by Cole McCade
Malcolm’s mouth tasted like…he didn’t know. Old pennies. Old blood. Like some bit of these victims had reached through the screen to crawl their bloodied, bruised, exsanguinated fingers into his mouth to put their pain and sorrow and fear on his tongue, holding it there with their fingertips.
“The spiral cuts?” he whispered.
“The same very fine, lightly textured spun steel wire he used in other areas,” Seong-Jae answered. “Used as a final tourniquet to slow blood flow prior to cutting.” Then, abruptly, he reached out to close Malcolm’s laptop screen. “Malcolm, stop.”
“No,” Malcolm said, pushing Seong-Jae’s hand away. “I have to—you—you were able to—”
“I was not. Malcolm, stop.”
Suddenly his face was captured in Seong-Jae’s palms—hot, firm, holding him in place as Seong-Jae leaned into him, resting brow to brow.
Until there was nothing in the world but Seong-Jae.
Until there were no vacant, staring eyes, bodies captured mid-sway, deformed into something unnatural and yet objectively, horrifyingly perfect.
Just black, depthless eyes, the long sweep of his lashes, the warmth of him wrapping Malcolm up in a safe wall that shut everything out as that low, sultry voice coaxed him in soothing yet strangely urgent murmurs.
“I left the BAU,” Seong-Jae said. “I left because cases like this broke me. I will not have them break you as well.”
Malcolm closed his eyes, sucking in several ragged breaths, shallow and feeling like they weren’t quite enough, too small to fill his chest, nearly hyperventilating. He didn’t realize his fingers were shaking until he curled them against Seong-Jae’s wrist—then clamped them tighter, holding fast, just to make his trembling stop.
He was supposed to be stronger than this.
He was supposed to be weathered, grizzled, this hardened detective who had seen everything and could be impervious to anything to get the job done.
But he’d never seen anything like this.
Not even in the old FBI files that had been declassified for educational purposes, and used as example materials in the criminal and behavioral psychology courses he’d taught at the University of Maryland. He’d covered Miyazaki, Bundy, Gaskins, Gacy.
But those had been distant, somehow. Their legends eclipsing the very human hideousness of what they’d done, the legacy of the murderers and their fame eclipsing the victims.
This killer was no one. No one with a name, a legend, a media presence that made him larger than life, a certain type of dark celebrity that cast its shadow over all until his victims were only accessories to his fame.
He was only known through the faces of the dead.
And those faces haunted Malcolm.
No matter how he tried to shut them out.
“How?” he asked, leaning harder into Seong-Jae, letting that smoke and diesel scent envelop him, comfort him. “How did you deal with this?”
“I cried,” Seong-Jae admitted softly. “Every night I went home, and I cried alone. Sometimes I cried on Seong-Ja, when I had time to spend with her and it was safe for me to be weak, to be small, to be afraid of the capacity for violence that seemed to live in everyone around me. Sometimes…sometimes I cried on Aanga, while we were together.” Seong-Jae slipped one hand back to stroke into Malcolm’s hair, his long fingers a gentle, rhythmic, yet firm pressure against Malcolm’s scalp. “I know you do not like him. It is not hard to see. But he was the one who told me…it was all right to cry, because I would break that much faster holding it inside than I would letting it out.”
It wasn’t an admission Malcolm had ever expected to hear from Seong-Jae—given so easily, so unashamedly. When Seong-Jae tried so hard to mask his emotions, to contain all the ferocious whirlwind of his wild and surging heart behind a façade of distant reserve and icy disinterest…it only told Malcolm how deeply his time with the BAU had cut Seong-Jae for him to admit this so openly.
Malcolm managed a shaky smile, opening his eyes, meeting that dark gaze, so heavy with concern, the set of Seong-Jae’s mouth troubled. “If he did that, maybe I won’t knock his teeth out for honing in on my boyfriend.”
“You would not knock his teeth out even if he had not.” Seong-Jae smiled slightly, tracing his thumb to the corner of Malcolm’s mouth. “You think you are the big bad wolf, but you huff and puff and blow, never bite. You are not that kind of man.”
