by Gregory Ashe
Then he nodded.
They drove six blocks to Matty’s building, where blue-and-red police lights strobed the street. Shaw pulled the Mercedes to the curb and studied the scene. Two cars were pulled up in front of the lofts: one was a black-and-white patrol car with its lights awhirl. The other was a gray Chevy Impala with both doors open. An unmarked car, Shaw was willing to guess. For detectives. And why had two detectives shown up so quickly at a call about a possible B and E?
Shaw didn’t know the answer, but he had a pretty good guess about who the two detectives were.
“Come on,” he said, squeezing Matty’s knee. “Let’s go inside and see what they found.”
Matty hesitated with his hand on the door.
“It’s ok,” Shaw said. “I told you I’d keep you safe, didn’t I?”
Matty smiled tentatively. “You didn’t tell me that. Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“No.” Matty pulled his lower lip between his teeth again. “But I’d like you to.”
“I’ll keep you safe, Matty.”
Matty’s smile flickered in and out, and he brushed at his eyes, and he nodded. He opened the door.
When they reached the double security doors, Detective Jadon Reck was squatting and snapping pictures of the lock and showing off an ass like two soccer balls stuffed into very expensive trousers. He glanced at them, snapped a few more pictures, and then he stood, stretching both arms over his head, exposing the powerful lines that lay hidden under his suit.
For a moment, North’s reaction to Jadon came back to Shaw: All that playing with your hair and batting your eyelashes, you were working him for information. Right? And then the way North had kept saying Jadon’s name like a dog shaking a bone.
Jadon was all right to look at, Shaw guessed. Jadon was fine. He still looked like a pro athlete who had crossed over to sit behind a desk: the suit couldn’t really disguise the packed-on muscle, and his jawline could have cut steel. That dark blond hair was gelled up like a guy trying to blend into a frat-boy lineup. He wasn’t Shaw’s type, of course—and that thought slammed into Shaw like a foul ball, flying so hard and low off the playing field that it knocked the wind out of him for a moment.
“Well, well, well,” Jadon said, stretching again, and holy Christ did he have a fucking 28 waist or something? Jadon grinned, and Shaw knew he had caught Shaw looking. “Did you change your mind about dinner?”
“What’s going on here, Detective?”
Jadon’s dark eyebrows quirked at detective like he’d caught Shaw saying a dirty word, and the playfulness left his voice—but not his eyes. “That’s exactly what we wanted to talk to Mr. Fennmore about. This is Mr. Fennmore, I assume.”
Matty shoved his hands deeper into his cardigan, twisting the sweater, and nodded.
“Well, Mr. Fennmore, what’s going on? You called 911, and we got here as fast as we could, but where have you been?”
“Excuse me?” Shaw said. “What are you doing?”
Jadon blinked. “I’m asking a few questions.”
“You’re interrogating him.”
The playfulness died in Reck’s—that was the only way Shaw could think of him now, as Reck, not Jadon—eyes. “Not at all. I’m just trying to establish what happened. Mr. Fennmore?”
So Matty talked through a disjointed account of what had happened, repeating parts Shaw had already heard, expanding in a few places where Reck probed, but adding nothing that helped to explain why someone might have been following him—or why someone might have tried to break into his loft. And those, of course, were the only questions Shaw cared about.
“I’d really appreciate it if you could accompany us back to the station,” Reck began.
“He’s had a horrible day,” Shaw said, taking Matty’s arm and interposing himself between them. “A horrible week, actually. I’d like to get my client some clothes and toiletries and then get him somewhere safe. Somewhere he can sleep.”
“A hotel?” Reck said, and there was absolutely nothing in his tone, nothing in the word, nothing in his face except a slight, mocking crease above those dark blond eyebrows and a crinkle of laugh lines around dark eyes. The implication still connected like a slap in the face.
“Fuck you.”
“Shaw,” Matty whispered, plucking at Shaw’s shirt.
Reck held up his hands in protest. “Did I say something wrong?”
