by Wasp, A. E.
“I work—worked— for Charlie, the same way you all do. At least, I did when he was alive. And now I’m here to take care of you.”
“Was he blackmailing you, too?” Ridge asked.
“Actually… yes. At first.” Josie smiled, like the memory was a fond one. “I was running a con at a hotel in Chicago. Unfortunately for me, I picked Charlie as my mark.” She rolled her eyes. “Turned out Charlie was running a longer con. He let me get away with my game for a while, but when he need some help with his, he told me he was onto me, and if I didn’t help him out, he’d report me.”
She took a long swig of mimosa. “So, I helped him. He asked me to stay. I stayed. The end. Now your turns. Geek boy, you first.”
Wesley leaned back in his chair, sipping the champagne. His eyes were halfway closed, and I knew he wouldn’t be able to stay awake long. “Me?” he demanded, straightening.
“Yeah, you.”
“Um.” His eyes slid to Leo. “You can’t arrest me, right?”
“Not right now, I can’t.” Leo stared deadpan at him over the rim of his glass.
“Later?”
Leo shrugged.
“Boys,” Josie said. “Play nice. Nothing said here actually happened. It’s just a big game of what if.” She emptied her glass, then reached for the bottle.
Leo stared at her, then grudgingly nodded.
“I blacked out most of the Eastern seaboard last year.”
My jaw dropped.
“That was you?” Ridge asked, equally stunned. “Holy fuck! I owe you one, then. I was in the middle of a job, nabbing a painting that had gotten held up in a divorce dispute.”
There were nods and groans of commiseration up and down the table, and it occurred to me how much of our collective business had to do with people’s petty feuds.
“I was green as grass, and Murphy’s Law was in full effect. In the week since I’d cased the place, the owner had redone his security system and redecorated his entire fucking house, so all my exit routes were blocked. I thought I was dead for sure. Then all the lights went out, the security system, everything. Bam. Pitch black. That was the only thing that let me get away. I thought it was my guardian angel.” Ridge shook his head. “But I guess it was you.”
Wes snickered.
“So where does Charlie come in?” Carson wanted to know.
Wesley looked uncomfortable. He drained his mimosa, then twirled the glass between his palms. “I guess Charlie was impressed. He found me.”
“Of course he did,” Leo muttered. “Fucking found Zero.” He held out his cup for Josie to refill.
“And what did you do for him?” Ridge asked.
Wes raised one eyebrow. “Stuff. What about you?”
Ridge shrugged. “I’m a thief. Art mostly, jewels. Small, easy-to-steal stuff. Charlie tracked me down through this Albanian guy I’ve used as a fence. Needed me for a job. I needed money, he paid good. Pretty simple.”
Leo snorted.
“What about you, Agent Shook? How did you get invited to this party?”
Leo’s lips tightened into a hard line. “I’m not part of this. I’ve been tracking Charlie’s ass for years.” He shook his head. “Cat and mouse. Hopping all over the country. Every time I got close - and I got really close - he’d get away.”
I didn’t think I was imagining the faint hint of admiration in his voice.
“So what does Charlie have on you?” Ridge asked the question I was dying to know the answer to.
“Nothing.” Leo reached for a pastry.
“Bullshit,” Wesley said. “You wouldn’t be here if he didn’t.”
Leo tore small pieces off the flaky treat and tossed them to the small birds hopping around the deck, apparently not scared of us at all.
“Okay,” I said when it became clear he wasn’t going to answer. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is, are you going to help us?”
“Help do what?” Leo practically yelled with frustration. He lobbed the remains of the Danish at the poor birds, who took off in a quiet flap of wings. “None of this makes any sense. Why give Steele pictures of Pfeiffer having sex? What the hell are we supposed to take care of?”
“It’s not me,” Ridge said through clenched teeth. “It’s my twin brother, asshole. Breck Pfeiffer.”
“Sure it is,” Wesley said. “The mysterious identical twin.”
Ridge scowled. I was pretty sure only Josie’s presence between them kept him from hitting Wesley.
