by Rhys Ford
“You know, your family has anger-management issues, Princess,” Bobby murmured to me with a smile. “It’s like all of you get really pissed off when the world doesn’t agree with how you see things.”
“And yet you are not only my best friend, but you fuck my baby brother,” I reminded him, and the baby cop winced, his cheeks flushing red.
“I married him, didn’t I?” Holding up his hand, Bobby wiggled his finger, where a glistening gold band sat. “Best decision of my life. Not so sure I made a very good one when I decided to be friends with you, but if I hadn’t hooked up with your sorry ass, I wouldn’t have met Ichi.”
“Or be suspected for murder,” O’Byrne said, ducking into the cordoned-off hospital room. She gave Bobby a rueful smile, glancing around the space, probably taking in the blood-soaked shirt lying on the bed where they’d left it after cutting it off of Bobby to stitch up his wound. “I’ve got an evidence bag for that. How’re you doing?”
“I’m okay. McGinnis here caught me up with what’s going on in the Brinkerhoff case. How the hell did everyone let that woman slide into place? We all just assumed she was supposed to be there?” He hissed when reaching for the cup of ice chips the nurse left for him. “Shit, this hurts.”
“What did she get you with?” O’Byrne carefully maneuvered the bloodied shirt into the bag, pushing it through the opening with a pair of tweezers. “I’d say we’ll get this back to you as soon as we run some tests, but I’m not sure you’ll want it.”
“Yeah, probably not.” He chuckled. The edges of his bandages were already speckled with blood, and pain flicked across his expression when he moved. A handful of painkillers waited for him on the rolling bed stand, but he’d refused them, wanting to wait until O’Byrne questioned him before downing anything strong enough to knock him out. “I don’t know what she sliced me with, but it was a straight blade, maybe something made to a point. Not serrated. The cut’s a clean one, straight into my side with a stab. My ribs kept it from going any deeper, but it was sharp. Went right through the shirt like it was water.”
“You said you followed her out of the elevator.” O’Byrne handed the evidence bag off to the young cop, then pulled out her notebook. The teasing note to her voice slipped away, and she’d gone serious. “What were you doing?”
“She said she had an appointment that she had to get to, but I figured I would take a crack at her. Considering we all decided that house was pretty much stage dressing, I wanted to see if she had any information about where her grandparents—or at least who I thought her grandparents were—lived.” Bobby frowned, pressing his hand against the bandage. “I was trying to keep her occupied so McGinnis would have a few minutes with Arthur. I didn’t know at the time she wasn’t the real deal.”
The gauze was a bloodied white slash against Bobby’s muscled, tanned torso, wrapped around his ribs and hiding some of the bruises I’d given him during our last boxing match. Or maybe he’d picked them up when we were rolling around in the alleyway, trying not to get shot. Either way it looked like he’d taken a beating. His focus was detached, his eyes on the floor as he went over the events.
“You follow her all the way outside?” O’Byrne began filling the page with her practically illegible scrawl. I would’ve hated to be her partner and try to reconstruct any of it for a report.
“Yeah. My legs are pretty long, and I had to hurry to keep up with her. She knew her way around the hospital. There wasn’t any hesitation about which way to turn, and this place is like a rat’s nest. You could end up in the broom closet if you go looking for a bathroom,” he replied, sucking in air between his clenched teeth as he held his side. “She was in a hurry. And she didn’t want to talk. I didn’t speak with her that long. Not like McGinnis here did. But she was all smooth and polished in front of the nurse station. Then, when we got outside, she went a little gutter. Not LA. She didn’t sound like she was from here. I’d say someplace back East. Maybe even Boston. It was the way she said car.”
O’Byrne nodded, jotting in the row of hieroglyphics. “So you followed her outside, and then what?”
“She went out the Urgent Care door. You have to cut through a pretty big section of the hospital to get to it. I thought it was weird, because she kept zigzagging through the corridors.” Bobby looked up suddenly, cocking his head as he thought. “She didn’t go out the parking structure exit. We ended up on the main walk, toward the left corner of the main building. I was right on her heels when she turned around, and I felt the blade go in. It took me a second to realize I’d been stabbed. I kept trying to walk into her. So I forced it in deeper. Then she jerked back, and the pain hit. Doctor said she probably twisted when she pulled it out because she took a good chunk of my skin with her.”
