TAKE ME HOME (31 page)

“I’m not letting him go,” Dennis said over his shoulder. “He’s staying right here until the police arrive.”

“I need to talk to him alone.”

Evan gripped Kyle’s free hand. “Don’t.” Kyle still held Evan in his other arm, their bodies pressed together. He couldn’t let go.

Dennis turned his head sideways and glared at Kyle. His gaze dropped to where Kyle had his arm wrapped around Evan, then where their hands were clasped together. He glared at Kyle again. “Are you in some kind of trouble? Did you bring it here and put everyone in danger?” Evan finally moved forward, separating them. “This isn’t Kyle’s fault.”

“Then what is going on?” Dennis asked.

He must have loosened his grip. Nate shoved Dennis and charged forward toward Evan and Kyle. “I need to know where it is.”

Dennis seized Nate again and yanked him back to where he’d had him pinned before, slamming Nate against the door, banging his head in the process.

“Stop,” Kyle said. “Let him go. He’s not dangerous.”

“How do you know?” Dennis gave another shove to Nate. “He came here with a weapon.” Nate shook his head. “I want the journal, and then I’ll go.” 164

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That wasn’t going to happen. Kyle tried to keep his voice calm, show Nate he could trust him. Knowing his track record with getting people to believe that fact, he didn’t hold out much hope. “I can’t give you the journal, but if you come with me and leave here without any more trouble, I’ll help you find what you’re really looking for.”

“You can’t let him go,” Dennis said.

“I can handle this.”

Evan faced Kyle. “Like you handle everything?”

What the hell did that mean?

A chorus of “Let it Snow” broke the silence left by Evan’s harsh tone.

“Okay,” Nate said. “If you can help me find where it’s hidden, I’ll go with you.” Kyle grabbed for his coat and backpack. “Tell my dad I borrowed his truck, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“You’re leaving here alone with this crazy person?” Dennis asked.

“He’s not going alone.” Evan reached for his coat and stood before Kyle.

The truth slammed into him. He’d never been alone. He’d always had Evan, supporting him in everything he’d ever done, through the ups and downs of his writing career, through the loss of his grandpa.

He had to stop being jealous and overprotective. Evan deserved more respect than that.

He had to let Evan make his own choices. About his future. About Dennis. About the two of them. He had to trust him.

“How do you know where the money is?” Evan whispered from beside Kyle in the truck. Kyle glanced back at Nate, who sat in the backseat of the cab, staring off into the darkness of the fields surrounding them. The hook Nate had retrieved from Gloria’s foyer floor lay on the seat next to him.

“I don’t know exactly.” Kyle tilted his head to indicate Nate behind them, hoping Evan would get that he didn’t want their visitor to know there was nothing in the journal about where the money was hidden. “I didn’t get a chance to read all of the journal, so there may be something in there.” Of course he had read the entire thing, and Evan knew that.

Evan got it. He gave a nod.

“I think he’s right, though,” Kyle said. “I’m betting it’s at the farm. Can you get the journal out of my bag?”

As he pulled out the journal, Evan said, “There’s something I don’t get. Why would they come to Ohio? After all Victor had said about not wanting anyone to know they were…” He trailed off, and Kyle didn’t need him to finish.

“They knew the money needed to be close to one of them, somewhere it could be accessed quickly, and somewhere no one else would find it. Joe wouldn’t let Grandpa hide it on his own, so the first time Grandpa came home, he brought Joe with him.” And no one had suspected they were anything but friends. Although, if his grandpa’s family were as perceptive as everyone around Kyle and Evan—or perhaps if he and Joe were as shitty at hiding what they felt for each as he and Evan were—then everyone knew.

Evan turned to Nate. “So the network didn’t hire you?” Take Me Home

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Kyle watched Nate in the rearview mirror. The moon was high, and the rays were reflecting off the snow, casting a white glow through the truck’s window, illuminating Nate’s face and beard. He did look like Santa Claus.

