s gonna be burnt to a crisp if he doesn’t cover up.” He was unpacking his own esky. “Hey, you don’t mind, do you, but I invited Emily and her kids.”

“The more the merrier,” John said. He cracked open a can of soft drink. “Is it serious with you guys?”

Darren paused for a moment, and then exhaled. “She would like it to be.” He grimaced. “Jesus. That makes it sound like she’s pushing, and she’s not. She’s more understanding than a lot of people would be. And I’d like us to be serious too, but a relationship can’t be my priority at the moment. Maybe not ever. It’s, ah…well, it is what it is, you know?”

John nodded.

Darren picked up Caleb’s shirt and waved it. “Caleb!”

Caleb finally glanced their way and headed up toward them. He greeted John with a hug, and then pulled his shirt back on.

David and Tee were the next to arrive, in Tee’s little pink hatchback. Tee, petite and blonde, was driving. David unwedged himself from the passenger seat awkwardly.

“That was like watching Shrek climb out of a clown car,” John called as they approached.

“Ah, piss off!” David said, all smiles.

“This is Caleb and Darren,” John said. “And this is my brother David, and his much, much better half, Tee.”

Smiles and handshakes all around.

Emily and her kids arrived next. Alex and Kate headed straight for the water, and Cricket strained at her leash wanting to follow them. She whined and wrapped herself around Caleb’s legs when he didn’t go with them.

Mary and Sepela and Jessie arrived last. Jessie was glued to her phone, but John let it slide because at least she was here.

“Malo!” Mary called as she approached.

“Malo lava!” John pulled her into a hug. It felt like too long since he’d seen his big sister.

They cooked the barbecue and ate, salads and sides spread over an entire picnic table, and drinks and ice in the eskies. Alex and Kate ran from the picnic area to the beach and back again, just stopping long enough to fuel up before disappearing once more. John watched Caleb watch them. His expression seemed half curious and half jealous, as though he didn’t understand exactly how a normal childhood worked—shouting, bickering, screaming with fun—but knew that his had been stolen from him. And he worried, John remembered from his birthday, that he was stealing something in turn from Alex and Kate, and from Darren and Emily too.

John also watched how his family approached Caleb, and how Caleb reacted to them. He was polite and wary, the way he usually was with strangers, but there was an undercurrent of something else there. Something that felt right. John thought it was eight years of hearing John talk about these people, and of a strange overlap where through familiarity alone they were almost Caleb’s family too even if this was the first time he’d met most of them. There should have been a word for that, John thought, somewhere between strangers and family. Somewhere between we’ve-never-met-but-I-know-every-funny-story-about-you. Caleb grew warmer and brighter with each passing moment, and even let Sepela bully him into eating a second helping of Mary’s potato bake.

“I like your mum,” he whispered to John as they both went to grab a drink.

John knocked their shoulders together. “She likes you too.”

Caleb’s face pinked up when he smiled.

“He’s a sweet boy,” Sepela said later as John helped her carry stuff back to Mary’s car.

“I know, Ma.”

She didn’t push, and John was glad.

The day was growing hotter, the shade retreating as everyone packed up and headed back to their respective cars.

“I’ll just take Cricket for another paddle,” Caleb said, and jogged down toward the beach again.

In the car park, Emily was wrapping Alex and Kate in towels for the drive home, and Mary was chatting to her. They were laughing at something. Jessie was leaning against Mary’s car, trying hard to look as though she’d had an awful time.

John stood with Darren by the picnic table and they watched Caleb and Cricket splashing in the shallows.

It was a good day.

“We need to do this more often,” Darren said at last.

“We really do,” John agreed.

It was a good day, and they could all use more of those.

* * *

The buzzer at John’s apartment went off at about eight that night, and Caleb’s voice came over the speaker, tinny and distorted. “John, are you home?”

John hit the button. “I’ll buzz you up.”

Minutes later, he opened the door to Caleb. Caleb was wearing tight-fitting dark jeans and a button-down shirt.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Does your dad know where you are?”

“He knows I’m in the city,” Caleb said. He trailed through into John’s living room. “It’s been good lately, you know? And there’s this guy from work, he invited me out. I didn’t tell you about him.”

John’s gut clenched, hard.

“We were supposed to go to a movie tonight,” Caleb said. He turned to face John, and shrugged. “That’s where Dad thinks I am, but I bailed.”

“Why’d you do that?”

Caleb’s forehead creased. “Because I don’t want him, John! He’s a nice guy, and he has anxiety, so like he’s cool with me when I’m like…like the way I am. But I don’t like him in that way.” He pressed his mouth into a thin line for a moment and then drew a deep breath. “And I’m not a kid. I know who I want, and if you don’t want me then that’s fine, but that doesn’t change how I feel about you. You can’t talk me out of my feelings, John.”

The blood roared in John’s skull.

“I love you,” Caleb said, lifting his chin defiantly. “I love you, and I don’t want to try to love anyone else, even if you don’t love me in the same way.”

For a moment John stood frozen on a precipice, Caleb with him, and he was too afraid to move in case he caused Caleb to stumble and fall. But the lie was hurting Caleb too, wasn’t it? The pretence that John loved him just as a friend. That hadn’t been true for a long time, and it wasn’t fair to pretend Caleb was the only one who felt it. It wasn’t fair for him to carry that alone. And every justification he’d ever made about why this was a bad idea crumbled like sand in the face of Caleb’s certainty. Because how could breaking Caleb’s heart now be better than maybe breaking it in the future? A thousand worst case scenarios flashed through his mind, and always would, but the truth remained unchanged.

“I love you too,” John said, and Caleb’s eyes filled with tears in anticipation of being let down yet again, and John burned with guilt. “And you are so brave in telling me that, and I’m so scared of hurting you, but I can’t lie to you anymore either. I love you, Caleb, the same way that you love me.”

Caleb’s indrawn breath was as sharp as a blade cutting through the air. “Do you mean it?”

“Yes.” John wasn’t sure if the admission was a relief, or a regret. “I mean it.”

And then Caleb was moving toward him, his eyes shining with unshed tears, and John opened his arms to meet him and they were kissing. And this time John didn’t push him away. Couldn’t have, if his life had depended on it, because all his walls had tumbled down and he was holding the man he loved in his arms. And even if this led them somewhere that John would later regret, he wasn’t sure he could ever regret this kiss. And he was stupid and selfish and reckless and unworthy, but he was kissing Caleb all the same.

Caleb’s mouth was soft, the pressure barely-there. He drew back, his breath hot on John’s lips. “John,” he whispered. “I don’t know how to do this properly.” But before John had a chance to pull back too, Caleb was gripping his shoulders. “Show me, please.”

John closed his eyes for a moment and curled his hand around the back of Caleb’s neck. He leaned back a little so that their gazes could meet. He didn’t have the words for this, so he raised his free hand and ran his thumb along Caleb’s bottom lip. He liked the drag of it. Liked the way that Caleb’s eyes widened and he shivered, his fingers digging into John’s shoulders.

“Like this,” John said, half afraid his voice would crack, and kissed him again. He sucked Caleb’s bottom lip for a moment, and then released it so that he could slide his tongue along the loose seam of his lips. Caleb’s mouth opened under his, and John felt a jolt of want run through him when their tongues touched. John almost smiled at the sugar-sweet taste of Caleb’s mouth; he’d been eating red frogs again. John chased the taste with his tongue, slipping it over Caleb’s teeth and against the roof of his mouth before he withdrew again, and sucked for a moment on Caleb’s lower lip.

Caleb made a small, surprised noise. He released one hand from John’s shoulder and slid it through his hair instead. John could feel Caleb’s fingers trembling against the scalp.

John deepened the kiss, this time darting his tongue against Caleb’s, and then pulling back to coax Caleb’s tongue to follow. Caleb pressed closer to him.

“John.” Those fingers digging in. “Please.”

John tilted Caleb’s head back so he could meet his gaze. “What do you need?”

Caleb’s eyes were wide, his breath choppy. He pushed himself against John, and John felt his erection pressing into him. “Please.”

“Okay,” John said. He held a hand against Caleb’s cheek, and Caleb leaned into it like a cat. “Okay. Take a breath for me.”

Caleb nodded, and sucked in a breath.

“I know…” John swallowed. “I know there are things that will be hard for you to ask for, but I’m going to need you to try, okay? You’re in charge here, so you have to tell me what you want, and what you’re ready for.”

“John, I…” Caleb’s voice cracked, and a flush rose on his face. “I want…I want to come.”

“Okay,” John said. “How do you want to do that?”

Caleb squeezed his eyes shut, and John’s heart broke a little. They’d beaten shame into him, and fear, and John wanted nothing more than to strip Caleb’s clothes off him and teach him how to love his body, how good it could feel. But he couldn’t push. He couldn’t.

Caleb squirmed, eyes still shut tight. “Y-your hand?”

John pressed a kiss to his forehead. “You want me to bring you off with my hand?”

“Y-yeah.”

“I want to do that too,” John said, and Caleb’s eyes flashed open. “Come and sit on the couch with me.”

He took Caleb’s hand and led him to the couch. Sat down, and pulled Caleb onto him so that Caleb was straddling his thighs, his knees digging into the cushions. They kissed again, reigniting the heat between them, and John slipped his hands to the fly of Caleb’s jeans and popped the button. The rasp of the zip was the loudest sound in the world apart from Caleb’s ragged breathing.

“You’re so beautiful,” John told him, and Caleb huffed out a laugh.

“No, you are.” Caleb’s trembling fingers tugged at the hem of John’s T-shirt. “Can you take this off? Can I see you?”

“Anything you want.” John tugged his shirt off, Caleb helping to pull it over his head.

“Holy shit.” Caleb trailed his fingers across John’s chest, his skin pale against John’s, his face bright red. “I mean, I’ve seen you at the beach and stuff, so I knew, but now I get to touch you.” His fingers moved to John’s arm and followed the path of his tattoo all the way up to his shoulder and throat.

“Do I get to touch you too?” John asked.

Caleb bit his bottom lip and nodded, his eyes wide.

“Can I touch your dick?” John asked, his heart thumping wildly even though he managed by some miracle to keep his tone even.

“Fuck. Yes, please.”

John grinned and licked his palm, and Caleb’s hips jerked forward without even being touched. Then John peeled Caleb’s jeans open and cupped his palm over the erection straining against Caleb’s underwear. Caleb’s moan was like music.

“Please, John. Please do something. Please touch me.”

John ran his fingertips under the elastic band of Caleb’s underwear, watching the muscles in Caleb’s abdomen dance at the touch. Then he slipped his hand inside, and closed his fingers around Caleb’s hot, hard dick.

He’d never even allowed himself to imagine this before, not in his waking hours, and the reality was as short-lived as every fantasy John had shut down with prejudice. Caleb bucked and gasped and was coming before John had barely given him a full stroke, his cum wetting John’s fingers and staining his underwear.

“So fucking beautiful, Caleb,” John said, his own dick aching. He pulled Caleb forward into a kiss, and slid his clean hand up and down his spine.

“Sorry,” Caleb mumbled, and hid his face against John’s neck.

“What are you sorry for? You’re beautiful, and that was hot as hell.”

“I know you’re lying,” Caleb whispered. “That was like ten seconds. I know you’ve been with guys before who—”

“I’ve never been with anyone before who compares with you,” John said. He waited until Caleb straightened up again. Waited until Caleb lifted his gaze to meet John’s. “Because I never felt this way about any of them.”

Caleb blinked, and a tear slid down his cheek. “Really?”

“Really,” John said. “I love you, remember?”

“I love you too,” Caleb whispered back, and dived back into John’s embrace.

It wasn’t the first time John had held him when he cried, but it felt like the start of something new. And right now, right here, with Caleb in his arms, it was easy to pretend that nothing else mattered. Not his job, and the dubious ethics of getting into a relationship with a guy whose case he’d once investigated, not Darren and the fact that he trusted John with Caleb, and not even Caleb himself, and the way that this could all go horribly wrong. Just for now, John was going to believe that he was making the right decision.

Chapter Nine

John showed Caleb and Darren into the interview room where Brian was setting up the camera.

“You need a drink or anything?” John asked.

Darren shook his head.

“How about you, Caleb?”

Caleb’s gaze darted from John to his dad and then back again, seeking permission, or possibly searching for the trap in the question. He opened his mouth and then closed it.

“I’m going to get a Coke,” John said. “You want one too?”

Caleb nodded warily.

He looked different. New haircut, new clothes, but his dark eyes still held the same haunted expression they had since John had hauled him out of that tank. He still hunched over when he sat, as though he was protecting himself from invisible blows.

John went and got two cans of Coke from the machine in the lunchroom. When he returned to the interview room, Brian had everyone seated and ready to go. But at the mention of Simon, Caleb shut down.

“Hey,” John said, and slid a sticker across the table. “Do you know what this is?”

It was a pink triangle. Underneath it, the words SAFE PLACE were printed. Brian and John had already heard from Naomi the form that Caleb’s sin had taken.

Caleb shook his head.

“This means that this police station is a safe place for kids like you,” John said. “Kids who are gay, or who think they might be gay, or who are still trying to figure it all out.”

Caleb lifted his gaze to John’s, and then dropped it again. He folded in on himself, as though he was trying to disappear into the narrow space between his shoulders.

Brian leaned forward. “Caleb, nobody in this room is going to punish you for who you are. I’ve got three daughters at home, and I love them to bits, and nothing will ever change that. And I’ll bet your dad feels the same way about you too.”

Caleb darted a wary glance at Darren.

“It’s true.” Darren’s voice cracked.

Caleb snaked out a hand and took the sticker. Pulled it back across the table and into his lap, where he stared at it for a long while in silence. And then he said, at last, “It’s my fault. I kissed him.” His voice cracked and broke. “I kissed Simon, and Brother Leon saw.”

* * *

“You’re looking chipper, Senior Constable Faimu,” Liz said when John arrived for work on Monday morning.

“Why wouldn’t I?” John asked. “We’re living the dream, Acting Senior Sergeant Grant, living the dream.”

“Harry threw up in my cereal this morning,” Liz said. “If this is the dream, I want my money back.”

“You should write a strongly worded letter to whoever is in charge,” John suggested. “Meanwhile, what’s on the docket for today?”

“Oh, you’ll be sorry you asked, dream boy.” Liz punched him in the shoulder. “Three drug overdoses last night, possibly related. No fatalities, but one kid’s still critical and it’s made the front page of the Courier Mail, so the bosses are pressuring us for a result.”

“Isn’t it drug squad’s problem?” John asked, but the question was rhetorical, because since when would drug squad not try to duck-shove this onto someone else?

“It’s our problem now,” Liz said. “Let’s get a coffee, and go talk to some kids who should have made better life choices.”

Still, John couldn’t help smiling as he followed her back down the stairs to the car park. The job was shit, and parts of it would always be shit, but there was nothing that could take the shine off this Monday morning.

* * *

By Monday afternoon, the shine had definitely dulled, but John’s spirits picked up again as he headed down the motorway. Peak hour traffic was as shit as always, but the promise of sharing a meal with Caleb and Darren cheered him up. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove, nodding his head along to the song on the radio.

He was at the house by six, pulling up out the front and being met at the gate by an ecstatic Cricket.

“Hey,” Caleb called from the top of the front steps. He flashed John a shy smile. “How was work?”

“About the same as always,” John said, climbing the steps. “Is your dad home?”

“Not yet.” Caleb grabbed John by the shirt collar and brushed their mouths together softly. It was sweet and chaste, and nothing like they’d done on Saturday night. “If he was here, I wouldn’t be doing that.”

John smiled at that, but unease rose in him. Darren was his friend, and this…this was a breach of trust. Not of Caleb’s trust, but certainly of Darren’s. John and Darren were a team when it came to Caleb, and John was scared he’d destroyed that. He didn’t want to keep any secrets from Darren, not over something as big as this.

“So, we need to talk,” he said as he followed Caleb inside.

Caleb turned, his expression suddenly wary.

“It’s nothing bad,” John said. “At least I hope it isn’t. I think that we need to tell your dad that we’re together.”

He saw the indecision cross Caleb’s face.

“Secrets aren’t good,” John said. “Not for any of us.”

“I know.” Caleb furrowed his brow. “But what other guy my age has to tell his dad when he gets a boyfriend?”

“What we have,” John said slowly, “the three of us, is a system that pretty much works, yeah? When something big happens in your life, or when something changes, you tell your dad, and you tell me, and we figure out how to navigate it together. That’s the way we’ve always done it, and it’s kept you with us, Caleb.”

“Except what’s changed?” Caleb asked, lifting his chin in a challenge. “My feelings haven’t. Yours haven’t. What’s changed?”

“Don’t be smart. You know exactly what’s changed.”

Caleb sighed, and showed John his palms. “Look, we’ll tell him, okay? But maybe not right away. Maybe, just this one time, I want to try to figure something out on my own. You and me, this is new, and shouldn’t I get to enjoy that before I’ve got Dad and Dr. Harper sticking their noses in it? I want to have a boyfriend, John, not an intervention about it!” His mouth quirked, but it wasn’t quite a smile. “Just for a little while. I just…it gets really exhausting not just having to manage my emotional responses to shit, but to worry about Dad’s too. Can’t it just be about us first?”

“I get that,” John said, his chest aching at the plaintive note in Caleb’s voice. “I do.”

“I’m doing better recently,” Caleb said. “I’m doing so much better.”

“I know that too.” John pulled him into an embrace and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “You’re the strongest person I know.”

“I think the new meds are working,” Caleb said. He traced his fingers up John’s spine. “I’m sleeping better.”

“Good.” John’s breath ruffled his hair.

They’d been here before, plenty of times. The new meds would work right up until they didn’t, John guessed. Right up until Caleb’s trauma and PTSD found a workaround, like they always fucking did. Or maybe that was John’s pessimism talking. Maybe this time Caleb could actually take a step forward without taking two back again. John wasn’t his psychiatrist, but Dr. Harper had said plenty of times that these were early days yet. It just didn’t feel like it, when Caleb and everyone around him had felt the weight of every minute for the past eight years since he’d been found. But John supposed that eight years wasn’t that long at all compared with the decade of abuse that had come before it and had culminated in Simon’s brutal death. At least Caleb was in a place now where he could talk about his own recovery, setbacks and all. He hadn’t been able to do that for a long time.

Caleb leaned back slightly and lifted his head. He held John’s gaze. “We’ll tell him,” he said. “We will. But he’s got this expo in Melbourne coming up, and I know he’s going to ask you to stay over with me if you can, and John—” Caleb bit his lip and flushed. “Don’t let my dad cockblock me now, please!”

Visions of sleeping with Caleb in his bed and all that might entail flooded John’s mind, and he felt heat rising in his face. “That’s fucking unfair, you brat.”

Caleb laughed. “I’m a brat now? I like it.”

“Lucky I like it too.” John rubbed his thumb along Caleb’s jaw line. “But were not necessarily having sex while your dad is in Melbourne. We’re also not necessarily not having sex.” He wrinkled his nose at Caleb’s dubious expression. “We’re not on a timeline, is what I mean, and we’ve got a couple of really big discussions in our future first, okay?”

Caleb bit his lower lip. “You do like the way I look, right, John?”

“Caleb.” John hooked a finger under Caleb’s chin and lifted his face. “This is not about a lack of attraction, trust me. You’re hot, and you’re smart and you’re funny. Fuck, mate, I could get hard just thinking about you.”

This time Caleb’s flush was paired with a shy smile.

“But we’re not rushing into anything, remember?”

“Yeah.” Caleb reached out and tugged a button on John’s shirt. “I kind of figured that when you didn’t get off the other night. Like, um…”

John might not have gotten off when Caleb was still there, but he’d sure as hell made up for it when he’d left. “Like?” he prompted.

“Like I thought you’d want to have sex. Proper sex. With me.” Caleb’s throat bobbed when he swallowed. “And I want to, even if I’ve never, um, had anything inside me like that.”

“You think you’ve got this figured out?” John asked him.

Caleb blushed. “Just…you know.”

God. John loved the way a blush could light up a white boy’s face like that.

“You think because I’m the bigger guy, the older guy, that I’m the top?”

Caleb shrugged.

“You think sex means penetration?”

This time Caleb squirmed.

“Let me tell you something,” John said. He waited until Caleb raised his gaze. “What we did the other night was sex. Sex doesn’t have to mean penetration. A lot of guys don’t even like anal.”

Caleb was as red as a beetroot. “Really?”

“Sure. Maybe you would, and maybe you wouldn’t. But there are heaps of things we can try before we even get to that. If we even get to that. It’s not a checklist, mate. You don’t have to cross off every item.” He raised his eyebrows. “And, just so you know, I’m versatile. So don’t assume, even if we do get there, that you’ll be on the bottom.”

Caleb’s jaw dropped. “You would let me…?”

John leaned down and brushed their mouths together. He could feel the heat radiating from Caleb’s face. “Yes.”

Caleb shuddered out a breath, his arms coming up around John’s neck. He laughed, and his breath was warm against John’s jaw. “Okay, yes, talking about these things is super important, and I get that, but can we be done with this conversation for now? Please?”

John took pity on his embarrassment. “Yeah, we can be done for now.”

Caleb drew a breath, as though he was steeling himself. “But not for good.”

“But not for good,” John agreed.

Caleb stepped away from him, his mouth quirking, and headed for the kitchen. “You want a drink?”

“Yeah,” John said, following him. “I’d kill for a cold drink right about now.”

They were sitting on the back veranda, open cans of soft drink beaded with condensation, when Darren arrived home with fish and chips.

* * *

John figured he was almost at the Gold Coast anyway, so why not keep going? He pulled up at the beachfront at Southport, took his shoes and socks off, and walked down to the water. He sat in the sand, his heels digging in, and watched the water for a while.

Shit.

This was a mess.

Being with Caleb felt so right—John loved him, and there wasn’t a shadow of doubt in his mind about that—but there was so much that could go wrong, and not having Darren in the loop felt a little too much like deception.

John gripped a shell and tossed it toward the water.

No, it was fucking deception, no two ways about it.

Tonight Darren had mentioned the expo in Melbourne, and John had agreed to take a few days of leave so that Caleb wouldn’t be alone in the house, and Darren’s assumption that John was Caleb’s friend and nothing more was no longer true. They were supposed to be a team, the three of them, all of them on the same page when it came to Caleb’s mental health, and now John and Caleb had skipped a few chapters ahead, hadn’t they? Or they were reading from an entirely different fucking book, and that was unfair to Darren.

But also, Caleb was right. He had a right to his own agency. Why shouldn’t he be trusted to navigate something on his own for once, if he wanted to do it? How would they ever know he could, if they never let him try?

“Because he’s not on his own, you arsehole,” John muttered to the ocean. He dug his fingers down into the grains of sand. “You’re a part of it, and you’re helping him hide it.”

But that was what Caleb said he wanted, and John couldn’t betray that.

The smartest thing to do would have been to not get involved with Caleb before telling Darren, but, well, the stable doors were flapping open in the wind now, weren’t they? And the horses were long fucking gone.

All John could do at this point was hope that Darren wouldn’t punch him in the face when he found out, even though a part of him knew he deserved it.

He lifted his hand and let the sand trickle through his fingers.

Only time would tell.

* * *

Tuesday morning was a replay of Monday. John and Liz grabbed coffee, and then went and chased up a bunch of potential witnesses to the weekend’s drug overdoses. Chased them up at school, got their details, and then phoned their parents to come and meet them now while they talked to them, or arrange a time to bring them to the station. John thought of Jessie while he listened to each kid stumble through their retelling of the weekend’s events: silly kids doing silly things, just the way they had since the beginning of time.

He remembered the saying his dad used: E le fono pa’a mona vae. The crab didn’t consult with its legs that they should pinch; they did it of themselves. Just like too often teenagers would be teenagers, and never stop to ask their parents if something was a good idea or not. And sometimes—most times—it didn’t matter and they grew up just fine anyway, but there was still a kid in hospital on life support for the decision she’d made on the weekend to try a pill.

“I think I used to smoke behind that building,” John said as he and Liz left Woodridge State High School in the early afternoon.

“You smoked?” Liz laughed. “And here I thought you were a choir boy!”

“Total bad seed,” John lied. “A rebel. Dangerous and mysterious.”

Liz’s smile grew.

In the car on their way back to the station John went over his notes while Liz drove.

“I mean, all these overdoses probably do come from the same bad batch, but it’s not the dealers,” John said. “These Woodridge kids aren’t hanging at the same parties as the Grammar kids. It’s got to be the supplier.”

“I think so too,” Liz said. “Which means we’ll see more this weekend, if not before. And it’ll hit the club circuit next, which means adult victims, which means we can kick it back to the drug squad since they get all pissy and start bitching that we’re stepping on their toes if we try to look any higher than street level dealers anyway.”

“Should never have been ours in the first place,” John muttered.

“Preach.” Liz slowed and braked for a red light. “So apparently I’m partnered up with Aaron on my night work next week.”

“Yeah,” John said. “I’m taking the week off. The boss approved it.”

“Aaron, John,” Liz said. “Aaron. I don’t have seven night’s worth of conversation about protein shakes and burpees in me.”

John snorted.

“All I’m saying is you’d better have a bloody good excuse.”

John kept his eyes on the road. “Darren’s got some expo thing in Melbourne, so I’m staying with Caleb.”

“Huh.”

John looked at her. “What does ‘huh’ mean?”

“It just means ‘huh’.”

“Bullshit it does.” John knocked his head back against the headrest. “Okay, so hypothetically, what would you say if me and Caleb were involved?”

“I’d say don’t beat around the bush,” Liz said frankly. “You’re been involved since the day you met him. To be less involved you’d need to go see one of those doctors who specialises in separating conjoined twins. Do you mean that you’re in a romantic relationship?” She rolled her eyes at his expression. “‘Hypothetically’.”

The driver behind them laid on the horn.

“Shit,” Liz said, and accelerated through the green light.

“Yeah,” John said. “I mean a romantic relationship.”

“It’s not a good look, is it?” Liz asked softly. “To be in a relationship with someone you met in a professional capacity when they were a child victim?”

John shifted in his seat. “That was eight years ago.”

“I know,” Liz said. “And I know you, which is why I’m on your side here. I’m just telling you it’s the sort of thing that might come back and bite you in the arse at some point, probably a few years down the track when some fucker backstabs you to get the promotion you want. Which is why I want you to tell me now, hypothetical bullshit aside, if you and Caleb are in a romantic relationship.”

“We are.”

“Okay,” Liz said. “Then that’s officially disclosed and noted, but you will tell the boss as well, understood? Because I mean it, John, it’s the sort of thing that can come back and bite you. Because Caleb isn’t your complainant anymore, but you were still in a position of authority over him at one point.”

John nodded, a little queasy at the thought of having that particular conversation with their supervising inspector.

“Good.” Her expression softened. “The boss thinks the sun shines out of your arse. You’ll be fine. And now for the real messy part; do you know what you’re getting into here, John?”

“No,” John said. “I have no fucking idea, and I’m so scared I’m gonna mess it up and hurt him.”

Liz reached out and squeezed his arm quickly. “Or maybe you won’t.”

“That’s a lot riding on ‘maybe’,” John said.

“There usually is when it comes to relationships,” Liz said. “Look, I won’t pretend that this is all sunshine and rainbows and puppies, but you’ve been in Caleb’s corner since the day I met you. You clearly love him and he loves you, and more than that he trusts you. And that puts you on an incredibly short list of people. He made the first move, right?”

Heat rose in John’s face. “Yeah.”

“Of course.” Liz shrugged. “Because you wouldn’t have. I mean, I don’t know, John, but doesn’t Caleb deserve a win for once? Is it possible you’re overthinking this?”

“Not with Caleb. There’s so much that can go wrong.”

“There’s a lot that can go right too.” Liz flicked on the indicator as they turned off Kingston Road. “Look, he can’t live in a bubble forever. He can’t be expected to not want the things that other people get to have, like a partner, and sex, and a relationship. Isn’t it better that he tries those things with you, someone he trusts, than with some random dickhead he picks up on a night out? Because you know how that ended last time.”

“Maybe,” John said. “Or maybe that would make it even worse if it doesn’t work out.”

“I mean…” Liz sighed heavily. “At some point you have to try, right? And since you’re already together, you’ve already passed that point. Whatever happens will happen, and you can’t control that, you can only do your best. And for what it’s worth, your best and Caleb’s best together? I think you guys might just do okay.”

John swallowed. “I hope so.”

“But anything else,” Liz said, “you’re just thinking around in circles, and that won’t do anyone any good. You’re already doing this thing, John. Maybe you could actually try enjoying it while you’re at it.”

John shook his head, a corner of his mouth tugging up in a rueful smile. “Caleb said something like that. He said he wanted a chance to enjoy it.”

“Sounds like smart thinking to me,” Liz said, and flashed him a smile. “Cheeseburgers for lunch?”

“I don’t know,” John said slowly as though he was mulling over the question. “What will your new bestie Aaron say about that?”

“Arsehole.” Liz glared at him as they headed for the nearest Macca’s.

Chapter Ten

The construction site just off Cavill Avenue was cordoned off from the street, but a workman showed John and Brian through to the office. The office was a repurposed shipping container, with a rattling, dripping air conditioning unit attached to the outside. The worker banged on the door.

“Boss? Coppers are asking for you.”

The man who wrenched the door open was almost a dead ringer for the kid who called himself Caleb Gray, except with a good thirty years on him. He was tall and must have been thin once, though now a small beer belly pressed against the buttons of his shirt. He was tanned, unlike Caleb, and he had deep lines that fanned out from the corners of his dark eyes.

“Darren Fletcher?” Brian asked.

The arm of a crane swung overhead. Tinny pop music blasted from someone’s radio. The beep-beep-beep of a reversing forklift cut through the song.

“Yeah. What’s this about?”

“Senior Sergeant Brian Keller,” Brian said, and nodded at John. “Constable John Faimu. We’re with the Logan CPIU. Can we come in, please?”

The colour drained from Darren Fletcher’s face. He jerked his chin in a nod, and then stepped back to let them enter.

The office was cluttered. It was full of paperwork and blueprints and shelves overflowing with the detritus of Darren Fletcher’s job.

“Is this about Jason?” he asked, dragging a shaking hand through his hair.

John thought of the kid in the hospital bed who was still calling himself Caleb Gray.

“It is,” Brian said. “We think we’ve found him. We’ll need to do a DNA swab to confirm, but we’re pretty sure it’s him. He’s alive, Mr. Fletcher.”

“Alive.” The word shuddered out of the man like he didn’t believe it. He rubbed a hand over his face. When he took it away, his cheeks were wet. “Jesus. Where…where is he?”

“In hospital,” Brian said. “Darren, when we found him, it wasn’t good. He’s got some fairly serious injuries, but the doctors say he’ll recover.”

“Injuries from what?”

“From the people he was with,” Brian said.

“When can I see him?”

“Let’s get that swab done first,” Brian said. “And if we can confirm he’s your son, then we’ll figure out when he’s ready to see you, okay?”

Darren Fletcher’s face twisted. “It’s been ten fucking years.”

“Yeah,” Brian said. “And I’m asking you to wait a few more days. Can you do that for me, Darren?”

John watched a hundred different emotions battle over the man’s face before he finally nodded, his shoulders slumping.

“Yeah. I can do that.”

* * *

“Thanks for doing this, John,” Darren said, lugging his suitcase down the front steps. “I really appreciate it.”