“You show up here, you fucking bully my client right in front of me when he’s done nothing wrong, you insinuate—”
“Shaw,” Matty wheezed, clutching a handful of Shaw’s shirt like he was trying to rein him in.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Aldrich. I think we’ve had a miscommunication.”
“Will you move? We’re getting his stuff and then leaving. If you need to talk to him again, you can do it tomorrow.”
Reck eased out of their path, but he trailed after them, his footsteps surprisingly quiet for a man so big. He rode the elevator up with them. He was humming something, and when Shaw recognized it, his blood pounded in his ears. The song was “Oh, Pretty Woman.” Shaw shot a furious glance at Reck, and Reck’s eyes crinkled again, and his shoulders lifted in a micro-shrug, and he burst into a full-on whistle.
When the doors opened, Shaw grabbed Matty’s arm and hustled him toward the loft so fast that he wasn’t sure Matty’s feet were even touching the ground. But he didn’t care; he needed to get out of here.
At the loft’s door, Detective Barr stood in their way, his chin jutting out toward them, his bushy little goatee glaring like carbon filaments under the hallway fluorescents.
“We’ve already talked to your asshole partner,” Shaw said. “And we’ve already done the whole song and dance, so he’s going to get some of his stuff and we’re going to leave.”
Barr glanced past Shaw at Reck and must have seen some kind of confirmation because he stepped aside. When Shaw tried to step into the apartment, Barr slapped a hand into his chest. It cracked against Shaw’s chest too hard, stung too much, for it not to have been meant to hurt.
“Just him,” Barr said. “We don’t want to contaminate the scene further.”
“That’s fucking ridiculous. You’re not doing some sort of CSI bullshit. You’re poking through his underwear and probably building your own private jerk-off collection—”
Barr’s face purpled, and he squared his shoulders and balled his fists. “Kid, I know who you are. And I know what you fucking owe me. I caught that son of a bitch, all right? The one that carved you up, I caught him. Me. You ought to be on your knees thanking me.”
“You caught a homeless man with substance abuse problems,” Shaw said. In his mind, the darkness of the alley rose like floodwaters. “You caught a guy who shouldn’t have been allowed to stand trial because he’s out of his mind.” Inside that darkness, Shaw could still see the glint of a gold tooth. A smile, he thought. The Slasher had smiled as he cut open Carl. The dark waters were higher now, and Shaw was struggling to breathe. “There wasn’t any fucking material evidence that put him at any of the attacks—”
“Listen here, you stupid piece of shit,” Barr said.
“Go,” Reck said from behind Shaw. “I’ll take care of this one.”
For a moment, Barr looked like he might continue. Then Matty squeezed past him, and Barr followed, slamming the door shut. The noise clapped down the hallway like a gunshot.
Reck took Shaw’s arm.
“Get your hand off me before I break it.”
“Will you come down here, then? Away from there?”
“Worried your partner’s going to punch me?”
“Worried you’ve got some kind of psychic yoga shit that you’re going to hit him with. You’ve got really scrawny legs, but what do I know? Maybe you can strangle a guy with them.”
For some reason, that made Shaw crack a smile, and he let Reck tug him toward the elevator. Reck put him in a corner, standing so close Shaw could
smell the wool suit and the sporty cologne, so close that when Reck kept a grip on his arm and Shaw looked up into Reck’s dark eyes, he had the strange, dizzying notion that Reck was going to drag him up and kiss him.
Those crinkles were back. “You’ve kind of got a temper, don’t you?”
“Only when assholes are harassing someone I care about.”
“You’re protective.” Reck nodded. “That’s adorable.”
“It’s not adorable. It’s masculine. It’s butch.”
Reck nodded again. “It’s those hemp pants. They really scream butch.”
“What am I supposed to wear? A tailored Brooks Brothers suit—don’t even try to pretend you bought that off the rack—and Under Armour compression shorts?”
“They stay dry.”
“Maybe you should buy a white shirt that isn’t see through.”
“Maybe. But sometimes I like people looking. The right person, I mean.”