“Eat more,” Josie said, nudging his plate toward him. She turned to Wes. “You, too. More eating, less fighting.”
Wes obediently shoveled more food into his mouth. Then he grabbed his phone and started typing.
“Do you have the pictures with you?” Leo asked me.
“Yeah. I figured we’d need them.” I picked the envelope up off the ground where I’d set it and pulled the pictures out. I looked through them, passing each one around the table as I finished. There were twenty-six full-color pictures in all. There were no clear pictures of the old man’s face. “These look like surveillance photos, taken from a distance with a long lens. From the grain, I’d go out on a limb and say they were from a film camera. What do you guys think?”
Leo and Wesley flipped through the pictures. “It could be,” Leo said.
“I can almost guarantee it.” Wesley held the photos up to the sun, tilted it back and forth. “They look chemically developed, not done on a printer.” He rubbed a finger across the face. “Yes. These are film.”
“Okay. So, what?” I asked. “What are we supposed to do? Why are we supposed to care who is screwing who?”
“Because it’s my brother, jackass!” Ridge said hotly. “He’s in college, for fuck’s sake. George Washington, up in D.C. He’s supposed to be doing some kind of fucking internship this summer, not…. not… whatever the fuck that is.” He waved a hand at the pictures in disgust.
“You wanna get on your brother’s case, that’s your business. I’m still not seeing how that’s a problem for us, man.”
“Can’t you just call him and ask what the pictures are about?” Wesley said, not looking up from his phone. Whoever he was texting, they were exchanging messages fast and furiously. His fingers flew over the surface.
“You think I didn’t try that?” Ridge retorted. “I’ve texted him a thousand times, no reply. My calls are going right to voicemail, and his mailbox is full. That’s why I’m going to Washington and find out what the fuck is going on. Make him stop doing … that.”
“Having a threesome with an ugly old guy?” I asked. “I mean, it’s a questionable life choice for sure, though the other kid is cute enough. But maybe the guy’s got bucks. Or he’s dynamite in the sack. Maybe your brother wanted a little strange. Maybe he was drunk.” I snapped my fingers excitedly. “Maybe he’s a professor and your brother’s blowing him for money!”
Leo balled up a napkin and threw it at my head.
“What?” I demanded. “I saw it in a porn once. Or…” I coughed. “Maybe more than once.”
Carson groaned.
“My point is, who gives a shit who he sleeps with? If he’s doing it for fun, that’s his concern. If he had too much to drink and made some bad choices, he’ll learn from them. If he’s doing it for money, more power to him.” I shrugged. “I don’t get my panties in a wad about where a man chooses to stick his dick.” I looked at the pictures again. “Or, uh… chooses to have someone else’s dick stuck.”
“No,” Ridge said, shaking his head resolutely. “No way is Breck doing that voluntarily. Someone is making him.”
“I think Steele has a point. Maybe he’s doing it for the money,” Leo said. “Wouldn’t be the first good-looking kid to do that. And nothing about these pictures speaks to things being involuntary. Even this one, where it looks like your brother’s passed out and the old guy is slapping the other kid…” Leo hesitated. “If I’m honest, it looks like a slapping kink. And your brother looks like maybe he had too much
to drink.”
“No offense, Ridge, but if that really is your identical twin brother, he could be making bank. Especially if he’s doing it in pairs. Fucking gorgeous, the both of you. People would pay a lot for that,” Carson added.
“No,” Ridge insisted. “He doesn’t need the money. I made sure of it. His whole job is to graduate. I take care of the money.”
“Well, actually,” Wesley said slowly. “From what I’m looking at right now, maybe he does need the money.”
“What?” Ridge said.
“I just ran a profile on him. Your brother is broke, Ridge. And he’s taken a leave of absence from school for next semester. Great grades though, before. 3.8 GPA.”
Ridge’s jaw dropped, then he shut it so hard I was afraid he was going to break a tooth. The anger in his eyes promised a less than friendly family reunion was in the cards.
“I thought your equipment was still in Chicago?” I asked. “How’d you find that so fast?”
