Foster Siblings 3: Brokedown Hearts (38 page)

Trembling suddenly, Ben lost a little more of the battle to keep up his facade of indifference about his repeated abandonment at the hands of Goran Enquist. “You let your own child go into the hands of greedy pigs who only wanted him for the money the state would give them.” Taking a moment, Ben sucked in a breath and calmed himself. He wouldn’t dare give this man the satisfaction of thinking he’d hurt Ben. “And when that child came to you as an adult, not for money, but just to get to know you, you rejected him again. Then, when your other son, the one you raised, who you supposedly loved from his birth, came to you and told you he was gay, you rejected him too. You threatened him, you threatened his half brother and banned them from having a friendship, and you refused to let his mother embrace him and accept her gay son.

“I know your ambitions, Father.” Ben choked on the word but deliberately spit it in the man’s face, this time with strength behind it. “You want to be something much bigger than the council member you are now. Nothing you’ve done is illegal, and it won’t get you run out of your valued position in your hometown, but it’s nasty nonetheless, and people will judge you for your cruelty. You would not get reelected, and having this information as public fodder would prevent you from climbing any higher in Swedish politics.”

More and more red flooded Goran’s face. He didn’t rush Ben or make a move, though, and selfishly Ben reveled in the man’s impotence. “You can make your power play right now,” Ben added, winding down, “and be the big man for five minutes, or you can let us go. We say nothing, ever. When you eventually run for a higher office, should any press sniff something out and come for damning comments from us, we keep our mouths shut. You choose.” Taking his brother’s hand again, Ben pulled Mikael to his side. “I’ll end up with Mika in the end either way.”

Mikael, clinging to Ben’s hand, pushed a step forward, closer to his father. “I won’t stop being gay, no matter what programs you put me through.” He stepped back just as fast and, with both hands, held tighter to Ben’s arm. “And I’ll always run away and try to get to Ben. It’s better to just let me go on my own.”

Eye color a mix of both his sons’, Goran looked Mikael over, flint in his stare, and finally said, “You are dead to me.” He barely flicked a glance Ben’s way as he added, “Just as you always were.”

Ben ignored the metaphorical slap and instead sank into the meaning behind Goran’s words.
He’s giving up
. “Never been happier to be disowned,” he muttered back at the man. “Let’s go, Mika.” Not cowing from Goran’s big presence, Ben dragged Mikael right past him to the rental car. “I have clothes in the car for you.”

By the time Ben and Mikael reached the car, Goran and his guard dog had pulled past where they were parked and driven away. The moment they were gone, Ben slumped against the side of his vehicle, losing his legs as adrenaline drained from his body. A car eased out of the alley. Ivan nodded at Ben, then drove by and disappeared too.

No more backup
. Pushing through the onslaught of fatigue, Ben unlocked the car, let Mikael into the backseat, and then climbed in behind the wheel. While Mikael got dressed in the back, Ben dug out his phone and gave David a call. With David’s nature to worry, he probably hadn’t slept a wink yet, and Ben wanted him to get some rest. And maybe, Ben admitted to himself, maybe he wanted to hear the sound of David’s voice, knowing it would soothe him in a way nothing else could and make him feel better about everything that had gone down.

The phone rang five times in Ben’s ear and then clicked over to voice mail.
Huh
. Ben tried again. Maybe David was in the bathroom. Ben had no doubt David would not sleep until he heard Ben’s voice. Ben dialed again, but once more, David didn’t pick up. New fingers of cold slid down Ben’s spine. He sent David a text, telling the guy he was worried and to get back to him ASAP.

A few heartbeats later, Mikael crawled from the backseat to the front, fully dressed. Once he dropped into the seat, he groaned and held his head and his stomach. “I don’t feel very good.”

“No shit.” Now that they were out of danger, Ben glared at his brother. “Most people don’t feel so hot after they’ve spent the past day making piss-poor decisions and acting like an idiot.”

Mikael grimaced. “I’ve had a bad time.” He slouched deeper into the seating, looking as gray as the leather at his back. “Don’t be mean.”

