Wild Horses (42 page)

“If you insist,” Attila said with a reluctant sigh. “You realize this will just take extra time, right?” He was dialing the emergency number already and explained the situation, then he hung up and settled down on the cold concrete of the loading dock, feeling restless. Useless, too.

It took only ten minutes for a police cruiser to pull into the parking lot. Another one showed up two minutes after, and that was only the beginning. Attila didn’t quite know what he expected. Perhaps he thought the police would enter the warehouse and bring Lindsey out. Then Hal would take her home and all would be well—they could all go back to their previously scheduled activities.

Attila didn’t expect the flashing lights, the ambulance, and the constant squawking of their communication equipment. He didn’t expect so many people to show up, and he sure as hell didn’t expect for the three of them to be separated and made to sit in the back of separate police cruisers. Just for questioning, the police said. His head swam and the number of people rushing around the cruiser was just too much activity to bear. He leaned back against the vinyl seat and closed his eyes. The panicked, vertigo feeling that made his stomach flip was familiar and unwelcome. Attila knew a panic attack when he saw one, and for now, he just closed his eyes and focused on breathing in and out. The cruiser felt too small and the noises of the police scanner were too loud. He tried the door—maybe he could wait in his truck—but found himself locked inside. He wanted to get out—he needed to get out of there right now—away from the radio noises and flashing lights and all those people.

As time passed, more personnel arrived and dozens of uniforms were going in and out of the warehouse. A big van full of people arrived, people in paper booties and Tyvek suits. They looked grim, determined to get their job done right. Attila saw flashes of photo equipment blaze through the open loading dock door. Then the medical examiner’s van showed up.

The roar of blood in his ears deafened him and he had to get out, get out now and find out if Lindsey was dead or alive, and most of all he had to get more air.

He thought of Kai.

You’re a fuckin’ liar!

You’re Master Attila the Hun, an’ you let me think everything was so new to you—that I was so damn special.

I was trying to live up to you. I should have gone back down into the gutter instead!

His memory supplied him with the words he’d been trying to suppress. He wasn’t a liar—not in his mind, anyway—although he himself could see that from Kai’s point of view, the situation looked bad. He wished he could have explained, but Attila was never a man of eloquent words, and he himself didn’t feel comfortable talking about his… quirks. Eccentricities. The things that made him follow the same steps over and over, the unbearable and overwhelming press of stimulus that had him drive most other people away.

He turned his face away from the crime scene, aware of his rapid heartbeat and the difficulty of obtaining enough air to breathe. He wished Kai was there to anchor him with an off-color joke and his ready smile, with a touch of his solid, warm hand. Except Kai wasn’t there, and Attila felt like he was floating—untethered in space and adrift—and he would fall and fall hard. He felt a pressure in his chest and figured maybe this was not just another panic attack; maybe he would die in the back of a cruiser, as though he were locked in a tomb, surrounded by a flurry of activity and flashing lights and the press of bodies right past the cruiser’s thin glass windows. His whip was back in the truck—there was no way to make space for himself. The radio squawked more unintelligible code, pushing him over the precipice.

His world turned dark.

Kai….

“H
E
REALLY
doesn’t like crowds.” That was Tibor’s voice. Tibor wasn’t supposed to be there. He opened his eyes and sat up straight, alarmed.

“What happened?”

“You freaked out. You should have called me as soon as you knew you had something,” Tibor said, looking relieved. “I could have told you what would happen. That would have helped, I think.”

Attila nodded, aware of his stark black shirt and black trousers, and relieved that his stupid bullwhip was nowhere in evidence.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Keleman?” A woman in an EMT uniform took his elbow, allowing him to swing his legs off the gurney, making sure he didn’t tip it over.

“Better,” he allowed. “Did you find Lindsey?”

“Now, there’s a story to tell,” Tibor grinned. “She’s okay. She wasn’t found here. The police will want to ask you a few questions just to see how you fit in. I’ll be there with you, okay?”

Attila looked around. The chestnut-haired EMT peered at him through her glasses and the man introduced as a plainclothes detective was hanging out at the edge of hearing range, still involved but not intruding much. The evidence people were gone and so were most of the police cruisers.

