Sandpipers' Secrets (16 page)

“Hush. No more of that,” Lark’s voice was husky with sleep and recent passion, but there was no arguing with him when he was like this. Brody already knew enough not to bother even trying.

As they settled back down to lie together contentedly, Brody heard keys rattling and the locks at the front door tumble. Zak. A wicked, happy smile pulled at Brody’s lips as he considered the possibilities with Wolf safely off at preschool for the day.

“Lark!” Zak bellowed as the door closed with a heavy thud.

Lark rolled his eyes theatrically as he grinned over at Brody, who couldn’t help grinning back.

What had the little troublemaker got up to this time? Brody wondered as he watched Lark climb from the bed with a much put upon look on his face.

“Larry Kenneth Piper! Get your ass out here right now!”

Lark froze, his eyes going wide then narrowing in displeasure. “Unless you plan on those words being listed as the primary suspect in your murder, you take that back right now!” he shouted back at Zak, heading towards the door in full high dudgeon.

“Larry?” Brody asked, fighting a chuckle.

Lark turned the frown on him. “You shut up. You didn’t hear that.”

Brody’s smile got even wider. Oh, man! This was priceless ammunition and they both knew it. He planned on keeping Lark’s real name carefully filed away for maximum effectiveness the next time the smaller man started to get out of hand.

Lark walked away, his proud, regal air of dismissal somewhat lost because he was stark naked. As he stalked off, he just looked too amazingly cute to be taken seriously.

But Brody didn’t get a chance to bask in the knowledge that he had a way to rib the little troublemaker for long. As he settled back into the warm, soft mattress, Brody heard Zak start yelling.

“What the hell is this?” Zak demanded angrily.

“Oh, Fuck! I can explain, Zak. I swear.”

Oh, shit, he really is angry!Brody leapt out of bed.

As Brody ran in, he skidded to a halt and eyed the two men facing off across the room with alarm—Zak looking more furious than Brody had ever imagined the man capable of. And Lark looked as white as a ghost as he stared at the letter and envelope in Zak’s hand as if it were a snake about to strike out and bite him.

“Oh, I can’t wait for you to try. What the fuck is this, Lark?” Zak yelled, holding up the sheet of paper and waving it around angrily. “How long have you been hiding this?”

“It’s not like that! I was dealing with it. I knew how you’d react. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.”

“Didn’t want to make a big deal out of it!” Zak’s face turned an even angrier shade of red as he spun around and paced away, obviously struggling against a truly incandescent explosion of pent-up rage.

Brody watched as Zak took a deep breath and turned around to face them once more. “This guy’s been threatening you. What the hell is there not to make a big deal about?”

“What’s going on?” Brody asked, confused and a little frightened by the way the pair was yelling at one another. It brought back some very unpleasant memories. Memories that twisted his gut with tension, making him nauseated to the point of wanting to throw up.

“We can’t afford the negative publicity. You’d have wanted to get the police involved. Which would have meant the media. It would have been a nightmare.”

Brody looked over at Zak, remembering the man saying something along the same lines when the back of the house area had been messed up by a vandal. But Zak was completely oblivious, and Brody still didn’t really know what the hell was going on.

“How can you worry about a thing like that when this…person is sending you threatening letters?” Zak cried, his voice rising still further in exasperation.

“Would someone tell me what’s going on?” Brody demanded.

“And I’ll tell you what’s a nightmare!” Zak bellowed at Lark, completely ignoring Brody as he stalked over to confront the smaller man. “It’s knowing that this crackpot’s been after you and you didn’t even bother to tell us!”

“Calm down, Zak,” Brody pleaded, interrupting before Lark could let fly with another retort.

“Did you know about this?” Zak yelled, turning on Brody suddenly.

“No! I don’t even know what you’re talking about!” Brody said, needing all his courage just to stand his ground against the angry man when his natural instinct was to run for the hills.

“Don’t yell at him!” Lark shouted at Zak.

Brody would have been grateful for Lark coming to his defence if it hadn’t been for the yelling.

“Just stop it. Both of you!” Brody cried, hating himself when he couldn’t prevent his hands from coming up to cover his ears or the fearful step he took away from them both.