“No,” Nate said. His tone was harsh, but the man had tears in his eyes. Maybe Dennis had been right. Maybe this guy was certifiable. Nate opened his wallet and pulled out a picture. He held it up so only he could see it, then gently tucked it back into his wallet again. “A man named Hastings came to see me, though. That’s how I remembered about the money. About the story I’d heard when I was a boy. I figured the network had to know more than I did. I followed Hastings to your grandfather’s attorneys, and from there I found out who the journal was going to be sent to.”

“Why did Hastings come to see you?” Kyle asked.

“I don’t believe explaining myself was part of our deal. You keep your journal, and I get the money. That’s it.” He went back to staring out the window, squeezing the wallet between his hands.

“Ev,” Kyle said, “why don’t you read the journal and see if you can find anything? The last note I added is where they arrived in Ohio.” When Evan gave him a questioning stare, he said,

“Maybe you can find a clue I missed. Check the glove box for a flashlight.” Evan stared at him for a moment more, then found the flashlight and opened the journal.

He shone the light on the page.

“Don’t read it out loud.”

Evan looked at him again and nodded.

Nate laughed. “I already know what you’re trying to hide.” Kyle glared at Nate in the review mirror. “And what’s that?” The man smiled, the look more like the ones he’d given his wife on the train than any look he’d had since showing up in Ohio. “Besides the fact your grandpa hid stolen money, which makes him an accessory to the crime? I know everything.”

“You’re Paskowski’s kid.” It made sense, even if the names didn’t match up. He was acting like the money belonged to him.

Nate met his gaze in the mirror and laughed again. “You’re smarter than your books imply.”

Evan spun around in his seat. “Shut up.” He faced the front of the truck and continued reading in silence, flipping pages every few minutes.

Kyle shifted his focus back and forth between the road ahead and Nate’s image in the rearview mirror. “You think because your father stole it, you get to keep it?” He didn’t respond.

A mile from the farm, Evan closed the journal and said, “I know where it is.”

“What?” Kyle had read that book from cover to cover. Nowhere did it say where the money was hidden. “How do you know?”

“He didn’t write exactly where it is, but he wrote about something else.”

“What?”

Evan ran his index finger along the journal’s spine. “The place he and—” He gave a quick glance Nate’s way. “Where he was last with his lover. I think it’s near there.” 166

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“Oh, yeah. That.” Okay, so he hadn’t exactly read it cover to cover. “I sort of skimmed that entry when I saw what it was about. It, uh, it looked…descriptive.”

“It was.” Evan paused, then added, “I imagine he didn’t want to forget it. He was in love.”

“Yeah.” Kyle turned his head. Thanks to the light of the flashlight, he stared into those clear blue eyes. “He was.”

They held the stare between them. He couldn’t read Evan’s expression.

A minute later, he made the turn onto the lane leading to the farm, snow crunching under the truck’s tires as he drove toward the farmhouse. The two-story house with a wraparound porch sat in the middle of the three-hundred-acre farm. To the right of the house was the barn where Kyle had spent so much of his childhood. It was there he’d first kissed another boy during the summer his grandpa had hired Kyle and his friend to muck out the horse stalls, wash the tractors, and do other odd jobs. It had taken Kyle the entire summer, until their last week, to work up the nerve to kiss his friend. That was when he’d first learned he could convince another guy to do almost anything using only his mouth and nothing close to words.

That memory sent his thoughts in a direction he didn’t care for. Had he pushed Evan too hard? To a place they shouldn’t have gone, right as Dennis was heading back to Evan?

He couldn’t think about that right then. He had to get rid of Nate before anyone else learned about the journal. But what if they actually found the money? What then?

The lights were off in the house, and the only illumination came from two sources outside: a high-voltage security light attached to the front of the barn and the Christmas lights strung along the roof of the house. Kyle’s cousin had moved to the farm after their grandfather had passed away. He and his family went to his in-laws’ in Toledo every Christmas Eve.

An arc of snow on the ground turned from white to green to red to white again as the Christmas lights cycled through their rotation. There was also one of those blow-up lawn snow globes with fake snow pelting the reindeer and the Santa trapped inside. The entire blow-up lawn ornament swayed in the breeze and made a squeaky sound as it rocked. What would his grandpa make of seeing something like that on his farm?

