you ran away from home.”
And there it was again.
“I didn’t run away from home.” Cute or not, she was already working fast toward pissing him off.
“Well, then why don’t you tell me what happened?” She smiled. He didn’t smile back this time. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. In the long run, you’re just another doctor working for my folks.
“I don’t remember what happened. I was at the ball game and then I was in a jail cell. Why is this so hard for people to understand?” He tried to keep the edge out of his voice, but it wasn’t easy.
“Well, then why don’t we try to get to the bottom of that problem, okay?”
Before he could respond, the phone on her desk beeped shrilly and the secretary’s voice came through the speaker. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Dr. Powell, but there’s a phone call for Cody. The man said it’s an emergency.”
Dr. Powell stared at him for a moment and then pointed toward the phone. “It’s for you. Go ahead if you want.”
He nodded his head and walked over to the phone. His head buzzed with each step and he had a moment of weird double vision. Not double vision exactly, more like he was seeing the world in an unfamiliar way-but then it was gone.
“Hello?” Cody listened, expecting to hear his mother’s or his father’s voice. What he got instead was a complete stranger talking in his ear.
“Hi, Cody.” The voice was deep but pleasant. “We haven’t met, but we really should.”
“Dude, I’m in the middle of a meeting right now.”
“Yeah, with the hot shrink. I know.” Cody looked around the room, pausing for that look at the cleavage he was trying not to stare at. He frowned at the doctor, but she wasn’t actually looking at him so he didn’t think she was setting him up with some crazy little test. There was one window, but all that was outside that window was blue skies. He doubted anyone was out there and looking in from a helicopter.
“Excuse me?”
“Hot shrink. I know where you are. She’s hot. Maybe you can come back and see her soon, but between now and then, you need to get to Boston, Massachusetts.”
“What?” His voice was shrill enough to get the doctor’s attention and she looked his way with a puzzled expression.
“Listen to me, Cody. You need to get to Boston. There are answers for you there.”
“Yeah? I’ll get right on it.” He made sure the sarcasm in his voice was obvious.
“I would if I were you. When you get there, you can finally find out why you woke up in a jail cell.”
“Who is this?”
“Call me Joe Bronx. I’m your new best friend.”
“I don’t need a new best friend,” he answered.
“Oh, but you do. Trust me, the cute doctor isn’t on your side. By the time this call is done, she’s going to decide to tell your parents all about it and they’ll probably have a fit.”
“Seriously, who are you?”
“Joe Bronx. We discussed that. Get to Boston.”
“It’s a big place. Where?”
“Find a pen and paper. Write down the number I give you.”
The good news about office desks is that there’s almost always a pen and paper. He wrote down the number.
“What if I don’t?”
“You’ll get there. Whether you want to or not. I’m just trying to give you a chance to run your own life for a change.”
“What do you mean?”
“Who decided you need to see the hot shrink? You? Or your parents?” The voice was calm, rational, not picking at all.
“My parents.”
“There’s your answer. Decide for yourself. When you get to Boston, call the number. We’ll meet, and I’ll explain everything.” The conversation was severed. Cody looked at the phone for a few seconds and finally set it carefully back into its cradle.
“Who was that?” Dr. Powell had stood up and moved behind him. He could smell her perfume, soft and sweet and inviting. He could practically feel the heat from her body. Hell, he could turn fast enough and probably their bodies would be close to the same height and he could kiss that mouth before she had a chance to react.
Yeah. Right. Never gonna happen.
Instead of fighting it, he decided to tell the doctor the truth. He turned to face her, but slowly. Sure enough, they were close to the same height and she was just almost close enough to steal a kiss from. “A guy named Joe Bronx, who said if I go to Boston, he’ll tell me why I was arrested.”
“Really?” She looked at him, and he stared at her eyes. They were green but shot with hazel and what looked like gold. He could have stared into her eyes for hours. “What do you think about that?”
“I think someone’s having fun with me. I don’t like it.”
“How did he know to call you here?”
“He said he could see me. He knew where I was.”
She looked at him for a while and slowly nodded, smiled. The look made his knees weak. It also made his brain want to panic. Joe Bronx was right. She’d be reporting to his folks very soon. She wasn’t to be trusted.
He’d have to trust Joe. There had to be an answer that didn’t involve him being crazy, and Joe was offering at least a chance of that.
Chapter Nineteen
Gene Rothstein
The phone call at three in the morning was the first sign that something had gone wrong. Really wrong, as in, even the news of his adoption was considered insignificant by comparison.
Uncle Robbie had been attacked. Gene’s parents were at the hospital while Gene, the oldest at fifteen, was left at home in charge of getting his siblings off to school. He was about to go back to bed for the few remaining hours before sunrise when the phone rang again. “Hello?”
“Gene? It’s Dad.”
“How’s Uncle Robbie?” Gene would never admit it to anyone, but he had felt gleeful when he first heard the news of Robbie’s misfortune. But he knew it was wrong. He was a part of the family, after all, even if it wasn’t by blood. Even if people like Revrund Robbie could preach sermons to him about how lucky he was to be loved by people who took him in from the cold. He tried to let go of his earlier anger.
“He’s stable. They’ve got him out of surgery and it looks good.” He could hear the relief in his dad’s voice. Not relief for Robbie, but relief that Gene would even ask. His father understood how deeply Gene felt the betrayal. They had argued for much of the evening. He was probably secretly thrilled that Gene hadn’t sent a letter bomb to the hospital already. “He took a bad beating,” his dad continued, “but there isn’t any brain swelling, so he should pull through.”
He didn’t have to tell Gene about complications. The family of a doctor always understands about things like septic infections and unexpected blood clots. They came with the territory and with the occasional ghosts that lingered in his father’s eyes after a hard day in the emergency room. Marty Rothstein knew his son understood all about that sort of complication, and so he let it go.
“That’s good to hear.” The words sounded sincere but tasted like a lie.
“Gene, are we okay?” His father’s voice begged for a happy ending.
He closed his eyes and swallowed and tried to say something nice, something pleasant, when all he wanted to do was scream and cry and act like a bratty five-year-old. “Give me some time, Dad. Okay? I need to adjust to all