“Tempted,” Malcolm murmured. “But the only one I want to bite is you.”
“Flirting is not appropriate in this moment, but I will accept that it is your coping mechanism and a method of deflection.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me,” Malcolm groaned, but he couldn’t help a faint laugh, some of that tightness in his chest easing. “Fuck. This is going to be a hard one, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Seong-Jae’s gaze searched his; it was strange to be on the receiving end of that penetrating stare, and yet rather than drilling Malcolm’s secrets out instead it felt like a soft, quiet touch reaching inside him, searching, touching tenderly on all his raw places. “I am serious, Malcolm. You do not have to subject yourself to this for me.”
“I won’t walk away from it.” Malcolm sighed. “You need me on this, omr-an. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
“I…” Seong-Jae made a frustrated sound. “I was being selfish and impulsive in the moment. I did not consider the impact this would have on you.”
“It’s okay to be a little selfish when you’re afraid and need someone.”
“I am not afraid,” Seong-Jae hissed, but when Malcolm only looked at him…he sagged, leaning harder into Malcolm, the pressure of their temples a touch harder. “…I am terrified.”
“That’s why I’m not going back.” Right now it felt like they were the only two people in the airplane, this stolen moment between them eclipsing the noise of other people, the sighs and sounds of passengers bumping their way in and out of their seats with their luggage. For him there was only Seong-Jae, and that quiet, broken admission that made it so hard for him to even think about letting go. “I’ll go wherever you need me, Seong-Jae. All you have to do is ask.”
“…but I did not even ask, this time.”
“You did, in your own way.” With small smile that was much harder to find than it should be, Malcolm brushed his lips against Seong-Jae’s. “The weight of this will be lighter if we carry it together.”
“For now…let us not carry it at all.” Seong-Jae leaned harder into him, then shifted to tuck against Malcolm’s side, leaning his head to his shoulder; the wild thatch of Seong-Jae’s dark hair teased past the collar of Malcolm’s suit to tickle his throat and tangle in his beard. “We saw enough of past cases for you to understand the pattern and the stakes. There is no point in reviewing the new case until Aanga can brief us on additional specifics on the ground, and until we have access to security footage. The flight is about to depart anyway, and they will ask you to turn your laptop off.”
Malcolm chuckled wearily, and slipped his arm around Seong-Jae’s shoulders, gathering him close. “I never thought you’d be the one to avoid work.”
“Perhaps my lazy, lackadaisical, inappropriately rule-breaking lover is rubbing off on me,” Seong-Jae muttered.
“I’m sorry, who just badged his way into a seat that isn’t his?”
“It was my seat,” Seong-Jae said, without the slightest ounce of remorse or shame. “The man who was sitting in it simply did not know that yet.”
“You’re a brazen bastard sometimes.”
But as the Fasten Seatbelt sign lit up and the plane began to vibrate around them, the low whine of the engines kicking up, Malcolm flipped his laptop open just long enough to hit the power button, then unplugged the thumbdrive, pocketed it, and closed his laptop to fit it into the compartment on the back of the seat in front of him.
Seong-Jae was right.
These might be the last few hours they would be able to steal before being thrust into terror and sickness without end for
some indefinite period of time.
Whatever was waiting on the ground in Phoenix?
It would still be waiting when they landed.
So for now…
“C’mere,” he said, leaning back in his seat and hauling Seong-Jae closer, as close as they could be in restrictive spaces that really weren’t made for men of their size, taking advantage of his window seat to bundle them into the corner. “Let me just…hold you for a while. Everything else can wait.”
Everything else can wait but you, he thought.
Everything else can wait but us.
[4: THE THINGS WE’VE DONE]
JASON MIN ZHE HUANG WAS ready to muzzle someone.
And the worst part was…
He wasn’t sure who.
Someone.
Anyone.
As long as it restored the peace and quiet of his goddamned house.
He stared rigidly at his laptop, and refused to acknowledge the bristling tension filling the open space—as if the massive terraced single-room apartment was a tank filled not with water, but with the acidic venom sizzling in the charged air between Sade and the spry little bastard currently handcuffed to the leg of the sofa, quite busily flicking through channels on the television so rapidly it was clear he was doing it only to irritate, rather than actually looking for something to watch.