For Kyle, it was a reminder his cousin had young children living there. No matter what happened, if the money was at the farm, it couldn’t stay there. It was too dangerous.

“When will they be home?” Nate asked.

“We have a couple of hours.”

He parked in front of the barn’s sliding double doors that spanned almost the full height of the building. He exchanged a look with Evan, and they got out of the truck, Evan carrying Kyle’s backpack with the journal inside. A gust of icy air smacked into Kyle, kicking up loose snow and blowing it in his face as if the farm were sending him a warning to get back in the truck and leave.

Even if Nate changed his mind, Kyle couldn’t. He had to know the truth.

Nate got out of the truck, hay hook in his hand.

“You don’t need that anymore,” Kyle said. “You and I both know you aren’t going to use it.” It was a bit of a gamble, but Kyle was confident that the Nate they’d met on the train wasn’t the kind of guy who would slash at someone with a hay hook. No matter what the reason was that he was so adamant about finding the money.

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Nate sighed and tossed the hook into the back of the truck. It slid several inches, causing a fingers-on-the-chalkboard scratching sound along the truck’s bed until it collided with the tailgate. Nate winced. “Sorry.”

Kyle rolled his eyes and faced Evan. “Lead the way.”

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Evan headed toward the walk-in door at the end of the barn closest to the house, trudging through the loose snow that had fallen in the past few hours. He hoped he was right about this. It wasn’t like the journal specifically said where they’d hidden the money.

Nate and Kyle kept up at his side, unease and determination radiating off both men as they strode through the snow. There was something they were missing about Nate, some detail on what was driving him and why he wanted this money.

They reached the barn door, and Kyle opened it. He flipped on the overhead light and took a step inside. The horses whinnied. “Sorry girls,” he said. “Not time to eat yet.” Evan followed him in. The creak and bang of the large sliding doors as they shifted in the wind, the shuffling of the horses’ hooves, the smell of hay and manure… It all brought back those days during the summer when he and Kyle had helped out on the farm. When he’d watched the shirtless Kyle shovel out the horse stalls, his tanned back rippling with the heft of each load, his ass on display as he bent to thrust the shovel in again. Evan hadn’t done much to help with the chores, he’d been too busy staring and trying to keep his hard cock from jumping out of his pants.

He smiled. He couldn’t help it. After all the years since that summer day in the horse stall, he’d finally gotten everything—and more than—he’d been picturing that day.

Kyle cleared his throat and gestured for Evan to go on ahead.

“Sorry. Memories.”

Kyle gave him a knowing smirk.

They walked past the horse stalls toward the back of the barn. Kyle’s cousin only had the two horses he kept as pets for his daughters. The rest of the hay he sold as needed throughout the winter to local horse and livestock owners. The hayloft should still have a good supply left. Evan just hoped it was laid out in the same configuration as it always was. That way they could get to the exact location from the journal. He stopped at the ladder that led to the loft above. He signaled for Nate to climb first, then Kyle.

There was a hesitation before Kyle put his hand on the ladder like he was going to make Evan go up before him. “That ankle is still bothering you.”

“A little.” Which meant there was no way Kyle was letting him climb last. He’d want to be there to catch him if he fell. Kyle had always been protective of him, but it had taken on a new intensity in the past six days. It was going to get old fast. They’d have to have a talk at some point.

They stood still for a moment more. Just the two of them in the dim light of the barn, an intimacy passing between them that had nothing to do with sex.

Kyle nodded and whispered, “Be careful.” Then he climbed the ladder first.

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The hayloft was warmer than the first floor. Neat stacks of hay bales nearly filled the entire upper half of the barn except for a narrow walkway around the inner edge of the center opening where the hay was raised and lowered into the loft. There were new planks of wood at various locations across the walkway’s floor, most likely to replace the ones that had rotted throughout the years. If the money was in the hayloft, how had it survived all this time? How had no one found it in sixty years?

“Where to?” Kyle asked.

“They were in that corner.” Evan pointed to the right back corner with the flashlight.

“They had just hidden the bags. It doesn’t say where, but it sounded like it was close by. It would have to be somewhere private.” He looked to Kyle. “As private as somewhere they’d have to hide in order to have sex.”