Infected Freefall

by Andrea Speed

  He went back to where Holden was waiting, and before he got there, Roan saw him sitting back in one of the waiting room chairs, eyes closed, head back, looking for all the world like he was in serious pain. People walking past made him lift his head and open his eyes, and then he saw Roan and flashed a small, weak smile. When he came near, Holden sat up and said, “Ahmed should be here in a couple minutes.”

  “You got some painkillers at home?”

  Holden gave him a hooded, sidelong glance, pondering whether to be indignant or not, but he realized he’d been caught and decided—for once in his life—not to put up a front. How could he? His lip was scabbed over and his eye was blackening, a deepening bruise violet splotch that was also making his eyelid swell. Soon, he might not be able to see out of his left eye. “I’m a whore, Roan. Of course I have painkillers at home.” He smirked at his own joke. “I also have Viagra, if you ever feel the need to fuck someone you’re not attracted to.”

  “Trick of the trade? No pun intended.”

  “Indeed. Sometimes you can’t get it up on cue. You have to have a plan B.”

  “You know, I’d think that’d make sex depressing, always having to fuck people you didn’t like.”

  He shrugged. “It does get tiring. It’s part of the reason why I’m getting out of the business.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “Really good, actually. I cut my schedule down to just four regular clients. I told the agency that I’m not taking any new gigs, I’m just doing my regulars and that’s it. Randy knows I’m intending to leave, and he’s cool with that. Mainly because he’s a partner in the web thing I have going with Rocky, and also, I ain’t getting any younger.” He flashed Roan a smile of bright, whitened teeth that had nothing but venom in it. “This is, after all, a young man’s game.”

  “Yeah, oldie, don’t want to fuck a guy and break a hip.”

  That made Holden snort a laugh, and he bent forward and put a hand on his face. “Ow, fucker, that hurt. Don’t make me laugh.”

  “Sorry.”

  Holden took a minute to regain his composure—yeah, he really was in pain—and then sat back in his chair, slumping slightly. “So while they were booking the tranny hooker, I heard a couple of cops discussing how you could possibly be in a fight after having gotten shot in the hand earlier today. Then there was a reference to some videotape, and you possibly being the gay Superman. Who shot you?”

  Roan quickly moved his hand into his coat pocket, but too late, as Holden had already looked at it and saw the somewhat circular patch of raw skin on the top of his hand. He knew it wasn’t just rumor; he knew it was somehow true. “I can’t be the gay Superman,” he replied, trying to be casual. “I wear my underwear inside my pants, and I’m not gay enough to wear a spit curl.”

  Holden sat forward and then leaned over the arm of the chair, looking him in the eye as best he could. “I’ve seen you change, you crazy fuck. It still freaks me out to think about it, but I’m honored I’m one of the few who know. Don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret. I’m good at keeping secrets.” He mimed zipping his lips shut and throwing away the key before sitting back in his chair. One of the cops passing by, Johnson, gave him a dirty look, and Holden blew him a kiss, which made him turn away in disgust. Holden sighed almost wistfully and added, “I had fun.”

  Although Holden’s previous statement had made him feel numb to his toes, Roan appreciated that he had plowed on to another topic, pretending that this hadn’t been something strangely significant and just a little frightening. “Tonight?”

  “No, when we were working together. I had a blast. If you ever need my help in another case or something, or just need physical backup, I’d be happy to help.”

  Roan was glad he was letting this slip by. Yes, Holden did know he could partially transform, and he’d almost forgotten that he did know that. It was just Dylan, Gordo, Seb, Dropkick, Doctor Rosenberg, and Holden. In retrospect, a shitload of people. “No offense, but I don’t foresee a lot of cases needing a hustler.”

  Holden looked at him with a moue of disappointment. “Sweetheart, you know me better than that. I’m not just a hustler; I can be whoever you need me to be. I’m the best actor who’s never walked a stage.”

  Actually, Holden had him there. He was. His entire life was being some man’s fantasy, and the fantasies always changed. Holden could adapt and sell it—whatever it was—with the bone-deep conviction of someone whose life depended on you buying it. Because it did. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he told him, and meant it. Holden might actually be useful someday. His street contacts could be invaluable. “So, you talk to your parents yet?”