“It’s no problem,” John said, and felt like the biggest arsehole in the world.

Caleb’s smile, both shy and mischievous, was a hell of a fucking balm though. They waved Darren off while Cricket raced up and down the fence line excitedly.

Four days of Caleb, while Darren was in Melbourne listening to speakers talk about sustainable development in the commercial construction industry. John knew who was getting the better deal, no question, though he knew Darren would appreciate the break. It wasn’t often he got the chance to be off duty when it came to Caleb, and John hoped he’d make the most of it. Visions of boozy middle-aged blokes in polo shirts and lanyards danced through his mind, and he smiled. Yeah, Darren deserved to cut loose and have some fun for once.

“Hey, do you want to get pizza tonight?” Caleb asked as they headed around the side of the house to the back yard to throw a tennis ball for Cricket.

“I’m pretty sick of fast food,” John said. “Why don’t we cook something?”

Caleb wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know what we’ve got.”

“We’ll find something,” John assured him.

It was nice, cooking dinner with Caleb, even though dinner turned out to be tinned spaghetti on toast. John heated up the spaghetti on the stovetop, and Caleb made the toast.

“You know pizza would have been a better idea, right?” Caleb teased as he moved around John to grab the butter from the fridge.

“There’s nothing wrong with spaghetti on toast,” John told me. “Me and Mary and David used to make this every time my parents went out for the night. Mostly because it was the only thing we could cook.”

Caleb scraped butter over the toast. “It’s barely cooking. It’s using the toaster, and heating.”

“That’s the beauty of it.” John nudged him with his shoulder. “Anyway, tomorrow we’ll go grab some groceries, and actually branch out into proper meals.”

“Pizza is a proper meal.”

“Blasphemer,” John said with a laugh that died in his throat the moment he realised. He froze.

Caleb was still too, staring down at the butter-smeared toast on the plate in front of him. And then his hand shook and the knife rattled against the edge of the plate, beating out a rapid, discordant tattoo. Caleb’s hand clenched around the handle, his knuckles white.

“Caleb?” John’s heart raced. “Shit, Caleb, I’m sorry.”

Caleb set the knife down, and turned his head. “It’s okay. It’s just a word. Just a dumb word.” He swallowed. “I know it doesn’t mean anything.”

“I’m sorry,” John repeated, because he knew that certain words cut Caleb deep, and that it was Ethan Gray’s voice he heard them spoken in, even after all these years. The word was meaningless, but the monster who’d once screamed it at a terrified boy was still very real.

“John.” Caleb shifted so that their bodies lined up flush, and placed his hands on John’s chest. “Remember how I said I’m not a kid?”

John nodded, his throat aching.

“I’m not a kid, and I’m specifically not that kid either,” Caleb said. “That terrified, broken fifteen-year-old kid you found that day. I’ve been working really hard to not be him anymore. And yeah, my brain is a fucking mess with the shit it throws up at me all the time, but when that happens, that’s not your fault. And I know it’s not mine either. It’s just like…” He shrugged and shook his head. “It’s just like the weather. You pack an umbrella and hope you don’t need it, you know? But the rain’s going to happen, whatever you do.”

John lifted a hand and traced a finger down the side of Caleb’s temple. “It’s a thunderstorm happening in there, huh?”

“Sometimes,” Caleb said. He smiled, but it couldn’t hide the worry in his eyes. “But mostly it’s just overcast with a chance of scattered showers.”

John’s heart ached for him. Caleb carried wounds that nothing would ever heal. They were a part of him now. They were scabbed over, but they would never go away, and he and the people he loved could only hope to move through life without tearing them open again. It wasn’t what Caleb deserved, but it was his reality.

“I love you,” John said. “And I know that’s not a cure, or an answer, or the part that comes at the end of a story. But it’s a promise. Whatever happens between us, I will always love you and I will always be on your side. You won’t ever have to be alone when the rain comes.”

Caleb’s expression was soft and vulnerable. His eyes shone, and his answering smile was wobbly. He swallowed, his throat bobbing, and slid a hand to John’s shoulder. Curled his fingers around the curve of the muscle there. “I know. I’ve always known.”

And then the spaghetti in the saucepan began to bubble, and John had to take it off the heat before it boiled over and left them with no dinner and a hell of a mess.

* * *

Caleb showered while John unpacked his bag in the guest room. He unzipped his bag and dug his phone charger out, then plugged it in at the bedside table, and figured that counted as settling in. Then he pulled his clothes out and put them in the top drawer of the empty dresser. He stared at them a while before sliding the drawer shut, and then sat back down on the bed.

The guest room was sparse and utilitarian. A bed and a dresser, and a bedside table with a lamp. The walls were painted a light blue that John knew from experience was almost eggshell when the sunlight hit it in the mornings. The wooden blinds were a little dusty, but the sheets on the bed smelled fresh and clean.

This had been Jason’s room once, Darren had told him years ago. It had been so long ago that he’d said it that he’d still been having trouble remembering to refer to his son as Caleb. It had come easily enough with the teenaged stranger he’d taken into his house, but a lot longer for Darren to remember to call the son of his memories that name as well. The baby’s name had been Jason, and Darren had fumbled the transition more than once before it finally became second nature.

From the other end of the house, John heard the shower shut off. A few minutes later, bare feet padded down the hardwood floors, and then:

“Hey.” Caleb leaned in the doorway wearing only a pair of boxer briefs.

Jesus.

John almost tore his gaze away out of habit, but then his fast-beating heart skipped a joyful beat and he remembered that he was allowed this. He was allowed to look at Caleb, and he didn’t have to hide his appreciation. Caleb was lean. He didn’t have a lot of muscle definition, didn’t have any bulk like John did, but he was lean and lithe and beautiful. He had faint tan lines on his arms, beginning where the sleeves of his T-shirts normally rested, and around his throat. John wanted to trace the lines with his blunt fingertips, and with his kisses. His torso was a shade paler than his arms and his face. He was almost hairless except for a few outliers in the slight dip between his pecs, and in the treasure trail that started at his navel. His nipples were pink, and tight under John’s gaze. A bead of water slid down his skin, leaving a gleaming trail down his abdomen.

He was beautiful.

His dark hair damp and mussed from the shower, his sharp jawline, his inviting mouth, and his slate-grey eyes. There was more beauty behind those eyes than in any other part of him, John thought, because he knew Caleb, and he loved him.

“Look at you,” John said, his voice low with wonder. He’d seen Caleb hundreds of times wearing nothing but boardshorts at the beach, but this was different. This moment wasn’t casual and carefree. It was laden with meaning. “Shit, Caleb, look at you.”

A flush rose of Caleb’s face, and stained his throat pink too. He shifted, a hand twitching in front of his boxer briefs in what might have been an unconscious and futile attempt to hide his growing erection. “Hey.”

“You’re beautiful,” John said, and the words felt insufficient.

Caleb smiled and ducked his head. “So are you.”

John laughed, because the idea was ridiculous.

Caleb raised his head. “You are. Don’t fish.”

John laughed again, the tension in the moment flooding away. “I’m not fishing.”

“You are.” There was a teasing note in Caleb’s voice, and his smile was brighter and less self-conscious. “You want me to tell you that you’re tall, dark and handsome.”

John hummed. “Two out of three, maybe.”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “Fishing.”

John snorted, and shook his head. “Hey, do you want to watch a movie, or is it getting too late for that?”

Caleb shrugged. “I can stay up for a bit. I don’t have work again until Monday, and a movie won’t screw up my sleep schedule that much anyway.”

Caleb’s sleep schedule was vital. When he didn’t sleep, it threw him off kilter enough that other things slipped too: he forgot to eat, forgot to take his meds, or he decided it would be okay to go out and drink and socialise, and maybe pick up. Which wouldn’t have mattered too much, except for the inevitable fallout. There were highs where Caleb was hyped up like a little kid on sugar, bouncing off the walls and loving it. He talked too fast, he had a million things to say, he was the life of the party. People loved that about him; the high before the crash. And it usually started with a lack of routine.

“Sounds like a plan,” John said. He raised his eyebrows. “But do me a favour, huh?”

Caleb looked at him questioningly.

“Put some bloody clothes on,” John said, “or I won’t be able to look at the screen at all.”

Caleb laughed, and blushed, and headed for his room.

“I don’t think I’m the one fishing here!” John yelled after him. He was about to head out after Caleb, when his phone rang. He grabbed it and checked the screen before answering,

“Ma?”

“John!” It sounded like she was crying.

“Ma, what’s happened?”

“It’s Jessie! The police just called me! She’s been arrested!”

* * *

Caleb sat in the passenger seat, drumming his fingertips on his knee as the motorway lights slid up the windscreen. “So this is how it feels when you get the call to come and get me in the middle of the night, huh?”

John snorted. “Not likely. I’ve never felt the burning desire to wring your neck for anything you’ve done.”

Caleb shifted, and tugged the sleeves of his hoodie down over his wrists. Balled his hands to keep them there. “Is she going to be in trouble?”

John sighed. “Yeah. More with the family than she is with the police though, I think.”

Jessie didn’t have a criminal history, so John figured with what he’d been told that she’d get off tonight with a caution. It was better than a court appearance, and hopefully it’d have the desired effect: Jessie would clean up her act. Though John had seen plenty of kids who hadn’t, and who’d just aged up into the adult justice system. And the last thing he needed right now was another potential conflict of interest he’d have to disclose to the inspector.

Hey, boss, what do you want to talk about first? The fact I have a family member who’s been arrested, or that I’m in a relationship with a former complainant whose case I investigated when he was a kid?

John was probably not going to get Christmas Day off this year.

“I just don’t know what to do with her,” John said, shaking his head.

Caleb pressed his mouth into a worried line.

John huffed. “It’ll look better in the morning, right? Things always look better in the morning.”

Caleb nodded.

They spent the rest of the drive in silence. When they reached the Beenleigh Police Station, John pulled into a parking space out the front. They were mostly empty due to the late hour. He and Caleb got out of the car and then headed for the front doors of the station. The doors rolled open, letting a wave of cool air out.

John strode to the front counter, his ID at the ready. He didn’t work out of this station, and he didn’t recognise the constable on the counter. “John Faimu,” he said. “I work out of Logan CPIU. I got a call that my sister’s been picked up in a stolen car.”

“I’ll buzz you through,” the constable said.

Caleb stuck close to John as the constable showed them through to the dayroom. There were three kids scattered around the room, each sitting a long distance apart from the other, and each accompanied by at least one uniformed copper. John could hear faint yelling from somewhere in the distance too; someone in the cells wasn’t happy.

Jessie was in the middle row of desks in the dayroom, sitting sullenly in a chair while a female constable talked to her. She straightened when she saw John approaching. “John!”

“Not a bloody word,” John told her. He introduced himself to the female constable, and they left Jessie slumped in her chair and moved to the other side of the dayroom to talk.

“The driver’s nineteen,” the constable said, “so he’ll be going to court in the morning. Jessie and the other girls are all underage.”

John didn’t know what was worse, that Jessie was hanging around a nineteen-year-old car thief, or that he knew exactly what that nineteen-year-old car thief would be expecting from a sixteen-year-old girl in return for his company. He shot a look in Jessie’s direction; she was chewing her thumbnail and scowling, as though this was all an inconvenience to her. John tamped down his rising anger.

“Did they know it was stolen?” he asked.

The constable’s expression was too neutral to be anything but carefully schooled. “They say they didn’t.”

Which meant, of course, they did.

John sighed.

“My sergeant’s happy to let the girls go with cautions,” the constable said. “Just so you know, though, the driver’s a real grub. He’s got a bunch of property offences and DMA stuff.”

John shook his head. “Yeah, I figured.”

“I’ll go get her paperwork,” the constable said, “and we can sort out a time later in the week to do the caution.”

“Thanks.”

The constable headed back over toward Jessie.

“What’s DMA?” Caleb murmured.

“Charges under the Drugs Misuse Act.” John tore his gaze from Jessie. “You okay waiting in here for a bit longer?”

Caleb had his hands jammed into the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie. He nodded. “Yeah. Not really a huge fan of police stations, but I’m okay.”

John squeezed his shoulder.

It took about half an hour for Jessie to get processed. John hung back and let the constable do her job. He read the notice board a bunch of times. It was no different than the one in his office. Crime bulletins and wanted persons mixed in with flyers for birthday parties, retirements, and kids’ school pie drives.

By the time they left the station it was almost two in the morning.

Jessie was pissed off when John directed her to the back seat of his car, and she huffed and tossed her hair like a brat.

“You want to tell me what happened tonight?” John asked on the drive to Ma’s place. “Like who the fuck this guy is you’re hanging out with who steals cars?”

“No!”

“You pull this shit again, and you know you’ll end up in court,” John said. “And then in a detention centre.”

Jessie glared at him in the rear-view mirror. “Like you care!”

“I do bloody care, actually,” John said, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. “And if you could see past your own bullshit, maybe you’d realise you are surrounded by family who cares!”

The tears came after that, but John knew Jessie too well. They weren’t tears of regret or sorrow—Jessie was angry as hell. She glared at him, her mouth set in a line, her jaw clenched even as the tears slid down her cheeks.

When they pulled up outside Ma’s house, she was first out of the car.

“You spend more time with Caleb than me!” she yelled as she slammed the car door. “You wouldn’t even care if I tried to kill myself like he does!”

John felt as though she’d thrown a bucket of ice water over him.

Selfish little bitch.

John had never hated her like he did in that moment. Who the fuck did she think she was to compare herself to Caleb? She had no fucking idea what Caleb faced, every single day of his life. Every day.

He got out of the car.

His anger was fast, hot. He took a step toward her, his hand raised, before he even realised he’d done it.

What the fuck? Are you going to hit her?

Jessie must have thought he meant it. She shrieked and ran toward the house.

John uncurled his fingers. He hadn’t even known he’d made a fist.

Fuck. He would have hit her as well. A part of him still wanted to.

“John,” Caleb said, and John realised he was standing beside him on the footpath. “John?”

The front door slammed shut behind Jessie.

John’s face burned. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to hear that.”

Caleb shrugged.

“Hey,” John said. He pulled Caleb into a hug and pressed his mouth to the top of his head in a soft kiss. “I’m sorry.”

Caleb’s fingers found his own, and his thumb rubbed a circle against John’s palm.

“I’ve never hit her,” John said, his voice catching. “I’ve never let her push me like that before.”

“I know,” Caleb said. “I know you wouldn’t do it.”

John wasn’t sure he had the same faith in himself, but he was selfishly glad that Caleb believed it. He never wanted Caleb to think he could be capable of hurting someone in anger.

He looked up as the front door opened again, and saw Sepela silhouetted there in her dressing gown.

“Come on,” he said to Caleb. “Ma won’t let us leave without feeding us coconut slice.”

They held hands as they headed for the house and Sepela stepped back to let them inside.

* * *

It was late by the time they got home again, and John didn’t even think twice about stripping down to his underwear and tumbling into Caleb’s bed with him. They were both too tired to do anything more than sleep, though it still took John a long time to doze off. Ma was upset with Jessie, and had spent a long time crying on John’s shoulder, asking him where she’d gone wrong. And by the morning David and Tee and Mary would know, and John’s phone would blow up. At least he was on leave and didn’t have to juggle all this bullshit around his regular work schedule.

He and Caleb lay facing each other, and John watched the faint moonlight falling over Caleb’s face. Caleb’s dark lashes fanned out softly as he slept, and his mouth was open. His tousled hair tempted John to run his fingers through it, and smooth it down.

Caleb’s hand lay in the small place between them, his fingers spread over the cool sheet. John shifted his arm up so that he covered Caleb’s hand with his own, and linked their fingers together.

Caleb’s mouth twitched.

“I love you,” John whispered to him, and watched his face until sleep took him.

Chapter Eleven

The hospital room was dark. The blinds were closed even though it was the middle of the day, the lights were turned down, and the television was off.

“You okay, mate?” John asked from the doorway.

Caleb barely glanced at him. His pale fingers were curled around the cover of a book. John took a step forward.

Fuck.

It was a Bible. Who the fuck had given Caleb a Bible? And then John realised that maybe nobody had, and maybe they were just stashed around the place like they were in hotels and Caleb had found one in the cabinet beside his bed.

John reached Caleb’s beside and put a hand over his. Wriggled the Bible free, and then tossed it into the bin beside the bed. Thanked fuck that Ma wasn’t here to see him do it.

Caleb’s eyes widened, and he sucked in a shocked breath.

“You want to read it, you read it in the light,” John said. “You understand me? You don’t just lie here in the dark and read the parts that make you feel like shit. The parts that Ethan Gray twisted up and lied about. You and Simon never deserved what happened to you, and Ethan Gray is not God. He’s not powerful, or strong, or all-knowing. He’s just a sad little man sitting in a prison cell right now, and I’m going to make sure he stays there for a long fucking time.”

Caleb’s breath shuddered out of him. “You will?” For the first time since John had met him a new expression stole cautiously across his features, softening them. It looked almost like hope. “Do you promise?”

* * *

John blinked awake, awareness slowly trickling into the places that sleep retreated from. His gaze went to the window first, and to the golden light slanting through the wooden blinds. Then it went to the man whose bed he’d been sleeping in, and his breath caught. They’d shifted in their sleep, and Caleb was lying on his side now, his back pressed against John’s chest.

If it was just this moment, just now, if time could stop right here, it would be perfect. Lying curled up with Caleb in the cool morning light of his room, breathing against the back of his neck and making strands of his fine hair dance. One arm under Caleb’s head, one hand resting on his hip. Perfect. If there wasn’t work, and bills, and family, and all that shit that came between them before they even opened the lid on Caleb’s issues. Perfect.

John eased his arm out from under Caleb, and rolled away from him. God. Falling asleep with Caleb might have been a mistake, because in sleep they were close. He could still feel the warmth of Caleb’s body, and his cock stirred. Caleb, still sleeping, wasn’t immune either. There was a bulge in his boxer briefs that with anyone else John might have teased into a decent erection: Good morning, beautiful. But he couldn’t go there with Caleb. Not without clear and explicit consent all the way, every time. John couldn’t afford to make assumptions about what Caleb wanted, or about what he was ready for. He couldn’t risk overstepping. He wouldn’t hurt Caleb.

He levered himself out of bed, and padded to the bathroom for a piss. Then, yawning, he made his way into the kitchen. Cricket, who slept on a canvas bed in the hallway, joined him. He opened the back door for her, and followed her down into the yard. She headed straight for the rain tree to do her business, and John took a scoop of dry food from the tub under the stairs and tipped it into her dish.

Cricket raced back and began to eat, her tail waving so much that her entire backside wiggled.

“Settle down, idiot,” John told her fondly, and she wriggled even harder.

John climbed the back stairs to the kitchen and pulled the eggs out of the fridge. He dug around for some cheese and mushrooms and tomatoes, and figured he could make a decent enough omelette out of those.

He cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl and whisked them with a fork.

Caleb trailed out from his bedroom a moment later, yawning. He put John’s phone on the kitchen bench. “It keeps dinging.”

John peered at the screen. It was full of missed calls and text message alerts from Ma and David and Mary. He sighed. “I’m not going to look until after breakfast.”

Caleb showed him a sleepy smile. “That’s a good plan.”

He came and stood behind John, and slipped his arms around John’s waist. He rested his cheek on John’s shoulder, and swayed with him as he worked.

“Don’t fall asleep on me,” John warned, but there was no heat in his words.

Caleb murmured something into his shoulder, and continued to cling until Cricket made her way back upstairs again. Then Caleb crouched down on the floor and fussed over his girl. Cricket lay on her back and wriggled, back legs bicycling in the air as Caleb rubbed her belly.

John’s heart ached for how much he loved this: just a warm, safe moment when Caleb was sleep-rumpled and happy, and Cricket’s tail thumped on the kitchen floor. Screw the big moments; the fireworks and the end credits. John wanted a lifetime made up of tiny moments like these, but even as he existed in one he was already afraid of when it would end, when Caleb’s mood would turn, and when he’d lose himself once more to the storm building in his head.

“You want to get the coffee on while I cook?” John asked

Caleb threw him a sleepy smile and nodded. Then, to Cricket’s displeasure, he rose to his feet, washed his hands, and put the pods in the coffee maker. “Are we going to visit your mum today?”

John grabbed two plates out of the cabinet. He used the spatula to cut the omelette into two in the pan, and then juggled it onto the plates. “Yeah, that’s the plan. You okay with that?”

Caleb shrugged. “You’re babysitting me, John. I go where you go.”

John winced.

Caleb laughed, his eyes suddenly bright. “Did I put you off? I did, didn’t I? I just gave you some creepy cheap porn vibes with the whole babysitter thing! I’m twenty-three, John, remember? Definitely not a kid.”

John raised his eyebrows. “All I’m getting from this is that you know that babysitter porn is a thing.”

“I can know it’s a thing without it being my thing.” Caleb was still smiling, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“Hmm.” John hoped he wasn’t pushing him. “What’s your thing?”

“Oh, I’m pretty specific,” Caleb said. His eyes shone. “You’re my thing, John. Just you.”

John’s heart skipped a beat and warmth burst through him.

Caleb’s flush deepened. “And now I made it all sappy.”

“I like sappy,” John said. He set the spatula down. “Get over here.”

Caleb hesitated, so John closed the distance between them. He reached for Caleb’s hand and drew him into an embrace. Pressed a kiss to the top of his head.

“I like sappy, and I love you, Caleb Fletcher.”

Caleb lifted himself up onto his toes and kissed John softly on the mouth. “I love you too, John Faimu.”

Coffee, omelettes, and the man he loved.

John couldn’t think of a better way to start the morning.

* * *

Dry frangipani leaves crunched under John’s shoes as he walked up Ma’s cracked concrete path, reminding him that it had been too long since he’d been around to mow the lawn and help keep the place tidy. He and David had a roster going, but John couldn’t remember the last time he’d done it, which meant that David was doing more than his fair share. John sighed. It felt as though David was doing more than his fair share lately when it came to family stuff.

The squeaky gate had alerted Sepela to their arrival and she had the front door open by the time they reached the steps to the porch.

“John,” she said with a tired smile that made John think she hadn’t slept a wink last night. “And Caleb. Come inside. I just took some Anzac biscuits out of the oven.”

She led them through.

There was already a man in the kitchen—in his twenties, wheat-blond hair, jeans and a T-shirt—and it took John a moment to place him out of context.

“Hi,” the guy said, transferring his Anzac biscuits from his right hand to his left so that he could shake hands. “John, right? I’ve heard a lot about you. Good things only, I promise! I’m Ian Crisp, the youth pastor at Woodridge Uniting.”

John felt Caleb freeze beside him.

John shook Ian’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too.” Ian looked expectantly at Caleb.

“This is Caleb,” John said, and then, hoping it wasn’t a mistake, hoping that Pastor Ian wouldn’t flinch and confirm everything Caleb thought he knew about men of God: “My boyfriend.”

Ian’s smile didn’t even waver as he stuck his hand out toward Caleb. “Nice to meet you, Caleb.”

Caleb mumbled something, and shook Pastor Ian’s hand.

“I take it you’re here because Ma called you about Jess,” John said.

Pastor Ian nodded. “Yeah, I’ve had a chat with Jessie this morning. She’s very upset and, I think, embarrassed.” John’s expression must have showed what he thought about Jess’s embarrassment, because Pastor Ian gave him a wry smile. “I like to think we’re in similar lines of work, John. We’re both hoping to steer kids onto better paths, and sometimes they make it harder for themselves than they should.”

Well, he’d got that right, John supposed.

“But Jess has agreed to keep coming back to youth group,” Pastor Ian said, “so I think that’s a good start. The kids there are good kids, and I think they’ll be a good influence moving forward.”

“I hope so,” John said, wary that any moment the conversation might turn to faith, and prayer, and trusting in God and what those things meant to Caleb. “Thanks for coming, but don’t let us keep you.”

Pastor Ian seemed a little bemused as Sepela swept him toward the front door.

“You okay?” John asked Caleb.

Caleb nodded, but didn’t met John’s gaze.

John pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and guided Caleb to it. Put gentle pressure on his shoulder, urging him to sit. “Want an Anzac biscuit?”

Caleb shook his head, his gaze blank.

John could hear Ma and Pastor Ian talking in low voices at the front door.

“Sorry.” John knelt down beside Caleb’s chair. “I didn’t realise he’d be here. I should have guessed he was on Ma’s list of people to call.”

Caleb glanced at him. “It’s okay.” He swallowed, his throat bobbing, and slid his hand up underneath his shirt. Closed it over something. Then he caught John’s questioning look and reached out and took his hand. Placed it over his chest.

John closed his eyes as he felt the familiar shape of his dad’s boar’s tusk necklace underneath the fabric. For strength, Tama had told John, and he thought, now: for the strong.

“I have to go talk to Jess,” he said. “Are you okay here?”

Caleb nodded, releasing John’s hand. “I’m okay, John. Really.”

John used the edge of the table to pull himself into a standing position. “If you need me, I’ll be just down the hallway.”

He couldn’t hear Pastor Ian anymore, and he glanced toward the front door as he swept into the hallway. The front screen was closed and Sepela was walking back to him. She squeezed his arm in silent thanks as she met him in the doorway of the kitchen, and she smiled.

“Your boyfriend?” she asked in an undertone.

“Don’t tease him, Ma. Just fatten him up with Anzac biscuits or something while I talk to Jess, okay?”

Sepela’s smile grew, and John headed for Jess’s room.

Jess’s room had been a shared room when John was a little kid: a bunk bed for him and Mary, and a trundle bed for David. By the time Mary was a teenager, John and David had been relegated to a sleep-out on the back porch. John and David’s dreams of moving back into a real room once Mary went to university had been dashed by Jess’s unexpected arrival. Still, they’d all managed. And as much as John loved having his own place these days, there was a part of him that would always miss living in his siblings’ pockets.

He knocked on Jess’s door, and waited a beat before opening it.

Jess’s room was a mess, with books and clothes strewn all over the floor. Jess was sitting cross-legged on her bed, wearing a pair of bulky headphones Mary had got her for last Christmas, and a scowl. She was writing in a spiral notebook.

“Hey,” John said, and gestured for her to take the headphones off.

Jess rolled her eyes and tugged the headphones down around her neck. He nodded at the notebook. “Homework?”

Jess shrugged and tossed the notebook aside. “Some stupid thing for youth group. What do you want, John?”

“I wanted to apologise,” John said, and that caught her attention like he knew it would. “I know I’ve been spending more time lately with Caleb than with you, and I’m sorry if you feel like I’ve been ignoring you.”

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

“I’m worried about you,” John said. “I’m worried about the people you’re hanging around, and the choices that you’re making. I hate that every time we see each other lately, all we do is fight.”

Jess’s bottom lip wobbled, and she pressed her mouth into a thin, stubborn line. She looked away and shrugged.

“I miss you, Jess,” John said.

For a moment he thought that Jess was going to ignore him, but then she reached out and picked up her notebook. “I’m writing a thing,” she said. “For youth group. About the parable of the mustard seed. Do you remember it?”

“Yeah,” John said. “That’s the one about how the big tree grows from this tiny, tiny seed, right?”

Jess nodded. When she spoke, her voice was small. “And it’s about faith, or the church, or something, I think. But Pastor Ian said you have to think about what you’re putting out into the world, and I think I’ve been planting the wrong seeds. Ever since Tama—” Her voice cracked. “Ever since Tama died I’ve just been planting angry seeds that are getting bigger and bigger, and I don’t know how to stop them.”

Tears slid down her cheeks, and she scowled and wiped her face.

John closed the distance between them and sat on her bed. He put an arm around her shoulder, his chest aching for her. “Just talk to us, Jess. Please, just talk to us.”

Jess held herself stiffly for a moment, and then she abruptly turned into John’s embrace and wept, her sobs shaking her body.

She wasn’t the only one who cried.

* * *

“Are you okay?” Caleb asked an hour later as they drove back toward the Gold Coast. He was balancing a container of Anzac biscuits on his knees, because Sepela never let someone leave her house without food.

“Isn’t it supposed to be me asking you that?”

Caleb rolled his eyes, but he smiled.

“I’m good though,” John said. “I think maybe this was a turning point. I hope it was, at least.”

“It was a breakthrough,” Caleb said. “That’s what Dr. Harper would call it.”

“Yeah, maybe it is.”

John hoped that Jess’s would prove more permanent than many of Caleb’s, although the second he had the thought he admonished himself for its unfairness. It wasn’t that Caleb’s breakthroughs were meaningless, just that for every wall Caleb crashed through there was another one right in front of it. Caleb was strong, and he’d never stopped fighting. John had loved that about him from the moment they met.

Caleb peeled the lid of the container off, and withdrew a biscuit. “Want one?”

“Not right now.” John tapped the steering wheel. “You know what we should do?”

“What?”

“Instead of just going back to your place, we should go and get Cricket and take her to the beach.”

Caleb’s smile broadened. “Let’s do it.”

John returned his smile, feeling more relaxed than he had in a long time. He wasn’t naïve enough to think that good intentions and a bit of a cry meant that all of Jessie’s problems were behind her, but he hoped that at least now Jess knew he was on her team and she wouldn’t fight him every step of the way. John decided he was allowed to feel optimistic about that, just like he was allowed to feel optimistic with Caleb’s progress lately. He was going to remember to celebrate the small victories, and taking Cricket to the beach seemed like a good way to do it.

They stopped in at the house long enough to collect Cricket and change into T-shirts and boardshorts. John threw a couple of cans of soft drink and bottles of water into an insulated bag, and then they headed out again.

It was a perfect day at the beach, barefoot in the sand with Cricket splashing happily in the shallows. Sunlight and salt, and fish and chips for lunch, eaten sitting in the shade of a wind-twisted pine tree on the foreshore. Cricket crunched on a pinecone between chips.

After they ate, Caleb leaned up against John’s side. They twined their fingers together, and watched the sea. It was a blustery day out on the water; the wind whipped up white caps on the waves. Distant windsurfers darted across the surface of the ocean, bright sails dipping and pitching on the troughs. Children with buckets and spades dug in the sand. Sharp-eyed seagulls swooped over the picnic tables.

“I wish every day could be like this,” Caleb murmured. Medallions of sunlight danced over him as the branches of the tree above them shifted in the wind. Light caught in his eyelashes and made them glow.

Cricket, still damp from her last dash in the shallows, rolled over to bake her belly in the sun.

“Same,” John said. “I just have to win the lotto so I never need to go to work again.”

“That’s your retirement plan, huh?” Caleb’s eyes danced.

“Pretty much.” John ate a chip. “That, or getting a sugar daddy.”

Caleb snorted with laughter.

When John had picked through the last of the chips and given the rejects to Cricket, he binned the greasy paper and then they walked along the foreshore for a while. Cricket tugged eagerly at her leash, and Caleb had to pull her back a few times to remind her of her manners.

They found an ice cream truck, bought an ice cream cone each, and then turned and walked back toward John’s car. The ice creams melted quickly in the heat of the day, and John raced to finish his before it dripped down his wrist. Caleb gave up halfway through and gave his to Cricket.

On the drive back to the hinterland, Cricket fell asleep, and John suspected Caleb wouldn’t be too far behind her.

Caleb took a nap after they got home, and John fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV. He missed a text from Darren, but answered it as soon as he woke up, assuring him that Caleb was fine. Familiar guilt bit at him, unsettling his feeling of lazy contentment, and John tried to ignore it. He didn’t like sneaking around behind Darren’s back, but at the same time Caleb was an adult and he’d made it clear that he wanted this.