“I need to go and feed the horses,” Attila said, his voice weak and uncertain.

“Sally’s there. You will get home soon. Where is Kai?”

“I left him with Theodore,” Attila said. He was going to say he would need to go and pick Kai up, but then he remembered how out of it Kai had been. Barely conscious. Whether Larry slipped him roofies, or GHB, or some other drug didn’t matter much. Either drug would have stripped Kai of whatever veneer of civilization he had, baring his anger to Attila’s eyes. Had Kai been in any shape to process information, Attila would have explained himself. Now it was getting late. The sky was painted in hues of orange and gray, and he could only hope that Kai didn’t think Attila gave up on him and left without him. Yet, he couldn’t talk to Tibor about all that had happened between them. Tibor had no need to know about Frankie’s.

“What, with your ex?” Tibor’s eyebrows rose into his hairline. “Will they be alright together?”

Attila shrugged. He could only hope. There was no need to tell Tibor that Kai has been drugged or that he hurt his head hitting a wall in a fit of rage, either. That might lead to the kind of questions Attila was unwilling to answer.

“O
H
DUDE
,
you called him a liar? That’s bad. That’s real bad. Never mind a milk shake—you’ll need at least flowers to make up for that.” Theodore shook his head from side to side, his face a mixture of pity and morbid curiosity.

“You’re just getting off on this,” Kai spat.

Theodore shrugged his slender shoulders. “Yeah. I mean, I thought we had something, y’know? I even moved up there in the middle of nowhere. We were exclusive, and he was real sweet….” His forehead furrowed in a frown. “Too sweet by far. He wanted me to, like, make decisions and stuff. I figured I’d keep house and he’d take care of the horses and be the big man, y’know, and
nooo
, he wanted me to understand everything and participate, and it just sucked dirt after a while.”

“He wanted a partner.” Kai’s face lacked expression, and he felt a chill come over him.

“Yeah. And I….”

“And you wanted a fucktoy.”

Theodore shrugged. “Can you blame me? He’s so delicious.”

Kai’s stomach roiled, and for just a moment, he thought he would throw up. He had never thought of Attila like that—just a fucktoy. Never. He made doubly sure he gave him his full due as the man who welcomed him into his life, into his home. Into his stables, even.

Attila made him his partner.

Nobody had believed in Kai before—not like that. Nobody had ever loved Kai the way Attila loved him, and Kai repaid Attila’s kindness by unwarranted anger and jealousy. Kai fished his cell phone out of his pocket. The message he typed out took a while, with his fingers still feeling slow and his mind still a bit flummoxed. He wasn’t sure he was saying the right thing anymore. He wasn’t sure he was thinking straight, but he wanted Attila to know that he was on his mind. Nothing else mattered. Kai looked at his message, frowned, then deleted it and started again.

It was damage control time.

A
N
HOUR
elapsed in small talk. Theodore was done with all the corsages and boutonnieres and had moved on to the altar pieces. The containers were large and heavy so they wouldn’t tip over, filled with florist’s foam and sprouting greenery. The florist had just centered tall, white gladiolas into a fan-shaped spray when Kai piped up again.

“He hasn’t returned my text yet.”

Theodore grinned. “You’re in the doghouse. Usually he’s meticulous about returning texts and phone calls.”

Kai swallowed an expletive, picked up his phone again, and dialed Attila’s number. He listened to the phone ring somewhere far away, in Attila’s pocket, then he was rerouted to his voice mail. “Hey… Attila? It’s me, Kai. I… I just wanted to know if you’re okay. I… I am worried.” He didn’t say
I am so sorry
and
I love you
because Theodork was listening in, his ears stretched to maximum as he cut and placed them in just the right places and at precise angles.

After half an hour of checking his phone for missed messages, Kai faced the blank window of his text app again. There was so much he wanted to say, but he wanted to say it in person. A few feet away from him, Theodore was putting finishing touches on the second altar piece. It looked just like the first, symmetrical and balanced.

Unlike me, lopsided and off-center.