“So you’re a slut as well as a bully.”
“You’re the one who’s looking.”
And fuck if he wasn’t right. Fuck if Jadon Reck wasn’t right because this close, with his jacket falling open, with that translucent white dress shirt practically pasted to his chest, Jadon Reck might as well have been naked from the waist up: Shaw could count each fucking ab, could trace the hard ridges of his pecs, could see the dark, wide buds of his nipples. Big nipples on a big guy.
“You’ve kind of got a mouth to go with that temper, don’t you?” Reck’s crinkles were back. “Did you have something else you wanted to say?”
Shaw did. He just couldn’t think of what it was. The heat coming off Reck was like a sauna, boiling all the oxygen out of the air. Reck was actually leaning down. His fingers were tightening on Shaw’s arm—painful, but also exhilarating. He wouldn’t kiss Shaw, not here, not while he was working, would he? He didn’t even know Shaw. Hadn’t even talked to him more than twice. Hadn’t—
His jaw scraped Shaw’s, the stubble igniting like fireworks, and he whispered into Shaw’s ear, breath hot, “Now be a good boy and tell daddy exactly what you know about your client.”
“Oh fuck.” Shaw wrested his arm free, planted a hand on Reck’s chest—the skin under that translucent shirt felt like magma—and shoved him back a step. “Oh fuck.”
“Too much?” Reck asked with those crinkles back.
“Oh fuck you.”
“I wasn’t sure. You’ve got a vibe. I thought maybe it was a daddy thing.”
“Oh fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck me. And most definitely fuck you.” Shaw tried to push past, but Reck corralled him easily with one big arm. “Get the fuck off me, or this is going to be a police brutality report on the front of the Post-Dispatch.”
“Butch cop strangled to death by chicken legs,” Reck said. “Ok, I admit, I misread the vibe. Just hold on. Hold on, would you?”
“What do you want?”
“I’m serious. What do you know about Fennmore?”
This time, absent the shock of Reck’s earlier question, the meaning of the words filtered into Shaw’s mind. He shook his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m asking because I’m worried.” Then, after seeming to weigh something internally, Reck added, “About you.”
“I’m a big boy. I don’t need a daddy. Particularly not one who is probably younger than me. And anything I know about my client is confidential information.”
Reck stared down Shaw with another mocking slant to his dark blond brows, but all he said was, “Do you do much investigation into your own clients, Shaw?”
“That’s Mr. Aldrich.”
“Do you, Mr. Aldrich? Before you take a case? Or after? Do you want to know who you’re working for?”
Shaw could feel his cheeks heating. “I’ve got a better question: what are two detectives for the Metropolitan police doing investigating a breaking and entering call?”
“We’re trying to raise our customer satisfaction scores.”
“What’s going on, Reck?”
“Call me Jadon.”
“What’s going on, Reck? First you’re at Mark Sevcik’s apartment, hiding out and waiting. How long were you there? Hours? Days? And who were you waiting for? Not Sevcik—that’s pretty obvious. There’d been a break-in at Sevcik’s. Someone was obviously trying to find something—maybe Sevcik, maybe something else. You and Barr try to pump us for information about our client. You dropped just enough hints about blackmail to get us interested, but you wouldn’t have done that unless you thought we knew something you didn’t. Now, miraculously, here you are responding to a random 911 call. That’s some pretty excellent work by the Metropolitan PD.”
The crinkles around Reck’s eyes smoothed, and he buttoned his jacket. Those honey-dark eyes ran circles on Shaw’s face, looking for something. “All right. We’re working a case. It’s a big deal.”
Shaw rolled his eyes.
“It is,” Reck said. “And we think Mark Sevcik is involved. In fact, we pretty much know he’s involved.”
“I already knew all of that. What’s the case?”
Another of those internal judgments passed, and Reck nodded. “Blackmail.”
“I’ve heard this one before; give me something new. Who’s being blackmailed?”
“Quite a number of people, actually.”
“You?”