Caleb was in the kitchen when John finally pried himself off the coach.

“I’m making toasted sandwiches for dinner,” he said when John found him.

“Sounds like a good plan.”

John liked the way they moved comfortably around one another. It was as though their friendship had expanded to include small touches and smiles, and the occasional kiss, and it felt like a natural extension of everything that had come before. There was no awkwardness in it, no abrupt re-evaluation of their relationship—it was just more. The friendship, the love, the trust, those were still the cornerstones of everything else they were building here.

They ate, and then Caleb went and showered. John loaded the dishwasher and started it up, and then headed to his room to put his phone on charge. He heard Cricket’s claws clicking softly on the polished floorboards of the hallway as she took herself off to bed in Caleb’s room and, a little later, the faint rattle of the pipes as the shower was turned off.

And then—

“John?”

John’s breath caught as he looked up to see Caleb standing in the doorway. He was wearing a towel wrapped around his hips, and water still beaded his chest.

“John?” Caleb said again. “Will you make love to me, please?”

And John couldn’t even imagine refusing him.

Chapter Twelve

“It’s wrong,” Caleb said, his gaze fixed on the table. “It’s against God, and you get…you get p-punished.”

“Punished?” Brian asked. “Son, nobody should ever get punished for kissing another boy. What happened to you was wrong, and you didn’t do anything to deserve it, do you understand?”

Caleb hunched over, his eyes squeezed shut and tears sliding down the sharp angles of his too-thin face. “No. It’s wrong, and God sees you!”

John’s chest ached. “Caleb, it’s not wrong, mate.”

“No.” Caleb shook his head, growing more frantic. “No, it is wrong! And God will strike down anyone who does it! Th-that’s what happened to Simon!”

“Huh,” John said. “So God’s going to strike me down too, is he? I’d like to see him bloody try.”

Caleb froze for a moment and then lifted his head again, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. He looked so startled that John fought the crazy urge to laugh. “Y-you?”

“Yep,” John said. “Me.”

Caleb’s mouth dropped even farther open, but his tears had stopped.

John slid a can of Coke across the table to him. “Have a drink, mate, and let us know when you’re okay to keep going.”

Caleb nodded cautiously, still staring at John like he was seeing something new and astonishing, and then snapped the can open.

* * *

It should have been terrifying, the moment that Caleb stood in the guestroom, wearing nothing but a towel and the moonlight—there was so much that could go wrong. But instead John sat on the bed, in awe of Caleb’s pale beauty, and almost totally overwhelmed at the sheer amount of trust that Caleb was putting in him.

“Have you thought about how you want to do this?” he asked softly.

Caleb shivered, and took a step closer. “I want to have sex with you. I want you inside me.”

Even in the faint moonlight John could see the flush painting Caleb’s pale skin. It started on his chest, and then climbed up his throat to his face. John reached out and touched the dip between his pecs, to feel the heat rising from him.

“I know…” Caleb swallowed. “I know you said we could do it the other way too, but this is what I want first.”

“We can do that,” he said. “And you can change your mind at any time, okay?”

Caleb nodded, his eyes wide.

“I won’t mind if you do,” John said. “I want this too, but only if we both do.”

“I want it,” Caleb whispered. His fingers brushed the sort, worn fabric of John’s T-shirt. “Will you take this off?”

John tugged the shirt over his head.

Caleb exhaled, and ran his fingertips along John’s abdomen. It wasn’t as defined as John would have liked—shift work and fast food took care of that—but he was still in pretty good shape. Caleb’s touch certainly seemed appreciative as his fingers swept over John’s skin, tickling John’s scant treasure trail.

“You’re so big,” Caleb murmured. “You’re the first big guy who ever made me feel safe. Will you touch me?”

John nodded, his mouth suddenly dry. He lifted a hand and placed it against Caleb’s left pec. Felt his heart thumping wildly underneath his palm. He shifted his hand a little, and swiped his thumb over Caleb’s pink nipple. Pink and pretty, though John would never say it aloud. He had a sudden flash of memory to swimming classes in primary school, and his utter befuddlement at discovering that white boys had pink nipples. He could still remember comparing his brown nipples with Liam Henning’s pink ones until Mrs. Lennox had put a stop to it and given them both a stern talking to about what was and wasn’t acceptable behaviour. John’s interest had been a lot more innocent those days than it was now. Now, as he rubbed the pad of his thumb over Caleb’s nipple, he felt a rush of desire when Caleb made a small needy sound and shivered under his touch.

“I have, um…” Caleb sucked in a sharp breath as John pinched his nipple gently. “I have condoms and lube.” He pulled back, not meeting John’s gaze. “I’ll get them.”

He hurried out of the room, and John wasn’t sure he’d come back. He wondered how long he should wait before he went after him and assured him it was okay if he’d changed his mind.

He remembered how Darren had come to him a few years ago, when Caleb had come out, seeking advice on what sort of condoms and lube he should get for him. Darren had been hideously embarrassed over that conversation, but John had thought it showed the measure of the man: Caleb’s safety was his first priority, each and every time. Thinking of how Darren had stumbled over his words asking John how to approach the talk about the mechanics of gay sex so he could have that conversation with Caleb, John felt a wave of guilt at keeping this a secret from him. At doing this behind his back. But Caleb was also right, wasn’t he? Didn’t he deserve to figure this out for himself? Didn’t he deserve to enjoy sex without having to discuss it with his father first?

Then again, hadn’t Caleb also just fled from the room like his arse was on fire?

Jesus. What a fucking mess.

John groaned and stooped to pick up his T-shirt.

“John?” Caleb was standing in the doorway gain, condoms and lube clutched in his hands.

John let his T-shirt drop again. He sat on the edge of the bed, and patted the mattress beside him. “Come here, Caleb.”

Caleb crossed the floor and sat beside him. Foil crinkled as he set the condoms and lube on the bed.

“Have you ever used this stuff?” John asked him.

Caleb shook his head, his cheeks bright pink. “Um, the times I’ve got close to doing it, the other guy took care of it.”

“Okay,” John said, keeping his tone even and hiding the sudden burst of fear inside him at how Caleb could have so easily been hurt. “Well, tonight I’ll show you how to use these, okay?”

Caleb nodded, pressing his mouth into an anxious thin line.

“It’s gonna be awkward as fuck,” John said. “But we’re going to do it.”

“Okay,” Caleb said faintly.

“If you want me inside you, that means we have to take our time with the lube,” John said. “It’ll hurt if you’re not ready.”

Caleb swallowed and nodded again. “I—I know this already.”

“Yeah, I know you do,” John said. “But I need to know we’re on the same page the whole way, okay?”

“We’re a team,” Caleb said with a shaky smile.

“Yeah.” John leaned in and kissed him softly. “We’re a team.”

He remembered his own excruciating embarrassment the first few times he’d done this, or, worse, the times he hadn’t been embarrassed because he’d been stumbling drunk instead. Back when he’d been younger, somehow that had seemed a better alternative than embarrassment. He hadn’t been with anyone he trusted back then. Most of the time he hadn’t been with anyone he’d known. Hook ups and one-night stands. They were a passage of youth, he guessed, but Caleb needed something else. Caleb needed someone he trusted, someone he loved, and John would rather die than screw this up. He wanted Caleb—he was so hard he ached—but more than anything he wanted Caleb to be safe, to be happy, and he wanted himself to be worthy of Caleb’s trust and his love.

“So what we’re going to do,” John said, “is just lie here and kiss for a while, okay? And I’ll get you ready by fingering you—yeah, don’t make that face, there’s really no nice way to say it—and then, if you like it and you want more, I’ll penetrate you, and—”

Caleb let out a sudden burst of nervous laughter.

“I know! But there’s no nice way to say that either,” John said, shaking his head and smiling. “It’s either I sound like a creepy doctor, or a cheap porno. There’s no middle ground here, mate.”

“This is why not talking about it is a better option!” Caleb’s smile faded slowly. “I mean, for most people, I guess.”

“Awkward conversations are a part of sex for everyone,” John said. “Or they should be. I mean that.”

“I know.” Caleb’s laughter seemed to have loosened the tension in him. “It’s just weird.”

“Well, the payoff will be worth it,” John said. He leaned in to steal another quick kiss, and relished the small moan of disappointment when he drew back. “Anyway, either I penetrate you, or we find another way to finish up. Because I gotta tell you, I am dying to suck you off, Caleb.”

Caleb’s face turned red again, and his breath caught. “You are?”

“Yeah.” John rewarded him with a longer kiss this time, sliding his tongue into his mouth briefly and feeling Caleb shudder against him. “There are no consolation prizes here. Whatever happens, it’s going to feel good, and we’re both going to enjoy it, okay?”

“Yeah.” Caleb exhaled the word on a breath. “So we’re going to lie down now?”

John nodded, and stood and unbuttoned the fly on his jeans. He unzipped, and pushed his jeans down. Kept his boxer briefs on for now, even though they weren’t doing anything to hide his erection at all. Caleb’s gaze was drawn to it. For a moment John thought that he’d back out, but then Caleb stood as well, and tugged his towel open and let it drop to the floor.

Jesus.

He was beautiful. Lean and pale, with a gorgeous dick rising from a thatch of dark curls. His dick was slim, but it was long and the curve of it promised great things. John’s arse clenched just thinking of getting it inside him one day.

“How do you want me?” Caleb asked.

“On your back for now,” John said, his voice rasping. His cock twitched as Caleb obeyed, and he fought the urge to surge forward and claim Caleb in a kiss immediately. He couldn’t go too quickly. He couldn’t, and he wouldn’t. He picked up Caleb’s towel and tossed it onto the bed. “Spread this out under you, hey?”

Caleb opened his mouth, and then John saw the lightbulb moment. He flushed again, and nodded, and flashed John his beautiful arse as he grabbed the towel and got up onto his knees to spread it out. Then he settled onto his back, looking achingly vulnerable. His eyes were as wide as saucers.

John climbed onto the bed beside him, and stretched out on his side. Caleb turned toward him, seeking to hide his nakedness in closeness, and John raised himself on an elbow and leaned down to kiss him.

Long, slow kisses that Caleb melted into, as John ran a hand up and down the side of his chest. It felt a little like gentling a panicked animal. Getting him used to touch until he wasn’t just submitting to it, he was arching into it. John did his best to ignore his throbbing dick and concentrated on building Caleb’s pleasure instead. He lost himself in the sensation of touching Caleb, of kissing him until he moaned, and of being touched and kissed in return. Caleb’s dick painted damp streaks over John’s hip as he leaned over him.

Minutes passed, and they might have been hours.

John reached back for the lube at last, licking a stripe up Caleb’s jaw to distract him from the sound of opening it. Caleb squirmed.

“What happens if I come too soon?” he whispered urgently.

“Then we either stop there,” John said, “or we see if you can come twice.”

Caleb moaned and shuddered. “John! Don’t say things like that! You’ll make it happen!”

John laughed, and nipped him on the jaw. “Oh, how awful that would be.”

Caleb laughed too, and then moaned again as John’s hand rubbed his hipbone.

“On you back again, manamea,” John said, and Caleb’s eyes widened at the endearment. John knew he didn’t know the word, but there was no mistaking the tone. “And pull your left knee up for me, okay?”

“Okay.” Caleb shivered as he obeyed.

“That’s it,” John said, and kissed him again. He shifted back briefly to squirt a glob of lube on the fingertips of his right hand, and settled back beside Caleb again. This time he put his hand on Caleb’s exposed inner thigh, and followed the path of that trembling flesh to Caleb’s core. He rubbed his index finger along Caleb’s taint, swallowing Caleb’s gasp of surprise, and then pressed it gently against his puckered hole.

Slowly. Slowly.

John applied slight pressure, and Caleb opened underneath him. John slipped his finger carefully inside.

Caleb winced, and John stilled.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No.” Caleb wrinkled his nose. “It’s just weird. Kiss me, please?”

John obliged, capturing Caleb’s bottom lip between his own and sucking on it hard for a moment. Caleb’s eyes widened, and then John released his lip and kissed him properly, pushing his tongue into his mouth and then withdrawing it, delighted when Caleb grew more assertive and followed John’s tongue with his own. Caleb was clearly an unpractised kisser, but he was a quick learner.

John withdrew his finger from Caleb’s arse, and then pressed back in with two. Caleb squirmed awkwardly.

“Tell me if it’s too much.”

“Just weird,” Caleb whispered, a crease appearing on his forehead. “Feels really…oh!”

John rubbed the little bump of Caleb’s prostate again, and Caleb made a startled, strangled sound. John grinned. “You like that?”

“John!” A shiver ran through Caleb’s body, and he moved a hand down to his dick. “That doesn’t feel how I thought it would! It’s like…oh, wow.” He bit his lip, his eyes closing. “Do it again, please.”

Caleb’s spine arched like a bow, his body tightening around John’s finger. A pearl of pre-cum glistened from the slit in his dick and then slid slowly down his shaft. John’s mouth watered as he watched it, and his dick was so hard it was almost painful, his balls starting to ache as well. He pushed all of that aside for Caleb, and it was no real hardship. His desire to make Caleb feel good overrode his own desire to come, because that would happen whether Caleb was involved or not. There was nothing stopping John from rubbing one out in the bathroom before bed. What mattered here, in this room and in this moment, was Caleb.

John lost all track of time, his focus narrowed down to Caleb and the way he reacted to every touch, every press of John’s finger inside him. At some point John worked up to two fingers, and began to scissor them gently, stretching Caleb, readying him for more, and Caleb gasped and moaned into every new sensation. John wanted Caleb to want this. More than that, he needed Caleb to be able to experience this with no thoughts of God and sin and hellfire. No thoughts of punishment.

“I love you,” he whispered, stealing another kiss.

Caleb panted into his mouth, and echoed the words back to him. And then: “John? More, please. I want more.”

“Ioe, lo’u tuinanau,” John whispered, heat rising in him.

“What does that mean?” Caleb asked, eyes wide.

“It means you’re the one that I desire,” John said. “Lo’u tuinanau. Roll over for me?”

Caleb’s flushed chest rose and fell, and he dragged John down for another kiss before rolling over and getting his knees up under him. John worried that this moment might be too fraught for him—a loss of eye contact combined with a position that meant only one thing—and he laid a path of kisses down the knots of Caleb’s spine to comfort him.

“Say it again,” Caleb murmured.

“Lo’u tuinanau, my desire,” John murmured, tasting the salt on Caleb’s skin. “La’u manamea. My sweetheart.”

Caleb shivered under the words and the kisses.

John moved and positioned himself behind Caleb, fumbling with the condom packet and almost putting his finger through the thin latex in his haste to roll it on his dick.

“I love you,” he said.

“Tell me in Samoan,” Caleb whispered, his spine twisting as he turned to look back.

“Ou te alofa ia te oe.”

Caleb repeated it back to him, butchering the pronunciation, but John’s heart swelled.

“Are you ready?” he asked, and Caleb nodded. “It’s going to feel strange at first, and if it hurts we’ll stop.”

“I want you,” Caleb said. “Please, John.”

His heart thumping, John gripped his dick and pressed the head against Caleb’s hole. Everything was slippery with lube. John paused for a moment, dizzy with the realisation of what they were about to do, and then pushed slowly inside.

God.

The heat. The heat and the tightness was incredible, like nothing John had ever felt before. And he knew that wasn’t true. He knew it wasn’t, but this was Caleb. This was Caleb, and everything was new. The entire universe was born right now in this exact moment, and John’s eyes stung with sudden tears. He wanted nothing more than to bury himself in Caleb in one long, smooth thrust, but he held back, the head of his dick barely breaching him, and rubbed a hand down Caleb’s spine.

“Push out,” he said. “Try not to tighten up.”

The advice was counter-intuitive, he knew, but Caleb nodded, and suddenly John was able to slide a few inches deeper inside him. Caleb cried out, the sound ragged, and John froze.

“No,” Caleb gasped. “Keep going, please.”

It took a little while, John’s fear battling with his desire every second of the way, but soon he was fully inside Caleb’s trembling body, leaning over him to kiss his shoulders and murmur endearments against his pale skin. Caleb’s breath came in short pants, and he clutched the sheet convulsively, fist opening and closing, his fingers leaving furrows in the fabric. He moaned, and the sound was strained.

“Are you okay?”

Caleb’s voice hitched. “I…I don’t know. Do something, please.”

John straightened up again, and slid a hand underneath him to find Caleb’s dick. It was only half-hard now, the shock of penetration having killed his arousal, but John curled his fingers around that warm flesh and coaxed it back into a full erection, and Caleb groaned and began to roll his hips underneath him. It took a few moments, but John was almost overcome with relief when Caleb’s moans hit a different pitch: one of arousal. Caleb had been close to the edge the whole time when John had been fingering him, and his pleasure built quickly to that point again. A few more strokes and a twist of John’s wrist and Caleb was crying out and coming, his body shaking and tightening around John’s dick and pulling him over the edge as well. There was no time to establish a rhythm or to guide Caleb into practiced movements. It was fast and messy and clumsy, and when Caleb collapsed onto the bed, his body twitching, John followed him down and pressed soft kisses to the sweaty nape of his neck. John felt lazy and sated and warm and he withdrew carefully, rolling off Caleb and pulled him into an embrace.

“Hey, John?” Caleb asked quietly after a moment.

John pressed his hand to Caleb’s chest to feel his racing heart. “Mmm?”

“You remember how you said some guys don’t like that?” Caleb’s quiet laugh was a puff of warm breath against John’s damp skin. “Turns out I’m not in that club.”

John laughed and kissed him, and then dragged him to the bathroom to clean him up.

* * *

Darren arrived home from his Melbourne trip happy and relaxed, and John convinced himself that everything was for the best. Darren was happy and Caleb was happy and John was happy—apart from his guilt—so there was nothing underhanded in the way he and Caleb had embarked on their relationship at all, not if it was working out for the best. And yet, even when he packed up his gear and Caleb drew him out of Darren’s sight for a secret farewell kiss, John knew that the danger wasn’t in how they’d started this in secret, but how they were now continuing it in the same way.

“We need to tell him, mate,” he said in a low voice.

He could hear Darren downstairs, whistling as he threw his clothes in the washing machine.

“We will.” Caleb bit his lip, and looked at John pleadingly. “Soon. Just…just a little bit longer, okay?”

John didn’t fully understand Caleb’s need for continuing secrecy. He understood it logically—Caleb wanted something of his own for once—but he’d never understand it on the same emotional level as Caleb felt it, because John wasn’t in Caleb’s shoes. He recognised that, though he didn’t even need to, because one thing the past few weeks had taught him was that there was nothing Caleb could ask him that John could refuse.

“Soon,” he agreed, forcing away the trickle of unease in his gut. “Very soon.”

Caleb smiled, and rewarded him with another kiss.

Jesus, what a mess. John couldn’t bring himself to regret a moment of the intimacy he’d shared with Caleb, but at the same time he could see they were both stepping closer and closer to trouble the longer they kept their relationship a secret from Darren.

John headed to Holland Park, to an apartment full of stale air that felt less and less like home every time he walked inside. He did his washing, went out and grabbed some groceries, and ate his dinner alone at the kitchen bench.

He wondered what it would feel like to have Caleb here with him, and the sudden rush of loneliness that welled up in him almost left him reeling. Three days of touching whenever they both wanted, and now John felt the acute pains of withdrawal.

He didn’t sleep well that night. He found himself reaching too often for someone who wasn’t there.

He was woken sometime after dawn by his phone, and grabbed for it twice with a clumsy hand before he managed to pick it up, He squinted at the screen: Liz.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked when he answered.

“Get in here now,” Liz said. “We’ve got remains.”

John’s sleep-addled brain took a second. “What?”

“We’ve got remains,” Liz repeated. She sounded strangely excited, almost delighted, and John couldn’t make any sense of that until she added, her voice hitching, “John, we think it might be Simon.”

Chapter Thirteen

John watched as Caleb traced his fingers over the print-out of the COMFIT picture. A boy’s face stared back at him. It was a thin face, with a crooked jaw, a smattering of freckles over the bridge of the nose, and tousled red hair.

Caleb saw him watching and pulled his fingers away with a jerk. Colour rose in his face. “It’s not right,” he murmured.

“No,” John agreed. “They’re tricky to get right, most of the time. And sometimes when you look at six hundred pictures of noses or chins or eyes all in a row, they all start to look a bit the same.”

He took the picture from Caleb, and walked over to the whiteboard. Taped it there, and then studied it for a moment.

It was Simon, or as close to as they’d get. And it was better than searching for a fucking ghost. John wanted everyone on the team to look at this picture, and to remember that it was a real boy who’d been killed. A real boy with whatever hopes and dreams he’d been able to nurture in that nightmarish place.

He headed back to his desk, and put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder. “Do you want me to print you a copy?”

Caleb pushed the chair back, shaking his head. “No,” he mumbled, and then hid his face in his hands. “No, I can’t. It—it’s wrong.”

John’s heart broke for the kid.

* * *

It was a man walking a dog who found him.

It was always a man walking a dog, wasn’t it, who stumbled across a shallow grave?

This shallow grave was in bushland, twenty kilometres from the Children of Galilee’s former compound. In the past eight years that bushland had shrunk. Housing developments had encroached on it slowly, bulldozers knocking down the trees and carving out allotments, slowed a little by environmental impact studies and protesters waving SAVE THE KOALA HABITAT signs. Slowed, but ultimately relentless. Now, years after the last of the protesters had moved on and the homeowners had moved in, a man walking a dog by the side of a creek had found the bones of a boy.

Well, no confirmation of that until the pathologist wrote up her report, but the forensic officers who bagged the bones were sure of it: an adolescent boy. And John knew that it was Simon. Who else could it be?

He saw them dig the skull out of the ground. A boy’s skull, caked in dirt. Cracked. From the wound that had killed him, or from the relentless pressure of the earth on his bones for the past eight years, the forensic guys couldn’t say. Probably what killed him. But don’t quote them on that.

John had never felt so physically sick at the sight of a body before. Not at an old one like this. Not one clean of flesh. There was no putrefaction here. No clouds of blowflies. No five-day-old body that had melted into the carpet. Now that had been one that had taken more than a few drinks to escape. More than a few to turn it into something he could laugh about now.

But this was Simon. It had to be. This was the kid who hadn’t made it. This could have so easily been Caleb.

And Caleb had been there. Seen this.

Two scared boys, screaming for their lives, and only one had lived.

Nobody had ever cried for Simon, nobody except Caleb.

John strode back to the car and leaned on it. He faced the road rather than the scene, and cried. For Simon, for Caleb, and for every kid who never came home. For every kid who never had a chance.

Liz came and stood beside him, and they stared at the traffic together. A media van was parked a few hundred metres down the road, held there by the marked police car pulled up in front of it.

“Shit,” Liz said, looking down at them. “Fucking vultures.”

“Public’s right to know,” John muttered, and rolled his eyes. Except it wasn’t just information the media fed to the public, was it? It was speculation and rumour and spin, and none of those things helped John do his fucking job.

“Do you want to be on this?” Liz asked.

John nodded. “Yes.”

This had been his case from the beginning. From the moment he’d wrenched open the door to the tank, metal screaming, and found Caleb there covered in blood. John wanted to see this one to the end. He’d caught up with some of the others since, who’d retired or transferred, and sensed that strange loss they carried with them when they talked about the case. The knowledge that they hadn’t finished. That they wouldn’t, not until they’d found Simon. Not until they’d brought him home. Nobody else missed him, or mourned him, or thought of him at all, except for them. In some intangible way, he had become theirs just as much as Caleb had become John’s.

John couldn’t quit now.

“Okay,” Liz said. “This is good, John. This is good.”

Didn’t feel good, but he understood. They had a body now. They had a body, and if it was the right body that meant they could finally charge those fuckers with murder.

“And John?” Liz’s tone was tentative.

He turned his head, throat raw as he swallowed. “Yeah?”

Her expression was grave. “We’re going to have to talk to Caleb again.”

* * *

Caleb.

God.

Everything had been going so well lately. Caleb had rolled with the punches in a way he’d never quite managed before, and John had been so hopeful that the worst of his trauma was behind him. No, that was a bad way to think of it. Caleb would never be cured. He’d never be transformed into a person who reacted to situations the same way that someone without suffering trauma would, but John had thought he’d been coping better. That his medication and his therapy and the strategies he and Dr. Harper worked on were all at last coming together in a way that kept Caleb at more or less an even keel, however choppy the water got.

But finding Simon wasn’t a small thing. Simon was at the heart of Caleb’s trauma. Caleb had been in the tank with him. Caleb had seen Simon beaten to death, and then he’d been left to die himself. Two terrified boys, and only one of them had survived.

And one, the adults claimed, had run away.

John knew that was bullshit, but Simon had been a ghost long before he’d died. John and Brian and the rest of the team had done nothing but hit brick walls when they’d tried to find out who he was, and where he came from, let alone where he was buried. It was Brian who came up with the most plausible theory in the end.

“The kid’s not in the system,” he said one night, peering at the whiteboard and all the names on it.

“What?”

“It’s the only explanation. I’ll bet he was born there, with those nutters. I’ll bet his parents never registered his birth. You know what that means? If we don’t get a body, get his DNA, it’ll be like the poor kid never existed.”

None of the kids knew who Simon’s parents were. None of them knew who their own parents were. Even Caleb hadn’t remembered that Analise Fletcher, going by the name of Sarah by the time John met her, was his mother. And all of the kids said that Ethan Gray was their father. Their father, their God, and their whole universe.

It still made John’s skin crawl.

John stared out of the passenger window that afternoon as the ghost gums flickered past, golden light flashing like strobes between them.

“Do you want me to tell him?” Liz asked as she drove.

John shook his head. “Maybe we can leave it off for a few days? Until we get confirmation it’s Simon?”

“That’s gonna take more than a few days,” Liz said. “We don’t know who his parents were, so the lab will have to compare his DNA with every adult who was a member of that fucked up bullshit cult.”

“Shit.” John rubbed his forehead. “Yeah.”

“Any contenders that you liked the look of?” Liz asked.

“This is pure speculation,” John said, rolling his shoulders to try to ease some of the tension in his neck, “but I always thought it might have been Leon Harrison. Caleb said that Simon had red hair. And Leon Harrison had dark hair, you know? But I interviewed him once and he hadn’t shaved, and his beard was coming through with a reddish tinge. It’s a long way from evidence, but I always thought it was a possibility.”

“Shit.” Liz shook her head. “You think he beat his own son to death.”

“I don’t think those people thought of the kids as their children,” John said. “Family bonds were the first things they broke. Like, everyone belongs equally to God, or whatever, which meant that in that place Ethan Gray owned everybody.”

John’s thoughts flew to Caleb, and he realised with a sinking, sickening sensation that a part of him would always be owned by Ethan Gray and there was nothing John could do to make it better.

* * *

John’s stomach churned as Darren opened the door to him.

“Hey,” Darren said with his easy smile. “You here for dinner?”

John shook his head. “We need to talk. Is Caleb here?”

Darren’s expression fell. “What’s going on?”

“There was a—” John caught sight of Caleb wandering out toward the enclosed veranda, a piece of toast in his hand. “Let’s not do this on the front doorstep.”

Darren let him pass, closing the door behind him.

Caleb’s smile was bright and happy, and John was about to shatter it. The knowledge sat in his gut like a stone, and his stomach clenched around it and roiled. He walked into the living room, his gaze taking in the bright, airy space. How many tears and breakdowns and violent rages had these walls been witness to over the years? Too many, and here was John, about to hold a lit match to the short fuse of Caleb’s emotional equilibrium and all he could do was hope for the best.

“Sit down, hey,” he said gently.

Caleb froze.

“Caleb,” John said. “Please, sit down.”

“What’s going on?” Darren asked, reaching out and putting a hand on Caleb’s shoulder. “Just tell us, John.”

And there was no way to brace Caleb for this. No way to circumvent whatever reaction he was going to have. And maybe—John’s heart swelled with hope—maybe Caleb wouldn’t break with the storm this time. His moods had been stable lately, and he’d smiled and laughed more than John could remember happening before. Except how was John supposed to know if the storm was over, or if this was just the calm of the eye as it passed over him? Hadn’t he told himself a hundred times that he knew Caleb’s conditions could only be managed and not cured? And yet he still hoped for it, like a fool, and just because for these past few weeks he’d made Caleb smile.

“A body was found this morning in Jimboomba,” he said, his heart pounding. “We think, given the location and the approximate age, that it’s Simon.”

Caleb blinked. His piece of toast dropped to the floor.

“Caleb,” Darren said. “Caleb?”

And then Caleb nodded slowly. He stepped free of Darren’s hand, and turned and headed for the bathroom. Closed the door behind him, which slowed John and Darren down.

John was only a heartbeat behind him, but it was long enough. He pushed the bathroom door open just in time to see Caleb put his fist through the bathroom mirror, and then wheel away screaming. It was the scream of a broken thing. It wasn’t just physical pain; it was a raw cry of soul-deep anguish, and John wanted to scream too.

The glass cracked, small pieces flying free and glittering on the counter. Blood ran down Caleb’s hand and dripped from his fingers.

Darren grabbed a towel off the rack and stepped forward.

“No!” Caleb flung up his hand and blood splattered the floor and the closest wall, shockingly bright and stark against the white tiles. “No!”

“You’re bleeding, Caleb,” Darren said.

“I don’t care!” Caleb yelled, backing up toward the shower. “I don’t care! I want to bleed! I want to! Why can’t you just leave me alone? I want to die!”

The shower screen shuddered as he backed into it.

“Why didn’t I die? Why didn’t I?” Caleb kicked back at the shower screen, and John winced as he heard it crack. “Simon died, but I didn’t!”

The rage was like a storm, and Caleb was seized by it, buffeted by another fast-moving front that rolled over them all. It picked him up and twisted him around, and flung him toward the shower screen.

John grabbed him and hauled him back. Circled his arms around him and held him tightly while he screamed and thrashed. Caleb got in a glancing kick on the shower screen, and the crack deepened, and then John hauled him back a few steps.

“Let me go!” Caleb screamed. His face was red, tears streaming, sweat-slicked hair stuck to his temples as he tossed his head back and forth. “Let me go, you fucker!”

“Call the ambulance,” John said to Darren.

“No!” Caleb bucked uselessly against John. “No!”

It had been a long time since John had seen him this bad, and he knew there was no talking him down from here. He needed to be in the hospital, sedated, for his own safety. It broke John’s heart to see Caleb try to tear himself apart like this. Broke it every fucking time, but if Caleb was caught in the storm then all John could do was try to weather it with him, and to try to keep standing when Caleb smashed over him like waves on a rock. And not even for now—Caleb wasn’t in control, wasn’t registering anything except his panic and his fear and his all-consuming rage—but for tomorrow too, and for the next day and every day that came after it, when he would remember what happened here, and at least know that John didn’t hate him, wasn’t angry with him, and would never push him away for the things he couldn’t help.

Darren stepped outside to make the call.

Caleb screamed and thrashed again, and John held him. Managed to keep Caleb’s arms at his sides, so at least he wouldn’t cop an elbow to the face.

“No!” Caleb screamed again. “No! No! No!”

He grew tired at last, like he always did, but John knew that a second wave of adrenaline-fuelled rage could come at any moment. When he felt Caleb’s legs give out John went with him onto the floor and they both knelt there on the tiles, John still holding Caleb from behind as Caleb panted and wept.

