Sullivan went to get up, and Boyd gestured for him to stay where he was. “I’ll tell Mac,” he said. “One of the nurses can do it. Donna, I need to head back to the station. I’ll check in on Shay later.”
She nodded stiffly and waited until he was almost out the door to say anything.
“Thank you for saving Shay,” she said quietly. There was still no anger in her, just a heavy weariness that dragged at her words. That seemed to make it worse, when the words couldn’t be blamed on anything else. “I know you’re a good boy. I do. And I wish I could be… kind… about everything. I just can’t. Even after today, even though I’m grateful, I don’t think I can ever forgive you.”
Boyd stared at her for a second. What did she think he was going to say to that? Was there any way to respond that would fix this?
“You don’t have to,” he said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
He closed the door behind him. It felt like it might be for the last time on Donna. No matter who Morgan turned to be—Sammy or not—Boyd didn’t think he needed to wait for Donna to say he’d atoned enough for being alive.
Chapter Twenty
THREE DAYS.That’s how long Mac said it would take to get the DNA analysis back from the lab. That was two days ago.
Morgan slouched down in the uncomfortable gray leather chair, legs sprawled in front of him, and watched Judge Nathan Fernfield be pointedly busy with something more important. It was the sort of power play Morgan supposed would work on lawyers or journalists, the great and the good who got past Fernfield’s stern red-haired assistant and into his office, but it didn’t work so well on someone like Morgan. He’d grown up poor and in the system. He’d hung around in ERs while his latest foster mom got her arm/his arm/the other kid they had stacked in the house’s arm set and plastered. He’d been cuffed to tables in police stations while he waited for the social worker, and he’d stood outside in the rain while he waited for the latest “uncle” who got horny when he drank to pass out.
Ten minutes in a lushly appointed office, his ass in a designer chair and a cup of coffee fresh from the secretary to drink, was not going to break him.
“Sorry about that,” Nathan said as he jabbed his finger down on the mouse button. He swung the chair around to face Morgan and smiled at him. “I have a lot going on at the moment.”
Morgan glanced around the office. There were blueprints rolled out on top of the coffee table in the corner of the room, its corners held down by awards, and a stack of neatly squared-off billboard posters leaned against the wall in the corner.
“I can see that,” he said. “You’re a busy man.”
Nathan leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands over his stomach. He hooked his thumbs over the belt buckle as he nodded.
“Cutter’s Gap was never the scope of my ambition,” he said. “I’m getting ready to run for the Supreme Court of Appeals. Funny enough, if your trial back in Huntington doesn’t go well, you might end up in front of me again.”
He laughed as though it were a joke. Morgan didn’t bother. He didn’t need Fernfield to likehim. The less he liked Morgan, the better. Maybe he’d pitch in an extra 20 percent to get rid of him faster.
“Don’t plan on it,” Morgan said. “You wanted me out of town. How much?”
Nathan tapped his thumbs against his buckle and ran his tongue over his thin lower lip as he stared at Morgan. After a second he pursed his mouth and pulled open the drawer in his desk. He pulled out a silver flask instead of a checkbook and held it up.
“Do you want a shot?” he asked as he leaned forward to splash some in his coffee. Morgan shook his head and watched as Nathan sat back and took a drink. “My grandfather was a waster and a bully, never held down a job for longer than it took him to get his hands in the till. My father had a bad heart, never did anything with his life but whine for my mother to solve his problems for him. I changed that. Now a Fernfield is going to be a justice on the Supreme Court of West Virginia. My son is going to open a luxury hotel where the Mill used to be, bring work and money back into this town. When people talk about Cutter’s Gap in a decade, I want them to say, ‘Isn’t that where the Fernfields started?’ Not ‘Isn’t that where that boy was murdered?’ I don’t really care about you—no offense—I just want the Calloway case to go away. We all did our part, more than our part, to find poor little Sammy, but I don’t intend to give up my future for some kid that never really, if we’re going to be honest, had one.”
He smiled all the way up to his eyes at Morgan. “So name your price.”
“Forty grand,” Morgan said. He grinned briefly when Nathan choked on his coffee. “It would have been twenty, but you convinced me you had more to lose than that.”
Nathan wiped his mouth. “Nice try,” he said. “Except I’m not paying for you to leave town, Mr. Graves. I canmakethat happen. One call to Huntington, and they’ll revoke your bail, drag you back in, and stick you in jail until it’s time for your trial. The money is for you to leave quietly before more shit gets flung over my town. A train that may have already left the station after your… display… with Boyd Maccabee when Calloway’s garage burned down.”
There was something about the way Nathan sneered when he talked about Boyd that made Morgan want to forget the money and just lay him out. It was, he reminded himself, the sort of impulse that had gotten him in this mess.
“So?” he said. “What’s your offer?”
“My only offer,” Nathan said and pulled his checkbook out. He scrawled the amount on it, signed it, and pushed it across the table. The checks had his face on them under a campaign hashtag. “Take it or leave it.”
Morgan took it. He just wasn’t sure what he was going to do with it. Not yet.
IT WAS4:00 a.m. when Boyd crawled into bed. So now it was three days. He smelled of smoke and sweat, and he yawned against Morgan’s neck as he pressed up against him. His cock nudged against Morgan’s ass, still soft but definitely there.
“Why is there a check for ten grand on the fridge?” Boyd asked as he draped his arm over Morgan’s hip. His hand grazed over Morgan’s stomach, casually intimate. It would have been less hot if he’d just grabbed Morgan’s cock.
Or maybe not, Morgan supposed as he let that idea flicker through his brain and his cock twitched against the sheets.
“Does it matter?” Morgan asked. “I told you you’d get your money back. Now you do. Some of it anyhow. Who cares how I got it?”