  He scoffed and waved a hand that revealed reddened knuckles. “No. My mother finally stopped calling. Oh, that reminds me, I’ve changed my number.” He searched the pockets of his own leather jacket—worn and brown, yet somehow stylish—and found a pen and a piece of paper that clearly contained a phone number he must have picked up at the bar before he got in the fight. The scribble over the number looked like “Troy,” or possibly “Trey.” “Tony?” Holden scrawled his new number on the back and handed it to him. “It’s my main line, so even if I’m not home, it’ll get forwarded to my cell. Call any time. If I’m on the job, I’ll call you as soon as I’m done.”

  Roan took the scrap of paper and wondered how jaded you had to be to refer to fucking a paying stranger as “on the job.” “Talked to Zoë?”

  “Oh yeah. I’m gonna go down to California and visit her and her daughter in the summer. She can’t come up here ’cause of money issues, and then there’s the fact that I’d rather she didn’t.”

  It wasn’t hard to guess why. “What does she think you do?”

  “She thinks I’m a local entertainer.” Roan laughed, and Holden feigned indignance. “Well, I am. It’s not much of a lie. I’ve entertained dozens and dozens of men in my life.”

  “Only dozens?”

  “I said dozens of dozens. Don’t nitpick.”

  He smiled almost in spite of himself, and Holden smiled back, a strangely genuine expression on his wounded face. “I know I look like hell, but you could come home with me.”

  The funny thing was, it was almost tempting. Roan wasn’t sure why, except maybe he was just looking to run away. Sex could be oblivion as much as drugs and violence. “I have a boyfriend, Holden.”

  “So?” At Roan’s look, Holden rolled his eyes. “Fine, be that way, stick to the parochial heteroparadigm. I expected better of a radical like you.”

  “Parochial heteroparadigm?” he repeated in amused disbelief. “Have you joined ACT UP?”

  Holden raised an eyebrow at him, that smart-ass grin on his face. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

  They got out in time to meet Ahmed in the parking lot. Roan wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t a black six-foot-five leather queen who drove a vintage Dodge Charger painted candy-apple red and listened to Danzig at communication-negating volume. Did you ever expect that? He was pretty sure the answer was no, just like no one ever expected the Spanish Inquisition. But he seemed like a decent—albeit strange—guy. Paris would have loved his car.

  A.J. had watched his bike, and while he hadn’t exactly washed and waxed it, he hadn’t sold it for smack, either, and he had to give him some credit for that. Ahmed was giving Holden a lift back to his place, so they said their farewells there, but Holden surprised him once more by giving him a kiss on the cheek and whispering, “Go home and cuddle your boyfriend, Roan. And lay off the pills, huh? You’ve got too much to live for.”

  He stared at him, words of denial springing to his lips, but Holden backed away and waved at him, giving him a sad smile. How had he known? No one else had known. Was it his pupils? How big were they? He looked in the bike’s mirror, but it was too dark to tell.

  Maybe it was even simpler than that. Maybe it simply took a liar to know one.

  He’d got what he wanted from Marcos, so he went home and slep
t it off for the rest of the night, which wasn’t long, since it was almost morning. He only beat it by a couple of hours. He had been at the cop shop longer than he anticipated.

  By the time he got up, Dylan was out for his morning jog—oh, how he used to hate those guys, and yet now he was dating one—and there were a few phone calls waiting for him, including Kwan asking almost angrily how he could possibly be in a fight after getting shot in the hand, but what he really didn’t understand was him kicking all their asses. “Stop making the rest of us look bad, asshole!” he added, before slamming the phone down. You could never accuse him of being anything but entertaining in his own curmudgeonly way.

  Fiona checked in, reminding him she’d see him at the office today. He called her back and got her cell phone, but he left her a message, asking if she could check in with the Sheridan Valley Penitentiary and see if she could set up an interview with Roland Chesney for as soon as possible. Also, he needed her to see if she could find some information on a former prisoner named Peter Oswald Tucker, who had relocated to Boise. That was what an assistant was for—the plodding work.

