“He’s been abusing children his entire life.”

“I know what he’s done.”

“I don’t touch the kids,” Reynold cried from the bed at Larkin’s back.

“Shut up,” Larkin ordered, turning his head long enough to address Reynold. He looked at Doyle again and pointed to the open door. “Get out.”

“Evie—”

“Right the fuck now, Ira.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Larkin found his Audi parked on the third floor of the hospital’s parking complex at West 165th Street.

More specifically, he found the Audi wedged between a matte black Hummer and silver Subaru Outback, with Doyle sitting on the concrete, back against the passenger door, knees drawn up and elbows resting atop. His portfolio bag lay discarded near the Audi’s front bumper, like he’d chucked it upon reaching the vehicle and really didn’t care how it landed.

Larkin’s derbies grated against the uneven surface as he moved into the stall. He tugged his trouser legs up before crouching and lowering himself to the ground beside Doyle, their shoulders close but not touching. He stared at his vague, distorted outline bouncing back from the body of the minivan. Just a blob of ash-blond sitting atop of bigger blob of charcoal gray. The silence between them was punctuated only by the distant honking of rush-hour traffic on the street below and the occasional echo of a car doing loops throughout the complex, looking for that one available parking spot the garage employee swore was still available.

Doyle asked, “Is Reynold pressing charges?”

“I don’t think so,” Larkin answered. “I explained prison social hierarchies to him and where among inmates molesters found themselves. I told him I’d need his full and absolute cooperation if I was to put in any good word about keeping him isolated from the general population.”

They were both quiet again.

From the street, someone yelled, “Hey, hey, hey, fuck you!”

Larkin closed his eyes.

—sandy-brown hair highlighted in gold, his freckled skin wet and sparkling like a hundred thousand diamonds, the stubble on his chin dark after a few days’ growth, but it made his profile more handsome, more adult—

Larkin opened his eyes. The intruding and disjointed memories brought on from the tase were still behaving erratically, ballooning bigger and bigger like those toys that grew up to 300 percent their original size—just add water! He felt beaten down, wrung out, his inside glass and outside lead, but when he glanced sideways, it was Doyle sitting beside him.

Doyle.

Not Patrick.

A few unexpected tears slid down Larkin’s cheeks and he hastily batted them away.

Doyle’s mouth was clenched shut, the muscles in his jaw and neck pronounced, like he wanted to scream, needed to scream, but knew it’d fall on deaf ears, so what the hell was even the point? The moment was dragged out into the light, its soft underbelly a mark for violence in this cruel world. It was likely a matter of mere seconds before Doyle would inevitably curl into himself for protection, dig a hole to bury his shame and guilt, hiding everything under a smile of sunshine and jubilance up to heaven.