At some point Darren came back into the bathroom and was standing by the door watching. Ready to act if Caleb took John by surprise, or if John’s grip loosened.

It wouldn’t though. John wouldn’t let him go while he was a danger to himself.

There was blood on the floor, and smears of it when their feet and knees had slid through it.

“Let me go, John,” Caleb said, and his voice was cold.

“Not yet, mate,” John told him, and he felt Caleb tense in his arms.

“Let me go!” Caleb bucked back against him, his second wind coming, but John was resolute. “Please, John!”

“I can’t do that, mate.” John’s throat ached.

Caleb sagged forward again, and for a moment John thought he’d gotten through to him. And then, a whispered, “Please.”

“Caleb, I can’t let you—”

Caleb wrenched forward suddenly, causing John’s knees to slip on the bloody tiles. “So you trust me to make my own decisions when it comes to us fucking, but now you don’t?”

John was so stunned, shame and guilt flooding through him, that he took a second too long to react. In that moment Caleb reared back, his skull connecting with John’s jaw and leaving them both sprawling.

“Let me go!” Caleb screamed again as John grabbed for him. And then, when John was lying on top of him, his fingers clamped around Caleb’s wrists. “Get off me!”

John rolled onto his side, pulling Caleb with him to relieve him of his weight. He didn’t let go. He didn’t glance at Darren either. Couldn’t. This wasn’t the way Darren was supposed to find out. Not from this Caleb. The Caleb he should have been hearing it from was the one who’d been doing so much better lately. The one who talked and laughed and was pushed a little every day at the edges of his comfort zone until it expanded bit by bit. Not this Caleb. Not this broken, bloody thing on the floor. Because when John looked at this Caleb, all he saw was how he’d taken advantage of a fragile, fractured soul.

“Darren,” John said, still too afraid to turn his head and meet his gaze.

“Ambulance is here,” Darren said, his voice rasping, and for the first time John heard another sound encroaching on the ringing in his skull: a siren.

They were still practiced at this.

John held Caleb immobile while one of the paramedics checked his hand and wrapped it to stem the bleeding. Darren listed all Caleb’s medications to the other paramedic, also letting him know when Caleb had last eaten.

“I don’t want to go,” Caleb said through his tears. “I don’t want to go to the psych ward.”

The paramedics sedated him, and John felt him relax inch by inch in his arms.

“John.” Caleb rolled his head back against John’s shoulder. His pupils were blown. “Why does it get so loud in my head?”

“I don’t know, mate,” John answered. He ran a hand down Caleb’s arm. “I don’t know.”

In a few minutes he was malleable, and the paramedics strapped him on his side onto a stretcher. John and Darren helped them down the front steps with it.

The afternoon light was bright and dazzling. The neighbour next door was watering her garden. The yards were big enough here that she was still some distance away. She was an older woman, and John knew her face. She’d lived there forever. He wondered what she made of Darren and Caleb, and of the occasional dramatic visits by paramedics and police. The neighbour lowered her hose as they carried Caleb out of the house, and stood watching silently as they loaded him into the ambulance.

“Where are you taking him?” Darren asked.

“Gold Coast University Hospital,” the paramedic said. “You know it?”

“Yeah. Been there plenty of times.” Darren’s expression cracked, and he swiped his eyes quickly. “I’ll follow you up there.”

The ambulance drove off.

Darren stared after it. He didn’t look at John. “Is it true?”

“Yeah.” John nodded, his throat dry. He noted Darren’s clenched jaw. “Darren, I—”

“Don’t.” Darren dragged a hand through his hair, and turned his head to stare at John. “I don’t want to hear it, John. I just want to get through the next few days with Caleb, okay?”

“Yeah.” John swallowed. “Do you want me to drive you to—?”

“I want you to go home, John,” Darren said. He snorted, and shook his head. “I want you to go home, and leave me to worry about Caleb. I think you’ve done enough, don’t you?”

John stood on the footpath, his heart pounding and the blood roaring in his skull, as Darren headed back inside.

* * *

John sat in his car, his eyes closed until the sharp rap of knuckles on his window jolted them open again. He sighed, and pressed the button to put the window down.

“You’ve been sitting out here for ten minutes, baby,” Sepela said, her brow furrowed with concern. “What’s happened?”

“Caleb’s in the hospital again,” John said. “And Darren found out we’re together.”

Sepela raised her eyebrows. “You’d better come inside.”

She didn’t give him the chance to refuse. She just walked back around his car and into her front yard. John briefly debated just driving off again, but he’d come here looking for his mother, hadn’t he? Like a kid with a skinned knee, fighting down the urge to cry the whole way.

He put his window up again and climbed out of the car. Made sure it was locked—this was Woodridge—and followed Ma into the house.

She already had the kettle on.

“Where’s Jess?” he asked, out of habit more than anything else.

“She’s at her friend’s house,” Ma said. “A nice girl, from youth group.”

John might have felt happier about that if he hadn’t just had his heart ripped out of his chest. He sat heavily at the small kitchen table, the old vinyl seat squeaking under him.

Sepela sat across from him. “Darren didn’t know you’re boyfriends?”

John shook his head, searching her expression for censure and only finding sympathy. “He didn’t…he didn’t want to tell him yet. It was only new.”

It sounded stupid now he said it like that.

Ma raised her eyebrows again. “Hmm. And Darren doesn’t want you to be Caleb’s boyfriend?”

“No, I…” John sighed. “I don’t know. We never even got that far before he told me to piss off. He’s angry.”

“You’re a good boy, John,” Sepela said. “But you’re pig-headed. Are you going to give Caleb up because his father is angry?”

“No, I don’t want to do that.”

Sepela shrugged. “Then apologise.”

John snorted.

“What? You think it’s not that simple? It’s exactly that simple. What else is there to do?”

John sighed, and buried his face in his hands. “It’s a fucking mess.”

“Language,” Sepela chided. The kettle clicked off, and the legs of her chair scraped across the floor as she stood. “Tea or coffee?”

“Coffee,” John murmured, straightening up. “You really think it’s that simple?”

“Do you love Caleb?” Sepela asked.

John nodded, his heart thumping.

Sepela shrugged. “Then it’s the most simple thing in the world, baby.”

John wished he could believe that.

Chapter Fourteen

John wasn’t comfortable with Naomi. She was a sharp-eyed little kid whose lifetime of mistreatment had made her already hard around the edges, and she was barely twelve. She was cunning, and she was a liar, too used to presenting herself in the most favourable light to the adults around her. The psychologist said she told people what they wanted to hear. There was something inside her that had been twisted and ruined by the Children of Galilee, and John didn’t know if she’d ever be able to just be a kid.

“No,” she said now, hugging her unopened bag of chips to her chest. “I was never bad. I’m good.”

“I know you are, Naomi,” Brian said, his eyes crinkling when he smiled at her. “But it’s not bad to tell on someone else, is it? Not if they’ve been bad?”

John could see the cogs turning rapidly in her clever little mind.

“Brother Leon said that if I saw anyone doing anything bad, I had to tell him,” Naomi said. “But he also said that Ethan could see us all the time.”

There was uncertainty in her words: maybe the all-seeing Ethan wasn’t as all-seeing as he said he was.

Brian nodded and hummed. “And what do you think about that?”

“God tests us,” Naomi said after a moment. “He can see everything, but he wants to know if we’re lying.”

“That might be it,” Brian agreed. “Did you ever tell Brother Leon any of the bad things you saw people doing?”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes bright with sudden fervour. “I saw Simon holding Caleb’s hand down by the creek!”

Brian glanced at John. “Is it bad to hold someone’s hand?”

“No,” Naomi said. “It is if girls and boys hold hands, because that’s sinful. But I knew Simon and Caleb were being bad too because they were hiding it.” She tore her chip packet open. “They wouldn’t have hidden it if it wasn’t a sin.”

John swallowed down a bitter laugh.

Her twelve-year-old logic was impeccable.

* * *

Two days later on Saturday morning the grass at the oval crunched dryly underfoot as John went to stand at the sidelines. He watched as David checked bootlaces and jerseys, unable to stop a smile when one little boy stripped his jersey off right there at the edge of the oval before putting it back on the right way around. The Magpies lined up to shake hands with the other team and then the referee blew his whistle. The kids spilled onto the field, knocking into one another like skittles and then pinballing off in all different directions.

“Hey, bro.” David clapped him on the shoulder. “Glad you could make it. Tee’s coming by later with stuff for the sausage sizzle. Are you sticking around for that?”

“Yeah,” John said. “I reckon I will.”

David’s brow creased. “You okay, John?”

“Not really,” John admitted. He’d stayed up late last night trying to drown his sorrows with a six-pack of beer. He’d got through four of the six, and this morning he was just as miserable, except now he had a hangover as well. So much for that plan.

Darren had sent him a text to tell him that Caleb was being held for a few days in the mental health unit, and since then there’d been nothing but radio silence from his end.

“Stick around,” David said. “I mean it.” He glanced at the field when the ref blew his whistle. One of his players was on the ground, hugging his scraped knee and sniffling. “Stick around, we’ll talk!”

John watched as David jogged onto the field to escort his wounded player off. It was nothing a Band-Aid wouldn’t fix, probably, but the poor little bugger saw the blood and started wailing and yelling for his mum. David hoisted him up and carried him off the field, delivering him into the arms of his parents.

A few minutes later the kid was sitting cross-legged on the sidelines, a melting ice-block in his hand, and a Batman Band-Aid on his knee. He was grinning and cheering for his teammates as his ice-block melted in bright green streams down his arm.

John wished that all hurts were so easy to heal.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out and answered. “Liz, what’s up?”

“How much would I have to bribe you to get you to come into work today?”

John raised his eyebrows. “I’m on a day off.”

“Hence the bribe.” Her tone was light, but it couldn’t disguise the seriousness of the request.

“What’s going on?” John asked. It wasn’t like he was doing anything with his day off, was it? Not since Darren had made it clear he didn’t want John near Caleb right now. At least John hoped that it was right now, and that Darren would eventually unbend. He hoped that Caleb would still want to see him, and that Darren would respect that. And he hoped that Caleb wasn’t sitting in some dreary room in the mental health unit at the hospital, wondering why John hadn’t visited. He hoped, selfishly, that Caleb knew to blame Darren for that, instead of him.

“The media’s sitting on the story for now,” Liz said. “And they’re not fucking happy about it, according to the boss. We need to get all our ducks in a row and start pulling in the former members to interview them all again before this breaks in the news.”

John’s stomach clenched. “Yeah. I can come in. Still no ID on the remains?”

“Not yet,” Liz said. “It’ll take another few days at least to run all the possible matches.”

“Shit. They can’t move it to the top of the list?”

“Another few days is the top of the list,” Liz said. “And that’s assuming that Simon was related to someone already in the compound. If he was a runaway who was never reported, we’ll be shit out of luck.”

John sighed. Forensic work was never as quick as it was shown on television, and the government forensic lab had been drowning under a backlog of cases for years. They did their best, but there were only so many hours in a day. They needed at least twice the staff they had now, but then wasn’t that the case in every government department? Except in middle management positions, probably. There never seemed to be a shortage of middle managers.

“He had to be one of theirs,” John said. “He was there from when he was a little kid too. He wasn’t some disenfranchised teenage runaway.”

“I’m hoping so,” Liz said. “Otherwise we’re leaving an awful lot of reasonable doubt for a jury, you know?”

Yeah, John knew.

“Maybe we’ll get DNA evidence to tie him to the killer, at least.”

“Yeah, I’m hoping for that too.” Liz exhaled heavily. “There’s an awful lot I’m hoping for with this one. I’m also hoping that because you already dealt with these arseholes that you can spot their bullshit at a thousand paces.”

John snorted. “Oh, everything they ever said was bullshit, trust me.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll be there in about half an hour.”

“Make it forty minutes,” Liz said. “You can grab some coffee on the way.”

* * *

Thirty-eight minutes later, John was walking into the office. He hadn’t really been dressed for more than a morning at the football, but he kept a spare set of clothes in his locker downstairs and he’d changed into them. Black trousers and a long-sleeved button-down shirt. He didn’t bother with accoutrements as he wasn’t leaving the office.

He’d sent a text to David from the queue at the coffee place, apologising for missing the barbecue.

Liz was at her desk, and John walked over and set her coffee down.

“You’re a lifesaver,” she said, and took a sip. “God. That hits the spot.”

John looked around the office. Being a Saturday, it was largely empty. Aaron was working away in the corner, and Casey was on the phone to someone. “Is it just us?”

“Just you and me, partner,” Liz confirmed. “And our first interview is waiting downstairs.”

“Okay,” John said. “Who is it?”

Liz held his gaze. “Analise Fletcher.”

John gave himself a moment to ride the wave of revulsion that rose in him. It receded at last, leaving behind a bitter aftertaste in his throat.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

“You set up,” Liz said, handing a bundle of files to him. “I’ll go and get her.”

John headed for the interview rooms, and picked the first one. He fiddled with the recording equipment to make sure it was all working, and then took a seat where the back of his head wouldn’t obscure the camera. He wondered if Analise Fletcher would remember him. He sure as shit remembered her.

He looked up a few moments later as Liz appeared in the doorway. She ushered Analise inside, and then pulled the door shut behind them.

Analise took her seat quietly.

At first glance it was hard to see any resemblance between Analise and Caleb, because Caleb was almost a carbon copy of Darren. But there was a certain softness to Analise’s features that Caleb had inherited. She was a pretty woman, despite the lines on her face that spoke of hard living. She had blue eyes and Caleb’s pale skin. She was light where he was dark. Her hair, once wheat blonde, was now shot through with grey. John remembered her as birdlike and frail. She’d put on a little weight since John had seen her last, and she wore it well.

She smiled at John when she saw him; the sort of apologetic smile John imagined she’d give a stranger on public transport if they bumped into one another awkwardly.

He wondered if that smile would vanish if she knew where her son was right now. Then again, her demeanour hadn’t shaken eight years ago when she’d known how close he’d come to death then. John was seized with a burning need to know if prison had changed her. If she really had accepted any responsibility for what had happened to Caleb, and if she felt even a shred of fucking remorse for it.

“This is Senior Constable Faimu,” Liz said. “You might remember him.”

Analise’s gaze slipped over him. She was still smiling faintly.

“I remember you, Ms. Fletcher,” John said.

“I go by Jones now,” she said, her voice soft.

Her maiden name, John remembered.

“Thank you for coming in,” Liz said. She took her seat. “Can I ask you to state your full name for the tape, and confirm that you have waived the right to have a solicitor present.”

Analise cleared her throat, her hands fussing for a moment on the edge of the table before she slipped them into her lap. “Analise Laurel Jones. And I don’t want a solicitor.” She blinked. “I’m not under arrest, am I?”

“No,” Liz said. “You’re not under arrest. If that changes, you’ll be afforded another opportunity to get a solicitor. And you can ask for one at any time during this interview. You can also end this interview at any time.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Analise said. “I haven’t broken my parole conditions. I don’t even know why I’m here.”

“As I explained to you when I called you, this is a follow up enquiry,” Liz said. “We regularly revisit our old cases just to make sure there’s nothing we missed the first time. It’s all routine.”

Well, not exactly, but Analise didn’t need to know that.

Liz’s smile was perfectly cordial. “I’m hoping you can tell us a little more about Simon.”

Analise’s eyes widened for a moment.

“Eight years ago, you told us that Simon ran away,” Liz said “Do you stand by that statement?”

“Yes.” A small furrow appeared on her brow. “That’s what I was told by Ethan.”

John exchanged a look with Liz, and let Analise read into it whatever the hell she wanted. That was often the trick with interviews: introducing enough doubt that people stumbled and overcorrected, tripping themselves up.

A flicker passed over Analise’s expression, but John couldn’t interpret it.

“I was told that Simon ran away,” Analise said again, shaking her head slightly.

“And you believed that, even after what they did to your son?” John asked.

Analise tilted her head as she regarded him curiously. “I think I do remember you.”

You should, John wanted to say. And the amount of hate I have for you should give you fucking nightmares.

Analise sat back in her chair. “Yes. You were there. You were very angry all the time.”

“I was,” John agreed. “Because I was the one who pulled your son out of that tank after Leon Harrison beat him almost to death.”

Liz jabbed him in the thigh under the table. A warning to rein himself in.

Analise shook her head again. “I didn’t know about that.”

John had always doubted that was true. And he’d always wondered, on the slim chance that it was, if she would have cared anyway.

“Tell me about Simon,” Liz said. “What sort of kid was he?”

Analise appeared almost puzzled by the question. “I don’t know. I didn’t know him. The children were raised collectively by some of the other brothers and sisters. I didn’t have much to do with them.” She trailed off for a moment before collecting herself again. “I was told he and Caleb were sinful, and in need of correction.”

John tensed at even hearing her say that name. She had no right to say that name, especially when she wrapped it in evasion and bullshit.

I was told.

I don’t know.

I haven’t done anything wrong.

Everything with these people was about shifting blame, then and now.

Liz leaned forward slightly, wearing the friendly, sympathetic smile she always did. John knew it was a lie. Liz was a hell of a fucking poker player too. She could bluff anyone. “Look, we know you didn’t have anything to do with Simon’s disappearance.”

Analise’s gaze flicked to John and then back to Liz. “Simon ran away.”

“He didn’t, though,” Liz said, her tone still soft. “Look at it logically, Analise. Caleb said that Simon was dragged out of that tank. If he wasn’t already dead, he was at least unconscious. He didn’t run away. He couldn’t have.”

“Caleb’s a liar,” Analise said.

John tried to swallow down his rising anger. How fucking dare she?

“Children lie,” Analise said. “You must know that.”

“In my experience,” Liz said evenly, “it’s adults who lie the most.”

Analise lifted a trembling hand to the collar of her blouse, and plucked at the fabric for a moment. “I don’t know why you’re asking me this again after all this time. I don’t know anything about what happened to Simon. If Caleb says that’s what happened and you believe him, why are you even asking me?”

Because Caleb had gone to pieces on the witness stand once before, and he would again. Because the Children of Galilee hadn’t just killed Simon that night, they’d also broken Caleb into a million shattered pieces.

“Because we want to know exactly who was involved,” Liz said. “And this is your chance to clean the slate. Isn’t that what religion is all about? Cleaning your slate?”

“I’ve made my peace,” Analise said, raising her chin in a challenging gesture that reminded John so much of Caleb that he felt like he’d been gut-punched. “With God, and with the justice system.”

John clenched his teeth as rage coursed through him and he struggled not to show it on his face. What about Caleb’s peace, or Darren’s, or even John’s? Analise Fletcher had no fucking right to put everything behind her and sleep soundly at night when she’d left so much destruction in her wake. He wanted her to hurt as much as she’d hurt others.

Where was Caleb right now? Back in a fucking psych ward because this woman, his mother, had handed him over to monsters.

Analise’s gaze flicked to John again, and she jolted. She looked back to Liz again. “I don’t think I want to answer any more questions, thank you.”

Liz was silent for a moment, and then she nodded. “Okay.”

For all of Analise’s smiles, John knew they’d get nothing else out of her. Jesus, he hoped there’d be enough to arrest her at the end of this. If he even got a hint that she’d known about Simon’s death and was covering for it, he’d charge her with obstruction first, and then conspiracy, and then whatever the fuck else he could think of. She could kiss her parole goodbye for starters, and hopefully this time she’d rot in prison.

“I’ll type up your statement and have you sign it,” Liz said. “You can wait in here if you like.”

Analise nodded warily.

John walked out of the room without acknowledging her. His heart was racing and his skin felt clammy. He dug his phone out of his pocket, and headed down the corridor to the meal room.

Darren answered on the fifth ring. “John.”

“Darren.” John leaned against the wall of the meal room, closing his eyes. He hadn’t been sure Darren would answer. “How’s Caleb?”

“He’s still in the mental health unit,” Darren said. His words were clipped, and there was an edge of coldness to his tone that John had never heard from him before.

John kept his eyes closed. The chill blast from the air conditioning settled on his clammy skin. Across the room, the fridge hummed. “Is he okay?”

“I’m hoping they’ll let him out tomorrow,” Darren said. “Dr. Harper has agreed to come and see him at the hospital and talk to the clinicians there.”

“It’s the weekend,” John said. “They’ll want to clear their beds. They should let him out.”

Darren didn’t answer for a while, and then he sighed. “Jesus, John. Tell me what the fuck you were thinking.”

John swallowed. “I love him.”

“But you can’t have him, John,” Darren said. His voice cracked. “Because if you have him, and you leave him…”

“I won’t leave him.”

“How can you say that? You don’t know that. You can’t.”

John’s heart raced. “I won’t. I swear to you, I won’t.”

Maybe it was a lie, but it didn’t feel like one.

“You’re his friend, John. If he loses you, it’ll break him.”

It would break John as well.

“I know that.” Fuck, he’d never felt like such a selfish prick. “But I want him.”

Darren raised his voice. “What you want isn’t the issue here!”

“I know.” John knocked his head back against the wall. “But what about what Caleb wants?”

Darren was silent for so long that John pulled the phone away from his ear to check the call was still connected.

“Darren?”

“I don’t know,” Darren said, his voice faltering. “I’m sorry, John, but I just don’t know.”

Which was better, John supposed, than being told to go to hell.

“You mind if I visit him? I might be able to get down there this arvo.”

“I can’t really stop you, can I?”

“That’s not what I asked, Darren.”

Another sigh. “Yeah, okay. If you get the chance, he’d probably like a visit.”

John sagged in relief. “Thanks.”

Darren ended the call.

* * *

John’s coffee was cold by the time he got back to it, but he still relished the hit of caffeine.

“Who’s next on the list?” he asked Liz when she came back into the office, chewing on a muesli bar.

Liz hummed. “I’d rather leave Leon Harrison until last. I want to have something back on the ID of the body before we pull him in here, since we know he was definitely involved. And he knows it too, so he’d be an idiot not to ask for a solicitor.”

John hummed in agreement. Leon Harrison wouldn’t come in for a chat. He’d need to be arrested on something. Same as Ben Quartermain, probably. They’d been Ethan Gray’s enforcers in the cult. They’d both been men who liked intimidating and hurting others, and Ethan Gray had given them the authority to do it.

“What’s your read on Ethan Gray?” Liz asked, pulling out the chair beside John’s and sitting down.

John took another sip of cold coffee. “That he’s a sad little man with a literal God complex.”

“I wonder if eight years has changed that,” Liz mused.

“The parole board obviously thought so.”

Liz snorted. “The parole board believes a lot of fairy tales.”

She had that right.

Liz shrugged. “It’s too late to drive to Toowoomba now, though. Maybe we should start at the bottom of the food chain anyway. See if any of the former members are willing to talk a bit more about what they saw now that they’re not busy singing Ethan Gray’s praises.”

John checked his watch.

“What? You have somewhere to be?”

“I’m hoping to get to the Gold Coast this arvo,” John said. “To the hospital.”

Liz’s face fell.

“Yeah, Caleb didn’t take the news we’d found a body well.” John swallowed down the sudden lump in his throat. “He didn’t slit his wrists this time, so I guess that’s progress?”

It was meant to be said lightly, but he couldn’t twist his mouth into a smile.

“Is he okay?” Liz asked. “Jesus, John, because you know we need to reinterview him at some point.”

“No,” John said. “He’s nowhere near ready for that. Not now.”

“Okay.” Liz reached out and clasped his hand. Her gaze was hard, unfaltering, and her jaw was set. “You tell him we’ll get them, okay? You tell him that we’re not going to stop until we put them back behind bars where they belong.”

John nodded. “Yeah. “His voice rasped and he swallowed. “I’ll tell him.”

Chapter Fifteen

A bead of sweat slid down the back of John’s shirt, and he tried his best to ignore it. The day was stinking hot. The sun beat down through the scattered gumtrees and baked the hard-packed ground. The ground was mostly dirt, though there were a few clumps of stingy grass here and there, dotted between the buildings of the compound.

The Children of Galilee were a weird bunch. They were clustered around their drab little church—more of an old shed than anything else—watching while the police went through the place. Their kids were in a separate group, sitting in the scant shade of a line of ghost gums. Someone had given the kids bottles of water.

John had already been through the main buildings—there were definitely no signs these kids were being given an education, let alone three square meals a day, and the communal dormitory gave John pause too—and now he was checking the outbuildings. He swung the bolt cutters in his hand as approached what looked like an old corrugated iron water tank. Except if it had been a water tank in a past life, it certainly wasn’t now: there was a door cut into the side of it, chained and padlocked shut. Some sort of storage?

John cut the chain and wrenched the door open.

The stench hit him first, and he backed away to let a cloud of blowflies free.

And then he looked, and then he saw.

The body of a boy lay on the floor of the tank, covered in blood and filth, and John’s stomach churned.

“Holy shit!” John dropped the bolt cutters. “Boss!”

* * *

John was caught at work longer than he wanted. The inspector came in, and John screwed his courage and asked to speak to him in private. It hadn’t been as excruciating as he’d thought. The boss, for all that he rode them hard when it came to overtime, was a decent bloke. He had a hell of a poker face as well, and listened to John tell him about Jessie’s arrest and about his relationship with Caleb with absolutely no expression at all on his face. And then, just when John had been wondering exactly how much shit he was in, the boss had raised a single eyebrow.

“Hmmm,” he said at last. “It’s not exactly ideal, is it?”

John’s stomach clenched. “No, sir.”

“Conflicts of interest come in three categories, John. Actual, potential, and perceived. Now so far we’re only looking at potential, and perceived. You’ve disclosed them, which means we can manage them. It’s not the end of the world, and it’s certainly not the end of your career.” And then he looked at his watch. “Now get the hell out of here. You’re not getting any bloody overtime out of me for this.”

John fled gladly, at least part of the weight lifted from his shoulders.

The rest of it belonged to Caleb.

Visiting hours ended at eight, and John made it to the hospital just past seven, cursing the sluggish peak-hour traffic all the way along the Pacific Motorway. When he arrived at the hospital and made his way to the mental health unit, he was glad he was Caleb’s only visitor. He wasn’t sure that he was ready to face Darren yet, and he bet the feeling was mutual.

Caleb had a private room, which was better that some of the other times he’d stayed here. John knew that Caleb wasn’t comfortable sharing his space with strangers, and it had always seemed unfair to make him do it when he was already spiralling after an episode. He was glad this time that Caleb had his privacy.

Caleb was lying on his bed when John entered the room, and for a moment John worried he was still sedated, but Caleb looked over when John walked inside and his eyes were bright and his smile was quick. He sat up, crossing his legs on the bed.

“John!”

John reached him and leaned in for a hug. Caleb surprised him with a kiss instead; a sweet, chaste press of their lips while his hand closed on the muscle of John’s shoulder and squeezed.

“Missed you,” Caleb said, his breath hot against John’s lips. Then he leaned their foreheads together, and sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“I missed you too,” John told him. “And you have nothing to be sorry about.”

Caleb moved back at last, his mouth pulled down into an unhappy line. “I told Dad we were sleeping together.”

“We were going to tell him anyway.”

Caleb raised his eyebrows and snorted. “Not like that!”

No, not like that.

John sat on the bed beside him, and took his hand. “Well, it’s out in the open now, and that’s not a bad thing. We’ll figure out the rest as we go along.”

Caleb leaned against him. “Was he really mad though?”

“Pretty mad,” John said. “At me though, not at you.”

Caleb tensed.

“What?”

“That’s just it,” Caleb muttered. “It’s like I don’t have a mind of my own, you know? Like any bad decision I make—and I don’t mean us—is never my fault because I’m just messed-up little Caleb who can’t be expected to get anything right.”

“He’s overprotective sometimes,” John said.

“I get that.” Caleb traced a circle on John’s palm with his finger. “And I know why he’s like that. I mean, I self-harm. I know I don’t always cope well with stressful situations. Or any situations, whatever. I know that sometimes my brain just flips a switch and it’s like I’m not even there anymore. I know why he can’t trust me to be safe, but shouldn’t he trust you?”

John’s heart ached. “I don’t think that’s what this is, Caleb. It’s not about trust. It’s...” He shook his head, and thought again of the snarl of traffic on the motorway. “It’s like you’re trying to cross a busy road, and every car on it means your chances of getting hit are higher. And your dad knows he can’t stop every car from driving down that road, but if he thinks there’s one he can stop, then of course he’s going to try. Because even if it’s just one, then that gives you a better chance to make it to the other side. And I’m the car he should have stopped, you know?”

Or, rather, John was the car Darren shouldn’t have had to stop, because John should have known better than to be on that dangerous road to begin with. But that was for John and Darren to work out, not Caleb.

Caleb was silent, drawing another shape on John’s palm.

“I think it’s okay that you and your dad have different perspectives on this,” John said. His throat ached, and he swallowed down a lump. “As long as we can all figure it out together.”

Caleb bit his lip and nodded. His gaze cut to John’s face. “Dr. Harper is coming to see me tomorrow. I guess we’ll talk about how to talk to Dad.” His mouth quirked faintly. “I just don’t like feeling this way. I want you and Dad to be friends again.”

“Hey.” John reached out and gripped his chin. Turned Caleb’s face gently toward him. “That’s not on you, okay? You let us sort that out. Me and your dad are both old enough and ugly enough to fight our own battles.”

Caleb nodded, his expression softening, and whispered, “Okay.”

John released his chin, trailing his fingertips along Caleb’s jawline. “Are they treating you okay in here?”

“The food sucks.” Caleb smiled and ducked his head. “But the nurses are nice.” He tilted his head. “Hey, why are you wearing a tie? I thought you didn’t have to work again until Tuesday.”

“Sometimes I think you know my roster better than I do,” John teased.

Caleb’s cheeks pinked up. “I have a vested interested in knowing when you’ll be free, John.”

John laughed quietly. “I got called in today, that’s all.”

“On a Saturday though?”

John forced a smile. Forced the memory of Analise Fletcher and her blame-shifting out of his mind. “Excuse you. I’m indispensable!”

Caleb smiled in return, but it was brittle and uncertain.

“Hey,” John said. “As soon as I know anything, I’ll tell you what I can, okay? You and your dad.”

Caleb nodded, and hunched his shoulders slightly. He withdrew his hand from John’s, and crossed his arms over his abdomen. “You think it’s Simon though?”

“Yeah,” John said. “We’re pretty sure of it.”

Caleb closed his eyes. For a moment he was as still and silent as though he’d been carved from marble, and John felt a fleeting rush of irrational panic that somehow Caleb had gone, been replaced by cold, unyielding stone. Then Caleb’s breath shuddered out of him. When he opened his eyes again, they shone with tears. “Why did he have to die, John? Why couldn’t he have held on?”

“I don’t know.” John folded Caleb into an embrace. He smoothed his hand up and down his trembling spine. “I wish I could answer that, mate, I really do. It’s not fair. It’s just not fair.”

He wasn’t telling Caleb anything new. Who knew life wasn’t fair better than Caleb? He only hoped he was offering him some comfort.

“Do you want to tell me about him?” he asked quietly. “What he was like?”

Caleb shook his head, and for a moment John thought it was a refusal, and then Caleb leaned back so he could look at John. “I don’t even know what he was like. We weren’t supposed to talk or anything, or play like normal kids. I grew up with him, and I hardly knew him. All I knew is that when I looked at him, I got these weird feelings. It didn’t feel like a sin.”

“It wasn’t,” John said. “It isn’t.”

