He freewheeled down the rest of the hill, winding in and out of traffic. By the time he found a set of iron railings against which to chain his bike, he’d lost sight of the vans, which had peeled off up various side turnings. The bus station reared ahead of him, a palace of rusting Gothic pillars and arches, where he could all too easily imagine Kit singing for the queues of waiting passengers.
He’d finished a thorough search when one of the vans drew to a halt at the far end, blocking a taxi rank. Two agents climbed out, both with dark hair. The woman was a good inch taller than the man, who made up for his diminutive stature with an impressive bulk. To his relief, Denny recognized neither of them and prayed they wouldn’t him. He glared down at the concrete pavement and walked right by.
“I hope this isn’t a waste of time,” said the male agent. He sounded bored.
I hope it is. For you at least.
“We’ll catch it,” said the woman, as the floral blast of her perfume reached Denny’s nostrils. “I’m not giving up. Not now Neil’s arranged paid overtime for us all. Don’t care if I search all night.”
Paid overtime for EBCA workers was rare—so rare that, when offered, nothing could be a better incentive for them to up their game. Denny’s blood ran chiller than the night about him. He struggled not to break into an incriminating run.
He’d hurried as far as the high street when two girls in their early twenties approached him up the pavement. They talked loudly, and he couldn’t help but hear.
“I can’t believe you gave that busker a fiver,” said the first, a tall girl with her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail.
“He was cute,” replied her friend, who possessed a soft, rounded face. She’d lined her eyes thickly with black makeup, the neatness of which had fallen victim to the dampness of the night. She resembled a small panda.
“He was a bit short for me,” said her friend as Denny passed.
“And a bit old, maybe.” The panda-eyed girl giggled. “But he was hot. Surely you thought he was hot? I liked his voice.”
“Yeah, his voice was okay,” said the friend. “But kind of weird, right?”
Where is he? Denny refrained from shouting. Just.
“’Scuse me.” He followed the girls back the way he’d come. They turned, setting their expressions stony. “I’m sorry, did that guy have blue eyes, and was he, uh, about so high?” He indicated somewhere just above his shoulder.
The girl with the black eye makeup glanced to her friend. “Yeah, guess he was.”
“Where is he?”
“Down the station,” said the girl with the ponytail. “Are you his boyfriend or something?”
He puffed out his cheeks. Now even strangers were asking if he and Kit were an item. “Something like that.”
The tall girl giggled and turned to her companion. “Told you, didn’t I? All the best ones round here are gay.” She swept a covetous gaze up Denny’s lofty frame and sighed heavily. They wandered on.
He swore beneath his breath, then crossed over the road, making haste toward the station once more. When he’d searched there earlier, he’d been relieved Kit had steered clear, but now his worst fears had been realized. Kit had gone busking—classic elf behavior. Sooner or later, the EBCA was bound to swoop.
They might have already beaten him to it.
Located a hundred yards away up the high street, the suburban railway station was a squat brick building, much less grand than the bus depot. Its sprawling entrance gave access to sixteen lines, overground and underground, all located on the level below. As he passed under the portal, a white van flashed its indicators and pulled in to the concrete square behind him. It drew to a halt by a red Victorian postbox, and he confirmed that it bore the EBCA logo. He didn’t wait to see who poured out; he had to be quick.
The station bustled with Friday evening revelers and gray-faced commuters, the murmur of their voices warring with announcements about rail delays and cancellations. When Denny put his ticket through the barrier, his ears pricked up. Distant strains of music filtered through the cacophony, wafting up from one of the platforms. He recognized the tune as a Bob Dylan song, the kind of folksy ballad that’d always done his head in. If the sixties music choice weren’t telltale enough, Kit’s voice grew distinguishable even from a distance.
“For God’s sake,” muttered Denny. He hurried to the top of the escalator and then jumped down two steps at a time. Kit started a mouth-organ solo.
Kit bought a harmonica with his hard-earned cash? He’d have to buy earplugs if Kit was going to practice that thing under his roof. He could smell minor debates about their conflicting tastes in music brewing already, but the notion only strengthened his resolve. He wanted to be with Kit, and he had to catch him before the EBCA did. For better or worse, his whole life seemed to depend on it.