“Anybody see her do this? Any witnesses? Anybody stop and help you?” O’Byrne came at Bobby with the rapid-fire questions, peppering him with choices, but they were all pretty much the same jab to his story. There’d been enough time between them leaving the upper floor and him getting into the ER for Bobby to shoot her. O’Byrne needed to shake his story, trying to see if there was anyone she could tap to verify what he was saying.
“Yeah. Actually one of the ER doctors was coming in. I think his name is Davis or Davison. I got handed off as soon as they got me in.” He pursed his lips, whistling out a low tone. “I stumbled back a couple of feet and went down. It took him a bit to get there, and there was a couple—an older couple—who were trying to help me up, but he told me to stay there until he could see how bad it was. Seemed like forever before we came inside. Must’ve been maybe five or ten minutes.”
“I requested copies of the camera footage from that side of the building, detective,” the young cop interjected. “Security said it would be about an hour, but they can download the video onto a drive for you.”
“Thanks. Good job on that.” O’Byrne gave him a curt nod. “Can you describe for me what she was wearing? I want to verify that’s what we found her in.”
“Yeah… um, Princess, can you do me a favor and see what’s taking Ichi so long?” Bobby gritted his teeth again, and the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes deepened. “As soon as O’Byrne is done with me, I’d like to get out of here, and as sexy as I am, I think I want to be dressed before I parade through the hospital again. I don’t think we’re going to go over anything you haven’t already heard or know. You mind, O’Byrne?”
“No. It’s okay. I’ll have to shake Mac down for his side of the story when I’m done with you, so it’s probably for the best,” she said, jerking her head toward the part in the curtains. “Don’t leave without me talking to you, okay? I’m going to also have to head upstairs and talk to the real Marlena Brinkerhoff before I go to the captain with this piece-of-shit story on a plate.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll be right back here,” I told O’Byrne with a shake of my head. “All I seem to be doing is going around in circles anyway.”
SEARCHING FOR my younger brother in a parking structure connected to a hospital was easier said than done. Luckily for me, despite the many levels, not many of them held a brooding Japanese man leaning against a silver SUV while smoking a clove cigarette. As usual, Ichi scored a good parking spot near the elevator, so after one quick jaunt around the lower floor, I spotted him before too long.
Problem was, as I crossed the twenty yards or so separating us, I noticed he wasn’t looking too happy. At first I chalked that up to the fact that his husband had just been stabbed, but his expression soured even more when I drew near.
“Hey!” I called out to him, noticing he didn’t have Bobby’s gym bag with him. “Did he not throw his shit in there? I’ve got some things in the Rover he can borrow if he can get his big head through the opening in my T-shirt. I don’t buy them in extralarge ego.”
Ichi took another drag of his cigarette, then exhaled a thin, fragrant stream. “He doesn’t need anything more from you. Don’t you think he’s taken enough of your shit?”
>
My baby brother’s words stopped me short, a few feet away from the end of their SUV. In a lot of ways, Ichiro fit in nicely with me and Mike. He was an edgier version of my philosophies with our older brother’s Boy Scout morals. He was a conflict of contradictions, pushing the envelope for his art but pretty much traditional down to the marrow in his bones. His appearance in my life had been unexpected and unwelcome, but he kept after me, cracking open my resentment about our mother discarding us and leaving me with a father who hated me. Eventually he fell into place as my younger brother. I’d been angry and hurt when he and Bobby began their relationship and hid their developing love from me, but by then, I’d grown very protective of Ichi. He’d somehow become my innocent, rebellious baby brother while I wasn’t looking, and Bobby’s interest in him seemed a bit incestuous, taking into account my brotherly relationship with Bobby.
But with everything we’d been through, Ichi never once spat in my face, not like he was doing right now. And I sure as hell didn’t know what to do about it.