  He’d made breakfast by the time Dylan came back, as long as you were generous enough to classify making toast and cutting up some blood oranges as breakfast. But Dylan liked to eat light after exercising, and that suited Roan fine, as he had lots of things on his mind and didn’t feel like anything heavy. Dylan sensed something was wrong and asked him about it, so Roan bluffed by telling him about the former cell mates of Jorgenson he was attempting to track down, and how he already sensed that this was a dead end, but he had to try it anyways. It was clear that this case still got to Dylan too. Everybody involved with the missing Keith Turner felt bad about it, even if they were only tangentially related to it. Except, possibly, the man who had killed him: no conscience meant no guilt.

  On his way out the door, Dylan suddenly asked him, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  This was where Roan wanted to be comforting, but he decided Dylan deserved the truth. He stuck by him for god knew what reason; it was the least he deserved. “It’s the only sure thing about this case.”

  Dylan nodded, looking heartbroken but not really all that surprised. After a kid was missing a decade, it was unlikely he’d just turn up on the doorstep one day, looking for all his unpaid allowance. But he bet Chris Spencer would give anything to have that happen.

  He set out for the office but soon diverged, taking Pacific Avenue down to a very familiar area he hadn’t wanted to see ever again. But Roan knew his luck didn’t work like that and never had.

  He felt eyes on him as he walked up to the porch, and he gave the middle finger to the CCTV camera he knew was watching him as he knocked on the door, ignoring the bell and its aggravating chime. Eventually the door opened, and a well-scrubbed guy who had the perfect look of the annoying gay personal assistant—a cross between that guy on Ugly Betty and that one David Spade used to play on unfunny SNL sketches—glared out at him with the most perfect blue eyes money and modern optical technology could buy. “Yes?” he spit, narrowing those cosmetically enhanced eyes at him. He smelled faintly of hair gel and the pheromones of leopard.

  Roan met his look, unimpressed. He had to know who he was, even if they’d never met before. “Go tell your boss Roan McKichan is here and wants to know why the fuck he wants to kill me. Tell him he can either talk to me, or talk to the cops.” Roan pulled out his cell phone and held out the screen toward him so he could see the numbers 9-1-1 were on it, although he hadn’t pressed the send button yet.

  The kid looked at it, the slightest bit of alarm cutting through his perfect mask of annoyance. “You’re crazy.”

  “Okay, if that’s how you want to play it,” he said, lowering the phone and slowly moving a finger toward the send button.

  “Michael, I’ll take this,” a new voice said, as a hand appeared on the boy’s shoulder and he was moved back from the door.

  Finally, Roan found himself face to face with David Harvey.

  9

  Tell That Mick He Just Made

  My List of Things to Do Today

  DAVID HARVEY was nothing special. He was a couple of inches shorter than Roan, with thinning reddish-blond hair that smelled of Rogaine and was spread across his scalp like a haphazard nest. His eyes were pale blue, like they’d been watered down somehow, and his mouth seemed a bit too wide for his narrow face. In fact, there was something almost fishlike about him, like Roan was staring at the first Human partially cloned from a trout. He gave off the faintest hint of lion pheromones somewhere beneath his Calvin Klein cologne.

  “I’d be careful about making slanderous or libelous comments on camera, Mr. McKichan,” he said, his voice and smile so disgustingly smug that Roan had to restrain the urge to punch him back into last year.

  “Your boy squealed, Harvey. Nolan wasn’t ambitious enough to do this by himself, but with his record, people could believe he was stupid enough. I don’t.” To his knowledge, Nolan hadn’t actually given up a name, but if Kwan was on him, it was only a matter of time.

  Harvey’s smile remained smug and plastered onto his face like a bad makeup job. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Roan wanted to cross his arms over his chest but didn’t, as that might seem defensive. He kept his posture open and blatantly hostile. “I can press the issue if you make me, Harvey. I’d advise you don’t.”