“Not out here,” Caleb whispered. “But in there, everything was. I knew it was wrong, but it felt like bubbles under my skin when he caught me looking and he smiled. It felt good. It felt like something totally new, something that had been created just for me, that nobody had ever felt before.”

John reached out and carded his fingers through Caleb’s hair.

“I loved him, and I didn’t even know him,” Caleb said. He laughed softly, and there was a sharp, bitter edge to the sound. “It wasn’t real, was it? It couldn’t be.”

“I think it was,” John said. “I think you can fall in love with someone like that. I think what you felt was real.”

And maybe it wouldn’t have lasted even if Simon had lived, but John didn’t need to tell Caleb that. Caleb and Simon had been kids. Their love must have been a crash of hormones, of fear, and of rebellion. It had burned bright, but only very, very briefly before it was snuffed out in the most violent way.

“How do I know?” Caleb whispered.

John pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “Did it feel real?”

Caleb gave a jerky nod.

“Then it was real,” John said. “Mate, of everything that happened in that place, the one thing you don’t need to question was you and Simon, okay?”

The one pure thing that Caleb had got, and they’d torn it apart in front of him while he screamed.

Caleb straightened again. “Do you need to interview me again? About what happened in the tank?”

“Maybe at some point,” John said. “But not yet. We’ve still got your statements from back then.”

“They didn’t help back then though.”

“They didn’t help because we didn’t have a body back then,” John said.

They still didn’t, not really. They had a body, but they had to prove it was Simon. They had to connect it to the Children of Galilee. John hoped to hell that their working theory—that Simon had been related to one of the other cult members—proved to be correct. Because otherwise they had two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle they knew belonged together, but no way to join them. No way would that hold up against a good defence barrister and a reasonable doubt argument anyway.

But if police work had taught John anything, it was that you just kept plugging away at a problem, day in and day out, until you finally got somewhere. It might take months, or even longer, but John was nothing if not tenacious.

“Okay,” Caleb said, and nodded. “So this time it’ll be different?”

“That’s the plan.”

Caleb glanced at him, his lips quirking. “You never make promises you can’t keep, do you?”

“Not about my job.” John took his hand. “But I promise that whatever happens, I’ll be beside you as long as you want me there.”

“Thank you.” Caleb squeezed his hand with shaking fingers. “How about an easier promise though?”

“Like what?”

“Like when I get out of here, you’ll come and visit me at home and we’ll go and get sushi, even if you hate it.”

“I don’t hate it,” John said, fighting a smile. “I just don’t like it as much as other takeaway options, like pizza, or fish and chips. And that happens to be a very valid position to take, excuse you.”

Caleb’s smile was like sunshine breaking through the clouds. “You’ll buy me sushi, won’t you, please?”

John rolled his eyes. “Of course I will.”

There wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t do for Caleb. Caleb could ask for the world and John would do everything in his power to give it to him, but of course Caleb never would ask, because there was still a part of him, and maybe there always would be, that thought he was unworthy of even the scant moments of happiness and pleasure he received. John silently prayed for a lifetime together, just so that he might get a chance to prove him wrong.

“Sushi,” Caleb whispered. “And orange Fanta.”

“Disgusting,” John said, but leaned in and kissed him anyway.

When he drew back again, Caleb was laughing softly, and John thought that he was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

* * *

On Sunday morning John juggled a Bacon & Egg McMuffin and a slightly burnt coffee in the passenger seat while Liz drove to Toowoomba along the Warrego Highway. Sunday traffic was light.

“Back when I was a kid, the trip between Toowoomba and Brisbane seemed like the longest drive in the world,” Liz said. “Though that was because I was a kid from Chinchilla just itching to get to the big smoke of Brisbane. Course, even Toowoomba was the big smoke compared to Chinchilla.”

“I’m pretty sure everything is the big smoke compared to Chinchilla.”

“Hey! There are smaller places.” Liz shrugged, and tapped her fingers along the top of the steering wheel in time to the beat of the song on the radio. “Not many, but still.”

She lifted her foot off the accelerator to give a nervous P-plater plenty of room to switch lanes ahead of them.

“How’s the family?” John asked.

“Harry’s cutting another tooth, so I’ve been up to my arse in drool and Baby Panadol for the last few days,” Liz said. “Then last night he’s so miserable that the second he finishes eating he throws it back up again, and also manages to shit himself at the same time. So there I am, holding this screaming kid, vomit all over my nightie and even in my hair, shit dripping down his legs and onto me, and Craig says, ‘Hey, love, do you reckon it’s time we tried for another one?’”

John couldn’t stop a burst of shocked laughter. “He didn’t!”

Liz threw him a wry look. “Right? That man needs to know how to pick his moments.” She smiled. “Still, we might be trying for another one soon.”

“That’s great,” John said. “Good on you.”

He ignored the faint pang in his gut.

John wasn’t sure kids were in his future. He loved kids, and he expected David and Tee to produce an entire football team at some point. John liked the idea of being Uncle John to a bunch of little kids. He wondered if Caleb wanted kids, and then he wondered exactly what kind of fate he was tempting by assuming they’d be together long enough for that discussion to even take place. There was no doubt in John’s mind that he would always love Caleb and that Caleb would always be his one, but it was also never that simple. Not for anyone, and certainly not for Caleb. Caleb’s storm was always building, and all either of them could do was take it day by day.

“Did you see Caleb last night?” Liz asked, and John jolted slightly at her prescience before he figured that, no, he was just that predictable.

“Yeah. He’s doing okay.”

“Good.” Liz drew her eyebrows together, a slight furrow appearing in her brow. “I went back over his statements after you left. About what happened that night in the tank. It’s…” She shook her head. “I don’t know how you and Brian held it together in those interviews.”

“We drank a lot,” John said, and he wasn’t sure it was even a joke. Brian had cracked a bottle of Scotch open right there in the office the day they’d send the brief away to Prosecutions, and not in a celebratory way.

“And today I get to meet the mastermind,” Liz murmured.

John thought about that as they drove.

He’d never thought of Ethan Gray as a mastermind. A deluded fucking nutjob, sure, but not a mastermind. He’d struck John as the sort of guy who had just enough charisma to be dangerous. In another life he would have made a killing selling used cars or timeshares. That natural magnetism, combined with what John thought was a genuine belief he was the next coming of Christ, had ultimately been a deadly combination.

For a man who’d once told his followers that he was God’s only son, Ethan Gray had come down in the world. He was now living in a rundown duplex in Harristown, near the caravan park. The right half of the duplex had a padlock on the front door and boarded up windows. It didn’t just look empty, it looked abandoned. Ethan Gray lived in the left half; the windows were open, and a grimy curtain fluttered in the breeze, beckoning Liz and John in from the front gate.

John banged on the door. “Ethan Gray? Senior Constable Faimu and Acting Senior Sergeant Grant, Logan CPIU. Open the door, please.”

The man who opened the door appeared a lot older than eight years accounted for, and a part of John was perversely pleased at that. He’d done his time hard. Good. He was thinner around the face than John remembered, with sunken cheeks and hard lines around his mouth. He wore his hair short these days, and it was thin on top and greying at the temples. He had bowed shoulders, and a stoop.

“What do you want?” he asked, his gaze flicking from John to Liz and then back again.

“Just a few questions, Mr. Gray,” Liz said breezily. “Can we come in?”

Ethan shuffled back to allow them inside, where the front room smelled like cats’ piss and stale cigarette smoke. John wandered over to the sagging bookshelf: a couple of magazines, some dog-eared novels, and a hardcover copy of the Bible. John curled his lip at the sight of it.

“What do you want?” Ethan asked again, digging around on his cluttered coffee table and producing a packet of cigarettes.

“We’re just checking in,” Liz said. “You’re one of our more high-profile parolees, Mr. Gray. It’s in all our best interests to keep communication open between us.”

A derisive snort. “Bullshit.”

Liz shrugged. “I want to talk to you about Simon. I want to know what happened to him.”

“He ran away.”

John huffed out a breath as he thought of the bones of the boy that had been levered from the hard-packed dirt in that scrubby ground not too far away from the old Children of Galilee compound.

“What happened that night?” Liz asked.

Ethan fumbled with his lighter, the wheel rasping a few times before the flame appeared. He sucked on his cigarette, and a curl of smoke drifted toward the ceiling. “Leon came to me to tell me that he’d seen the boys acting in ways that weren’t in accordance with God’s Holy Word, and he and Ben took them away to be corrected.”

“Did you give that instruction?” Liz asked.

Ethan narrowed his eyes are her. “God did.”

“Hmm.” Liz glanced at John. “Well, to all intents and purposes, that was you, wasn’t it?”

Ethan answered with a shrug of his stooped shoulders. John wondered if he’d been this evasive with the parole board and, if he had, how they’d let him out of prison to begin with. But maybe he’d spun then a different story about how all his delusions were behind him now. Maybe they had been, right up until he’d been stuck in this sad little flat with nobody to worship him, and now he wanted it all back.

“Did you know what sort of correction would be administered?” Liz pressed.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child,” Ethan murmured.

“I’m not a fan of corporal punishment myself,” Liz commented, “but even I can tell the difference between a few smacks on the backside and almost beating a child to death.”

Ethan’s gaze flicked away from her.

“In Caleb’s case, I mean,” Liz said. “Because Simon was beaten to death, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Ethan said, a hard tone creeping into his voice that must have only been a shadow of how commanding he’d once sounded. “Simon ran away.”

Liz looked to John and raised her eyebrows.

“Everyone says that,” John said. “Funny how he ran so far that nobody ever saw him again.”

“Funny,” Liz echoed.

Ethan flicked the ash from his cigarette into a cracked coffee mug. “I didn’t touch a hair on his head.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Liz said. “You gave the order.”

Ethan lifted his chin and sneered. “You can’t prove it.”

And there it was, John thought. There was the old arrogance that would trip him up eventually. Eight years couldn’t completely erase the God complex.

“Not yet,” Liz agreed, unperturbed. “But we will.”

She gave him a pause to hang himself; he didn’t take it.

Liz smiled slightly. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Gray. I’d just like to remind you that your parole conditions prohibit any communication with any former members of your group, and that if you breach those conditions your parole can be revoked and you can be sent back to prison.”

Ethan Gray’s expression morphed into narrow suspicion. “You came all the way from Brisbane to ask me about Simon?”

Liz’s smile grew. “Thanks for your time,” she said again.

They left.

* * *

“What a fucking cunt,” Liz said thirty minutes later as she dug into the bag of cinnamon donuts from Donut King.

John was driving now, navigating their way out of the Toowoomba CBD, such as it was, and back toward the highway.

“I mean, call me old-fashioned,” Liz said, “but I prefer my gods to be a little more impressive. You have to wonder what the fuck any of them ever saw in that.”

“He didn’t look quite so pathetic eight years ago,” John said. “He had this… this energy, I guess. This presence. You could see the way they all looked at him like he really was God, you know? It was this weird kind of mix of worship and terror, and you couldn’t pick them apart.”

“Like kids with abusive parents.”

“Exactly like that,” John agreed with a nod.

“Well,” Liz said, “we’ve stirred him up now. We just need the forensics back, and hopefully that’ll give us enough to arrest Harrison and Quartermain. Then we’ll get Gray too, and any other fucker we can prove knew what happened and covered it up.”

“You don’t think we’re playing our hand too soon?” John asked.

“It’s not the way I would have chosen to do it,” Liz said at last. “But the boss has a different opinion, and he has more stripes than me. Anyway, none of them are allowed contact. If we find out they’re comparing notes before we make our move, then we’ll just add a breach of parole onto their charges.”

John nodded tightly.

“Well get them, John,” Liz assured him. “We’ll get them.”

They headed east back toward Brisbane.

Chapter Sixteen

John hung back and watched as Darren Fletcher paced back and forth, sucking furiously on a cigarette as though he was a drowning man pulling oxygen from it. “I don’t know this kid, John! I don’t know him!”

The more time John spent with Darren, the more he saw the resemblance. It wasn’t just in their dark hair and eyes, or the similar cast of their features. It was in their pain too. Their pain and their rage and the open wounds in their chests where their hearts had been ripped out.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with him?” Darren demanded, as though John had the answers and was withholding them for the hell of it. “How am I supposed to make it better?”

“I don’t know,” John said evenly, not even blinking as the stinging smoke hit his eyes. “But I’ll help you any way that I can.”

* * *

On Sunday evening, after another fruitless day of interviewing the couple of former members of the Children of Galilee who’d agreed to come to the station, John walked nervously up the front stairs of Caleb and Darren’s house, a bag of sushi rolls swinging from one hand and a 1.25 litre bottle of Fanta in the crook of his arm. Excited barking greeted him at the door before he even had a chance to knock.

“Hey, Cricket,” he said through the open plantation shutters, and Cricket stuck her nose against the gap. Her tongue lolled out.

Footsteps sounded, and a moment later the lock in the door turned, and the door was pulled open.

Darren’s expression shifted though more than a few conflicting emotions before it settled on vaguely uncomfortable. Given the other possibilities, John was going to count that as a win.

“John.” He stepped back and let John inside. “Caleb’s out the back.”

“I got enough for everyone,” John said, holding up his plastic bag. “I’d like it if you joined us.”

That was possibly a lie, but he knew that the sooner he and Darren worked though their discomfort, the sooner they’d settle back into being friends again. And John wanted that almost as much as he wanted Caleb. Both the Fletcher men were important to him. It would break his heart to lose Darren’s friendship over this, but Caleb always came first. And he hoped Darren would eventually realise that was one thing they had in common.

Darren gave him a look he couldn’t quite read, but then nodded and led the way through the house to the wide back deck. John grabbed some glasses from the kitchen on his way outside.

Caleb was sitting at the table on the deck, his legs drawn up, staring out into the darkness.

“Caleb,” Darren said, and then, slightly louder: “Caleb.”

Caleb seemed to jolt awake. He turned in his chair, his blank expression morphing into a delighted smile as he saw John. “John!”

He pushed himself up out of his chair and then stepped toward John. He hesitated, his smile vanishing, and then his arms fell to his sides. His hands twitched as he glanced at Darren.

“We need to talk about this,” Darren said. “I’m not happy about it, but this isn’t about me.”

Caleb nodded warily.

John stepped forward with his bag of sushi. He set it on the table, and brushed against Caleb’s shoulder while he did it. He gripped Caleb’s forearm and squeezed, and Caleb’s shoulders sagged as the tension flooded out of him.

“Brought you sushi,” John said.

Caleb’s smile returned, a little shakier this time, but he sat down again.

John sat beside him, and Darren took a seat opposite.

They began to eat.

“So,” Darren said gruffly, “When did it start?”

An impossible question, John thought. He’d loved Caleb from the start. He couldn’t even remember now when those feelings had shifted into wanting Caleb. Two years ago, maybe. Possibly three. There had been no dramatic revelation, no road to Damascus moment for John. Everything had seemed like the natural progression of what had come before.

Caleb was specific. “A few weeks ago, the night after we had the barbecue at the beach with John’s family.”

Darren’s brow creased. “You told me you were going to a movie with a guy from work.”

Caleb chewed his lip for a moment. “I lied, Dad.”

Darren sighed. “Caleb, you know we’re not supposed to have lies between us.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t want to tell you I was trying to seduce John!” Caleb’s voice rose, and John reached out and took his hand to settle him. Caleb drew a deep breath. “I know what happens when I lie, okay? I know how keeping stuff in is bad for me, and I spiral, but it’s not like you would have let me go if I’d told you the truth. And I wanted John more than I’ve ever wanted anyone. I love him, Dad.”

“I know.” Darren cleared his throat. “I worry, Caleb, okay? I worry about what can go wrong here.”

John’s gut twisted.

“Me too,” Caleb whispered. “But, Dad, I want to be your son for once, you know? Not just…not just another one of your project risk assessments.”

Darren swiped at his eyes, and nodded.

Caleb’s chair creaked as he rose, and he tugged his hand free from John’s. He rounded the table, and then went to his knees beside Darren’s chair. John’s eyes stung as he watched them embrace, Darren leaning into Caleb’s hug and holding him tightly.

He thought of Analise Fletcher and her vague, detached smiles, and hated her again for what she’d done. For taking Caleb away to begin with, and for leaving him with so much damage that every day threatened to fracture under the weight of it, for both father and son.

“Okay,” Darren murmured at last. “Okay, Caleb.”

Caleb rose and returned to his seat. He ate his sushi one-handed. His other hand reached for John’s, and John held it. A heady rush of emotion almost threatened to overcome him at how right this felt, and at Darren’s grudging acceptance. Grudging for now, but John thought that he’d come around. He had to, once he saw how happy Caleb was with this, and once he realised that John would never do a thing to threaten that happiness. Nothing but time would change Darren’s feelings on the matter, but that was okay, because he’d given them time.

“How’s work going?” Darren asked.

“I can’t talk too much about it,” John said. “We’re still waiting on forensic results.” He looked worriedly at Caleb, and Caleb squeezed his hand reassuringly. “You know how I always said we needed a body? Well, now we need a way to link that body to the cult before we can start making arrests. We’re hoping his DNA will match someone’s from the group. That’ll give us enough to move forward, but it takes a little while.”

Darren’s brow creased. “Does it always take this long?”

“Yeah, unfortunately.” John shrugged. “It’s been less than a week, so that’s par for the course. For cases with a lower priority it can take months to get anything back.”

“Why?” Darren asked.

“Staffing levels, shitty budgets, the same as anything with the government.” John saw that Caleb’s face was pale. “Sorry. We can talk about something else.”

Caleb shook his head. “No. No, I’m okay.”

He wasn’t, but John didn’t push. He changed the subject instead.

“What about your job?” he asked Darren. “How’s everything going there?”

“Same old shit,” Daren said. “Sub-contractors who don’t turn up when they say they will, the council coming up with more and more hoops I have to jump through to get approval, and last week I sacked a bloke who turned up for work when he was clearly off his face on something and now he’s threatening to get all his bikie mates to bash me.” He snorted. “He’s all talk. He’d piss himself if he ever met a bikie.”

“You should report it just in case,” John said.

“Nah, he’s all hot air.” Darren waved the suggestion away. “Besides, if anyone turns up, the rest of the blokes on my crew will tell them where to shove it. I’ve got a good crew.” He dripped his roll in soy sauce. “Speaking of work, though—Caleb, Frank says you can go back whenever you’re feeling up to it.”

Caleb shrank a little in his seat. “Is he sure?”

“Of course he is. And I think it’s good for you to get out of the house sometimes. I know it’s not exactly an exciting job, but…” Darren shrugged. “It’s good for you.”

“Maybe if I can work there for a while, then I can think about going to TAFE or something,” Caleb said softly. He didn’t meet Darren’s gaze. “I mean, maybe. I know stuff like this hasn’t really worked out for me before.”

“We can look into TAFE,” Darren said. “And it doesn’t matter if something hasn’t worked before. That doesn’t mean you have to stop trying. Not if it’s something you want to do.”

Caleb lifted his gaze at that. “Like being in a relationship?”

For a moment Darren stared at him blankly, and then he shook his head. “Shit. I walked into that one, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did.” Caleb flashed Darren a quick smile, and squeezed John’s hand. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you earlier, Dad.”

Darren sighed. “I know, Caleb. And honestly, my reaction wouldn’t have been any different if you told me from the beginning. So just let me deal with that, okay? You worry about you, not about me.”

Caleb nodded.

A rocky road ahead was better than a door slammed in his face, and John figured it was probably more than he deserved at this point. He and Darren had a long history, and they’d work it out in the end.

“What do you want to study at TAFE?” he asked, to change to subject again.

“Maybe animal welfare?” Caleb shrugged again, and bit his lip. “The shelter that we got Cricket from? I can volunteer there if I get the right certificates. They sometimes have paid positions come up too, but there’s no guarantee of that.”

John looked at Darren.

“You don’t need paid work,” Darren said, shaking his head. “I’ve got us covered.”

Of course he did. Fletcher Construction was a multi-million dollar business. Hell, this house was worth more than anything John would ever be able to afford. Caleb didn’t need to work for money, but Darren was right: work gave him something to do, something to focus on outside his own head. A volunteer position with animals, as long as his employers were understanding of his limitations and made the appropriate accommodations, might be perfect for him.

“I think it’s a good idea,” John said. “You’re doing great with Cricket.”

Caleb grinned and looked over to the corner of the veranda, where Cricket was chewing a knot of rope happily. “We’ve been walking in the mornings, too. She’s getting better at not pulling on her leash.”

John loved the expression Caleb got on his face when he talked about Cricket. It wasn’t just love, it was pride, and Caleb hadn’t had enough of that in his life. He second-guessed everything he did, even the positives, and self-doubt crowded in at every opportunity and was followed rapidly by self-sabotage. But Cricket was different. She wasn’t a social setting, or education, or a job. She didn’t have any onerous expectations of him. She just wanted to be fed and loved, and she was happy and thriving under Caleb’s care. Caleb had come a long way since he’d first come home and his violent episodes had terrified the German shepherd Darren had owned at the time. It was sometimes too easy to forget how hard Caleb had worked and how much progress he’d made whenever he stumbled, but that kid eight years ago? That kid could never have been trusted to care for an animal.

The satisfied curve of Caleb’s smile when he watched Cricket, or spoke about her, warmed John’s heart. Caleb deserved to be proud.

Caleb tugged his hand free from John’s to twist open a fiddly container of soy sauce. He squirted the sauce into the lid of his open container and dipped his California roll into it. “She still hasn’t got the hang of staying, but we’re working on it.”

John rubbed his palm on the knee of his jeans, missing Caleb’s touch. “She’ll get there. Kelpies are smart dogs.”

“Too smart,” Caleb agreed, his eyes shining.

John glanced at Darren. His expression had taken on that hint of softness it often did when Caleb was happy—thinking that it wouldn’t last, maybe, or of all the years he’d been robbed of moments like these. He’d finished eating and was tapping his fingers on the top of the table in that unconscious way he did when he was about to sneak out to his car for a cigarette. He kept them in the glovebox because he was in the process of quitting. He’d been in the process of quitting for the eight years John had known him.

Soon enough, within a few minutes Darren got up and walked back inside, all the way through the house and out of the front door.

The night was dark and cool. Insects buzzed around the lights, pinging against the bulbs. Wings beat somewhere in the darkness as an unseen flying fox headed for the rain tree. A crash of dry leaves announced its arrival. Cricket got up and stretched, and then crossed the length of the veranda, her claws clicking against the wood. She stretched again, and lay down at the top of the stairs. She peered intently into the darkness, her ears pricked.

Caleb covered a yawn with his hand.

John checked his watch. It was barely past eight, but Caleb had his routine. And given that he’d spent the last few nights in the hospital, he probably hadn’t been sleeping well. He always complained he didn’t, despite the meds they gave him.

“Time for your shower, yeah?” John asked.

Caleb nodded, leaning back in his chair and stretching. “Are you working tomorrow?”

“Eight until four.”

“Maybe I can meet you for lunch?” Caleb suggested, half teasing and half shy. He shrugged. “If I go to work.”

“Probably not tomorrow,” John said. “I think me and Liz might be on the road a bit tomorrow.”

In the middle of an investigation like this one the chances of getting a scheduled meal break were slim to none. For all he knew they’d be heading out to Toowoomba again. Not that he could tell Caleb that. The next time John mentioned Ethan Gray’s name to Caleb it’d be to tell him he’d arrested the prick.

A flash of disappointment crossed Caleb’s face.

“How about we do dinner again?” John asked. “I can come over after work again.”

“Okay.” Caleb smiled and it morphed into another yawn.

“Shower,” John reminded him, and Caleb rolled his eyes and headed inside.

John began to clean up the sushi containers and glasses. He shoved the rubbish into the plastic bag he’d brought the sushi in, and tied a knot in the handles, then tucked the whole thing under his arm as he carried the glasses and the empty Fanta bottle inside.

Caleb was already in the bathroom, and the shower was running. John put the bag of rubbish in the bin under the kitchen bench, and tossed the plastic bottle in the recycling. When he straightened up again Darren was back inside.

“It was going to be someone eventually,” Darren said.

John had hoped they were finished talking about this, but he only nodded instead. John had sure as shit wrangled back and forth with his feelings over his relationship with Caleb so it wasn’t as though he could expect Darren to suddenly just get over it, and they’d pick up their friendship again like nothing had happened. If there was one thing all these years of listening to Caleb talk about his therapy had taught John it was that everyone was entitled to their feelings. Emotions were powerful, and they were valid, even if there wasn’t always a logical basis for them. Caleb had once said he sometimes saw himself as a three-year-old having a tantrum in the shopping centre. The anger and the pain and the frustration were real, even if they came from being denied a bag of lollies. John had thought it was an unfair self-assessment, but then he’d seen Caleb go into meltdown about things that didn’t matter, hadn’t he? And he knew it wasn’t really about those little things at all.

Just like this moment, for Darren, wasn’t just about Caleb and John getting together, but maybe the culmination of a hundred of Darren’s different fears and insecurities and doubts. And the foremost of them had to be that he was afraid of losing Caleb again, even if it was only losing him to John.

“So.” Darren’s mouth twisted, and he shrugged. “So I’m glad it’s you, John. It won’t stop me from worrying, and it won’t stop me from being pissed off you kept it a secret, but I’m glad it’s you. I know how much you care for him, and that’s all I can ask for, isn’t it?”

John nodded, his chest tight. “I’m sorry too, for how it happened. But I’m not sorry it happened.”

Darren exhaled slowly, and then tilted his head toward the fridge. “Beer?”

“Better not,” John said. “Early start in the morning.”

“Coffee then.” Darren crossed over to the machine on the bench.

“Coffee,” John agreed.

They fell into silence as they waited for the coffee to brew. It wasn’t their usual companionable silence, but John hoped they’d get back to that soon. He stacked the glasses in the dishwasher, and grabbed the sponge off the sink to go outside and clean the stray bits of rice off the table on the back deck. When he got back inside, Caleb was out of the shower. He was wearing a thin pair rugby-knit shorts, and no shirt. He hadn’t dried his hair properly, and a drop of water slid down his throat and trembled for a moment in the dip of his clavicle before slipping down his chest. John tried his hardest not to notice it.

Caleb reached for his bottle of pills. He cracked the lid open and upended a single pill into his palm. Showed it to Darren, who got him a glass of water from the sink. Caleb swallowed the pill down, grimacing slightly.

“I’ll come and turn your light off in ten minutes,” Darren said.

Caleb nodded, and stepped toward John.

John’s heart beat faster.

“Goodnight,” Caleb said, and then, before John could answer, pushed himself up onto his toes and brushed his mouth against John’s in a chaste, perfect kiss. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” John said. “Goodnight.”

He didn’t dare look at Darren as Caleb trailed toward his bedroom, but he heard Darren’s slow exhalation of breath and decided that it was a small price to pay for a kiss from the man he loved.

* * *

John was tired when he finally made it back to his apartment. This morning’s breakfast bowl was still sitting in the sink, a couple of pieces of cereal caught in the skin of warm milk that had developed on it during the day. John rinsed the bowl out but couldn’t be bothered wash it. He left it to sit in the bottom of the sink to deal with later.

He plugged his phone in to charge, and then went and showered.

After his shower he checked his phone to find a text message from David:

Tee is taking Ma & Jess to get their nails done on Saturday. You up for a day of work at Ma’s? The back gutter of the roof needs repairs.

John groaned. He wasn’t rostered on for Saturday, but that didn’t mean much. Not in the middle of an investigation like this one. Also, even if he did have the day off, he would have loved to spend it with Caleb. But David was already doing more than his fair share of work at Ma’s house, and the fact he was even asking meant that it was a two man job because otherwise David would have just done it himself and not mentioned it to John.

Work is crazy lately, so I don’t know if I’ll be free or not. I’ll try to make it.

He shook his head even as he hit Send. It was the truth, but it sounded like a flimsy lie.

He waited a few minutes for David’s response.

No worries, bro. There’s a new guy at work who reckons he’ll help out for the cost of a slab if you can’t make it. Let me know.

If there was any censure on David’s reply, John couldn’t tell. But he doubted it. David was too generous for that.

John sighed and set his phone down again. Work was always going to get in the way of family. That was just how it was. It sucked, and that was just how it was as well. Maybe it was time to get off shift work for a while, and actually look at some of the vacancies that came up from time to time in HQ. Monday to Friday stuff, and no more bullshit shifts. Or maybe he could stay with CPIU but move into school-based policing. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen those guys in the office after five.

He couldn’t transfer to a new position right now, though. Not in the middle of this investigation. Any other investigation maybe, but not this one, because John had made a promise to Caleb, and to Simon, to see this one through to the end. And that was what he was going to do.

John set his alarm for the morning, and headed off to bed.

Chapter Seventeen

Naomi was mulish. She scowled and kicked at the legs of her chair. “Do I have to go with them?”

Brian was always calm and friendly with Naomi. “You do. They’re from the Department of Child Safety, and they’re going to put you with a nice family to live with.”

“I have a family,” Naomi said. “Ethan is my father!”

He sure as shit wasn’t, but John kept the scowl off his face when Naomi looked at him.

“Hmm.” Brian tilted his head. “Are you a bit nervous about going to live with new people?”

“No!” Her denial was too quick to ring true.

Brian lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone. “I hear they have a dog.”

Naomi’s eyes grew wide.

“So, I tell you what,” Brian said. “You go and see what they’re like, and if you have any problems, you can call me and I’ll come out there and talk to you, and we’ll see what we can figure out.”

Naomi still didn’t look convinced.

Brian reached into his pocket and drew out his wallet. He opened it up, and pulled out one of his business cards. Took a pen and wrote his mobile number on the back. “This is my name here, on the front, and my office number. And this number on the back is where you can find me at any time, okay?”

He slid the card across the desk, and Naomi took it and clutched it as tightly in her skinny fist. Her lower lip wobbled.

“Now let’s go and get you some chips and lollies for the drive, hmm?”

She nodded, and suddenly looked very, very small.

* * *

John was woken by his phone before his alarm went off. Daylight was barely creeping in at the edges of the darkness, softening it into a pale grey light that heralded in the nascent dawn.

“Liz,” John said, swinging his legs over the side of his bed as he sat up. The soles of his feet touched the cool floor. “What’s up?”

“Can you come in early?” Liz asked. “The media just broke the story.”

“Shit. I thought they were holding off on that.”

“Yeah.” Liz sounded terse. “Those fuckers.”

There was no real heat in her tone. They’d been on borrowed time since the day they’d found the remains. John had seen the media van there at the time. It was probably a miracle they’d held off this long. And while John did actually support the idea of the public’s right to know, he hated those times when the media used it as a battering ram, because sometimes the public’s right to know put investigations in jeopardy. And sometimes it was nothing that dramatic at all. John still remembered going to deliver a death message back when he’d been a first-year constable, and hearing the woman crying before he’d even reached the door because she’d seen footage of the accident on television and recognised her husband’s crushed car. John had yet to figure out how the public’s right to know was more important than that woman’s right to have the news broken to her gently.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll grab a quick shower and come straight in.”

“As much as I hate to say it, don’t stop for coffees today,” Liz said. “See you soon.”

John was out of the door in ten minutes, his hair still damp and his shirt sticking to the small of his back where he’d missed drying a patch of skin after his shower. He ate a muesli bar while he drove, and checked news sites on his phone at red lights.

Woman’s body found in Milton park.

Grave fears for missing tourists in Cape York.