A man talking on his mobile phone blocked the stairway with his luggage.
“Could you move, please?” asked Denny.
No answer.
He tapped the offender on his padded shoulder. “You’re gonna make me miss me train, mate.”
Without looking around, the man pulled his bag aside, and Denny continued on his way. From the corner of his eye he saw Neil, followed by a second guy from the Croydon depot, both speeding down a parallel escalator. His heart hammered heavier than his boots.
Neil reached the base of the moving stairway simultaneously with Denny, and they both broke into sprints. There were ten different entrances to choose from. Kit’s music poured from the one at the far end, labeled platforms one and two. As he made his way over, Denny stooped forward to conceal his face and his height. He dared not look back to see if Neil had spotted him and followed. This was going to be close.
His tautening nerves kindled an unexpected thrill. Neil wouldn’t get Kit. Denny would fight him with his bare fists. He’d fight him to the death. God, he’d not felt this alive since…well, since he’d been in bed with Kit last night, but before that, had he ever felt this alive?
As he burst onto the platform, Denny gulped in a lungful of air. Waiting passengers crowded, some reading newspapers, others munching pasties and burgers on the go, the stench of which mingled with sickly stale chewing gum and dry fumes from a heating duct. A fresh bunch of commuters poured from a central London train onto platform two, the tramp of their footfalls echoed by a high-pitched bleep, the slam of the doors, and then the rising electric hum as the carriages pulled away. Craning above the milieu, Denny still could not see Kit but discerned where he stood, at the heart of a cluster of listeners halfway down platform one. A female station attendant in a navy uniform waited nearby, waving her baton at the departing train. So far, she’d chosen to ignore Kit’s illegal busking activities.
Denny wove his way through the crowd, jumping over an ankle-high lapdog and earning an angry look from its elderly owner. He forged his way on. Finally he caught a glimpse of Kit, who wore a khaki rucksack, a red bobble hat, and a matching woolly scarf. Denny rolled his eyes. Kit wasn’t exactly subtle. He was still singing his soul out, humming and tapping his foot while he strummed his guitar. Denny noted he’d bought a skintight pair of black jeans on his shopping spree. No wonder the girls had noticed him; a butt that cute would be hard to miss. Denny drew nearer, but now he detected Neil tearing down the adjoining platform two, from where most of the arriving passengers had dispersed. Only a line of benches and then a café selling coffee and cakes divided the other agent from platform one and Kit, whom Neil had surely realized was the target.
The elf stopped singing, and the station rippled with applause. That had to be the end of the song, right?
Kit drew a deep breath and then pressed his lips forward to the mouth organ wired in front of them. Another instrumental solo.
“Not that noise again,” shouted Denny. Neil had just entered the coffee-and-cake shop from his side of the platforms, and Denny could see through the windows that the agent only needed to pass out the opposite exit to reach his EB. There were sti
ll yards between Denny and Kit, a thick crowd of people blocking his route. “Just bloody well run.”
“Language, young man,” snapped the lady with the lapdog.
“Run, Kit!”
Kit removed the strap of his guitar from his shoulder and looked nervously from side to side. The buzz of discontented voices mounted, while the station attendant frowned and barked into her radio.
The door behind where Kit stood flew open, and Neil burst out. In seconds, he would grab the elf.
“Run!” yelled Denny.
At last Kit spotted him. For a split second, their gazes met. Kit threw off his mouth organ, quirked the merest hint of a smile, then turned on his toes and fled toward a subway, which led under the tracks to platforms three and four.
“We’ve got the exits manned,” hollered Neil. “You can’t get far.” He blew a whistle. “Stop him!”
Denny no longer cared who he barged aside. He reached the front of the crowd just as Neil hurried past. Denny stuck out his foot and tripped Neil, sending the agent sprawling onto his hands and knees.
It was a cheap trick but an effective one.