He hated the panic—the overwhelming need to run he felt whenever people raised their voices or started fighting around him. He couldn’t handle conflict or even disagreements. He just wanted them to stop. All the peace and contentment he had felt a few minutes ago disappeared, like smoke in a raging storm.

“Brody…” As Zak reached out for him, Brody flinched automatically.

Fuck.

Zak looked as if he’d been sucker punched.

“Sorry,” Brody murmured in apology, looking down at his bare feet as his face heated with embarrassment.

“It’s okay, Brody.” Lark cautiously stepped forward and very slowly wrapped his arm around his waist, snuggling into his side. “I’m the one that’s sorry.” Lark turned his head back to Zak. “Can we please get dressed and talk about this, Zak? I’m sorry, okay? I fucked up.”

Brody risked looking over at Zak. He stood rooted to the spot, staring at them cuddled together. Brody felt a tremor of trepidation chase over his skin.

“Brody, I didn’t…I wouldn’t…” Zak sounded lost and miserable, but worst of all he sounded hurt.

Now Brody felt even more wretched than he had when the yelling had overwhelmed him. “It’s all right. I just…I don’t do well with yelling.” And wasn’t that the understatement of the fucking century.

Lark tugged on his arm, leading him back to the bedroom. “Clothes. And then…I…I think we need to talk.”

Brody didn’t think he’d ever heard Lark sound quite so subdued and forlorn.

Oh, fuck. He really had screwed it all up somehow.Stupid fear. Dumb ass can’t handle a bit of yelling, fucking baby . Brody chastised himself even as the terror began to ride him hard. Couldn’t they just go back to the start of the morning? How had everything gone so wrong when it had all been going so right for once?

Ten minutes later, Brody walked back into the living room. A loose, casual T-shirt and sweatpants made him feel slightly less exposed. Unfortunately, his emotions and the tension strumming through the room
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were still too raw for him to feel comfortable.

Zak was sitting on the edge of the couch. He still looked angry. The knots in Brody’s gut tightened when Zak glanced up, then quickly turned away with a sad, guilty look on his face.

Fuck. Not even a month and he’d fucked it all up with one stupid, cowardly automatic reaction. Brody wrapped his arms protectively around his middle and tried focusing on Lark to distract himself from his mounting panic.

Lark was spreading a sheaf of papers out on the coffee table. After adding the letter from today, he sat back on his haunches on the floor beside the couch. Brody knew the instant Lark spotted him standing in the doorway, because a sad expression came over his face.

“I’m sorry,” Lark murmured. “This isn’t how I wanted to spend the day.”

“Me either.” Zak shifted in his spot and ran his hand over his head.

At least everyone seemed calmer now, if still tense and uneasy. Brody breathed a sigh of relief. He could handle tense and uneasy. Just not yelling.

“Can someone just please explain what’s going on?”

The longer the silence continued, the more he found himself getting both agitated and slightly irritated with not knowing what had caused the men he loved to start fighting so suddenly.

“I’ve been getting letters,” Lark finally said.

“Threatening letters,” Zak growled.

“They didn’t start off that way but…yeah. Look, let me just show you.”

Reaching over, Lark picked up one sheet from the pile and held it out.

“This was the first one. Basically it’s a very long-winded ‘you’re sick, you need to get help’. It arrived the day after Gus quit.”

Brody read a little of the opinionated, hateful letter when it was passed over to him. It certainly wasn’t light or fun reading, but there was nothing truly sinister about it. He still wished Lark hadn’t tried to cope with it on his own.

“I kept it, but I pretty much hoped it was a one-off rant and tried to forget about it.” Lark picked up two more letters. “These two are basically the same, but by the fourth…well, it does sound more threatening.

Not vicious, but…I called in a local investigator and had him try to trace the letters back to whoever sent them.”

“You did what?” Zak looked shocked, and Brody couldn’t blame him.

Telling strangers the story, showing them the progressively more abusive letters, Brody wasn’t sure he liked the idea himself.

“I brought in professionals.” Lark’s voice was tight and defensive; it was obvious this hadn’t been an
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easy decision for him to make, but it was one he was going to stand by. “I thought if I could find out who it was that was sending the letters I could go and confront them. Tell them to leave us alone. Make them stop somehow. I don’t know…something. But it was no use. There was nothing traceable and no leads.”