Human remains discovered at Jimboomba.

John hit the link for the article. There was nothing in it that mentioned Ethan Gray or the Children of Galilee, but it didn’t have to, did it? Because if Leon Harrison or Ben Quartermain had found this article, they’d know the police were closing in on them and that it was only a matter of time before they got a knock on the door. And if Ethan Gray had seen it, he’d know exactly why Liz and John had been poking around. John doubted any of them would give a fuck about violating parole and running if they knew there were murder changes coming for them.

And while Caleb already knew, John hoped that seeing the media speculation—because of course there would be speculation—wouldn’t send him on another downward spiral. Caleb was so strong, but John wasn’t sure he could take another hit right now and stay on his feet.

Jesus. This had the potential to turn into a total clusterfuck.

The guy in the car behind John’s leaned on the horn, and John gave an apologetic wave as he accelerated through the green light.

Ten minutes later he was climbing the steps at work and checking his watch. It was just past six, and that muesli bar wasn’t going to cut it for long. Hopefully he’d get the chance to grab something for breakfast later, since he hadn’t had time to pack a lunch either. Then again, something told him it was going to be one of those days where he survived on station coffee and vending machine snacks.

He entered the CPIU office, and was surprised to find a bunch of people already at their desks.

He raised his eyebrows as Liz walked over to him. “What’s all this?”

“This is the boss suddenly approving an actual op,” Liz said. “It’s not just you and me on this now. We’ve got eight of us.”

“That’s the good news,” John said. “Hit me with the bad.”

Liz snorted. “Still no ID on the body, which doesn’t give us enough for an arrest warrant. I’ve got Aaron and Clare digging through phone records in the hope we can pick up the Three Stooges on parole violations, and we’re checking their internet history as well. We got a warrant for that, at least.”

“That’s better than nothing, I guess,” John said.

“I’ve also got plainclothes crews sitting off their addresses,” Liz said. “I don’t want these arseholes to give us the slip now. Except…” She shrugged.

“Except?”

“Except they already might have,” Liz said. “Harrison and Quartermain last checked in with Probation and Parole last Thursday, and they’re not due again for another three days. And we saw Ethan Gray in person on Sunday. I’ve got people on their addresses, John, but no fucking guarantee they’re still inside them. All three of them could have already done the bolt.”

“Maybe,” John said, but he didn’t like to consider it. “We might have stirred things up when we started talking to the group again.”

“If we did, then we know they’re still in contact with each other,” Liz said. “It’d be nice to have some phone records proving it though. Something to get them on until we can ID the body.”

“So where do you want to start?” John asked.

Liz sucked in a breath. “I want another go at Ethan Gray. Ideally, I’d love to send someone to break his fucking door down and arrest him, but we don’t have enough for that, and he’s hardly likely to sit down for a friendly little chat, is he?”

“Yeah, I doubt it.”

Liz chewed her lip for a moment. “Fuck this. We need to link the body to those fuckers. This is bullshit.”

“Okay,” John said. “How about we keep doing what we’ve been doing? We pull whoever is willing in for a friendly chat, except now we tell them we’ve found a body, and we make sure they know that if they offer us any information about what happened to Simon, we’ll be a lot nicer to them than if we find out later they’ve been hiding anything.”

“Yeah,” Liz said. She exhaled heavily. “Yeah, I think that’s all we’ve got right now, isn’t it? We’re treading water until we get that ID.”

“We’ve done that plenty of times before.”

Liz nodded. “Right?”

They got to work.

* * *

Paulette Fisher was a small, grey woman who wore her guilt like a second skin. She’d been like so many of the other Children of Galilee—hopeful, optimistic and, ultimately, gullible. John had felt sorry for her the first time he’d spoken to her eight years ago, and he felt sorry for her now. Paulette hadn’t been charged with anything and she’d never been in prison, but she carried around more remorse than those who had.

“Oh, he was the most beautiful boy,” she said now, her face crumbling a little when John asked about Simon. “All of the kids were beautiful, so kind and sweet with each other, but Simon had this spark about him, you know? And he brought it out in the others too. Caleb just lit up when they were together.”

John’s chest ached at the thought of fifteen-year-old Caleb, nursing his secret crush at the same time as he panicked at the thought of hellfire.

“When Ethan said Simon ran away, I remember I was so upset.” Paulette curled her narrow fingers around her cup of tea. “I was upset that he’d decided to forsake our community for the outside world. I was upset that he would endanger his soul. And then…” She shook herself. “And then a few days later the police came, and it was you, wasn’t it? You were the one who found Caleb?”

John nodded because he didn’t trust himself to speak.

“I…” She blinked, and tears welled. “When I saw you bring him out, do you know I thought there’d been some sort of terrible accident? I just couldn’t believe it. Even now I can’t believe how wilfully blind I was. I can’t believe there were people around me, children who were scared, and who were being abused, and I just had my head in the clouds and never noticed a thing!”

John remembered how she’d cried that first night in the holding cell. How she’d cried again all through every one of her interviews, asking over and over if Caleb was okay. She’d never denied the idea that Simon was dead. Not after seeing Caleb. John had frankly been amazed that any of them had clung to the delusion that Ethan Gray was their saviour, but Paulette had been in the minority with her immediate disavowal of the Children of Galilee. Most of them had clung harder and harder, at least for a while.

And some of them, John suspected, still did.

“But you never saw any abuse?” John asked her now.

“No.” She shook her head. “I’ve had eight years to go over everything I saw in the months I was there, but everyone seemed so happy, and so at peace.” She shook her head. “I was so blind.”

“You never did anything to get in trouble?” John asked her.

“No, I guess I didn’t.” Paulette sighed. “It seems crazy now, but I loved it there. I loved the rules and the routine. I loved the feeling of being in a community. I think I must have looked so hard for that, that when I thought I’d found it, I didn’t question it.” She wiped her eyes and said in a shaky voice, “I’m a lot more cynical now.”

John nodded again.

Weren’t they all?

* * *

John took a break at around eleven, and went on a lunch run to Subway for the rest of the team. He sent a text to Caleb while he waited, to let him know how much he was missing him, and got a selfie of a smiling Caleb and Cricket in reply. John stood there in the line at Subway, grinning like a fool at his phone, and the girl behind the counter had to call out to get his attention. When he produced the long list from his pocket, she looked as though she regretted it.

When he got back to the office he distributed all the subs and then ate his in front of the whiteboard in the incident room. Stared at the old mugshots of Ethan Gray, Leon Harrison, and Ben Quartermain, and hoped he’d get the chance to cuff at least one of them. There was something satisfying about being the one to do that. Something in the click of the hardware that said, more than any words could, Got you now, you fucker.

When he headed outside into the main office, there was a guy standing there he didn’t know. Young guy, tall, with slightly stooped shoulders, holding a folder with an iPad balanced on top. He was wearing a firearm on his belt and an ID on a checkered lanyard around his neck, but John couldn’t read his name from this far away.

He closed the distance between them. “Can I help you?”

“Hey,” the guy said. “Nathan Lockland. I’m from Roma Street CIB. I’m looking for a Brian Keller?”

John blinked at him. “Brian retired a few years back. He lives up at Maroochydore now.”

“Figures,” Lockland said. “You mind if I show this around?”

“We’re pretty bloody busy today, but knock yourself out,” John said with a shrug. “What’ve you got?”

“Homicide in Milton,” Lockland said. “I’ve got a victim found in a park this morning. Her purse is missing, so I’ve got no ID, but we found this in the bottom of her backpack.”

He opened up his folder and pulled out a sealed plastic evidence bag with Brian’s old business card inside.

John took it and turned it over, his heart suddenly pounding faster. There was a phone number written on the back in Brian’s still-familiar scrawl, several of the numbers faded now, the card worn and soft with wear.

“Have you got a photo of your victim?”

“Nothing official yet.” But Lockland pulled out his phone, and thumbed through his photo album. He handed the phone to John.

If he’d passed her in the street, John wouldn’t have recognised her. She’d been a skinny kid, narrow-eyed and sharp-faced. This young woman was overweight, with purple-dyed hair. One side of her face was swollen and abraded, as though she’d been dragged over rough bitumen. But it was her.

“It’s Naomi,” John said. He reached behind him with his spare hand to grab a desk to steady himself. His vision swam. “Naomi Dobbs.”

“You know her?” Lockland asked, his voice sharpening.

“Liz!” John called. He didn’t think he raised his voice that much, but everyone in the office turned to stare. “Liz, Jesus Christ.” Fear stabbed him in the gut, and left him swaying.

There had been two witnesses to Simon’s murder: the skinny little girl who’d seen men moving what might have been a body, and the boy who’d been in the tank with Simon at the time. And when it came to the timing of Naomi’s murder, John didn’t believe in coincidences.

“Caleb!” John thrust Lockland’s phone back at him, and fumbled with his own. It took him two attempts to unlock it. He dialled Caleb’s number, and waited, his heart pounding, for Caleb to answer him.

Nothing.

He tried again.

Nothing.

“It’s Naomi,” he said to Liz as she strode over toward him. “They killed Naomi.”

Lockland looked back and forth between them. “What the hell is going on?”

“Shut up a second,” Liz said, making her own call. “Yeah, I need a general duties crew sent immediately to an address, please. Code One.” She rattled off Caleb’s address. “Try him again,” she said, and it took John a moment to realise he was talking to her. “John, try him again.”

No answer.

He shook his head at Liz.

“Aaron!” Liz called across the room. “You and Clare, with us. Let’s move. Pete, get the crews sitting off our suspects’ addresses to get in there and arrest them now.”

“Can someone tell me what’s going on here?” Lockland asked again.

“We can talk in the car,” Liz said. “Let’s go.”

They raced downstairs to the car park.

* * *

John sometimes joked that Liz drove like a bat out of hell, but today it felt like she was Sunday driving, even with the siren screaming, and the car whining and vibrating with the speed they were doing. John kept his eye out as they approached intersections, but once they were on the motorway Liz floored it. Most of the traffic was heading into the city, not out of it, so they had a reasonably clear run.

“You ever heard of the Children of Galilee?” Liz asked.

“No,” came Lockland’s voice from the back of the car.

“It was a cult,” Liz said. “They got busted up eight years ago. A few of them ended up in prison for child abuse and assault. The thing is, they also killed a kid, except we could never prove it because both our child witnesses fell apart in interviews, and we didn’t have a body. Last week we got the body and sometime last night the media ran the story.”

“My vic is one of your witnesses?”

Lockland caught on quick. John might have appreciated that at any other time. As it was, he kept calling Caleb’s number and kept getting no answer. He hesitated, and then called Darren instead. It went to voicemail, which wasn’t unusual when Darren was working on a site. Construction was noisy.

“Darren, it’s John. Call me urgently.”

“That’s right,” Liz said to Lockland. “And we’re heading for the other one’s house now.”

“I need to make some calls,” Logan said. “Do we have an ID on the suspects?”

“The cult leader was Ethan Gray,” Liz said. “Lives in Toowoomba. Our two other most likely candidates are Leon Harrison and Ben Quartermain, both with north Brisbane addresses. All three of them are recent parolees.”

“Got it.”

John glanced back to see Logan on his iPad, looking up the names.

A moment later, as they screamed down the motorway, Lockland was on his phone. “Yeah, I need you to get a BOLO put on for three suspects and any vehicles registered to them. I’m gonna send you the link to the names now.” A pause. “Fucked if I know. Just passed Yatala, I think.”

It normally took over an hour to get to Caleb’s house from Logan. Liz got them there in forty minutes, and John felt the weight of every one of them.

There was a police car blocking the street outside the house, and another one pulled into the driveway. A neighbour was standing on the footpath, hands on his hips as he gazed at the show. Both police cars had their lights still flashing when Liz pulled up. John was out of the car before Liz even turned the engine off, his heart in his mouth as he raced up the familiar front steps.

There was a uniformed copper in the doorway to the enclosed front veranda. John could see that the door was swinging open, the hinges busted.

A squeal of brakes in the street and the wail of a siren: Aaron and Clare were pulling up too.

“John Faimu,” he said to the copper on the door. “Logan CPIU.” There was a dark stain on the copper’s shirt, and the sudden sharp scent of blood hit John in the face. “Wh—what have you got inside?”

Liz and Lockland hurried up the stairs behind him.

The copper on the door looked young. She must have only been in her early twenties. She was small and blonde. “There was nobody here when we got here,” she said. “The neighbour saw a white van leaving the street. There’s…” She stepped aside and gestured at the veranda floor. It was covered in blood.

“Oh, Jesus.” John felt his world tip, and Liz grabbed him firmly on the upper arm.

“It’s from the dog,” the blonde copper said. She shook her head, her eyes wide. “They stabbed the dog.”

No. Caleb couldn’t come home to that. Not Cricket.

John almost laughed at the thought.

Caleb couldn’t come home to that? There was no fucking guarantee Caleb was coming home at all, was there? Because they’d failed him. John had failed him. All those years promising to keep him safe, and John had failed him.

His vision swam, and burning bile rose in his throat. He swallowed it back down with difficulty, his guts churning.

“My partner drove him to the vet,” the copper said. “There’s still four of us here though.” She added the last part hastily, as though she thought she might get in trouble for admitting one of them had left the scene.

“Her,” John said, his voice rasping.

The copper looked at him.

“It’s a her,” John said. “The dog. Her name’s Cricket.”

It seemed somehow important to say that, and John had no idea why.

Liz put a hand on his chest. “Stay out here.”

John could have argued, he supposed, but he didn’t have it in him. He trusted Liz to do the job right. And what was she going to find that the general duties coppers hadn’t? Caleb was gone, and that was all that mattered.

John sat on the front steps heavily.

One copper on the front door and one on the back after their search of the house. Which left… John picked them out across the street: two blue uniforms knocking on doors and questioning neighbours.

John pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialled Caleb’s number again.

Heard it ringing distantly from somewhere in the house.

He sucked in a breath and held it. He felt like passing out. When his phone rang suddenly, John almost dropped it in surprise. And then, with black dread curling in his gut and threatening to choke his heart, he stared at the name on the screen for a moment before answering.

“Darren, you need to come home. They’ve taken Caleb.”

Chapter Eighteen

“He spends all his time in his room,” Darren said, chopping vegetables for a stir fry because, as he said to John, he’d been living on fast food for the past eight years and stir fry was about the only bloody thing he could make. “He doesn’t come out until I ask him to. Jesus, I have to think about getting back to work at some point. What am I supposed to do with him?”

John hummed.

Darren shook his head and waved the knife around. “Like stuff like this. The psychologist at the hospital said I have to lock up everything that he could harm himself with. Medication, knives, even my bloody tackle box. I don’t know if I’m cut out for this.”

“Nobody would blame you if you aren’t.”

“Bullshit,” Darren said. “And it’s not like I’m going to give my son to some foster family to raise. It’s just…” He trailed off with a shake of his head.

“It’s just?”

Darren squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “I knew I wasn’t getting Jason back. I knew he’d be different, because it’s been so long. But this kid doesn’t feel like mine. I can’t even hug him, John. How am I supposed to deal with a kid who won’t talk to me, and who won’t even let me touch him?”

* * *

John stepped over the bloodstains on the polished floorboards of the veranda and walked through to the back of the house. He was careful not to touch anything, even though his fingerprints were already all over the place. On the dishes in the drainer by the sink, on the taps in the bathroom, on the walls in the spare room and in Caleb’s bedroom. There wasn’t a corner of this house that John hadn’t been at home in, and hadn’t left some trace behind.

He glanced into Caleb’s bedroom as he passed and saw Aaron, gloves on, opening and closing Caleb’s dresser drawers.

There was a half-eaten sandwich on a plate at the kitchen table. Caleb’s phone was resting beside the plate. A glass as well, though it was empty. It appeared as though he’d just walked away for a moment, and he’d be back any second now.

Liz was on the back deck, brows tugged together as she made a phone call. Lockland was with her, and when he saw John he beckoned him through.

John forced himself past Caleb’s half-eaten lunch and out onto the back deck.

“You last heard from him at eleven, is that right?” Lockland asked.

John pulled his phone out and showed him the picture of Caleb and Cricket, and the timestamp: 11.08. Caleb’s smile was blinding, and John couldn’t look at it without his eyes stinging.

Fuck.

He couldn’t lose it. Not now. Not when there was still work to do.

Lockland’s expression was curious, but he didn’t ask. He was either too professional for that, or he really didn’t want John going to pieces on him.

“So the neighbours from number twelve said they heard a car speeding off at around 11.30, and saw a white van leaving the street. No rego, but Leon Harrison has a white van.” Lockland flipped through his notebook. “And it was a white van spotted in Milton when Naomi was killed.”

“Lotta white vans out there,” John said dully.

Lockland’s brow creased. “Listen. Naomi. It’s a homicide obviously, but I don’t think they were intending to kill her. It looks more like an abduction gone wrong. Someone tried to pull her into the van, but she struggled and fell, and that’s what killed her.”

John’s mouth curled into a bitter smile. “Bullshit. I get what you’re trying to do, but bullshit. They might not have intended to kill her at the side of the road, but come on, you really think they were just going to have a little chat with her and then let her go? You think that’s what they’re doing with Caleb?” He clamped his mouth shut before his voice cracked, and shook his head.

He wanted to kick and scream and punch walls. Wanted to put his fist through glass and feel the sudden sharp sting of it. He couldn’t feel the ground underneath his feet right now, and he felt like he was falling through space. Was this how Caleb felt when the storm in his head got too loud and swept him up?

John’s vision blurred with tears and he turned away from Lockland.

God.

Caleb must be terrified.

If he’s even still alive.

Shut up. Shut the fuck up.

John swallowed down the pained noise that tried to rise in his throat.

Clare moved closer and gave his wrist a surreptitious squeeze. She opened her mouth as if she was going to say something, and then a commotion at the front door caught her attention.

“Let me in! Let me in, I live here!”

Darren.

Clare hurried back into the house. John heard the low, urgent exchange of words, and a moment later Darren was stepping onto the back deck, dazed and shaking.

“John,” he said. “John, where’s my boy?”

“I…” His voice cracked on that simple word, and sudden tears blurred his vision.

The expression of heartbreak and horror on Darren’s face would haunt him forever, but it was the hope that cut the deepest.

“John,” he said, reaching out to grab John’s shirt, tugging on the fabric. “John, tell me he’s okay. Tell me.”

John didn’t have the breath in him to push that lie out. He opened his mouth, but no other words came either.

“Mr. Fletcher,” Clare said, taking his arm and drawing him away from John. “I’m Clare Dowling. Take a seat over here with me, and I’ll tell you what we know so far.”

John stared after him, a thousand useless apologies dying before they even reached his lips.

He’d failed, and Caleb was—

Caleb was gone.

John’s hands were shaking and he couldn’t stop them.

Liz finished her phone call, and crossed the deck to John. She didn’t comment on his shaking hands. Didn’t give him any sugar-coated bullshit either. Just levelled him with a stare and gave it to him straight.

“Quartermain’s out of the equation,” she said. “I just heard back from the guys at his address. They tried to raise him, and got no answer. When they looked in the back window, they saw him sitting in his armchair. He’d cut his wrists and bled out. They think it happened sometime overnight.”

John tried to feel the tiniest bit of satisfaction over that, or anger, or something—anything—but he was too frantic with worry for Caleb to give the smallest fuck about Ben Quartermain.

“Leon Harrison’s not home,” Liz said. “And his white van’s gone too.”

John nodded. There was nothing surprising in that. Leon had been the one to kill Simon. He was the one with the most to lose if Simon’s murder ever made it to a courtroom. It didn’t help get Caleb back though, did it? Knowing that it was Leon Harrison who’d taken him meant nothing to John unless they could get him back. John didn’t care about arrests and court dates and future prison sentences. None of those things could keep Caleb from harm.

God. What if he was already dead?

How could John live with himself if Caleb was already dead?

Panic threatened to choke him, and he held his breath to try to keep a lid on it.

“And we might have something,” Liz said. Her tone was cautious. “The guys sitting off Ethan Gray’s address were going to go and raise him like I asked, but then they saw him leaving his place and getting in his car. They’re following him now, and he’s heading east on the Warrego Highway.”

“Coming this way,” John said slowly.

“Maybe.” Liz exhaled heavily. “They’re keeping an eye on him from a few cars back, and we’re getting the chopper headed out that way just in case they lose sight of him.”

It wasn’t much of a lead, John knew, but it was all they had right now.

Liz’s expression tightened. “John, I want you to stay here with Darren and—”

“No.” John shook his head.

“John.”

“No,” he repeated. “Don’t you make me sit this one out, Liz. Not Caleb. Not when you know what he means to me.”

“Knowing what he means to you is exactly why I’m telling you to wait here,” Liz said. “You fucking know that!”

Lockland moved away from them.

“I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have a personal stake in this,” John said. “I’m not going to pretend I don’t love him. But you know I can still do my job, Liz. You know I can.”

Liz pressed her mouth into a thin, tense line, and then shook her head. “Okay. Don’t make me regret this, John. You remember where the line is, and you don’t fucking step over it, you hear me?”

“I hear you.” It was more than she had to do for him, and John knew it. “I know where the line is.”

Whatever Liz was going to say in response was curtailed by the ringing of her phone. “Grant.” She paused to listen. “Where? What’s the exact address?” She clicked her fingers and mimed writing in the air. John grabbed a pen and passed it to her, and Lockland shoved his folder toward her. She scrawled an address on the folder. “Okay. Got it. Yep, tell them we’re on our way.”

“What have we got?” Lockland asked.

“Our two junior constables from Toowoomba are sitting off a property in Hatton Vale,” Liz said. “Ethan Gray just arrived, and there’s already a white van parked there.”

“Let’s go,” Lockland said.

“Clare, stay here,” Liz said. “Scenes of Crime are on their way.”

Darren began to push himself out of his chair.

“No, Darren,” Liz said. “Wait here for us, okay? Wait here.”

Darren’s blank gaze sought John out. “John?”

“Stay here,” John said. “We’re going to do everything we can to bring him home, okay?”

Darren nodded, tears sliding down his weathered face. “Please, John. Bring my boy home again.”

“We’ll do everything we can,” John said, because as much as he wanted to promise Darren that he’d bring Caleb safely home, he was too afraid that if he said it, the universe would prove him a liar.

* * *

The constable from Toowoomba sounded like a teenager, or maybe John was just getting old. His name was Raj, and he drew a rough mud map of the property at Hatton Vale, took a picture of it, and sent it to John as a text. An old house, with at least four out-buildings, and two X’s on the map where Ethan Gray and Leon Harrison currently stood out the front of the place talking.

The constables had pulled over at the side of the highway, popped the bonnet of their unmarked car like it had broken down, and gone in on foot. They were keeping out of sight now, hidden behind a clump of eucalypts, hunkered down in the dry grass watching. They were a few hundred metres away from the house, and hadn’t seen any sign of Caleb.

John couldn’t shake the idea that there was a body in the back of Leon Harrison’s white van.

“We’re about twenty minutes out,” John told Raj. “We’ll cut our lights and sirens before we get there. Are you guys vested up?”

“Yeah. No sign of any weapons, but yeah.”

“I’m going to keep you on the line,” John said. “Let us know if you see movement.”

Lockland leaned forward from the back seat. “We’ve got uniform backup coming from Laidley and Marburg.”

“Keep them back until we get there,” Liz said. “We don’t want the marked cars tipping them off.”

“What’s the address again?” Aaron said. “Heise Road? Looks like there’s a servo on the highway before the turnoff. How about we all meet there and vest up before going in?”

“That’ll work,” Liz said, blasting the horn at a car that was too slow to move over to the left lane and get out of their way.

John tried to tamp down his urge to yell that no, they didn’t have time for this, they needed to go straight in. He knew better. He knew officer safety came first. Leon Harrison was a killer. What were the chances he’d go quietly when the police turned up? They needed to have a plan before they went in.

“I’ll get the ambos on standby too,” Aaron said.

John had been involved in the planning of many ops before, but none in the front seat of a car as it hurtled down the highway. None this precarious, where every second weighed so much. And none where his swirling emotions threatened to rise in his throat and choke him.

His phone dinged with a text message, and he looked at his screen. It was from David: We on for Saturday for fixing Ma’s roof?

The message was so innocuous, so innocent, that John could barely parse it. His entire world was falling apart right now, and David was thinking of fixing Ma’s roof? John wanted to laugh, it was so absurd. He swallowed down his irrational burst of anger toward his brother—David didn’t know, he couldn’t know—and swiped on the message to remove it from the screen. How was the world still turning for other people when for John it was collapsing all around him? It made no sense. Nothing made sense anymore. All John could do was think of Caleb, and of his need to hold him in his arms again.

Their last kiss, only a night before, after Caleb’s bedtime routine. His mouth wet from the water he’d swallowed his pill down with, his eyes dark and full of love.

“I love you too,” John had told him, so at least there was that.

It wasn’t enough, but at least there was that.

John closed his stinging eyes for a moment as the car sped down the highway.

* * *

Seven of them met at the service station in Hatton Vale. Seven of them, plus the ambulance. Three of them from Logan CPIU, one from Roma St CIB, two uniforms from Laidley, and another uniform from Marburg. Seven of them to go in and arrest Leon Harrison and Ethan Gray. Nine, once they met with the constables from Toowoomba who were still skulking in the bush outside the property.

Those were good odds for arrests, John thought, but he didn’t know if they were good odds for Caleb. He didn’t know if Caleb was even still alive.

Liz ran everyone through it quickly, passing around John’s phone with the picture of the mud map on it. And then they vested up and drove in, a rapid convoy of flashing lights with a dust plume rising into the sky behind them.

* * *

Ethan Gray bolted like a rabbit when he saw the cars hurtling toward him, darting away from the buildings and across a scrubby field. Raj’s partner from Toowoomba went after him, and so did Aaron, who put on a burst of speed at the last second to bring him crashing down a couple of hundred metres from the old house.

So that training of his really was paying off.

John barely saw any of that, because Leon Harrison had a firearm. An old rusted piece of shit rifle by the look of it. He pulled it out of the back of the van, yelling and screaming, and fired a shot toward them.

Liz and John hunkered down behind their vehicle.

Beside them, the coppers from Laidley drove off in a burst of dust, doing a wide arc as they cut toward the house. It was enough to divide Harrison’s attention. Enough for Lockland to get a shot off. If he shot first and then yelled at Harrison to put his rifle down, John wasn’t going to remember it that way, and he doubted anyone else would either.

Harrison wasn’t hit, but he was rattled. He returned a few pot shots from the cover of his van, and then made a sudden retreat for the house. And nobody here wanted this to turn into a siege, because the Laidley coppers were seconds behind him as he crashed through the front door, and they weren’t the only ones.

They had him on the floor by the time John got to them, knees in his back and his face mashed into the grimy old carpet. John hardly spared them a glance as he swept through the house, his heart pounding with more than the sudden rush of adrenaline from being shot at.

“Caleb?” he yelled. “Caleb!”

Rooms empty of nothing but mouldering furniture and dust.

No.

He had to be here.

He had to.

Because John wasn’t ready to face the alternative yet, even though he knew that moment might be creeping closer and closer. That moment when John’s universe collapsed in on itself, and pulled him into a black hole he’d never be able to climb out of again. Not alone. Not without Caleb at his side.

What had he told Caleb? That love wasn’t a cure, or an answer, or the part that came at the end of the story. He’d told him that love was a promise. He’d told him that he wouldn’t ever have to be alone when the rain came.

A promise, and he’d broken it.

What if today had been the end of Caleb’s story? What if Caleb’s story had ended with John’s broken promise? And what if John had nothing ahead of him now but empty pages?

No.

John wasn’t ready to face that now, and it wasn’t hope that kept him on his feet. It was denial.

“Caleb!”

John burst back outside into the sunlight, Lockland at his side, running for the white van with the back door still swinging open.

Nothing.

“Fellas!” Lockland called, gesturing Raj and the Marburg copper over. “Check every outbuilding. If you don’t find him, check ’em again.”

Later, John wanted to believe it was something inside him that was drawn to the smallest shed. Something in him that pulled him toward Caleb like a magnet toward true north, but he was too much of a pragmatist to fully believe it.

Dry grass crunched under his boots as he ran for the small outbuilding. It was an old feed shed or something, maybe once part of a chook pen judging by the tangle of chicken wire hanging like netting off one side. The grass had grown through the wire and flattened it, and the shed itself leaned at a precarious angle, but—John’s heart hammered hard when he saw it—the padlock on the door was shiny and new.

“Bolt cutters!” he yelled to anyone who’d listen. “Get me some fucking bolt cutters!” He pounded on the door. “Caleb? Caleb!”

It was Liz who elbowed him out of the way to cut the padlock, grimacing with determination as she did it.

John wrenched the door open, half-expecting the stench to hit him like it had eight years ago, except Caleb hadn’t been here for days this time. Hours, if that, but he wasn’t moving. He was lying curled in a ball on the filthy floor of the shed, and he wasn’t moving.

John dropped to his knees beside him, his hand hovering above him, almost afraid to touch. “Caleb? Caleb?”

He pressed his shaking fingers against Caleb’s throat, searching for a pulse.

Caleb’s eyes flashed open and he flinched away.

This kid’s a fighter, John had thought the first time, but this time Caleb didn’t try to attack him.

“John?” His voice was a dry whisper. “John?”

“Yeah,” John said. “Yeah, manamea, it’s me.”

And Caleb pushed himself up off the ground and into John’s arms, shaking and crying.

And maybe Caleb had to be an atheist, and maybe John could never thank God aloud for this, but as he held Caleb in his arms and cried with him, there was no doubt in his mind that this was a miracle. And it was one John would give thanks for every day for the rest of his life.

Chapter Nineteen

John reached up and gripped a handhold as the ambulance careened down the road, taking a corner at a hell of a speed. It wasn’t as though John was a stranger to fast driving with the wail of sirens in the background, but police cars sure as shit handled better than this top-heavy thing. Everything rattled and shifted, but the paramedic sitting next to him didn’t even flinch.

The boy was strapped to the stretcher, eyes half closed. John wasn’t sure he was even aware of anything around him at this point.

There was an ugly patina of bruises on the kid’s face, and his jaw was swollen to hell. The paramedics had cut his bloody shirt off him—it was shoved into an evidence bag back at the site for now—and he was bruised and swollen all over. His skin was also broken in more than a few places, the wounds caked over with dried blood and oozing fluid and pus. This beating was obviously more than a few days old, and nobody had made any attempt to treat his injuries.

The ambulance took another corner, and John swayed.

The kid’s eyes widened and he blinked up at John and the paramedic.

“You’re in an ambulance,” John told him. “We’re taking you to the hospital. It’s going to be okay.”

The kid’s slate-grey gaze fixed on him, and his mouth twisted a few times before he managed to push the words out: “Where’s Simon? What happened to Simon?”

John didn’t have an answer for that. He shook his head helplessly.

Who the fuck was Simon?

* * *

John tried to argue to have Caleb not admitted to the Ipswich hospital once he was medically cleared, but the staff wasn’t having a bar of it.

“I know he’s having a mental health episode,” John told the doctor more than once. “And if you let me get him out of here, I can take him to the mental health unit at the Gold Coast where they know him, or straight to his regular psychiatrist.”

Caleb hadn’t stopped crying since the ambulance had brought him here. Even now, sedated, the tears still slid down his cheeks. His trembling had subsided, but he’d replaced it with small, repetitive movements: nodding, tapping, pushing his mouth into strange shapes.