  Harvey arched a single eyebrow at him. It was more blond than red, although tinted a slight orange that couldn’t have possibly been a real hair color and yet was. “Elijah was afraid of you, but I’m not. You are one of us, even if you don’t act like it, even if you are a pillow biter. As such, you’d think you’d have more loyalty against the normals, but—”

  “Did you just call me a fucking pillow biter?” Roan exclaimed in utter disbelief.

  Harvey gave him a hard smile, his eyes gleaming with a triumphant sort of anger. “We all know what you are, and I understand the need to compensate for that, but really, you could change if you wanted to.”

  Roan just glared at him for a moment, and then turned his back toward the camera so there’d be no film of him giving Harvey a short, sharp sucker punch to the solar plexus. Harvey made a pained noise lost in the rush of breath from his lungs and dropped to his knees, involuntarily heaving. Roan crouched down, out of barfing distance, and whispered, “You want to make me angry? Congratulations, fucker. But you’ve forgotten something, haven’t you? You may have a deranged cult following, but I have a hard drive full of shit on all of you. The reason it hasn’t hit the front page of cultwatch dot com is because I really don’t give a fuck about you and your insane shit, but you’re starting to make me care. I don’t think you want to make me do that, David.”

  Harvey managed to get his gag reflex under control, although a string of saliva drooped from his bottom lip until he wiped it away with the back of his hand. He looked at Roan with pained, enraged eyes. “The computer belongs to us. It’s our rightful property.”

  “No, it belonged to Eli, and I assume he wanted me to keep power-mad fuckers like you in check. I have no illusions that your fancy-ass lawyer will get you off the hook for any charges that might be flung at you. Everybody will be happy with Nolan taking the dive alone. But I’m watching you, and you try anything like this again, I’m not gonna stop at flinging your shit around on the web. I will fuck you up. I will fuck up your life beyond the telling of it, Dave.”

  Harvey scoffed and sat back on his haunches, arm still around his gut. He was a soft man. He’d never been in a genuine fight in his life.

  “You think it’s hyperbole? Try me.” Roan stood up and spit on him. Dave hadn’t expected that, so when the spit hit his head he jerked back as if Roan had kicked him and stared up at him with uncomprehending confusion. “Next time you try and have me assassinated, make sure they don’t miss.”

  He stalked away, kind of hoping the cowardly shit would attack him while his back was turned, tackle him maybe
, take a shot at a kidney punch, but he didn’t. And why would he? Pillow biter or not, he was the alpha lion even when they were in their Human skins, and he knew it. And Roan was absolutely dying to have a good reason to lay into him, work him like a heavy bag, make him choke on his own blood and spit teeth.

  Back in the car, Roan glanced back at the porch of the house turned Church of the Divine Transformation and saw David continuing to glare at him from under the shelter of the eaves, the hate naked and raw on his face. This wasn’t the last he was going to hear from David Harvey.

  Good.

  He returned to the office in a strangely sanguine mood. Not good, not exactly, just… peaceful. It was the calm resolution of someone who knew they were going to die, knew they couldn’t change it, and just decided to die with dignity. Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best metaphor, but it would do for now.

  Fiona was behind the front desk, her red hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, and once he was in the door she began her litany. “Okay—you can see Chesney any time you want, as long as you stick to regular visiting hours, as Chesney doesn’t seem to have any visitors. Gee, a rapist murderer has no friends? Who’d have thunk it? And what I’ve scrounged up on Peter Tucker through vaguely legal sources I have e-mailed to you. If you have illegal sources you may want to use ’em, as I didn’t find much. So what are you doing back at work after you got shot in the hand?”

  He held up his hand for her inspection. “The damage was overstated. Do we have anyone coming in today?”

  She nodded and checked her online schedule. “At one we have a guy coming in named Jack Murray, who seems to think his wife is cheating on him.”

  “Oh, the usual then, male version.”

  “Yep, Adam and Eve on a raft, wreck ’em.” Using the old diner lingo made her flash him a big smile, and while he didn’t smile back, he smirked at her eager cheekiness. He was glad someone was so enthused about the tedious reality of people’s relationships going through slow-motion catastrophes.