Reck laughed, and the sound was so loud and so genuine that Shaw actually grinned in automatic response before he could force the expression off his face. “No. My first time was with a very, very, very good-looking summer ranch hand named Robbie Phillips, and it was in a hayloft in Iowa. After Robbie went back to Stanford, I never heard from him again.”
“Robbie Phillips?”
“Very, very, very, very good looking.”
“In a hayloft?”
“Itchy. I don’t recommend it.”
“Unless Robbie Phillips is available.”
“Not anymore. I found him on Facebook, and his thirties hit him harder than a dump truck.”
“So your first was older than you?” Shaw plucked at his Lululemon shirt. “I guess that explains why you’ve got a thing for older men.”
The crinkles were back, and Reck nodded slowly, his eyes raking Shaw up and down.
“This has something to do with firsts? Is that it?”
Another slow nod. Heat prickled across Shaw’s chest.
“I’m not going to break my client’s confidentiality,” Shaw said. “But I can tell you that I’m working a case that sounds similar.”
“First-time sexual encounters videotaped and then used as blackmail material?”
Shaw nodded.
“You’re not going to tell me that Matty Fennmore is a victim.”
Shaw shook his head. “No comment.”
“And you’re not going to recommend to this client, even if he happens to be a very pretty twink that you tote around like you keep him in your pocket, that he go to the police.”
“We advise all our clients to go to the police with legal issues.”
“Of course.”
Shaw shrugged.
“There are a lot of people on the hook for this investigation, Mr. Aldrich. Some of them are important people. Some of them aren’t. Either way, I’m going to find the asshole who did this and make sure he pays for it.”
“Because you’re a tough guy,” Shaw said. “I get it.”
“Because this guy took the most vulnerable moment of an already-vulnerable population and turned it against them. Because that’s the kind of thing monsters do. And because yeah, I am a tough guy, and I’m going to find this monster and rip his head off.”
It shouldn’t have sounded hot. But it kind of did.
At the end of the hall, the door to Matty’s loft clicked open, and Reck spun away from Shaw as smooth as silk. Matty emerged into the hallway, dragging a roller suitcase behind him, and he paused and studied the two of them, twist
ing the hem of his cardigan.
“It’s ok,” Shaw said. “He only looks like an asshole.”
Reck had a little smirk on his face like he thought he’d scored a point.
“He’s really just an enormous, gaping, monster dick.”
“Keep talking about Daddy’s dick,” Reck whispered as Matty trudged toward them.
Shaw, for some reason he couldn’t articulate, found himself blushing like crazy as he shepherded Matty into the elevator.
Reck watched them, and as the doors closed, he called, “Make sure you find him a nice . . . hotel.”
Shaw tried really, really hard not to flip Reck the bird.
He lost.
Chapter 19
You can sleep on the sofa,” Shaw said, pointing across the bedroom to the hall. When Matty had dragged his bag off the landing, Shaw shut the door with his hip and locked it. “You are now officially in the safest bedroom in America.”
Matty paused, taking in the room. His hesitation made Shaw take a second look, and now he glimpsed the space through fresh eyes. He stumbled over to the bed and tried to shake the sheets out of the tangled ball they had become. “The sofa’s really comfortable,” Shaw said, twisting the knotted bedding. “And the bathroom—” If anything, he was making things worse, so he dropped the balled-up sheets and sprinted over to the standing mirror, plucked the sock from the top, and hid it behind his back. “The bathroom is right there, first door, so you can . . .”
Instead of moving toward the bathroom, Matty walked a circuit of the room. He glanced at the dresser and the two translations of Faust that Shaw had propped on the top—why, Shaw groaned inwardly, why had he left out the 1821 Boosey and Sons, why? Because he was a pretentious fuck, of course. Because he liked it when North asked questions. When North wrinkled his forehead and pursed his lips and really concentrated, focused a hundred percent on what Shaw was saying. He liked it because North was probably the smartest person Shaw had ever known, and Shaw liked it when he got to show off. But of course Matty would probably think the books were boring and stupid, and he’d be right—