Somebody screamed. Neil swore angrily, and Denny rushed after Kit, a flash of sandy-blond hair and red wool disappearing down the stairs. Denny’s hood fell back as he ran, and he didn’t care. Being recognized was the last thing on his mind.
He tore down the subway steps two at a time. When he reached the bottom, the other Croydon agent entered from the opposite side. Denny vaguely recognized him, a tall man with a dark mane squashed beneath a green baseball cap. A commuter with a boxy briefcase scuttled through the tunnel, but there was no sign of Kit. The other agent hadn’t caught him, so either he’d got past, or…
The ladies’ toilet sign stuck out horizontally above an archway halfway down the tunnel. There were no other doors, the walls lined with advertising posters, white tiles, and graffiti, so it would be the only place to hide. The Croydon agent reached the lavatory entrance first, stopping at the turnstile to mumble something into his comms unit.
Kit’s best hope lay in some sort of escape hatch or fire exit existing inside the loos. Most likely, though, it would be a dead end. Denny cursed beneath his breath. Would the agent dare burst in there?
A figure emerged from the toilets, tottering in a pair of fuck-me heels, a miniskirt, and a shiny leatherette jacket with the hood pulled up.
The cheekbones were unmistakable.
Kit.
The elf had been right when he said he made a reasonably authentic girl. But was he convincing enough? Kit’s jawline seemed a little sharp, his figure way too skinny, and his shoulders incriminatingly square and angular. Thank heaven he seemed to have found time to buy a razor and shave at some point since leaving Denny’s place, and he’d styled what could be seen of his hair to mimic a feathery pixie cut.
As Kit pushed through the turnstile, the agent stepped to block his route. “Did a bloke just go in there?”
“Dunno. Was doing me makeup.” Kit adopted an exaggerated south London twang. He sounded like a croaky girl with a cold. Sort of. He looked straight up at the agent and stretched his eyes wide. “Might have done.”
The agent grunted at Kit’s shapely, if muscular, legs, which the elf had clad in thick black tights. Denny curled his fists at his sides. A passerby accidentally jolted Denny from behind. He stumbled forward, scarcely registering his movement. His heart seemed to stop.
Then the agent tipped back his cap, muttered something else into his comms unit, and shuffled aside. Kit puffed out a swift breath, then hurried on.
“All right, love?” Denny could hardly feel his legs moving, but the space between them somehow evaporated. He grabbed Kit’s hand, the contact igniting a renewed rush of adrenaline.
“Yeah,” said Kit, his tone remarkably calm. The agent put a coin in the slot and pushed through the barrier and into the ladies’ toilets, out of their sight. “Thanks for waiting.”
They walked across the subway in silence, then passed up the far platform. Denny ran his thumb over the back of Kit’s hand again and again, as much to comfort himself as his “girlfriend.” Kit looked pale beneath his makeup and felt feverishly hot, despite the coldness of the evening.
They traveled up the escalator, waiting, not climbing. Nothing to attract attention.
“I hope you bought a bloody ticket,” muttered Denny.
Kit nodded. “I’m gutted I’ve lost another guitar, though.”
“We can replace it.” At the top of the moving stairway, they passed under high arches into the ticket hall. The tall female agent he’d spotted in the bus station lingered at the ticket barriers, scrutinizing each man leaving the station. “We’ll replace everything,” muttered Denny, scratching his forehead and shading his face, just in case. “Though do you really need a bloody mouth organ? I hate the sound of them nearly as much as I hate bagpipes.”
“You hate bagpipes? You’d feel differently if you’d been in Scotland in 1745, when—”
The agent slid her gaze to them, and Denny silenced Kit with a kiss. The elf’s lips were thick with makeup, dry and chalky with a hint of soapy lanolin. Denny would have liked to plunge deep and taste him properly, not least when Kit looped his arms about Denny’s shoulders and deepened the kiss. His high heels made kissing easier. Denny made a mental note of this and unwillingly broke away. He tugged his hood forward as far as he dared.
“Now shut up and smile.” Denny read the streak of amusement between Kit’s lashes. “And never let go of my hand.”
They passed through the barrier without earning a second glance from the agent.