“Fuck these people, right?” John said, taking Caleb’s hand. “They’d be having episodes too if they got fucking abducted!”

The doctor gave him a narrow look because his voice had carried. He’d meant it to. And okay, it was shitty of him, but John wasn’t in the mood to play nice. He wanted to get Caleb into the care of people he knew, not strangers. The last thing Caleb needed right now was strangers.

Darren arrived within an hour of Caleb’s admittance, driven by Clare. Dr. Harper arrived an hour after that, and John took himself outside, found a garden bench that overlooked the car park, and sat down and buried his face in his hands.

Caleb was safe now.

John had found him, and Caleb was safe.

It should have felt like a relief, but John was too fucking bone-weary to feel anything but that heaviness weighing him down. He had no idea how long he sat there until someone sat beside him.

“Hey.”

John straightened up and stared at David. “The fuck are you doing here?”

“Liz called me,” David said. “You okay, bro?”

John hadn’t cried in front of David since their dad died, but the tears came again today, and David wrapped his arms around him and patted him on the back until he could breathe again.

They watched an ibis forage around a bin.

“Liz said you got shot at,” David said at last.

“Yeah. I mean, so did she though, so…” John shrugged.

“That’s crazy,” David said, shaking his head. “Some crazy shit, John.” He nodded toward the hospital building. “How is he?”

“Darren’s with him,” John said, because he never answered that question straight, did he? There was no way to answer it straight. “And his psychiatrist. He’s got some bumps and bruises, but mostly it’s…” He chewed his bottom lip. “Mostly it’s psychological.”

David nodded.

“People would get it, if he’d lost a limb or something,” John said. “But when it’s mental health, they think it’s imaginary, or something he should just get over, or whatever. But it can still be bad, you know?”

“I know,” David said, with that same easy acceptance he’d always had. “Did you know Tee was anorexic in high school?”

John jolted. “I didn’t know that.”

“That’s because she’s been in recovery since before I met her,” David said. “And she’s mostly kicking its arse, because she’s the toughest woman I ever met, but sometimes it’s still rough, you know? Like her parents still get on her case about it sometimes, and sometimes when she comes with me to community events and a bunch of loud Samoans keep shoving food at her.”

“Shit.”

“She knows how we are,” David said with a smile. “And she knows I run interference for her when she needs me to. And that’s what you do with Caleb, isn’t it? You watch out for him on his bad days, and you make sure you’re right there when he needs someone to lean on for a while.”

John nodded.

“And people don’t always understand that,” David said. “You know Tee’s mum once said that I was a good guy for going out with her when she could be so difficult?”

John’s jaw dropped.

“Difficult,” David said with a snort, “as though she’s not the reason I wake up with a smile every morning.”

“Jesus, I can’t believe her mum said that.”

“Yeah, there’s a reason she hangs out with Ma more than her parents,” David said. “But the point is, when you love someone like that, they’re not difficult, or a burden, or you don’t deserve brownie points for treating them how you’d like to be treated. You love ’em and you count your blessings, and that’s it.”

John smiled slightly, something in his chest easing for the first time all day. “It’s that simple, huh?”

“Course it is,” David said. “No offence, bro, but you’re not exactly a prize, you know? You work shitty hours, you get in shitty moods, and your face looks like a smashed crab—”

“Fuck off!” John laughed.

David grinned. “But Caleb works with all that, because he loves you, right? And you do the same for him, because that’s how it goes. Right?”

“Yeah.” John elbowed him. “That’s how it goes.”

* * *

David sat with John for more than an hour on the park bench outside the hospital, until John got a text from Darren asking him to come back inside.

“You want me to hang around?” David asked. “Have you got a lift home?”

John’s mind blanked for a moment. “I probably have to go to the station after this. I think Clare’s still here somewhere. If she’s not, Liz will send someone to get me.”

Jesus. He really needed to call Liz. He’d left her dealing with the arrests, and a bunch of different crime scenes, and no doubt a shit load of questions from the boss about what the fuck had even happened today, and how their investigation into an eight-year-old crime had turned into a homicide, a suicide, and an abduction literally overnight. How long until she got the chance to take a breath, let alone head home to see Craig and Harry?

This fucking job.

What a mess.

“John, go and see your boy,” David said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Fuck everything else.”

That felt like a philosophy John could get behind.

“And this weekend,” David said, “we’re not doing Ma’s roof. Let’s do a barbecue instead, huh? Our family, and Caleb and Darren.”

“I don’t know if he’ll be out by the weekend,” John said. “I don’t know if I’ll be working.”

“Fuck work,” David said. “Phone in sick. And if Caleb isn’t out, then I guess we’ll reschedule. But I’m locking you in on this, John. You need it. You work too much.”

Hearing that from anyone else, and John might have taken it as criticism. From David though, he knew it was only concern.

“I’ll text you,” he said. “I promise.”

“If you don’t, I know where you live.” David gave him a hug, slapping his back soundly a few times, and then headed for the car park.

John took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and walked back into the hospital.

Caleb was in a private room now. John got the number from a nurse in A&E, and then followed the signs up to the next floor. Clare was sitting in a chair outside Caleb’s room, playing a game on her phone. John wondered if he should stop and ask her for an update, but Caleb was right behind that door. John didn’t know if there was a power in the universe that could have stopped him.

Clare gave John a nod and a smile as he passed.

John knocked quietly on the door and then pushed it open.

Caleb was sitting up in his bed, his legs crossed, pillows jammed behind his back. He was still rocking a little, and Darren was sitting beside him, his fingers resting lightly over the canula on the back of Caleb’s hand. Caleb must’ve been fiddling with it, picking at it.

“Hey,” John said softly.

Caleb’s gaze slid over him.

“He okay?” John asked.

“He won’t settle,” Darren said. “They don’t want to dope him up anymore since he’s not fighting them, but he won’t settle. Dr. Harper’s trying to get him transferred to the Coast overnight and reassessed in the morning.”

“Dad,” Caleb said suddenly. “Dad, why’s it so dark?”

“It’s not dark, mate,” Darren said

“Oh.” Caleb nodded, rocking back and forth again.

John took a chair from the corner of the room and set it down beside Caleb’s bed, on the other side from Darren. “Hey, Caleb,” he said. “La’u manamea.”

The corner of Caleb’s mouth twitched, and he slid his hand up his chest. His fingers twitched against his hospital gown. “Where…where…”

“Your necklace?” Darren asked. He took his hand off Caleb’s for a moment, and reached into his pocket. “They took it off you, remember? I’ve got it right here.”

He pressed the small boar’s tusk into Caleb’s pale hand, and Caleb closed his fingers around it.

“Is it dark, John?” Caleb asked in a whisper, his eyes wide.

“It’s still daytime,” John said. He reached for Caleb’s free hand and took it.

“It feels like it’s dark out there,” Caleb murmured. He drew a breath and was silent for a long moment. “Don’t give up on me, John, please.”

“That’s never going to happen.” John squeezed his hand, his gaze falling on the old scars that cut across his wrist and forearms.

“I know. I bleed and you’re here.”

“I’d be here anyway.”

Caleb’s gaze dropped away again, and tears slid down his cheeks. His hand shook violently in John’s. “John. Cricket. She—she tried to bite him, and—”

“I know,” John said. “I know.”

Caleb pulled his hand free, a whine building in the back of his throat. He began to rock again.

“Caleb,” Darren said softly.

John stood up, and put his hands on Caleb’s shoulders. “Can you take a breath for me, Caleb?”

Caleb wrenched out of his grasp.

Darren hit the button for the nurse.

“I love you,” John said, not because he thought those words could stop the storm from breaking, but he hoped they’d at least give Caleb something to hold onto when he came out the other side.

Caleb screamed and thrashed, and John’s heart broke for him.

* * *

It was almost 9 p.m. when John and Clare climbed the stairs to the office, and John didn’t care to do the maths on how long this day had already been. All the lights were still on and the place was still buzzing. Not only were the morning crew and the afternoon crew still here, but it appeared that the night work crew had been called in early too.

John found Liz and Lockland in the incident room, surrounded by paperwork as well as boxes from that noodle place on Wembley Road.

“What the hell are you doing here, John?” Liz asked, peering at him narrowly. The bags under her eyes had bags, and John figured he didn’t look any better.

“We’re working an investigation, aren’t we?”

“Don’t give me that crap,” Liz said, and Lockland snorted. “I need you to go home, get some sleep, and be back here bright and early in the morning so you can roll me under my desk and take over when I collapse.” She squinted at her watch. “Anyway, I’m just about to call it a night here. We’ve got those assholes in the watchhouse, and no magistrate is going to give them bail in the morning once they see the charges. Everything else can wait.”

Not everything.

John logged into a computer.

“Go home, John,” Liz grumbled.

“I will in a minute.”

Liz trailed over to him and leaned on the desk. “Caleb okay?”

“He’s alive,” John said. “Everything else is a work in progress, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.” Liz squinted at the screen. “What are you doing?”

“I’m looking up the crews from the Coast who attended Darren’s address. Are they on the occurrence yet?”

“Them and six million other coppers,” Liz said, just as John made it to the correct tab and saw an incredibly long list of names. Liz pulled her notebook out of the pouch on her utility belt and flipped it open. “Sean French is the one you’re looking for, but I already called him. He took her to the Reedy Creek Animal Hospital, and didn’t correct their erroneous assumption that the Service would be paying for her treatment. Do the guy a favour and call them with your credit card details, please. He’s shitting himself that they’re going to send the bill to his station and then he’ll get fired.”

“She’s alive?”

“They’re not going to try to bill the Service for a dead dog, John. She had surgery, and they’re going to keep her in for a while, but yeah, she’s alive.”

John sagged in relief.

“Tell them you want a copy of her report,” Liz said. “Animal cruelty should get another few months added to Harrison’s sentence, right?”

“You gonna get all the traffic cameras too?” John asked. “In case he blew through a couple of red lights?”

“Fuck yeah, I will.” Liz’s smile was a little feral. “And then I’m going to beat him over the head with a ticket book myself.”

John couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled out of him. It was relief more than anything, he thought, that they were actually having this conversation, and not a very different one in a world that had collapsed around him because Caleb was dead. It was relief, and combined with a lack of sleep, with the adrenaline dump he was trying to fight off, and with being shot at today, John’s laugh verged on the hysterical.

“Come on,” Liz said. “Get the hell out of here.”

“Just let me make this call first,” John said.

Liz nodded, and turned back to her half-eaten box of noodles. She picked through them with a fork, digging out the prawns and eating them.

“Reedy Creek Animal Hospital after hours,” a woman said. “Is this an emergency?”

John ignored that question. “This is Senior Constable John Faimu, with the Logan CPIU. I’m calling about a dog that was brought in earlier today, after she was stabbed.”

“Oh!” The woman’s tone changed. “She’s in recovery now. She had several deep puncture wounds, and the vet had to remove one of her kidneys, but she’s a young dog so the vet expects she’ll recover well.”

“How long will she be in there?”

“At least a few more days,” the woman said.

“Okay.” John closed his eyes briefly. “I’ll come and see you tomorrow, and give you my credit card details.”

“Oh, I didn’t realise you were her owner.”

“I’m not,” John said. “I’m a friend of the family.” A jolt went through him when he said it. He’d been using that line for so many years that it was second nature. “I mean, she’s my boyfriend’s dog. He’s in hospital himself, so if I can take care of this in the meantime, then I’ll do it.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” The woman seemed a little flustered, and John could only imagine what she was thinking right now: If this was the state of the dog, what condition was the owner in?

“I’ll come and see you tomorrow,” John repeated. “Sorry for calling so late.”

“That’s okay,” the woman said. “I’m here all night with the animals. Oh, but before you go, we don’t have a name to put on her chart.”

“Cricket,” John said. “Her name’s Cricket.”

He ended the call, and immediately sent a text to Darren: Tell Caleb that Cricket is going to be okay.

He glanced up from his phone and saw Lockland making a face as he drank what was presumably a cold coffee. It wasn’t fair. A woman was dead, and John was relieved that a dog had survived. It didn’t seem right to be happy for that when whoever Naomi’s friends and family were, tonight they were in shock and grieving. But then nothing was fair when you put it up beside some other thing and tried to make it balance. If there was one thing the job had taught John it was that he had to hold hard to the little victories, because the defeats, when they blindsided him, were fucking massive.

Tonight, John had won. Caleb and Cricket and Darren had won. There’d be plenty of time in the upcoming weeks and months to rail against the unfairness of the universe. In the meantime all that mattered was that Caleb and Cricket were alive, and they were both coming home. John could hold onto that, and he could sleep tonight.

This was his miracle, and John would take it, bitter aftertaste and all.

“Come on,” Liz said. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

John logged off the computer, and followed her out.

He’d take it.

Chapter Twenty

John pulled up at the side of the road, and glanced at Caleb. Caleb was in the passenger seat, clutching the plastic bag full of the scant belongings he’d accumulated while in hospital. Most of them had come from John: comic books, toiletries, a bunch of pairs of fuzzy socks because his hospital room had been cold.

“What do you think?” John asked, nodding at the house.

Caleb squinted at it, and then shrugged and shrank back. “I don’t remember it.”

“Well, it’s been a long time. It’s nice though, right?”

Another shrug, while he chewed his bottom lip anxiously.

“It’s a nice house,” John said. “You’ll like it here, I think.”

“How does this work?” Caleb asked him in a soft voice. “Do you just leave now?”

“I’m going to come in, and help get you settled in, but yeah, at some point I’ll have to leave. I’ll be back though, to check up on how you’re going.”

Caleb nodded, and clutched his plastic bag harder. “Promise?”

“Your dad’s a good bloke,” John said. “He’s going to look after you. But I’ll come and visit as often as you want me to, okay?”

Caleb looked at the house again. He swallowed, and nodded. “Okay. As long as you promise.”

“I promise,” John said, and reached out and squeezed Caleb’s skinny shoulder gently. “Now let’s go and take a look, okay?”

* * *

On Saturday afternoon, John arrived at the house to what sounded like an argument. He rapped on the front door and peered through the shutters. “Hello? Everything okay?”

Footsteps hurried toward him.

“He’s not going to care, Caleb!” Darren yelled from further in the house.

Caleb wrenched the door open. His face was flushed, and he was agitated. “Hi.”

“Hi,” John said, stepping onto the enclosed veranda and trying very hard not to remember the last time he’d done this. The veranda was spotless now, though it smelled faintly of bleach. “Everything okay?”

Caleb dropped his gaze and stared at his feet.

Darren wandered down the hallway. “He’s worried about what to wear. Thinks he hasn’t got a single thing in his wardrobe.”

John looked him up and down. “What’s wrong with what you’re wearing now?”

Caleb was in jeans and a T-shirt.

“That’s what I said!” Darren rolled his eyes. “I’m going to pack the esky. Sort him out, will you, John?”

Darren’s teasing tone told John that Caleb wasn’t in any immediate danger of heading for a crisis. He’d been a little off-kilter since getting out of the hospital, and taken to sleeping with his light on at night because his fear of the dark had returned. But he was seeing Dr. Harper for a session every day, and a visit to Cricket at the animal hospital yesterday had gone better than John had expected. Caleb had cried, but then so had John. So had the vet, and she didn’t know half the story.

Caleb lifted his gaze. “I want to look nice.”

John raised his eyebrows. “You always look nice.”

That won him an unwilling smile. “Shut up. I mean, I want to look nice for your family. I know you like how I look.”

“Last time my family saw you, you were wearing boardies at the beach,” John said. “I don’t know where you’ve got this impression we stand on ceremony. We’ll be lucky if David’s arse isn’t hanging out of his ratty old footy shorts, let’s be real.”

Caleb’s smile grew, but so did the flush on his cheeks. “I know. I just…this is the first time I’m meeting them when I’m your boyfriend.”

“My boyfriend,” John said, and couldn’t stop his smile from spreading. Warmth expanded in his chest. “I like the sound of that.”

Caleb reached forward and took his hand. “Help me find something nice with long sleeves to wear.”

Except the second they were in Caleb’s room Caleb was closing the door and pushing John back against it. Not that John was unwilling to go. It’d take more than a skinny white boy to move him an inch unless he wanted it to happen. Still, he was unsure exactly what Caleb was going for here, so he rested his hands on his narrow hips, and let him take the lead.

“Thank you,” Caleb whispered, and pushed himself up onto his toes to brush a soft kiss against John’s mouth. “For never giving up on me. And not just for the other day too, for what you and Liz and everyone did, but for afterwards. For every time I’ve ended up in hospital, or yelled at you, or hit you, and you could have just walked away.”

“Caleb.” John’s voice was hoarse with emotion. “I could never just walk away from you. I would never even want to.”

Caleb embraced him, pressing his face to the crook of John’s neck for a moment. When he spoke, his breath was warm against John’s skin. John had to strain to hear him. “I’m scared that all I’m ever going to be to you is a beaten kid. A fucked-up headcase. A victim.”

John frowned. He put his hands on Caleb’s shoulders and gently put enough space between them so he could look him in the eye. “No. No way. You listen to me. You think I ever thought that? I never thought that. You know what you were? You were someone those fuckers didn’t break. And they tried. They tried, but you wouldn’t break.”

Caleb’s eyes swam with tears. “Broke me in other ways.”

“Nah,” John said, and smiled. “They couldn’t fucking touch you, I promise. Not where it counts. Not in a million years.”

“Do you mean that?” Caleb’s voice hitched.

“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met,” John said. He cupped Caleb’s cheek with his hand.

Caleb’s gaze searched John’s face, as though he was searching for a lie. If he was, he’d never find one. And then he dived forward against John, and buried his face in the crook of his neck again, and John held him. Rubbed his hands up and down his back, the thin fabric of his T-shirt sliding underneath his palms, and breathed in the scent of his shampoo. Tears pricked his eyes, because he’d been so afraid that he’d lost these moments, lost this man, and he could barely believe he was here now, holding him.

It took him a moment to realise that Caleb was leaning back again, and pushing up onto his toes for another kiss. This one was less innocent than the last: Caleb curled a hand around the back of John’s neck to hold him in place as they kissed, and his tongue darted out to sweep along John’s bottom lip. When John opened his mouth, Caleb slipped his tongue inside. Heat swept through John as the kiss deepened, and his skin tingled and prickled. Caleb moaned and pressed against him, his erection pushing against John’s thigh. John slid his hands down to Caleb’s arse in response, pulling him tighter against him.

Caleb panted against his mouth. “I want you.”

John shook away visions of dropping to his knees and sucking Caleb’s dick into his mouth. “Me too, but—”

Right on cue, a sharp rap on the door that startled them both and left Caleb stepping quickly away. “Hurry up, you two! We’ll be late!”

John laughed silently at the sight of Caleb’s blush.

“Just helping Caleb find something to wear,” John called back.

“Is that what the kids are calling it?” Darren asked.

John couldn’t silence his laugh this time.

Caleb wrenched open his wardrobe door and dived in as though he was trying to escape to Narnia.

* * *

“Malo!” David called, jogging around the side of the house to the front.

“Malo lava.” John helped Darren haul the full esky out of the boot. The ice inside it sloshed, and the whole thing listed like a ship on a stormy ocean before they set it down on the footpath.

David didn’t bother with the front gate. He just hauled himself over the fence, even though it groaned alarmingly under his weight. “Hey,” he said to Darren. “Let us take that for you.”

David and John took an end of the esky each and carried it through the gate and around the side of the house to the back yard. John could already hear voices and laughter. The family was all here, and he broke into a smile when he saw them. His smile widened when he saw the smoke coming from the earth oven his dad had dug into the backyard years ago. The stones piled on top of the umu were stacked around foil-wrapped packages of food, and there was a small pig roasting in the middle.

“You found one!”

David flashed him a grin. “Yeah, I know a guy who knows a guy. That little fella’s been cooking for hours now. Hope he turns out as good as Tama’s always did.”

They set the esky down, and John turned to where Caleb and Darren had followed them in with folding canvas chairs.

“I think you know everyone,” he said. “Except Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen.” He waved to Ma’s neighbours, and they waved back.

Mrs. Nguyen was holding a fat squirming baby. Harry.

Liz, a beer in her hand, was pinching his toes while Mrs. Nguyen fussed over him.

David returned to supervise the umu, and Craig, Liz’s husband, joined him.

Jess was slouched in a chair, but she stood up and made her way over to John cautiously, as though she was afraid of the reception she might get. “Hi.”

“Hi,” John said.

“David said you got shot at.”

“Yeah,” John said. “Got a hug for me?”

She rolled her eyes, but stepped forward into the hug and squeezed him back tightly. Then, from the vicinity of his armpit, she said, “Hi, Caleb. Hi, Mr. Fletcher.”

“Hi,” Caleb said.

“It’s Darren,” said Darren. “Nice to see you again, Jess.”

John let her go. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Ma’s showing Tee how to make sapasui,” Jess said. “And Mary’s doing the panipopo for dessert.”

“They’re going all out,” John said. “How long’s it been since we had panipopo?”

“Too long,” Jess said with a hesitant smile.

“Agreed.” John didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, so he reached out and squeezed her arm and hoped that said it for him: I love you, Jess. I’m glad we’re back on the same side. She didn’t pull away, so he took that as agreement.

John opened the esky and pulled out a beer for Darren, and soft drinks for him and Caleb. He was driving, and Caleb wasn’t supposed to drink on his meds. Which didn’t always stop him, but he flashed John a shy smile when John handed him the Coke.

They set up their chairs near the others, and settled in as the afternoon wore slowly into dusk. It was good, sitting here and talking, and catching up on the things he’d missed: neighbourhood gossip courtesy of Mrs. Nguyen, the job Craig had last week where he got stuck on a fence chasing a suspect and ripped the arse out of his pants getting down again, and Jess’s speculation that Mary was seeing one of the other dentists from her practice.

“He’s divorced,” she said. “And he’s old.”

He was thirty-seven, John found out later from Mary, and died a little on the inside. Jess probably thought anyone over twenty was ancient.

By the time the sun had set and the stars were blinking in the sky above them, the pig was ready to serve. David carved it up, making sure to leave room on everyone’s paper plates for sapasui, taro, and fa’alifu fa’i—green bananas cooked in a savoury coconut sauce.

John smiled at the cautious expression on Caleb’s face and he poked at his plate with his fork. “Try it,” he said in an undertone. “If you don’t like it, I’ll buy you a cheeseburger on the way home.”

He was pleased to see Caleb’s expression morph into one of pleasure as he tasted Ma’s sapasui.

“Do you know how to make this?” Caleb asked.

“Sure. It’s our version of chop suey. Anyone can make it.”

“I can’t believe you fed me spaghetti on toast when you know how to make this.”

John laughed. “I’ll show you.”

Caleb smiled.

When John finished his drink he went to get another one, and met Liz at the collection of eskies set a little way away from the chairs and the lingering heat of the umu.

“We finally got the forensic results back on the remains today,” she said.

John raised his eyebrows. “Please tell me they were Simon’s.”

She flashed him a wry smile, her gaze finding Craig and Harry for a moment before she looked back at John. “Of course they were. And you were right. We got the DNA match with Leon Harrison. Simon was his son.”

“Shit.” It wasn’t a surprise, he supposed. He’d expected it. It was just that he could never understand how a parent could harm their own child. He’d seen it so many times in his years in the job, but he’d never really be able to wrap his head around it.

“And listen,” Liz said. “I know you don’t want to talk work tonight, but I got a call from Nathan Lockland earlier today. He figured out how Harrison found Naomi.”

“How?”

“She never changed her name, John. Just went back to using Dobbs when she found out that’s what it was originally. And she used this app,” Liz said. “It maps out your walking routes and shit like that. Aaron would be all over it. Anyway, it updated to her social media, and showed she walked the same route every day.”

John sighed. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Liz’s eyebrows tugged together, and her forehead creased.

“But Caleb doesn’t use social media,” John said. “And Darren’s address isn’t even in the phonebook.”

Liz nodded. She eyed John expectantly, the way she always did when she was waiting to see if he’d put the pieces together the same way she had.

And then the penny dropped.

Shit.

“Analise,” John said. “Fucking Analise told him where to find Caleb, because she used to live at that house too.”

“It looks that way.” Liz cracked open a beer. “Want to pay her a visit on Monday?”

Anger burned low in John’s gut, and he glanced over to where Caleb was sitting. He’d gone back for a second helping of Ma’s sapasui. He was smiling at something Tee was saying, and that old protectiveness welled up in John anew. He’d burn down the world to keep that smile on Caleb’s face. “Fuck, yeah I do.”

Liz clapped him on the shoulder. “Monday. Tonight’s for family.”

“For family,” John agreed.

He grabbed Caleb another drink and walked back over to him, and Caleb brightened as he saw him approaching. John sat down beside him, and held out his hand. Caleb’s smile widened, and he reached out and laced their fingers together. John’s thumb slipped under the cuff of Caleb’s shirt, and he rubbed it gently against one of the old scars on the inside of his wrist.

Around them, people laughed and talked as the night wore on.

* * *

It was close to midnight by the time they made it back to the hinterland. Caleb had dozed most of the way back, and stretched awkwardly after he climbed out of John’s car.

John lifted the near-empty esky out of the boot and carried it in easily.

“Stay,” Darren offered. “It’s too late to drive back now.”

John glanced at Caleb.

“Spare room or Caleb’s room,” Darren said. “You’re both adults.”

“Thanks,” John said.

“There’s always a bed for you here, John.”

A little while later, John climbed under the sheets in Caleb’s bed. Caleb was already stretched out there, wearing his boxer briefs and a T-shirt, and fighting sleep.

“Did you take your pill?” John asked him.

Caleb shook his head. “If I take it this late, I’ll be wrecked all day tomorrow.”

“Okay,” John said. “If you’re sure.”

Caleb’s mouth quirked. “I wasn’t going to take it at first so that we could…you know.” He snorted. “But then I realised Dad’s totally ruined it anyway, because there’s no way I could have sex with you in my bed when knows that’s what we’re doing.”

John laughed silently, and traced Caleb’s jaw with his thumb.

“I’ll bet he did it on purpose.”

“Probably.” John leaned in and kissed him softly. “Goodnight, Caleb.”

Caleb smiled. “Goodnight, John.”

John lay in the dark and watched the moonlight slanting through the wooden blinds, and listened to Caleb’s breaths even out as he fell asleep. John fought sleep for as long as he could, the moment too precious not to savour, and when he did finally close his eyes he dreamed of Caleb.

* * *

“Analise Jones,” John said on Monday morning, when she opened the door to him, “I’m arresting you for breach of your parole conditions, and for conspiracy to commit crime.”

“Crime? What crime?” Analise asked, her eyes wide, and her forehead scrunched. She wore that slightly confused air well, but John didn’t believe it for a second.

“Kidnapping, for starters,” John said. “You told Leon Harrison where to find Caleb.”

“No,” she said. “I—”

John couldn’t be bothered listen to her bullshit. He turned her around and cuffed her, shocking her into silence, and the sound of the mechanism clicking into place was like fucking music. He wrenched her arms, and savoured her gasp of pain.

Liz watched, her arms folded over her chest.

John leaned in close, speaking in an undertone that wouldn’t carry. “You gave your own son up to those men. Twice. You’re a fucking monster, and you’re going to rot in prison. And after that you’re going to rot in hell, and that’ll still be too fucking good for you.”

Analise flinched, and John wrenched her arms back again just to make sure she really felt it.

He walked her back to the car in full view of the curious neighbours, Liz at his side.

Chapter Twenty-One

John didn’t know when it happened.

He’d always been in love with Caleb Fletcher.

It was his spirit he fell in love with first.

All of the rest came later.

* * *

On the morning of his thirty-first birthday, John woke up late in Caleb’s bedroom, and took a moment to remember where he was. He smiled when he realised.

Caleb wasn’t in bed with him, but that was no surprise. John had worked until past midnight before driving here, letting himself in with his key and then sliding into bed beside Caleb. Caleb had woken just long enough to murmur something to him, and then he’d fallen asleep again. He’d taken his pill before bed, and John hadn’t expected him to wait up. He probably should have just gone back to his apartment, except he’d wanted to wake up with Caleb on his birthday.

Except where was Caleb?

John sat up and stretched, his bare feet hitting the cool floorboards. He reached down for his pants, crumpled from a night on the floor, and stood up to step into them. He buttoned yesterday’s shirt on, more or less, tossing his tie onto the bed to remember later. He checked the clock beside Caleb’s bed: it was almost nine.

The bedroom door was ajar, and John heard the clicking of claws on the floor outside. A moment later a nose appeared in the gap, and Cricket nudged the door open further, her body vibrating and her tail wagging when she saw John was awake.

“Hey, Cricket,” John said, and ran a hand down her spine. “How’s my gorgeous girl?”

She beamed up at him.

Her hair had mostly grown back in now from where the vet had shaved it weeks ago, and she had a few lumpy scars hiding underneath it, but she’d bounced back from her ordeal in the way that only a dog could: with pure optimism. She was a little more skittish of strangers coming to the door now, but weren’t they all? Darren had got a top of the line security system installed, and one of those cameras that caught whoever was at the door and sent alerts to everyone’s phones. John could watch parcels getting delivered from his office in Logan.

John leaned down to give Cricket a more thorough scruffing, and in response she bounced up and licked his face.

“Not the birthday kiss I wanted,” John told her wryly.

He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and set out looking for the one he did want.

He found Caleb in the kitchen, staring down at a carton of eggs as though he’d forgotten what he was doing with them. John moved up behind him, and slid one arm around him. With his free hand he took the carton of eggs from him and set it down on the benchtop. “Good morning.”

Caleb jolted. “Good morning. Sorry, I zoned out.”

“You feeling okay?”

Caleb made an ambivalent sound in the back of his throat. “New meds, so you know. Like Dr. Harper agreed that while it’s great I don’t want to slit my wrists, if the reason I don’t want to slit my wrists is because I’m a complete zombie, that’s not exactly ideal. So we’re trying a new prescription.”

“And you’re zoning out on it?”

“Little bit,” Caleb said. “But that could also be last night’s sleeping pill. Dr. Harper says to give it a week or two and see how it goes. My system has to flush out all the old shit before we can see if the new shit is better.” He jolted again, and twisted around in John’s embrace. “Shit! Happy birthday! I had this whole plan to make you breakfast and wish you happy birthday when you got out of bed!”

He leaned forward for a kiss.

John put a hand on his chest and held him away. “Already got my birthday kiss from the dog. You should let me wash my mouth first.”

“Gross.” But Caleb’s eyes lit up with delight. “I can’t believe you’re cheating on me with Cricket.”

John moved to the sink and splashed water onto his face, grimacing. “It surprised me too.”

He turned around again and Caleb stepped into his space. John leaned forward to kiss him, but was distracted by his sleep-rumpled hair. He teased a few strands apart between his thumb and forefinger, and Caleb’s smile was soft and shy.

“You’re beautiful,” John said.

Caleb wrinkled his nose.

“Beautiful,” John repeated, and claimed his mouth in a kiss that was definitely better than the one he’d shared a few minutes before with the dog. Caleb put his arms around John’s neck, and John’s hands slid to his hips and held him close.

“Happy birthday,” Caleb whispered when the kiss ended.

And John couldn’t remember having a happier one in his life.

* * *

“You’re an idiot, Faimu,” Liz grumbled.

“I’m the smartest man in the world,” John corrected her as he signed the paperwork.