“What’s going on?” The parking structure’s floor scraped against the soles of my shoes, a shuffle of tiny bits of sand and gravel from God knows where. “Ichi, what happened?”
“Bobby fucking got stabbed, Cole,” Ichi hissed at me, pacing off the end of the SUV with a single stride. “That’s what’s wrong. Did you miss that part of the afternoon? When you were chasing whatever it was you’re after? Did you miss my husband getting stabbed?”
“It wasn’t like I did it.” For some reason, I fell into a whisper as if I didn’t want anyone to hear us arguing. I didn’t know what was going on in Ichiro’s head, but I knew how he felt. I’d sat by Jae’s hospital bed more than a few times and Bobby’s as well, not to mention the vigil we all stood when Mike was shot. “He’s fine. So he may not be able to swing from a chandelier during sex for a while, but—”
“It’s not a joke, Cole. This isn’t something to laugh at,” Ichi said, turning to face me. His kretek burned red-hot at the end when he took another hit, holding the smoke in for a moment before releasing it in a plume. “I don’t want him working with you anymore. And if I tell him that, he’ll push back at me because I don’t have any right to tell him how to live his life, but I can’t watch the two of you do this. If Jae is okay with you trying to kill yourself every day, that’s between the two of you. But I won’t let Bobby do that. I can’t. I never thought I would find somebody I would love enough to want to marry, and I was okay with that. Then I met him, and everything changed.
“And don’t get me wrong, I love you and Mike. You’re my brothers,” he asserted, “but he’s my husband. He’s my family. And we both know he’s older than I am, so every year I have with him is an even greater gift. He takes care of himself. He works hard to stay healthy so he can be with me as long as he can. So I don’t need you to try to kill him every time you take a case. I just can’t. So I’m asking you—if you love me as much as you say you do—don’t take him with you anymore. I love him, Cole. More than I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire life, and if I lose him because of you, I’m going to lose more than my husband. I’m going to lose my brother as well.”
Fourteen
NO ONE ever came to Los Angeles in the last ninety years or so to look at the stars in the sky. Despite being the birthplace of packaged entertainment sold in long or short forms, the night above the glittering City of Angels rarely bared a twinkle in the midnight-blue veil she pulled over her head after the sun quenched itself in the Pacific Ocean.
I had a cold beer and the dark skies to keep me company. It was my third beer since wandering outside and making myself comfortable on one of the outdoor recliners. I’d packed five Cosmic Cowboy bottles into a steel bucket filled with ice and intended to work on the case, going over my notes and everything else. But the folder lay where I’d put it down, on the recliner next to the one I slouched into, and instead I worked on the beer.
It was nearly eight o’clock, but the neighborhood was already winding down. I was once again thankful for the mature trees I’d kept around the property’s perimeter, forking over a small fortune to an expert to keep them healthy and sound. Their full canopies hid most signs of other houses, but the occasional sparkle of light shone through. As large as the lot was—a generous wide and long stretch—we still had neighbors, and we kept our shallow relationships as pleasant as possible, with high fences and the occasional nod of hello if we happened to see one another while getting mail. I liked it that way, especially on nights like this when my mind felt as if an octopus crawled up into it and began thrashing around in its death throes.
Honey lay along my hip, a dirty-blond rag mop with a snore like a rutting bison but possessing a cheerful disposition I sure as hell wouldn’t have held on to if I’d been thrown out of the only home I’d known because my owner’s parents hadn’t wanted his boyfriend to have her. I hadn’t been sure about picking her up from the shelter when they called to say they found her years later, but in a lot of ways, she was the first step I took in forgiving myself for Rick’s death. She’d been practically a puppy when she’d been taken from me while I was in a coma, yet she remembered me when she saw me. Although she pretty much loved everyone she met and would probably show a burglar where the silverware was if given half the chance.
I was still grateful for her and even more thankful Jae talked me into getting the extrawide loungers, because while Honey was a fairly small dog, she took up more than her share of the cushions.
The kitchen’s back door opened, its hydraulics squeaking loud enough to remind me, once again, to spray it with lubricant. None of the outside lights were on, and the moon was a thin curve of silvery yellow hanging on the edge of a far cloud, but I knew it was Jae coming to find me.