Lucas Aleks.
Sila.
Keeping that little fuck here had been one of Min Zhe’s worst ideas in decades, and he’d made some pretty impressively bad decisions over the past few years.
But he couldn’t trust that weaselly little shit out of his sight.
Even if keeping him locked up here meant having Sade walking around the house like a porcupine twenty-four seven, murder in those snapping brown eyes.
Said brown eyes currently fixed rigidly on one of the many screens in the corner of the living room Sade had taken over with the tangled mess of tentacled cables and devices—more like a Giger installation—they called a workstation. Min Zhe had just barely managed to coax them in off the balcony last month, even when the cold had turned Sade’s frequently bare toes nearly white and they had been sitting under the overhang bundled up in three different coats, breaths puffing while snow fell down around their shoulders and dotted the dark brown cascade of tumbling, messy hair.
They still slept curled up small in an easy chair, refusing both Min Zhe’s bed and the guest room.
To say things weren’t okay in this house, and in his life?
Understatement of the fucking millennium.
And things were about to get worse.
Lucas Aleks stopped flicking channels, pausing on the home shopping channel and hitting mute. Silence fell, save for the rapid-fire click of Sade’s typing, a machine gun firing bullet after bullet from slender brown fingers. Min Zhe didn’t look up from the stack of shipping manifests he was sorting through, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel it.
That soundless hiss on the air.
The signal of a match struck, and edging closer and closer to a waiting fuse.
Lucas tilted his head back against the back of the couch, platinum hair spilling over the white leather, and stared up at the ceiling through those strange mixed-colored eyes, one green, one blue. He blew out an exaggerated sigh before rolling his head toward Sade.
“I’m bored,” he said sulkily, British accent lilting over the room with precise articulation, exaggerated sullen formality.
For a moment Min Zhe thought Sade wouldn’t acknowledge it—until they thinned their lips, baring the faintest sliver of their teeth. “Don’t talk to me,” they muttered, typing never slowing, eyes narrowing, the reflections from the screen flickering in their eyes and rimming their high cheekbones in silver, bringing out the stark lines of tension in their jaw.
Lucas smiled—slow, carnivorous, twisting to curl up on the sofa with his legs drawn up and one arm draped over the back, watching Sade intently. “What will you do if I don’t liste—”
Sade slammed their mouse down against the desk with a sharp smack, head snapping up, fierce eyes locking on Lucas. “I’m sorry, did I give you the impression I was non-violent?”
Min Zhe sighed, rubbing his temples. “Sade.”
That ferocious gaze flicked to him, boring into him with simmering frustration just barely leashed under the surface. “Don’t you Sade me. You stick me here with that—that—”
“That what?” Lucas practically purred, eyes lidding as if in deepest pleasure. As if he was enjoying this. “Do go on, Mx. Marcus. I’d love to know what you truly think of me.”
“Lucas,” Min Zhe growled. Fuck, he had a headache. Felt like he always had a fucking headache lately. “Stop antagonizing them.”
Lucas just watched Sade for several long moments, as if trying to drive a point home. Sade met his gaze across the room, and for all that everything was so wrong right now…
Min Zhe couldn’t help but admire the firm, unwavering challenge in those tawny eyes. The strength. The pure and utter conviction that made Sade so resilient, a force in and unto themself, no matter how small they might be.
Dynamite. Small packages. That sort of thing.
And even if Sade would barely even acknowledge his existence, all it took was the wildness in those burning eyes to explode Min Zhe’s heart into sharp, erratic beats.
But after several long, simmering seconds, Lucas turned his gaze from Sade with slow deliberation, lingering on Min Zhe with a smirk, as if he’d made some kind of point.
“Then stop letting me get bored,” he lilted.
Min Zhe sank back in his desk chair, lacing his hands together over his stomach and regarding the twisted little whelp thoughtfully. Looking at that pixie-like face, it was hard to believe this sylph of a man had wreaked so much havoc on the BPD and on Min Zhe’s own organization over the past several months.