He held up his phone and shook it. “Turbo charged phone loaded with my own custom decryption software. Don’t leave home without it.”
“I know Charlie,” Leo said. “Probably better than anyone here, except maybe Josie. He wouldn’t be sending us to D.C. just to stop some guy from selling his ass. No offense. There has to be more than this. If it was just about your brother, why give the assignment to Steele? There’s something more going on here.”
“I agree,” Carson said. “That is much too straightforward for Charlie. He wasn’t blackmailing the guy, I assume.” His accent came and went. I could hear bits of Josie’s drawl and Wesley’s broad vowels sneaking into his pronunciation.
We all looked at Josie. She shrugged. “Don’t look at me. No one knew all the pies Charlie had his fingers in.”
“Great,” Ridge said. “Just fucking great.”
Josie sat up straight. “I’m sure he had a good reason for this. Charlie was a good man.”
We all snorted at that.
“He was,” she insisted.
“He was a criminal,” Leo said. “Like everyone at this table. And I am including you,” he said to Josie.
She grinned. “I didn’t say he was an honest, law-abiding man. I said he was a good man. You can be both.”
Leo’s eyes narrowed, and I could see him fighting to keep the words in. Not in Leo’s world, you couldn’t.
“Josie, is there any more information? Does Miranda know anything?”
“No. That’s it. Pretty sure there are limits to what she can know without being disbarred.” Josie smiled to herself. “Though I’m pretty sure if he was still around, Miranda might kill Charlie herself.”
“Charlie has that effect on people,” Leo said. He blinked. “Had. Had that effect.”
“We’re all spinning our wheels here. I need to get my brother,” Ridge stood up. “I have ways of tracking him, and I’ll go alone if I have to. Miranda said we could use Charlie’s plane.”
“Josie, fuel the jet!” I waved my hand imperiously. “I’ve always wanted to say that. But seriously, we have nothing else to go on. Looks like we’re going to get Ridge 2.0.”
Leo pushed his chair back and stood up. “I’ll run these photos through some facial recognition, see if we can’t find out who the brown-haired guy is.”
“You think the other kid could be Charlie’s target?” I handed over the photos I still held. “Not the old guy?”
“Could be both of them,” Leo said. “You know how it is. No one is too young to go bad.”
Yeah. I knew. “Come on, Angel-Face, you and I can clean up and come up with some sort of plan. Josie, can you make arrangements for us to fly into D.C. under the radar as soon as possible?”
She nodded.
“One thing,” I said to Ridge as we started loading up the dirty dishes. “I’m a man of limited but very specialized skills. There’s only one reason civilians hire me, and unlike your brother, it’s not for my looks. Either Charlie thinks you, or Breck, or possibly both of you, need protection, or someone needs to be roughed up.” Or worse. I really hoped it wasn’t worse. I’d die happy if I never had to take another life. I used deadly force only as an ultimate, last resort, and everyone who hired me knew it.
“But who?” Ridge asked. “Who is Charlie looking to take down?”
Leo and I shared a look. Neither of us wanted to say it, but old men in bed with young boys brought up too many bad memories. Including some I worked very, very hard to keep down.
“Let’s go get your brother,” Leo said, “and find out.”
4 Breck
I finished making the cup of lemon tea in Chad’s otherwise barren kitchen and immediately regretted it. My stomach was too knotted up to handle even that. Chad’s apartment no longer felt safe. I imagined Cisco’s eyes tracking my every movement as I gathered my clothes and put them in a bag.
I’d head to Rock Creek Park, I decided. Danny had once mentioned that he liked to walk there. And since I’d exhausted all the likely places to find him, it was time to start searching the unlikely ones.
I grabbed my tea off the counter and headed to the living room to dump the cooled mixture on Chad’s ficus.
The knock on the door startled me so badly, I spilled tea-water all over the floor.
“Maintenance, Mr. McMickles!”
Poor Chad. If I’d grown up with a name like McMickles, I’d probably be an asshole, too.
“Uh. Busy now! Come back later,” I called. Much later, like after I’d left.
“Emergency,” the maintenance man insisted.