“But it has to be Gus. Doesn’t it?” Brody suggested, surprised that Lark didn’t agree.

“No,” Lark said, shaking his head.

“What do you mean, no? He’s the bastard that started all this!”

“Yeah, but I had the investigators check. He’s not even in the state. He’s gone back to live with his sister inSeattle , and these are all local postmarks. So it’s someone around here.”

Brody looked between his lovers in confusion. “So there’s someone else in the kitchen determined to…”

“Maybe someone said something to someone else. We can’t assume anything.” Zak stood up and paced towards the window.

Brody took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Time to get everything out in the open, but he didn’t relish the next few minutes. “Do you think the person who wrote the letters did the paint attack as well?”

“What paint attack?” Lark’s asked, his voice rising in alarm and confusion.

“Brody…”

Brody ignored Zak’s rumbling censure. “Someone wrote,” he hesitated a moment as he looked over at a dark and brooding Zak and swallowed before he continued, “they wrote ‘YOU SICK FREAKS!’ and threw paint at the back of the restaurant the day after Gus said all those things in the kitchen.”

Lark turned on Zak in disbelief. “And you had the balls to go off at me!”

“One stupid message scrawled in paint on a building is not the same as multiple personal letters escalating to threats of unknown consequences.”

“Only two before today sounded anything like a threat. And I was dealing with it!” Lark shot back.

Zak picked up the last letter and waved it about in evidence. “This is not just some idle threat! It made my blood run cold when I saw it. ‘You were warned’ and ‘Now face the consequences’. Fuck, Lark!

This is serious.”

“Please,” Brody whimpered, trying to hold it together as the voices rose again to border on yelling.

Instantly, the pair froze.

“Sorry,” Lark murmured in apology.

Brody couldn’t leave it like this. He knew he had to explain, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to think about it, to dredge up the past and think about what had happened to him as a child. And he really didn’t want to have to say the words and tell Zak and Lark about it. Brody scuffed his bare toes against the thick carpet pile and tried to get out just enough.

“Always they would yell. Mom and her boyfriends. Sometimes they would hit me. Sometimes they’d just tell me to go away. Most of the times they would be too drugged out of their minds to care. But always there was the yelling. I just…I can’t stand it now. You know?”

Lark moved closer and wrapped his arms around Brody, leaning into him.

Zak looked over at them for a long, pregnant moment and Brody found he couldn’t look away from the intense, pale green-brown eyes.

“Come here.” Zak’s gentle, firm command did funny things to Brody’s insides, and he found himself moving without consciously making the decision to obey.

When he was within arm’s reach, Zak slowly, carefully pulled Brody in against his chest. Then Lark stepped up behind him and Brody found himself sheltered and surrounded by the two of them.

“I’m sorry we started yelling again, Brody. You know we’d never hurt you, don’t you?”

Brody turned his head and concentrated on the strong, steady heartbeat beneath his ear. He was glad he didn’t have to meet Zak’s intense, penetrating gaze. He knew Zak wouldn’t hurt him—at least, intellectually he did, but—

“I’d never, ever hurt Lark either. I’m just angry that he didn’t tell us about this.”

Lark’s forehead came to rest between Brody’s shoulder blades and he felt the smaller man heave a heavy sigh against his back.

“I’m so, so sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing,” Lark said softly.

Zak reached around and ran his large hand over Lark’s hair. Brody leaned into Zak and just breathed for a few moments, soaking in the warmth and connection between the three of them. He tried to focus on that and push everything else out.

“I’m sorry, too,” Zak whispered, leaning his cheek on the top of Brody’s head.

For a long time the three of them clung together, letting peace steal back into the room. No one spoke.

Everyone concentrated only on breathing and holding on.

“I think we need to discuss this with Wolf, too,” Zak eventually said.

“What?” Brody jerked back, not sure he had heard correctly. They couldn’t talk about this sort of thing with a four year old. Wolf just wouldn’t understand. Brody didn’t understand, how the hell was Wolf supposed to cope with it all?