Liz rolled her eyes. “Jesus. School-based policing? You’re insane. You always said you’d go up the wall working eight to four, Monday to Friday.”

“That was sleep-deprived John talking,” John said. “That guy didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about.”

Liz tried to keep scowling, but a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “You’ll still be a senior constable when I’m commissioner, you know.”

“Probably,” John agreed contentedly. “You can make fun of me with your new partner Aaron, in between training sessions.”

Liz punched him in the shoulder. “Don’t even joke about that, you bastard!”

John laughed.

This was good. He’d expected to have more mixed emotions about making the move to school-based, and while there were a lot of things he’d miss about leaving his old position—being on the front line, taking the lead in investigations as they unfolded, and even the occasional adrenaline burst from chasing a suspect down or wading into a brawl—he sure as shit wouldn’t miss the shift work. And while he knew that working as a school-based police officer would come with its own new challenges and frustrations, John loved the idea of being able to spend his evenings and weekends with Caleb.

He had no doubt at all that he was making the right choice.

“I’ll still bring you coffee,” he said.

“I’ll hold you to that,” Liz replied with a smile.

They went and got shitty takeaway for lunch for old time’s sake.

* * *

John’s birthday party wasn’t until the weekend, so he headed to Caleb’s again after work, this time with an overnight bag stuffed with clean clothes. He was more or less living there now, and Darren was making vague noises about remodelling the downstairs and turning it into a self-contained place for Caleb. John appreciated the gesture, even while he was a little uncomfortable with it. Not because he didn’t want to move in with Caleb and not because he didn’t appreciate the practicalities of the idea—Caleb would still have Darren nearby if he needed him, and he’d be in a familiar enough place that he could keep his routine intact—but it bruised his pride a little to have Darren footing the bill. Then again, what was a little bruised pride in the end, when the payoff was moving in with Caleb?

And they were a team, he remembered, and being part of a team meant knowing when to let someone else take the lead. Caleb liked the idea and Darren wanted to do it for him, so John wouldn’t object. Pride was pride, but family came first, and Caleb and Darren were family.

O le fogavaʻa e tasi.

One family.

It was just on dusk when John pulled up out the front of the house. The dying day had painted the sky with fading swathes of pink and orange, and the flock of rosellas that lived in the rain tree came winging home as John climbed the front steps. They screeched and screamed as they swooped low over the roof of the house, and John knew from experience that it’d take them an hour or two to settle down and shut the hell up.

John rang the doorbell, and then listened for Cricket’s claws clicking on the floorboards. They were followed a second later by the soft creak of bare feet, and Caleb opened the door before John could get his key out.

“Hi,” John said.

“Hi,” Caleb echoed softly, and then reached for John’s hand to tug him inside.

“Where’s your dad?” John asked. “I didn’t see his car.”

“He’s going straight from work to dinner at Emily’s place,” Caleb said. “He’s still calling her his friend.” He rolled his eyes.

“He’s out of practice,” John said with a smile. “He’ll get there in the end.”

“I’m making dinner,” Caleb said. “Come and help me?”

John followed him through to the kitchen.

Dinner wasn’t fancy—premade pasta and garlic bread—but then Caleb was no chef. He studied the jar of pasta sauce, like he was worried there was some way he’d screw up reheating it, until John took it off him and tipped the contents into a saucepan.

“They never make this spicy enough,” he said. “Have we got anything with kick?”

Caleb shrugged helplessly, but when and dug through the pantry. He reappeared with two small jars: granulated garlic, and—John smiled as he took the second one—mustard seeds.

“What’s so funny?” Caleb asked. “Can’t we use these?”

“We can use the garlic,” John said.

“How much should I put in?”

“Just a dash,” John said.

Caleb made a face. “How much is a dash?”

“A little bit more than a smidgen.”

“John!”

John laughed at Caleb’s outrage, and put the mustard seeds back in the pantry. Then he stood behind Caleb, arms around him and chin on his shoulder as he watched Caleb carefully shake a few granules of garlic into the sauce.

“More?” Caleb asked.

“A bit more.”

John thought of Jess and her mustard seeds, and the thoughts and deeds she’d been sowing. Thought of how they’d taken root and poisoned everything around her, and how hard it had been for her to tear up those weeds and start fresh. And he and Caleb were doing the same, weren’t they? For a long time John had refused to pursue an intimate relationship with Caleb, let alone even acknowledge that was what he wanted. The seed of love had been there, but John had refused to let it grow in the way they’d both wanted. And when John had finally tended that seed, it had grown into something more beautiful than he could have imagined. John’s miracle wasn’t just that Caleb had survived, it was that every single day they loved one another.

Caleb stirred the sauce, his brow furrowed, and John wanted to reach out and smooth the lines away. He smiled instead, and reached past Caleb to turn the heat off.

“What are you doing?” Caleb asked.

“This.” John spun him around and walked him backwards across to the other side of the kitchen. He swept a newspaper off the benchtop, and lifted Caleb and sat him there. Pushed into the space between his knees, and grinned when Caleb locked his ankles behind him.

“Shirt off,” John said, and Caleb wriggled out of it. John helped him with it when it got caught on his head, tugging it free for him. He caught the fabric between his hands, and pulled Caleb’s arms back down to his front. The T-shirt twisted between Caleb’s wrists.

John stared for a moment at the boar’s tusk necklace that rose and fell against Caleb’s pale chest. Strength, he thought, for the strongest person he knew. Then he looked back to the T-shirt, and Caleb tried to turn his arms to hide his scars, but John didn’t let him. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to one of the newer scars. It was pinker than the others, the rough flesh still raised.

“Are they okay?” Caleb whispered.

“They’re a part of you,” John said. “And I love you.”

The scars didn’t make John think Caleb was weak. They reminded him of how strong Caleb was, of how much of a fighter he was, just like the boar’s tusk around his neck did.

He tugged Caleb’s shirt free and dropped it onto the floor.

Caleb bit his lip, his gaze dropping to John’s shirt as he reached out and began to unbutton it. John braced his hands on the edge of the bench, wanting nothing more than to lean in and claim Caleb’s mouth in a kiss. Use his tongue to sooth away the indentations in Caleb’s bottom lip. But Caleb was still working on his buttons and John didn’t want to stop him. He lifted one hand to slide it up Caleb’s inner thigh, and Caleb dug the heel of his foot into John’s lower back reflexively.

Caleb shoved John’s shirt off his shoulders, his breath coming in such short pants that John didn’t even need to reach down and cup his dick to know if he was hard or not. He did it anyway though, and Caleb arched into touch and moaned.

“I want to blow you,” John said, an answering wave of lust rushing through him as he palmed Caleb’s erection. “Can I?”

“Oh, fuck, yes.” A full body shudder ran through Caleb. “Please.”

John opened the button on Caleb’s fly, and Caleb leaned back. Caleb’s chest heaved as he rested his weight on his hands. John tugged his zip down, and Caleb lifted his arse off the benchtop so that John could pulls his jeans down to his thighs. Caleb’s dick strained against his red boxer briefs.

“You’re fucking gorgeous,” John said, and slipped his finger beneath the wide elastic band of the underwear. Caleb sucked a breath in, his stomach hollowing and the muscles of his abdomen dancing under his pale skin.

“So are you,” Caleb said on a moan, taking his weight on his hands again so that John could pull his underwear down. His dick sprang free, lean and hard, the head gleaming with arousal. John licked his lips instinctively, and Caleb jolted.

“Lean back for me,” John said and, when Caleb obeyed, he ducked down and licked a stripe up Caleb’s hot, hard dick.

“John!” Caleb rocked his hips up, one hand finding John’s head. His fingers scrabbled for purchase in John’s short hair.

Jesus, he tasted good. John’s mouth watered when he finally closed his lips around the head of Caleb’s dick, and he pressed his tongue against the slit. Caleb jerked as though John had put a couple of thousand volts through him, and the sound he made—caught somewhere between a gasp and a groan—was like music. John kept one hand on Caleb’s tense thigh to keep him in place, and used his other hand to cup his balls. He tugged and squeezed gently, not enough to cause any pain but more than enough to have Caleb shuddering and bucking into his mouth helplessly. His boy was on a hair trigger, and John loved it.

He sucked, hard, taking him deeper, and Caleb’s entire body tensed. The muscles in his thigh tightened under John’s hand, and he groaned and pushed up, the head of his dick nudging the back of John’s throat.

And John swallowed him down.

Caleb didn’t last more than a few second after that. He came, shaking and crying out, his fingers digging into John’s scalp. John swallowed quickly, and then straightened up, pulling Caleb into an embrace. Caleb panted against his throat, his breath hot. He stroked John’s hair with a trembling hand, tiny aftershocks quaking through him.

John slid his thumb against his thigh, and the soft hairs there. “Good?”

“Mmm.” Caleb got his spare hand between them, pushing his palm against John’s throbbing dick. “Can I touch you?”

“Hell, yes.” John leaned back a little, and helped Caleb unbutton his fly. Then Caleb pulled his zip down, peeling his fly open and slipping his hand inside John’s briefs. His palm was warm and dry, and John shivered at the slight rasp of his skin against the sensitive head of his dick.

It didn’t take much to bring him off, not when he could still taste Caleb’s cum in his mouth. He rocked into Caleb’s grip burying his face in the crook of Caleb’s neck and kissing and licking at his skin, and then came, his legs quivering at the suddenness of it. It took him a little while to get his breath back.

Caleb laughed softly “My hand is sticky. You gotta move so I can wash it.”

Did he though? John straightened up and raised his eyebrows. He took Caleb’s hand, and lifted it to his mouth. Licked those trembling fingers clean while Caleb stared, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. Only when he was finished did he move back and let Caleb shuffle off the benchtop.

“Holy shit,” Caleb said. And then, in a much for urgent tone: “Holy shit!”

John turned to stare at the oven, at where smoke was starting to curl in the air.

Holy shit alright.

So much for the garlic bread.

He dived for an oven mitt, dragged the garlic bread out of the oven, and then flapped a tea towel in the air to try to prevent the smoke alarm from going off.

Too late.

The high pitched beeping began, Cricket yipped and howled in accompaniment, and Caleb turned on the water in the sink to drown the smoking garlic bread. He was flushed and panting, his jeans and underwear still bunched around his pale thighs.

What a mess.

And John didn’t mean the garlic bread.

He waved the tea towel around, laughing, as Caleb hitched his pants up awkwardly and shot him a rueful smile.

Dinner might have been ruined, but Caleb was happy. That seemed like a pretty fair exchange to John.

* * *

They ate their pasta without garlic bread, and then watched a movie.

Afterwards, Caleb rinsed the dishes and John stacked the dishwater. He showered while Caleb rolled a tennis ball up and down the hallway for Cricket, and then brushed his teeth when it was Caleb’s turn to shower.

Caleb had a bedtime routine, and John knew it in his sleep.

He let Cricket outside for a last run of the yard until Darren got home, and locked the door after her when she came back inside. By then Caleb was out of the shower, brushing his teeth.

John picked up the newspaper from the kitchen floor, and read the comics.

Caleb padded into the kitchen in his sleep pants. He took the bottle of pills from the benchtop and unscrewed the lid. He tapped a pill into his palm and showed it to John.

John filled him a glass of water from the sink.

Caleb swallowed his pill, and then reached for John’s hand.

John walked with him into his bedroom.

“You want to read tonight?” he asked softly.

Caleb shook his head. “I’m pretty tired.”

“Me too,” John said with a smile.

Caleb climbed into bed. John flicked the light off and followed him. The moonlight was bright, filling the room with a soft, silver glow. John pulled the sheet up over them, and Caleb rolled toward him. He rested his head on John’s shoulders, and splayed his fingers on John’s chest.

John curled his arm around him, and tilted his chin to press a gentle kiss to the top of Caleb’s head.

“I love you,” Caleb murmured. He already sounded halfway to sleep.

“I love you too, la’u manamea.”

John listened for a while to the sounds of the night: the house creaking as it settled, the groan of Cricket’s canvas bed outside in the hallway as she shifted, and the sounds of the breeze rustling through the palm fronds just outside Caleb’s window. And above all of them, Caleb’s breathing, slow and steady as he slept. John drifted off at last, content and peaceful and happy, with his arms wrapped around the man he loved.

The man he’d loved from the very beginning.

Afterword

Thank you so much for reading The Parable of the Mustard Seed. I hope that you enjoyed it. would very much appreciate it if you could take a few moments to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads, or on your social media platform of choice.

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I also have a Facebook group where you’ll be kept in the loop with updates on releases, have a chance to win prizes, and probably see lots of lots of pictures of my dog and cats. You can find it here: Lisa Henry’s Hangout.

P.S. Keep reading for information about another angst-with-a-happy-ending story by Lisa Henry and J.A. Rock.

About When All the World Sleeps

Daniel Whitlock is terrified of going to sleep. And rightly so: he sleepwalks, with no awareness or memory of his actions. Including burning down Kenny Cooper’s house — with Kenny inside it — after Kenny brutally beat him for being gay. Back in the tiny town of Logan after serving his prison sentence, Daniel isolates himself in a cabin in the woods and chains himself to his bed at night.

Like the rest of Logan, local cop Joe Belman doesn’t believe Daniel’s absurd defense. But when Bel saves Daniel from a retaliatory fire, he discovers that Daniel might not be what everyone thinks: killer, liar, tweaker, freak. Bel agrees to control Daniel at night — for the sake of the other townsfolk. Daniel’s fascinating, but Bel’s not going there.

Yet as he’s drawn further into Daniel’s dark world, Bel finds that he likes being in charge. And submitting to Bel gives Daniel the only peace he’s ever known. But Daniel’s demons won’t leave him alone, and he’ll need Bel’s help to slay them once and for all — assuming Bel is willing to risk everything to stand by him.

You can find When All the World Sleeps here.

An excerpt from When All the World Sleeps

“Hey, Harnee’s kid,” Daniel Whitlock said, and the smile lit up his whole face.

Bel resisted the urge to plant his fist in it. “Officer Belman to you, Whitlock.” He took his flashlight from his belt and shone the beam in Whitlock’s eyes. The guy’s pupils had almost swallowed his hazel irises entirely. “What’d you take?”

Whitlock turned from Bel and shoved his hands in his pockets, pulling his jeans tight across his ass. “I’m going home. You coming with me?”

They were in the parking lot of Greenducks, a rundown bar wedged between a former beauty salon and a mortgage firm. You had to go down a flight of half-rotted wooden stairs, and then you were in a basement full of cocksuckers. And not the kind you saw in gay bars in movies. No tanned and toned bodies, no goddamn angel wings or leather shorts. These guys stank, and they smoked, and they’d do anything for drugs. Bel only went into Greenducks when he was desperate enough to pretend not to notice the exchanges that went on.

“I ain’t going nowhere with you,” Bel told Whitlock.

Fucker. Goddamn filthy tweaker head case.

Liar.

Murderer.

Everyone in Logan, South Carolina, knew who Daniel Whitlock was—what he was. But what made Bel doubly uncomfortable right now was that unlike most everyone in Logan, Bel had noticed Daniel Whitlock long before he’d been in the papers.

Before he got his badge, Bel had worked a night shift twice a week at Harnee’s Convenience Store, and Whitlock used to come in Thursdays around 1 or 2 a.m. to buy a Twix and a bottle of Mountain Dew. Always went through Bel’s line.

“That stuff’ll keep you up all night,” Bel had said once, nodding at the Mountain Dew. Whitlock hadn’t answered, and that was the first and last time Bel said anything to him beyond “Have a good night.” But he’d noted the strong, easy slope of Whitlock’s chest under his T-shirts. When it got colder, Whitlock had worn plaid flannel like all the other guys in Logan. But in the summer his T-shirts had been just a little too tight. Close-cropped hair the same linty brown as his faded sneakers. Beautifully defined features, almost too sharp.

“He don’t want to join us, Danny,” a voice said.

Bel hadn’t noticed Jake Kebbler standing behind Daniel in the shadow of the bar. If Bel’d had to pick any of the Greenducks crowd for looks alone—besides Whitlock—he’d have picked Jake. Unfortunately, every queer in Logan had already picked Jake, over and over again. “Looks like a gnat-bit curl of pork rind,” Matt Lister had said once about Jake’s dick.

Whitlock grinned. He pushed Jake against the side of the building. Kissed him. Risky—Greenducks gave queers a place to meet, but it sure as fuck didn’t fly the rainbow flag. You came to Greenducks because it was the closest to safe you were gonna get if you liked restroom blowjobs—not because you were welcome there. And once you were outside, well, you were in hetero territory.

Jake tipped his head back then slowly collapsed. It was oddly graceful, like a dancer’s swoon. Whitlock tried to catch him, failed, and lowered himself on top of Jake. Kissed him again, or maybe whispered something—Bel couldn’t tell. Then he got up and walked over to his car, leaving Jake on the ground.

Nice, Bel thought. Your date passes out, so you’re just gonna call it a night? Not that Jake seemed to care. Hell, he probably wouldn’t even remember what had happened when the sun woke him in the morning with a face full of asphalt. Jake didn’t have a brain cell left he wasn’t bent on destroying with meth. And was that . . . yeah, Bel could just about make out the glow of a burning cigarette in Jake’s hand. Stupid asshole.

Bel walked over to Jake. Wasn’t like he could leave a man to burn to death. Which made him the only one. Whitlock was still standing by his sedan, staring at nothing.

“You stay right there,” Bel called as he bent to check on Jake. Still breathing. Bel plucked the cigarette out from between Jake’s skinny fingers and crushed it under his boot. When he turned around, Whitlock had taken a step closer. “I told you to stay there.”

“Need something so bad.” Whitlock sighed. He slid his fingers into the waistband of his jeans, like he was going to tug them down right there in the parking lot. “You wanna fuck me, Harnee’s kid? Can use my car.”

Bel had been a cop for three years now, and he’d been propositioned more times than he could remember. It was never like those letters in skin mags though. Usually it was some toothless skank old enough to be his grandma, giggling drunken high school girls, or narrow-eyed truckers who would nod to the side of the road in silent invitation like Bel was dumb enough or desperate enough for that. Might as well just roll around in the filthy bathrooms at the truck stop on US 601, pick up his diseases that way and take out the middleman.

And now, Daniel Whitlock. Who might have been Dear readers, I never thought it would happen to me material back when he was in high school—Bel, still in middle school, had noticed him right about the same time as he’d noticed those weird tingly feelings that made his dick hard—but doing it with a fucking murderer was never going to happen. And Bel was pretty damn insulted that Whitlock even thought he had a chance.

“Get your ass home,” he said, curling his lip.

Whitlock reached for his car door.

“You ain’t driving tonight,” Bel told him. “Ain’t you killed enough folk in this town?”

It didn’t even register with Whitlock.

“You walk,” Bel said. “You give me your keys, and you walk.”

No argument. Whitlock dug around in the pocket of his jeans and held his keys out. “I’m going home now?”

“Yeah.” Bel took the keys and crossed his arms over his chest. “You’d better start walking.”

“Okay.”

Bel shook his head. Goddamn drug-fucked nutjob.

He watched as Whitlock turned and squinted down the street, wobbling like a compass needle before it fixed its position. Then, his hands still in his pockets, Whitlock started to walk. Bel leaned against his cruiser and looked down at Whitlock’s keys, thumbed through them and found a tarnished Saint Christopher medallion. Not so different from the one Bel’s mama had given him when he’d become a deputy.

Bel sighed. Figured he couldn’t let the guy get squashed like a possum on the side of the road. He didn’t get to pick and choose who he looked out for.

He got in his cruiser, turned the engine over, and flicked the headlights on. Set off down the street at a crawl, keeping well behind Whitlock as he stumbled toward home. Bel wondered what it would be like living out there in the woods. Cold as hell in winter, probably, and mosquitoes as big as chicken hawks in the summer. Perfect for freaks like Whitlock and the Unabomber.

The twenty-four hour diner on Main was empty; Bel glanced in as he drove past at a snail’s pace. Sue-Ellen was working, or at least she was leaning on the counter staring at the small TV beside the register. Across the street, Harnee’s was open too, the H flashing intermittently again, so half the time it just read arnee’s. Bel figured he’d stop in on the way back, just to show the flag. On weekends, the high school kids hung around in the parking lot, trying to get someone to buy beer for them. But tonight the lot was empty.

Bel remembered a long stretch five years ago where Whitlock hadn’t come to Harnee’s on Thursday nights. Recovering from what Kenny and his friends had done to him, Bel had figured, though he’d refused to join in his coworkers’ gossip sessions about it. Long after Daniel must’ve healed up, he’d still been absent. People’d said his mama bought his groceries. Bel had almost missed him. The guy hadn’t been friendly, but he’d been easy enough to look at. Then Whitlock had showed up the night of October sixteenth and had bought a lighter along with his candy and soda.

The next morning, the story had been everywhere.

Kenny Cooper’s house had burned to the ground. Kenny inside.

Bel had followed Whitlock’s trial with interest. Had even been called to give testimony about the lighter. And he’d been as pissed as anyone when the prosecution had opted to seek a conviction for manslaughter instead of first-degree murder. Wasn’t like Bel gave two shits about losing Kenny Cooper—that asshole had been a waste of air. It was Whitlock’s bullshit defense that had made Bel half-crazy.

Sleepwalking. Seriously. Like Whitlock was some kind of zombie lurching around eating people’s brains, then waking up the next day not remembering any of it? Yeah, that was the shit you saw in movies. How about Whitlock was a crazy meth head who’d say anything to save his hide? The more Bel’d thought about it, the angrier he’d got, and the more convinced he’d become he’d seen signs Whitlock was off whenever he’d come into Harnee’s. Something not right in his eyes. The way his body twitched while he was waiting for his total, like he was receiving small shocks.

And Bel wasn’t the only one who, after the murder, suddenly remembered things they’d noticed about Whitlock. Sunday school teachers and guys he’d run track with and even the girl he’d gotten to second base with on prom night, all eager to chime in.

“Always knew there was something wrong with him.”

“He had that look, you know?”

“I smacked him as soon as he put his hands on me. Knew he was no good.”

And Bel had raged with the rest of the town when Whitlock had been released after eight months in jail. This wasn’t about Kenny Cooper—it was about justice. You didn’t burn someone alive and then walk free, no matter what some quack said on the stand about your sleep disorder. It was impossible to drive five miles in your sleep, shake kerosene around the base of a house like you were watering the goddamn plants, flip your lighter on, then go home and climb into bed.

Bel looked up the street again. Whitlock was still heading in the right direction. He was passing in front of the Shack now, where Bel drank most times. All the cops drank at the Shack. Hell, all the town did. It was closed at this hour, a few trucks parked out front still. Owners must have walked.

A battered red pickup swerved onto Main Street, going too fast. It overcorrected, swinging wildly toward the center line before it recovered. Bel recognized it: Clayton McAllister’s truck, so it was probably Clayton at the wheel with a few of his buddies packed into the cab.

The truck headed toward him, slowing as it passed Whitlock, then braking and backing up. Too far away to hear what they yelled at Whitlock, apart from faggot. A beer can flew from the window and bounced on the road. The horn blared.

Whitlock stopped. He lifted his head to look at the truck.

Last thing Bel needed was Clayton and his drunk buddies figuring it was time for another gay bashing. Bel hit the lights, the red-and-blue strobes flashing. Just to let Clayton know he was there.

The truck didn’t move, so Bel rolled his window down. Just in time to hear Whitlock yell, “Wanna suck my dick, cunt?”

The truck’s door flew open, and Clayton jumped out. Bel was out of his cruiser in a second, moving automatically to stand between Clayton and Whitlock. “Fellas,” he said, because Brock Tilmouth was getting out of the truck too. “I don’t need any trouble here. Go on home.”

“You hear what he said?” Clayton was a scrawny guy. Thin and rat faced. Had a few gingery hairs on his upper lip that were trying real hard to be a mustache. Pale blue eyes.

Bel glanced at Whitlock, who was standing slack-jawed, completely spaced out. “I heard, and you’ll live. Get on home, Clayton.”

“Wanna . . .” Whitlock slurred. “Hey, faggot.”

Clayton shouted around Bel at Whitlock. “You’re the faggot, freak! Didn’t learn your lesson the first time?”

Bel’s jaw tightened.

Hell, he thought as much as anyone that Whitlock deserved a beating. Not because he was gay, but because he’d gotten away with murder. Kenny Cooper had been Clayton’s best friend. They’d bashed Whitlock first, which was what’d made him go all fire starter on Kenny, but everyone knew Whitlock had started it by offering to suck Kenny’s dick.

And here Whitlock was making the same offer to Clayton. Goading him.

Bel could remind Clayton not to take the law into his own hands, but Whitlock had done just that—and gotten off almost scot-free. Less than eight months in prison, and what was it? Three years parole? That was a kick in the teeth to Kenny Cooper’s family, his friends, and pretty much the whole town.

No justice in that.

What was it his gram used to say? Take an eye for an eye, and soon the whole world would be blind. You weren’t supposed to go out and get your own revenge when you’d been wronged. You were supposed to trust the law to deal with it. But nobody said what to do if the law failed you.

Hurl beer cans and abuse, maybe. Couldn’t blame Clayton for being angry.

But then, where was the justice in the law’s reaction to Cooper bashing Whitlock? No arrests made, because Whitlock had sworn he hadn’t seen the guys who’d done it. And yet everyone knew it’d been Kenny Cooper and his buddies. Just no one’d lifted a finger to look into the matter or prosecute Cooper.

So couldn’t blame Whitlock for being angry either.

It scared Bel to catch himself thinking that way. He didn’t blame Whitlock for his anger, but he sure as hell blamed him for killing Cooper.

“Enough, Clayton,” Bel said, his voice hard. “You keep moving. I’m gonna get Whitlock home.”

For a second, Bel thought Clayton was gonna fight. Was gonna lunge at Whitlock even though Bel was right there. At the very least, Bel expected Clayton to say something. But with a last glare at Whitlock, Clayton climbed back in the truck, put it in drive, and crept past Bel’s cruiser.

When the truck was out of sight, Bel turned to Whitlock.

“Get in the car.”

Whitlock didn’t move. He gazed at the spot where Clayton had been and drew in a shuddering breath.

“Whitlock. I said get in the car.” Bel stepped toward him, and Whitlock cringed back. Stared at Bel with eyes Bel remembered from nights at Harnee’s—unfocused, bloodshot, the sockets bruised looking. He blinked in the glare from the headlights.

“You wanna walk all night, or you wanna ride home?”

Whitlock took a couple of steps toward the cruiser. Nodded at the back door. “In there?”

“Yeah. In the back, Whitlock.” Bel climbed in behind the wheel. Whitlock hesitated.

“Get in the goddamn car. You’re lucky I don’t arrest you. What’re you on, huh? If I searched you, what would I find?”

“You can search me,” Whitlock said softly. He walked closer to Bel, who tried not to look at the front of his jeans. Whitlock leaned against the cruiser, one arm on the roof, his hip cocked, drawing the fabric of his T-shirt tight. “Want to?”

“Back of the car,” Bel repeated. “You get in now, it’s a ride home. You don’t, it’s cuffs and the station.”

Whitlock gave a sharp inhale that made Bel’s dick stir. Then he grinned, said, “Yes, sir,” and stepped away from the window.

Bel couldn’t see Whitlock’s face as he slid into the backseat of the cruiser. Whitlock pulled the door shut and then sat staring straight ahead through the partition.

“Tell me how to get to your place,” Bel said.

Whitlock didn’t answer.

“You can do that much, can’t you? Not so trashed you can’t tell me where you live?”

No answer.

“I can get out to Kamchee, but you gotta tell me where your cabin is.”

Whitlock glanced out the window.

Bel turned and slapped the partition. “Damn it, Whitlock!”

Whitlock jerked in the seat. He struck the partition right back, then fumbled for the door handle, but he was locked in. He planted his hands in a wide stance on either side of him, drew his legs up onto the seat, and stared down into the seat well as though it was full of alligators or something, shaking.

“Nutcase,” Bel muttered, stepping on the gas. They headed toward Kamchee. Bel kept sneaking glances at his passenger. Whitlock’s breathing gradually slowed, and Bel saw him looking around, confused but obviously trying to orient himself. He looked up finally and met Bel’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“I’m under arrest?” His voice sounded different—harder. Wary.

Bel shook his head. “I don’t have time to screw around with that. Tell me how to get to your place.”

“My car?”

Bel held his tongue. The guy was slower than a frozen creek, and Bel hated how much he liked looking at him. Only thing more fucked up than being a murderer was having a hard-on for one. “You can get it tomorrow.”

Whitlock closed his eyes briefly and nodded. Told Bel how to get to his cabin.

“Not real smart, was it?” Bel asked. “Goading Clayton like that?”

“I don’t know.” The words were almost inaudible.

They drove in silence a while longer, until Whitlock pointed out the turn to his cabin.

When he let Whitlock out, Bel suggested, “Sober up.”

But Whitlock seemed plenty sober now. Didn’t sway or grin. His expression was focused, almost angry. “Thank you for the ride,” he said stiffly.

He walked up the gravel drive and let himself into the cabin. A light went on. Bel got back into the cruiser and let out a sigh. He didn’t want to think about the shit Dav had told him. She claimed there really were people who did things in their sleep and had no recollection later, and that Daniel Whitlock had been a model of good behavior since his release. Of course he had been—he didn’t want to go back to fucking jail. Dav ought to know Whitlock was no saint.

Bel recalled Whitlock’s reaction when he’d slapped the partition. The lashing out, the confusion, the fear. The change in Whitlock’s voice, in his body. Was it possible . . .?

No. You had to be awake to drive yourself into town. To get down those stairs at Greenducks. To kiss Jake Kebbler out back by the dumpster.

You had to be awake.

Want to read more? You can find When All the World Sleeps here, on KU or available for purchase.

Also By Lisa Henry

Dauntless

Anhaga

Two Man Station (Emergency Services #1)

Lights and Sirens (Emergency Services #2)

The California Dashwoods

Adulting 101

Sweetwater

He Is Worthy

The Island

Tribute

One Perfect Night

Fallout, with M. Caspian

Dark Space (Dark Space #1)

Darker Space (Dark Space #2)

Starlight (Dark Space #3)

Playing the Fool series, with J.A. Rock

The Two Gentlemen of Altona

The Merchant of Death

Tempest

With J.A. Rock

The Preacher’s Son

When All the World Sleeps

Another Man’s Treasure

Fall on Your Knees

Mark Cooper versus America (Prescott College #1)

Brandon Mills versus the V-Card (Prescott College #2)

The Good Boy (The Boy #1)

The Boy Who Belonged (The Boy #2)

Writing as Cari Waites

Stealing Innocents

About the Author

Lisa likes to tell stories, mostly with hot guys and happily ever afters.

Lisa lives in tropical North Queensland, Australia. She doesn't know why, because she hates the heat, but she suspects she's too lazy to move. She spends half her time slaving away as a government minion, and the other half plotting her escape.

She attended university at sixteen, not because she was a child prodigy or anything, but because of a mix-up between international school systems early in life. She studied History and English, neither of them very thoroughly.

She shares her house with too many cats, a dog, a green tree frog that swims in the toilet, and as many possums as can break in every night. This is not how she imagined life as a grown-up.

Lisa has been published since 2012, and was a LAMBDA finalist for her quirky, awkward coming-of-age romance Adulting 101, and a Rainbow Awards finalist for 2019’s Anhaga.

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