Suppressed fear escaped Ben, and his voice rose as he said, “You took God only knows how many different drugs and alcohol, and you were naked in a building with over a thousand people in it, with three guys on you, who, if they’d ganged up, could have hurt you. I’m not going to paint pretty pictures and commend you for making stellar choices today.” Incredible love wove its way into the fear, though, and Ben reached out and squeezed Mikael’s hand. “But I’m also grateful you’re okay, and I’m happy you’re coming home with me.”

His smile wan, Mikael rolled his head and met Ben’s gaze. “Thank you for wanting me.”

Nodding, Ben swallowed down grit thickening his throat. “More than just about anything, kid. Come on.” He let go of his brother, started the car, and pulled out in the direction that would lead them back to the airport. “Let’s go find the quickest way home.”

Still, even as Ben rejoiced in finding Mikael, and in having Goran back off so easily, his phone had yet to vibrate in his lap. David hadn’t returned his calls or text.

A nagging, sick feeling twisted in Ben’s gut, and at the next stoplight he texted David again.

By the time they reached the airport, David still hadn’t gotten in touch with Ben.

This kind of silence wasn’t in line with David’s personality.

Why aren’t you picking up the phone, honey?

Ben didn’t trust this level of quiet out of his talkative man at all.

Chapter Sixteen

Pain radiated through David’s skull, down into his body, and jerked him out of unconsciousness. He blinked and blinked and blinked, but something covered his eyes, and he couldn’t see.
What?
From his position lying on his side, he pushed up, but his cramped muscles screamed in protest. His arms and legs wouldn’t separate, and too weak to do more, he fell back to his side.

Bits and pieces of memory flashed like a strobe light in David’s mind, showing split-second images from his day—worrying about Ben, the fight with Sam, not being able to find Elsa, the door being closed to the bathroom…
Oh God, oh God
. A flood of panic swept through David, drenching him in fear, and he struggled against the binding on his arms and legs, desperate to get away.
He knows all my secrets. He knows how to hurt me and end my life.

Before David could attempt to push up again, a hand slammed over his mouth, stifling his voice and ability to breathe. “Please don’t scream.” The same hand took hold of David’s arm and arranged him in a sitting position on a couch. David’s hands were taped behind his back, and a tweed-like cushion scraped against his fingers. “It won’t matter if you do scream, but I will put tape over your mouth so I don’t have to hear it. And it hurts like the devil when it comes off, so for your sake I’d rather not.”

The fabric across David’s eyes loosened, and suddenly light from above cut across a log-cabin-type room. With one blink, the glare receded, and David could see more clearly. A brown-haired man in his midforties with a slender, familiar face, wire glasses perched on the end of the nose, filled David’s vision.
Dr. Fariday
. In David’s mind, salvation and this face had always been linked together, but where he sat now, ice chilled his blood.

The doctor touched David’s cheek, and a voice in David’s head—Ben’s voice—warned him not to recoil.
What would Ben do?
Where David sat, terrified and confused, he willed Ben’s single-minded focus and passion into his head with crystal clarity. David prayed for every big and little thing Ben had ever said to him to escape from his subconscious and find its way to the surface and into his brain.
Get him talking; get information. Stay calm. Try to find a way out and get free
. All good advice. They were all things Ben would tell him to do. Right here, right now, David understood he had to save himself. Ben was halfway across the world, and he had enough worry on his plate with Mikael. David would not let that emotional, protective man come home to find him gone.
I won’t scare him like that. I won’t let it happen.

Numbness had set into parts of David’s body. He couldn’t feel his hands and feet. Pinpricks had begun creeping up into his arms and legs, threatening to cripple him completely, but David sat up straight anyway and tried not to wince.

“Dr. Fariday, why did you take me? I haven’t done anything bad.” As David talked to the doctor, he scanned the room, but with plaid curtains pulled across all the windows, David had no way to begin to identify his location. “I’m doing better and better every day”—he spotted his phone on a kitchen bar across the room but quickly averted his eyes from it—“and I’m not bothering anyone like I did with Chris before. I swear.”

Dr. Fariday folded to his knees next to David, ran his fingers through David’s hair, and David barely suppressed a gag reflex. “My dear David, you try so hard. It’s very sweet. But you were supposed to come to me right away.” Continuing his trek, the doctor trailed his hands down David’s arms and brushed them across his thighs. “From the beginning, I told you Gainesville would be best for you. I sent you notes telling you to leave Coleman, but you didn’t listen.” The man’s supportive smile did not match the unnatural light in his brown stare. “Now I have to train you all over again.”

