No answer.
He stood. He dialed again.
No answer.
Something was very wrong.
He gave up fighting the fear and called the station. God help him if Patrick was out buying fucking margarita mix with a dead cell phone battery, but he was bringing in the cavalry anyway.
There was still no sign of Patrick by the time McGuire, Carter, Captain Sullivan and three of his Task Force colleagues arrived at Patrick"s house. The news they brought was bad.
Brandon refused to sit when Sully asked him to. Instead the Captain sat with Destiny and took her hands in his.
“We found Patrick"s truck on the way here. I"ve got men going to retrieve it,” Sully said.
Destiny looked confused. “I don"t understand.”
“It was sitting at the Stop & Shop, engine on, driver door open, no sign of Patrick.” 177
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Brandon thought he might vomit. He could tell by the way McGuire was looking at him that there was more. “No sign at all?”
“His cell phone was on the dashboard, which is how we found it. GPS,” he offered, his hesitation setting off ever louder alarm bells in Brandon"s head.
Shit, he should have sat down. He locked his knees and stared at Sully, waiting.
Sully squeezed Destiny"s hand and continued. “And there was an empty syringe on the floor,” he admitted quietly.
Destiny began to cry.
Brandon pulled her out of the chair and into his arms. Focusing on her would be better than thinking. He couldn"t think.
He looked over her shoulder at Patrick"s boss and friend. “What do we do next?” Sully stood, appearing older than he ever had. Shaken. Brandon reached out and clutched his shoulder.
“We take you two back to the station, where you"re safe and where you can help us find answers. I"ve already requested Bobby Wilkinson be moved from the county lock-up infirmary to one of our interrogation rooms. Immediately. In the meantime, I"ll leave a couple men here at the house in case Patrick or anyone else comes around.” Brandon nodded, too close to the edge to speak. They had to find Patrick. He had to tell Patrick all the things he"d been too stupid and afraid to say. Why hadn"t he been braver?
Forcing his thoughts from what he couldn"t change, his mind raged with ideas on how he could extract information from Bobby Wilkinson.
Destiny tugged at her hand and he realized he was crushing it in his own, easing his grip immediately. He told himself to pull his shit together, managing to do so long enough to get them back in the car. Captain Sullivan rode shotgun for the trip to the station, with cruisers in front and back.
Brandon drove on autopilot, trying to plan, to think, but always coming back to one simple truth.
He should have told Patrick he wanted forever.
* * * * *
Standing in the packed observation room, Destiny"s hand still clutched in his, Brandon watched Bobby Wilkinson being led on crutches into the room, just inches away on the other side of the glass. Rage burned in his gut.
“What do we know?” he asked, struggling to find his reason. His calm.
Bob MacFarlane, his colleague from Organized Crime, spoke up. “Not much. We"ve yet to find any connection to the Bennedettos and Mario is avidly claiming he has nothing whatsoever to do with this. Can"t find an angle on why he would be involved.” McGuire entered the room and all eyes turned to him. “I"ve checked everything I can on this guy"s history and there is no mob connection. He never made it onto your 178
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radar,” he said, indicating Brandon and the other Task Force members in the room,
“and the Feds haven"t heard of him. Nothing. The only person I"ve spoken to who does claim to know him is his mother, who is a real piece of work. Dad took off when Bobby was a kid, never came back. Mom claims to have done the best she could on her own, but all she could tell me was that she kicked „that weird kid" out of the house a few years back for being „into freaky Jesus shit" and she hasn"t heard from him since.” The door opened again and Brandon"s boss, Lieutenant Richter, entered. Brandon hadn"t been real happy with the distance Richter had been keeping since his attack and subsequent exit from the closet.
“Brandon, I"ve called everyone I can think of and no one with connections to any family—Irish, Italian, Vietnamese, you name it—has heard of any contract out on you, Patrick or Destiny.”
More dead ends. Though another strong ally, it turned out. His boss had ties all over local and federal law enforcement and he"d have had to call in some favors for that intel.
“Thank you,” Brandon managed.
But what did it all mean? They didn"t know who or what Bobby Wilkinson was, but one thing was becoming pretty clear.
“This guy isn"t mob, is he?” Brandon asked no one in particular. When every head in the room but Destiny"s began to bob, he accepted it.
So then who or what the fuck was he? Brandon was tired of waiting to find out. He didn"t care if it cost him his job. The job didn"t matter.
What mattered was Patrick.
What mattered were the countless hideous statistics roaring through his head, each one reminding him that the longer they went without finding his friend, the greater the likelihood they wouldn"t find him alive.
Brandon was in Interrogation Room A with Bobby Wilkinson before anyone could stop him. He was vaguely amused by the thump of someone hitting the door as it closed in their face. He took the moment of distraction, the mere seconds Bobby"s attention was drawn to the door, to collect himself and get his emotions in check.
They could yank him out of there, bodily haul his ass from the room, but he didn"t think they would. It would undermine their standing with the accused. It would lessen their chances of finding Patrick.
At this point, most of the people in the observation room were probably
