"Jack?"
No answer.
She was pretty sure he was in there somewhere. In fact, now she could hear him breathing hard as if he'd been running a long, hard race, and all of it uphill. She pushed the door open the rest of the way to see more of the room. At first, she didn't see him, but then she saw his legs on the ground on the far side of the sofa.
Her concern for Jack overrode the last of her caution. She tiptoed into the room, which looked as if a tornado had ripped through the place.
"Jack, are you all right?"
"Oh, yeah, I'm just dandy. Can't you tell?"
His voice was pure gravel, but at least he'd answered. She stepped around the scattered weights and other stuff he'd tossed on the floor. When she finally saw him, she gasped. He looked as if he'd aged ten years since yesterday, and his pretty green eyes looked as if he were staring straight into hell.
"What happened in here, Jack?"
He laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound. "What's the matter, Caitlyn, don't you like what I've done with the place? And I worked so hard on it too."
She ignored his sarcasm. "If you don't want to tell me why you tore the place up, at least tell me that Ricky is all right."
Because it was clear that something horrible had happened to the boy. She couldn't imagine anything else would have set Jack off like this.
"He will be, no thanks to me."
Jack drew his knees up and hid his face on his crossed arms. "He's back in the hospital."
Caitlyn collapsed on the ground right next to him. Moving slowly, she stroked the back of his head. "Talk to me. Tell me what happened."
The silence dragged on for what felt like forever. Finally, he lifted his head and waved his hand around to point out the mess in the room. "You should go, Caitlyn. Don't get caught up in the chaos that follows me everywhere."
His eyes were looking a bit feral, but she wouldn't retreat now. Moving her hand in slow circles on his back, she kept her voice calm. "I repeat, tell me what happened. I can't help if you don't talk to me."
Jack shook off her hand as he surged up to his feet and began pacing back and forth in the small area of floor that was clear of debris. "Ricky took off sometime before dawn this morning. The little shit packed up a bunch of his clothes and other stuff and then just disappeared."
He paused to stare out the window. "I should've known something was wrong when he didn't get up to go out on the job site with me. Mom said she'd heard him moving around a couple of times during the night. We thought maybe he was feeling under the weather or something. So instead of going upstairs and checking on him like I should have, I went off to work like nothing was wrong."
No wonder he was beating himself up. "Jack, you couldn't have known he'd leave like that. You're not a mind reader. For Pete's sake, anyone could see that he's been happy living here with you and your mom."
Jack's broad shoulders were rigid with tension. "That's just it. On some level I did know, Caitlyn. I've wondered all along if he'd leave once the cast was off his arm, and he could take care of himself again. Yesterday afternoon, he and Tino and I tuned up Dad's truck together. We were teaching him just the same way Joe taught us. Everything went fine right up until the end. Then it was like someone flipped a switch, and the kid walked away. He didn't say what was bothering him, and I didn't ask. He seemed distracted all evening."
"Again, Jack, you couldn't have known what he was thinking."
Some of Jack's temper came roaring back. "Don't make excuses for me. I should've known … should've done something … anything that would've kept his bastard of a stepfather from getting his hands on Ricky again."
Oh, dear God, no wonder Jack looked so broken up inside. Her own heart hurt for both the boy in the hospital and the man standing in front of her. She'd never seen anyone so in need of a hug even if he'd be the last person on earth to admit it. Pushing herself up off the floor, she joined him at the window. Even without touching him, she could feel the waves of heat and frustration pouring off his body.
"So how did the man find him?"
Jack shoved his hands in his pockets. "Just as we suspected, Ricky's mother lives in the area, but his real father died several years ago. The two of them struggled financially after his death. From what we can tell, she married this guy Lawrence, who dragged them up here from California. As it happens all too often, the man liked the woman but not her kid. When she had to choose between them, she chose the meal ticket instead of her son. To make sure Ricky got the message that he was no longer wanted in the fabulous new life they were building together, Lawrence damn near killed the kid. That's when Ricky ended up in the hospital the last time."
Now Caitlyn was furious. "What kind of monster would choose an animal like that guy over her own child?"
"Not everyone is as strong as you are."
"Don't go making excuses for her, Jack. I'd give anything-anything-to have a son like him, but that woman threw Ricky away like he was a piece of trash."
Now she was the one who needed that hug, but Jack wrapped his arms across his chest and moved farther away from her. "Long story, short, Ricky went to see her this morning to give her one final chance to step up and be his mother for real again. I think he knew what the outcome would be, but it's hard to give up on a parent for good, no matter how awful they are. True to form, the woman ran him off and then called her new husband to let him know that Ricky had come back."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees. "He caught Ricky, didn't he?"
Not that she really needed to ask. The answer was written in the grim set of Jack's mouth and the pain in his eyes. "He did, but not before Ricky called me to come get him. By the time I tracked them down, the guy had already smacked him around some, but I managed to get him off the kid. My brother had called the police, who took the bastard into custody."
"How badly hurt was Ricky?"
"He's got a swollen jaw and a concussion along with a whole new crop of bruises. The cops are pressing charges against both the mother and the stepfather, so they wanted the doctors to do a full assessment of Ricky's injuries. The doctors also wanted to keep him overnight for observation to make sure the concussion isn't serious. Mom and Tino are with him right now."
He glanced back at the mess behind them. "I held it together until we got him admitted, but then I needed to get away before I lost it completely."
"Are you okay now?"
"No, so you need to leave. I'm not safe to be around, which is what I'm going to tell Ricky's caseworker when she calls."
Caitlyn grabbed his arm. "Don't do that, Jack, at least not until you've had time to think it through."
"There's nothing to think about." He stared down at her hand on his arm as if it were some kind of parasite. "The men in my family-my real family-were all little better than animals. I'm no different."
Was he crazy? Her guilt over having considered calling Mrs. Harkens, the caseworker, herself only fueled her temper. "That's crap, Jack McShane, and we both know it. You're a good man, the best I've ever known. I feel safe with you. After being married to a bastard like Josh, do you know how hard it was for me to let someone get close to me again?"
He clearly wasn't in the mood to hear it. "But-"
She stopped him. "No buts, Jack. If you were like the other men in your family, you would have never taken in a kid like Ricky in the first place, and those people were never your real family anyway. If you weren't such a good man, Marlene and Tino wouldn't love you as much as they do."
Jack kept shaking his head in denial. "But I didn't keep Ricky safe. He was going to leave."
"And it hurts to know that, Jack, but he's a kid. We both know they don't always think things through. When he did, who did he call to come get him? You, Jack, nobody else. He knew you were the one person in the world who would come running no matter what, the one person who understands him better than anyone else could."
His eyes looked so bleak. "If that's true, why did he take off in the first place? Why didn't he trust me to help him deal with his mother and stepfather?"
Clearly he thought that was his trump card. She wasn't buying it, not for one second. "I'll tell you why. It's because the person who should love him the most, the one who should want him no matter how bad things get, told him he wasn't worth keeping around. That kind of rejection can screw you up in so many ways."
Jack sneered. "How would you know? Your parents might be on your case to date again, but you've never once said they didn't love you."