Page 51 of Beneath the Stain

“Yeah,” Mackey muttered. “Hiding this shit is gonna be hard.”

“You know,” Trav said, feeling like a dog with a bone, “there’s a place where people are really fucking anonymous, and where you could heal your body and your soul.”

Mackey glared at him. “Rehab,” he muttered. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. All roads lead to rehab. I’m hearing you.”

“Do you hear me enough to go from here to rehab without passing go?”

Mackey thought about it and munched on some toast while his eggs and sausage congealed on the plate. Trav looked at the food getting ready to be wasted and sighed.

“Will you think about it more if I go get you a donut?”

Mackey looked up and just emanated sunshine. “Really? They have donuts? You’d get me one? Really?”

Trav swallowed hard. “Yeah, Mackey. I’ll go get you a couple—any preferences?”

His smile widened, pushing his cheeks up until his eyes squinted. Trav could see his overbite, and the crowding on the bottom, and the pure vulpine beauty of his features. “Apple fritters,” Mackey said, nodding. “Not pastries or danishes but fritters—do they have those?”

“I’m pretty sure—and if they don’t, I’ll go down the block, so I might be a few, but I’ll be back.”

That smile, sunshiny and surreal, stayed in place. “That’s awesome, Trav. Thanks!”

Trav nodded. He had to get the hell out of there, because he was suddenly not comfortable in his own skin. He tried to remember Terry, a grown-up, sitting across from him and eating cereal in his pajama bottoms and socks, but he couldn’t. There was too much sunshine in his eyes to see anything but Mackey.

“You’re welcome,” Trav said and practically bolted through the door. He had a sudden thought when his hand hit the frame, though, and he turned around. “Just, uhm, don’t go anywhere, okay?”

Mackey rolled his eyes. “My ass fuckin’ hurts, Trav. Where’m I gonna go?”

Great. There was some cold water right there.

“Yeah. Yeah—I’ll be back.”

He actuallydidhave to go to the donut shop down the block, and he came back with a dozen since he knew Mackey’s brothers would be by later. Jefferson—apparently the Trav/Outbreak Monkey liaison—texted telling Trav they’d be by to visit around noon. Trav asked for him to bring some of Mackey’s clothes—new ones, he specified, because he was tired of seeing Mackey ignore the new clothes on his own and go for the stuff that Kell had probably worn in the ninth grade—and then asked if Kell or Blake suspected the rape. He didn’t ask if Stevie or Shelia knew—he was going to assume they did.

No. But Blake is stoned already. Maybe him and Mackey should be roomies in rehab.

Trav grimly thought he’d have a look at Blake’s contract and see if he could force that issue. For one thing, putting Mackey and Blake in the same room for some deep soul-searching might be a way to keep Blake in the music business. Trav was pretty sure that without the family support the Sanders boys had, Blake wouldn’t last long if they kicked him out.

Trav refused to analyze his lack of regret at that thought—why losing Blake as lead guitarist didn’t pluck a single guilt string while having Mackey descend into the pit Trav had just pulled him out of annihilated him.

When he got back, Heath was there, carrying a suit bag for Trav and a knapsack for Mackey.

“God, did you just buy me clothes?” Trav asked. He set the pink donut box down so he could take the bag from Heath. The price tag still dangled from the hanger.

“How many old friends from the service do you think I have?” Heath muttered. “Now do you have a place you can clean up? Debra sent you a kit last night, but the nurse said you were too out of it to put on your jammies and brush your teeth. I can’t believe you went out like that. You look homeless.”

Trav groaned. He didn’t even want to look—he was pretty sure Heath was being nice.

“Animaniacs,” Mackey said, clearly delighted as he opened the knapsack and took out a brand new pair of pj’s. “Fuckin’ awesome! I ain’t seen these guys since I was a kid!” He took the pajamas from Heath and swung his legs around to stand up. A look of discomfort crossed his face, and he settled back up on the bed. “I’ll change into these after I eat my apple fritters,” he said, like he was fooling anyone. “Trav can help me into ’em—I’m feeling sort of weak.”

Trav met his eyes then, and the world stuttered. Weak, sore, and vulnerable. Trav nodded. Yeah, he understood. “Yeah, okay, Mackey. Let’s hear what Heath has to say while you eat, okay?”

What Heath had to say reflected pretty well on the LAPD, actually. For one thing, the recording studio had security cameras everywhere. The cops had a great shot of this Charleston guy drugging Mackey’s drink and another of him guiding an obviously out-of-it Mackey into the hallway. There weren’t any pictures from the outside of the building, but that didn’t matter—they had the guy’s DNA, and that was all they had to say before he’d called lawyer and the lawyer called deal.

“What’s the deal?” Trav asked grimly.

Heath looked at them both. “The deal is, you come down and sign as Mackey’s proxy—it’s in the contract you can do that for just such emergencies, so don’t worry, all real. And this guy goes in for three years, aggravated assault, and nobody breathes the rape charge—not him, not his lawyer, not anybody. But we’ve got his DNA on file—if he does it again, we’ve got him dead to rights.”

Mackey exhaled unhappily. He put his half-eaten apple fritter down on the little portable table. Trav wanted to sit there and feed it to him, bite by bite. “God. I hate that thought,” he muttered. “I hate it, like I’m a big fucking coward, taking the back door out.” He laughed grimly at his own pun. “Man, what kind of waste of fucking skin am I, I can’t fight on—”