It occurred to Kai that without Attila, he felt like he was leaning too far to one side. The whole world was askew as Theodore placed the altar pieces in the cooler and moved on to make the bride’s bouquet. When the room was filled with the heady scent of something tropical, Kai examined the buckets on the worktable for the source of the floral perfume. “What’s that smelly stuff?” he asked, trying not to be too interested.

“Stephanotis. You like?” Theodore’s voice lacked judgment.

“Can I… can I buy some?”

“I don’t have a lot to spare. I ordered it special for the wedding, you know.” Theo frowned.

“Just a little piece? And, can you put it in a vase or something?” Kai pleaded.

“I can make a little peace offering for you and put it in a water vial. You need to make sure the water level keeps covering the stem, though. It needs to be checked every day. And it’s not cold hardy, so you freeze it, you’re shit out of luck.”

“How much?” Kai asked.

Theo gave him a number. Kai blanched. “You’re shitting me!”

“That’s what I buy it for, Kai. I sell it for three times as much.”

Kai nodded and dug for his wallet and slapped a twenty on the table. “Thanks, Theo.”

“Not Theodork?” Theodore asked, smiling.

“Maybe only sometimes,” Kai said, suddenly feeling exhaustion weighing down on his shoulders. “I can see what he saw in you. You’re all right. I hope he likes it. I hope it’s not too fragrant for him.”

“No. He likes freesias and hyacinths, so this scent should be okay, too.” Theodore snipped off three small inflorescences of white, waxy flowers and tied them together with wire. He eyed the selection of various ribbons on the ribbon rack. “I wish I had the color of your hair,” he mused. “If you want to be sickeningly romantic, you’ll cut some off and wrap it around, instead.”

Like a drowning man grasping at every straw, Kai removed the rubber band from his long braid and separated the thick strands. He isolated a lock on his left side. “Let me braid it first,” he said, eyes focused and eyebrows drawn together in concentration. He would do anything to get his Attila back—even cut his precious mane off. He kept plaiting, focused on the task while wishing the man saw fit to text him back.

T
WO
more hours elapsed and Kai found he felt less dizzy than before. He drank a lot of water, used the employee bathroom, swept the shop floor and vacuumed the carpeted areas, and sent a text message every twenty minutes. The phrasing of his texts varied, but the general content remained the same. His little vial of stephanotis was wrapped in a braid of his own hair and enveloped in a green sheet of tissue paper and clear cellophane.

“I’ll need to close down in half an hour,” Theodore announced as he wiped down the empty work surfaces. “Attila was going to pick you up here. You better come with me, I guess. He knows where I live.”

Kai thought about that. “I can go to my old place,” he lied. Theodore would not know that his old place was a concrete loading dock.

“Are you feeling normal again?” Theodore asked as he examined Kai from head to toe.

“No worse than usual,” Kai lied again. The fuzziness would disappear—he no longer needed to sleep, and the rest was just his own damn fault for head-butting a brick wall.

“Does he know where it is?” Theodore asked.

“Yeah. He parked pretty close to it—he will know. I’ll text him again.”

“His phone could be off.”

“His phone is never off,” Kai said, his voice mournful. “He’s pissed at me.”

“Yeah. For a good reason.” Theodore hung a stack of floral delivery orders off a hook on the shelf above the computer, getting his work ready for the next day. “He can’t stand being accused of any kind of duplicity. Lying, cheating, stuff like that. Why do you think
we
broke up? You know that ice-cold mask he substitutes for his face when something goes wrong? Expect that. For a long time, too. And that stuff with Frankie’s—you two have to talk about all that. If you don’t, it will just fester like a bad wound.” Theodore disappeared inside the walk-in cooler to store the buckets of cut flowers for the night.

“Why’re you telling me all that?” Kai asked when the short brunet reemerged.

Theodore straightened up and faced him dead on. “I failed to make him happy, you know. I left, and it just about killed him. I didn’t know it at the time, but I seriously fucked up. He’s a nice guy… weird, with his horses and all, but nice. If he can be happy with you, then maybe I can sort of, like, redeem myself? Maybe I can fix some of that cosmic karma I screwed up so bad two years ago.”