Damn it. “No hablo ingles!”
“Open la puerta, Señor...McMickles?”
Shit. Figured they spoke rudimentary Spanish.
I crept through the kitchen toward the door and peeked through the peephole, but all I could see was the base of the man’s neck and the blue, button-down uniform that maintenance guys wore.
How fucking tall was this guy? Or was I just particularly short?
I took a step back.
“I’m having sex!” I cried. “Oh, God! Oh, fuck. I’m sooooo clooooose!” My fake pleasure-moans were on point, if I did say so myself.
There was a momentary pause, but then, “Sir, water is pouring into the apartment downstairs, and we think it’s coming from your air conditioner!”
Fuck. That could be true. That thing had to be gushing out water, cold as it was in here.
I hesitated. It would have been nearly impossible for Cisco to have traced my phone here this fast. And no one else knew I was here.
When in doubt, do the thing least likely to arouse suspicion.
I undid the deadbolt and opened the door… and all I could think was whoa.
Like, whoa, this guy was tall. As in Jason-Momoa-tall. And the peephole had not done justice to the breadth of his chest, which almost filled the fucking doorframe. They built the maintenance guys like Aquaman around here.
Then whoa again, because when I stopped staring at his chest and finally lifted my eyes to his face, he was grinning at me like I was the coolest thing he’d ever seen, teeth bright white against his tan skin. And while I was used to guys finding me sexy — that was literally my job — the looks they gave me were usually possessive and covetous and hard, nothing like this warm amusement that suggested Aquaman and I were sharing a joke.
And then whoa one more time, because the dude licked his lips and said, “So… was it good?” in this deep, raspy voice that reminded me of the radio announcer on the easy listening station back in Alamosa, and damn if I hadn’t laid in my bed at night back in high school, listening to fucking clarinet solos and power ballads, just so I could jerk off to David Tremaine telling me tomorrow’s weather forecast between songs. This man was a walking orgasm, and I felt a stab in my gut I barely recognized as lust since it had been so long since I’d felt it.
“W-what?” I stuttered.
“The sex,” he said, leaning against the doorframe and leering at me like no maintenance man outside porn ever
would. “Was it good?” How did he manage to make a good ole boy accent sexy?
Somewhere beneath the lust-filled part of my brain, distant alarm bells began to ring.
“Get out of the way, Alvarez,” a distinctly familiar, distinctly un-sexy voice carped, before another body pushed forward, elbowing Aquaman in the gut. “And for God’s sake, turn the pheromones off. Some of us are trying to breathe.”
It was like looking at my own damning gaze in the mirror as Ridge shook his head at me. “What the fuck have you done, little brother?”
I stepped back, stunned. “How did you find me?”
He rolled his eyes and strode past me into the apartment. “Psychic twin powers.”
“Bullshit.”
“Better question, dumbass,” he said, hands on his hips, “is why are you hiding?”
I snapped my mouth shut and ran both hands through my hair, leaning back against the kitchen counter. I closed my eyes.
The tuba player upstairs was still practicing, and if there was a god, when I opened my eyes, I’d have somehow been transported upstairs. I cautiously lifted my lids and found Alvarez leaning back against the door with his arms crossed and his eyes still warm on mine.
He winked.
“Imagine my surprise,” my brother continued, “when I got to that apartment in Georgetown I paid for, only to find that you hadn’t been living there since January.” He was angry. I’d known he would be. But he was disappointed too, and I hated that.
I bit my lip. “I… needed a change of scenery. I’ve been subletting.” More like crashing in random cars and benches around campus, grabbing hotel rooms when it was really cold.
“Yeah? A change of scenery? That why the school says you’ve taken a leave of absence for next semester?”
“You went to the school?” My eyes widened, and I took a threatening step toward him. “You had no right to pry into my life, Ridge!”
“My paying your tuition says I do.” He closed the distance between us like he was ready to throw down right there, right then. He’d do it, too. Neither one of us was the type to back down from a fight.
Aquaman put a hand on Ridge’s shoulder, and oh my god the glare he got in return. Ridge was not a fan.
