They climbed down, and Jack and Liam looked around them. They’d been told to wait in the parking lot, but there was no sign of Kyle. Jack recalled what Kyle looked like: dark hair, skinny, sharp cheekbones. He realized he was categorizing Kyle from what he recalled of the court case, not what the man might look like now.
“Jackson Campbell-Hayes.”
The voice was to one side of him, and there was no question in it, merely a statement. Jack turned to face the owner of the voice. Kyle hadn’t changed. At nearly six foot, he still looked too skinny, his dark hair falling over his eyes. His posture was straight, but he was so damned wary.
Liam moved to Jack’s side, and Kyle took a step back.
“Only you,” Kyle said. “It was supposed to be only you.”
“I can go,” Liam said. He wasn’t talking to Jack, he was talking directly to Kyle.
Kyle appeared to consider Liam standing there. Then he shrugged one shoulder. “Doesn’t matter to me, I guess.”
“You want to get coffee and go sit?” Jack inclined his head to the coffee cart by the kids’ playground. Without waiting he began to walk that way. He stood next to the cart and ordered his coffee strong and black. Jack knew Liam would want black with two sugars, and then he waited for Kyle. “What do you want?”
Kyle shook his head. “I can get my own drink.”
Jack wanted to argue; he didn’t. He took his coffee, and he and Liam sat at the wooden table close by. Deliberately they took opposite sides in an unspoken agreement that they wouldn’t form some kind of brick wall for Kyle to stare at.
Kyle joined them, sitting next to Liam with the biggest gap between them he could manage. He hadn’t bought coffee but a bottle of iced water, which he rolled over his forehead before placing it on the table in front of him. Jack noted Kyle’s reddened eyes, his pale skin.
“You feeling okay?” he asked, concerned.
Kyle looked far from okay. He looked like he was about to keel over. Kyle didn’t answer; he pressed on with whatever agenda he had in his head.
“What do you want? Why won’t you leave me alone?” He lifted startlingly green eyes to Jack and stared at him directly.
“I wanted to know how you are.”
Kyle huffed a laugh, which turned into a cough. “Oh yeah, I’m good,” he offered finally.
“You have work? And a place to live?”
“What is this, a Social Services interview?”
“No, we wanted to check you were okay.” Liam placed a hand on Kyle’s arm, but Kyle pulled it away abruptly.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” he snapped.
“I have a proposition for you.” Jack tried to get this back on track. “I want to start a project where—”
“Fuck you. You’ve seen me, now stop fucking calling me, and tell your cop to stop following me.” Kyle stood up, grabbing at his water and missing. “I’m fucking fine, okay.”
As if those words were dead weight in him, he fainted away, falling in a heap half on the bench and half on the floor before rolling the entire way and hitting the ground with a thud. Liam tried to catch him but missed and nearly toppled over trying to get to him. Jack was at Kyle’s side in an instant, checking for a pulse and somehow yanking out his phone in one go. He connected with emergency services and explained. Paramedics were dispatched with an ETA of five minutes. Jack took off his light jacket and balled it up, placing it under Kyle’s head.
Liam sat back on his heels. “What the fuck, boss?”
Jack shook his head. Like he knew anything. Maybe he had diabetes like Hayley did? Maybe he was just exhausted? He promised the unconscious man on the floor one thing, he would do his damn best to find out, then fix this.
“I hate hospitals,” Liam said. He’d found coffee and was now slumped in one of the impossibly hard chairs that were common to all hospitals.
Jack nodded. He’d already had Eden and the baby, then Hayley and her diabetes, he wasn’t sure he could manage any more of these places after today. Kyle had still been unconscious when the paramedics brought him in. Jack and Liam had followed and were now waiting along with other people in the outside room. Jack and Liam weren’t family. They were nothing to Kyle except people that knew him a little but Jack wanted to stay and Liam agreed.
“Me too,” Jack admitted a bit lamely. His head was too full of what the fuck do I do now. They’d been here two hours. There was no next of kin, nothing against Kyle’s name about family, and they only knew that because one of the paramedics took pity on them. The only thing they found in his wallet was an address for a hostel, written in careful, tidy handwriting. “I’m phoning Ethan,” he said.
Jack left, and as soon as he was outside the main building, he put in the call with the PI who had led them this far.
Ethan Farrell was on call 24-7, it seemed. He answered on the second ring. “Jack? How did it go with Kyle?”
“I’m in the hospital with him now. He collapsed. What can you tell me about his… situation?”
Ethan cursed down the phone. “I told him he should see a doctor. He didn’t look well on Friday.”
“You’d better fill me in. How did he let you know he wanted to see me?”
Ethan had been deliberately evasive about how he’d contacted Kyle and got him to agree to a meet-up.
“Long story,” Ethan began.
Jack settled against the wall outside the ER. “I have time.”
“He saw me and basically lost his shit outside the pharmacy near his house.”
“How do you mean he saw you? I thought you’d talked to him.”
Ethan huffed. “Clearly six years as a cop didn’t prepare me for subtlety and undercover shit. I was checking in on him, and he saw me. That’s beside the point. Kyle was being shown the door at the pharmacy. I don’t know why, I wasn’t close enough, but he looked right at me, and he crossed the road, through the traffic—nearly got hit—and he stood there and shouted in my face. Told me he’d be in the park on Sunday and could I leave him alone. Only his version had a lot more cuss words.”
“Okay.” Jack had to think about that later. “So the hospital are having difficulty tracking down next of kin. Do you have anything I can give them?”
Ethan was quiet, and Jack checked the phone. Was he still connected? “Ethan?”
“Sorry. Look, Jack, this isn’t easy. The kid, who isn’t actually a kid but turned twenty-six on the fifteenth of May, has no one. Mom tossed him out at fifteen. Kyle used to live in Austin, moved to Laredo and the ranch, then back to Round Rock, after his mom OD’d two years back. Dad unknown. No siblings or extended family. I’ve been checking in on him every so often without him knowing. Or at least I didn’t think he knew. He has about five different cash-in-hand jobs: cleaning, handyman-type stuff. As far as I can see, the address he uses is a room in this block where you literally pay cash for the night. He has no one.”
“Well, that’s not true now,” Jack said firmly. “He has me.”
As soon as Jack finished the call, he phoned Steve, who answered on the second ring.
“Jack, hey.”
“Steve, I’m with one of the kids I told you about, Kyle Braden, from the trial I was at with Liam. I need some information from you.”
“Shoot.”
“If I text you the details I have, could you recommend some local places and people, just to be a support network for him until he gets back on his feet.”
“Can do, send it over.”
“I need some advice. He’s in the hospital—dehydration—and he doesn’t have any kind of permanent residence. I want to give him some money. What do you think?”
“How much money?” Steve had a note of caution in his voice.
“Couple thousand, enough to get a deposit for a room or something.”
“No, Jack.” Steve sighed down the phone. “All you’re doing is paying your way out of this. I’m sorry if that seems harsh.”
“I’m going to offer him a place at the D,” Jack added. He felt a little hurt at Steve’s words, despite knowing they held more truth than he cared to admit.