* * * * *
They left the bike and walked toward Denny’s home, too nervy to exchange many words, their breaths clouding in the air. Kit was adept at walking in heels, but his every tread clopped on the pavement and echoed loudly when the traffic grew quiet. Each vehicle driving by set them both tensing, and even the roar of a plane overhead startled Kit. Never had Denny been so relieved to see his stationary van, the flicker of John’s TV, and his unlit, empty house.
At the end of the driveway, Kit squeezed Denny’s palm and dropped it. Denny sighed, feeling like a balloon deflated. He’d never held a guy’s hand in public before. It had felt nice, despite Kit’s disguise and the danger.
“Thanks for helping me again,” said Kit. “I’m not sure why you bothered.”
Denny had too many reasons to list, and a thousand more now flashed through his mind. Beneath Kit’s makeup and his hood, a fog seemed to have lifted. His expression seemed open, guileless. Denny couldn’t discern Kit’s many years of memories anymore. All he could see was the guy he cared for—and a plethora of questions about the future.
He settled for the only answer that mattered. “I never wanted you to leave in the first place. What you did was stupid.”
Kit looked away. “I’m sorry. It seemed like a good idea at the time, though when I thought about it later, uh…I could have come up with a better plan. But I don’t want you to feel you have no choice. That you have to help me.”
Denny answered as confidently as ever in his life. “I’ve made my decision, Kit. I want to help.” He grinned. Maybe now wasn’t the time to tell Kit his cool performance in the bedroom had been quite convincing, but not perfect. Denny had seen through it soon enough.
“I don’t want to mess up your life,” said Kit, sighing.
“I’m a messy person. Together, maybe we’ll find a way to clear things up. Let’s face it.” Denny laughed. “I wasn’t doing that well alone.”
“Yeah, but you’re still in trouble, and it’s all my fault. Has your uncle called?”
Denny pulled out his phone and checked it. No messages; then again, Henry wasn’t the sort to leave any. He should be here soon, though.
“I’d better move on,” said Kit. “In case you were seen with me.”
Denny glanced up at the night sky, where a couple of the brighter stars had penetrated between the clouds. He whispered a
silent prayer to whichever deity cared to listen. “Okay. But this time, get a taxi and check in to a bed-and-breakfast or something. Actually, I’ve got some friends over in Balham who’ll rent you a cheap room. They’re a good bunch.”
“Sounds nice,” said Kit, wrapping his arms about himself.
“And no more talk of not coming back to me.”
Kit rewarded Denny with the slightest of smiles and a tangible shimmer of relief. “No, mate, no more of that. I’ll return when it’s safe and for as long as you want me.”
A lump formed in Denny’s throat, but he refused to let emotions govern him. Time pressed so, and if they’d been spotted at the railway station, Denny’s house was no longer safe. He’d do better to wait for his uncle somewhere else.
“Okay. We’d better find you another change of clothes, and let’s be quick about it.”
Casting a glance to his neighbor’s window, he pondered whether he could ask John to lend Kit something, as they were closer in size, but decided that would be pushing his luck too far. At this hour, he’d have to see if something of his would do after all. Leading the way up the drive, he fumbled for his key. He undid the double lock on his front door. Then he heard the crunch of footsteps on the drive. Kit gave a cry. Denny turned, and a flashlight blinded him.
“Not so fast, mate.” Neil stepped out from behind Denny’s van. “I thought that was you at the station.”
Denny squinted to see him, fists clenching. When the blobs marring his vision cleared, he saw the agent in the green cap had grabbed Kit and pulled him backward up the driveway, veering dangerously near the rosebushes and the fence. The agents must have parked their van around the corner and come on foot to surprise them.
“Let go of my girlfriend,” shouted Denny.
“That’s not a girl, you freak.” Neil gestured wildly at the other agent with his torch. “Seb, check it out.”
Denny grabbed for Kit’s arm, which the elf reached toward him. Seb tugged Kit back a foot, then spun him around, grabbed at his groin, and squeezed. Kit yelled wordlessly, loud, hoarse, and undeniably male.
Catching Kit Page 10