But, well…
Poison came in small packages, too.
And sometimes all it took was one drop to kill.
“Keep in mind,” he said slowly, “that I let you live for a few very specific words stored away in that little blond noggin of yours.” He let his gaze flick over Lucas, lingering on the handcuff stretching its chain from his wrist down to the leg of the sofa. “I’m not interested in anything else you have to say. Read a goddamned book until I’m ready for you to be useful.”
Unfortunately until I’m ready might be for a few more weeks still.
Chess was a slow game, and he was still moving his pieces into place.
Lucas’s smirk only widened, and he lifted his unfettered hand in a mock-salute. “Yes Sir, Min Zhe.”
Min Zhe curled his upper lip. “You don’t use my given name, white boy.”
“Mr. Huang.”
With a slow, controlled sigh, Sade thudded their head back against their chair. “I’ll shoot him, Min Zhe. Just say the word.”
“I won’t let you take that pleasure away from me.”
“If I were you,” floated in from the balcony, icy and precise and coolly feminine, “I’d kill the little rat.”
Lillienne Wellington pushed the glass balcony door open, flicking her cigarette stub from elegantly manicured fingertips to disappear over the balcony’s edge before she slipped inside with poised, measured steps, shrugging her thickly furred white coat from off her shoulders and brushing snow from her sun-streaked, honey-brown hair. Lifting her chin with aloof hauteur, she regarded first Sade, then Lucas, before settling her half-lidded gaze on Min Zhe and closing the door behind her.
He didn’t know why she irritated him so much.
No, he did.
Because even when she was in his goddamned house, she acted like she owned the damned place.
Just because she came from money, her name had clout, and her damned daddy owned half of Baltimore.
Daddy dearest was about to go to jail for murder in the first, so that name was fucking mud right now.
And she could stop parading around like she had goddamned ai
rs when she was well on her way to getting as dirty as Min Zhe.
He met her gaze in unwavering silence, then said firmly, “But you’re not me.” He looked away from her pointedly, dismissing her from his attention and returning his gaze to the stack of papers. “And don’t you forget that.”
Whatever she meant to say in response was cut off by Lucas’s eerily sweet little giggle, his nasty soft sing-song. “I made your poor sweet papa bear kill your boy toy, and he didn’t even hesitate.”
“You little fucking—”
“Wellington!” Min Zhe stood firmly, raising his voice, and Wellington froze mid-stride, tense and bristling, glaring at Lucas with her mouth set in a murderous line, fingers curled into bird-like claws at her side.
Jesus fucking Christ, at this rate he was going to have to dispose of a body by sunset.
After several quivering seconds of silence that felt like that moment waiting for the last ounce of pressure on a trigger…Sade spoke. Soft. Slow.
But there was no mistaking the deadly intent in that quiet, huskily lyrical voice.
“If we took a vote in this room,” they said, never once looking away from Lucas, “you’d be dead.”
“I’m so scared,” Lucas retorted, shivering his shoulders. “You’re just upset because your boyfriend calls the shots, and he picked me over you.”
Sade didn’t respond to the needling. Didn’t respond at all, keeping themself in perfect icy control, but there was a subtle menace, a promise in the fluid language of their body as they stood, resting their hands against the edge of their desk, leaning forward.
“I’m upset,” they said, dropping each word like a dagger, “because you tried to kill someone I care about very much, and put someone else I care for in mortal peril.”
Lucas tossed his head. “Don’t blame me for both of your bad decisions. I never sent you down this route.” He arched one brow. “I’m the one offering you a hand out.”
“Snakes don’t have hands,” Sade retorted, and Min Zhe groaned, raking a hand back through his hair.
“Enough. Everyone. And Lucas, fucking drop the accent, we know you’re from Sacramento.”
Lucas wrinkled his nose—but when he spoke again that British accent had vanished, leaving a rather calm, quiet American accent, so generic he could have been from anywhere, likely as much of an artifice as the British lilt. “You really aren’t leaving me any options to entertain myself.”