“I-I…”
Focus
. David clamped his thighs together to stop his skin from crawling under Dr. Fariday’s roaming hands.
Focus for Ben
. David lifted his attention to the doctor’s unsteady gaze. “I don’t understand.”

The doctor tsk-tsked. “I brought you back to life, David. If not for me, you’d still be catatonic. Perhaps in an even worse state than that.” He put his hand under David’s chin, turned his head side to side, and studied David as if he were a jewel shining in the light. “I made you the new man you are today.” Dr. Fariday grazed his hand up David’s jaw and into his hair, the touch a sickening caress. “Don’t you think I deserve to bask and spend time with what I created?”

Play along. Just play along
. “Why didn’t you ask me out to dinner?” David couldn’t bring himself to nuzzle into the doctor’s hand, but he forced his body rigid so that he didn’t shrink away from it either.

“Perhaps I could have done that if you’d come to Gainesville like I asked.” The man’s smile, while crazed, appeared terrifyingly sincere. He pushed up from the floor to sit next to David on the couch, so close their bodies touched from shoulder to ankle. “We could have grown closer naturally.” He slipped his arm around David’s shoulders, pressed a kiss to his temple, and whispered at his ear, “And I wouldn’t have had to step in and redirect your focus away from that nasty little town.”

With his hands tied, helpless, David had to clench every muscle in his body in order to keep from wiping the imprint of the doctor’s lips from his face. “I didn’t realize you wanted a relationship.” He kept his tone meek and his head down. “I didn’t know you were gay.”

“I’m not.” Even as the doctor said that, he played with David’s hair as if they were casual lovers. “You were supposed to stay close to me, though, so I could keep an eye on you. I needed to be able to make sure you didn’t destroy everything I took so much time and effort to properly build.”

David closed his eyes and willed himself not to cry. “I’m sorry. I really wanted to go home, though.”
Oh God
. Suddenly everything David had told this man about Ben flooded him—
he knows we had sex, and that I’m in love with him
—and David realized he could not downplay or pretend it didn’t exist. Thank the Lord that Ben was on the other side of the world where this person could not hurt him. Stuffing down a whimper of relief, David shrank in on himself more and tried to look like a frightened mouse. “I didn’t mean to meet someone new.”

Back and forth, back and forth, the doctor let his fingers linger with gentle brush strokes against David’s shoulder. “That man did prove a distraction to you. I had thought I’d trained you well enough to never completely trust anyone but me again, but it didn’t fully take.” Lightning fast, Dr. Fariday switched from fondling David to yanking his head out of hiding and studying him like a specimen. Finally, stare narrowed, he declared, “It has to be your gender. I didn’t anticipate that being male alone might mean I had to alter my techniques to make my lessons with you stick. I figured since you were gay, you would attach to me as any female would. And to a certain degree you did, but not enough, and I apologize for that, because that is my mistake.”

“I’m not mad.” David could barely speak through the tightening in his throat. His weak response was no act. “I promise.”

Looking at David so very closely, the doctor wound an arm around David’s waist, squeezed his bound hands, and a new fervent light entered his eyes. “You do intrigue me, David. And I want to help you become whole again. Even more than I did with the others.”

Going somehow colder than moments ago, David recoiled from Dr. Fariday’s touch, back into the couch. He couldn’t help it as he croaked, “Others?”

The doctor suddenly jumped to his feet, and he looked around as if disoriented. “Never mind that right now. I thought you’d wake up a lot faster than you did, and now you’re forcing me to leave you when we’ve only just gotten back together. Come on.” He yanked David to his feet and started walking. With his ankles taped together, David had to hop to keep up with Dr. Fariday’s fast pace. “Let’s get you in here”—the doctor swung open the door to a coat closet—“just in case you think about running. And now this.” He grabbed duct tape off a table by the door and started pulling off a strip. “You’ve become far too feisty under the tutelage of that man.” With the doctor’s casual toss-out of that information, David understood he’d had not one man watching him since his release from prison but two. The
rip
of the tape sliced through the room as Dr. Fariday added, “I’m not sure I trust you yet.”