The only other people who would’ve sought me out were Bobby and Ichi, one of whom was stabbed and hopefully resting while the other made himself perfectly clear that he wanted nothing to do with me as long as I endangered his husband.
I envied Jae’s grace nearly as much as I admired it. He moved silently, more of a gentle wind across the grass, where I stomped and prowled loud enough to wake the dead. I watched him cross the lawn, his face hidden by flickering shadows, the glow of the streetlamp at the front of the house kissing his cheekbone, then his temple, playing hide-and-go-seek with his features. To say I was in love with him would be like trying to paint the sunset using only black and white. He’d grabbed ahold of my heart, sinking through its torn and hardened flesh to force it to beat again while he fought me every step of the way. He hadn’t wanted to fall in love with me, and I hadn’t wanted to change. I’d been content in my stagnation, happy to dwell in the doldrums I’d fallen into, but neither one of us had any choice in the matter. We were… destined… to fall in love, and I woke up every morning to do it all over again.
It wasn’t a bad way to live.
The sex was pretty fucking fantastic.
Thing is, Jae was never one to let me marinate in misery, and the time had come for me to pay the piper for the time it took me to drink the three beers and wallow in my guilt.
“Come here,” Jae said to the dog, gathering her up while she grumbled in her half slumber. Dumping Honey in my lap, he made himself comfortable on the canine-warmed side of the recliner, then reached for one of the beers. “Does this twist off, or do I need a… what are those called?”
“Church key,” I said, taking the beer from him. Leaning over Jae, I retrieved the bottle opener from the edge of the bucket where I’d hooked it, popped the cap, then sat up to hand it back. “Here.”
I got a kiss for a thank-you, and I deepened it, disrupting the dog enough to send her grumbling and sliding off of the cushions to seek out a different place to sleep. Jae twisted his fingers through my hair, tugging lightly. I tilted my head back, following the movement of his gentle pull. His teeth dented into my skin, scoring a light furrow across my throat. Then he let me go, bringing the bottle up to kiss his swollen lips.
He felt good against me, much better than the dog. Jae also smelled better, so I added washing the dog to my mental to-do list, hopefully above lubricating the screen door, because it had squeaked for as long as I’d owned the house. Resting his hand on my thigh, Jae sat with me, sipping his beer and letting the unseen stars churn overhead, their shimmering journeys hidden by milky clouds and the city’s blanket of lights. The air turned a bit chilly, and he shifted his weight, resting on the hip closest to me, pulling his legs up to hook over my shins, seeking out my heat.
“Did you talk to Ichi?” I heard myself breaking the quiet, shattering it with a verbal hammer forged in an anger I’d thought I didn’t possess. Bobby had been mine before Ichiro’s, and sitting there with my throat closed up around the pain I couldn’t swallow, I realized I was angry at being replaced or maybe simply angry in general. “I’m going through a lot right now in my head. With Bobby. With Ichi. And I’m not really too sure what to do about it.”
“What do you want to see happen? What is your wish for how things will be once you work through everything?” Jae asked, his fingers making circuits around my knee. “Because right now, Ichi is scared, and Bobby probably doesn’t realize it. So he lashed out at you, and now you are having to eat his anger. Yes?”
“Some of it, yeah. But some of it’s on me too,” I replied, checking the level of beer in my bottle. It was still mostly full, so any blurring of my thoughts couldn’t be explained by the alcohol. “I got pissed off at Ichi for demanding Bobby stop working with me, and then it dawned on me I was kind of pissed off about both of them shuffling me down on their list of people they love. Which is fucking stupid, because I fell in love with you, and it didn’t change my relationship with Bobby.”
“It did.” Jae sat up a little bit, angling so he could see my face. “You stopped going out with him to clubs, and a lot of your afternoons were spent with me instead of with him, going to ball games or doing things that you both like to do. It’s hard because both of you were alone for a very long time and used to just having each other. Then I came along, and he had to split his time, leaving him alone again. Then when Ichi came, you spent more time with him, learning how to be his brother, slicing Bobby’s time even more.”
