Shades of Henry (The Flophouse Book 1)

by Amy Lane

  “Yeah.” Lance blew out a breath. “What about afterwards? Did you and Dex talk?”

  Henry’s smile faded. “Yeah. I… I had this sort of awful thought, that if I wasn’t around for Malachi to be a complete asshole to, he might turn on my sister.”

  Lance’s eyes went wide. “Oh my God—abusers don’t often just quit.”

  “We emailed my oldest brother. Travis still keeps in touch with Davy. He’s going to keep us posted.” Henry blew out a breath. “It’s all we can do, really. ’Cause I keep thinking, what’ll my folks do if Malachi suddenly starts whaling on my sister?”

  “What do you think will happen?”

  Henry snorted bitterly. “They’ll tell her it’s her fault.”

  Lance cupped his cheek. “It’s not, you know.”

  Henry looked away. “I had some of that shit coming.”

  “No, you didn’t. Not a damned bit of it,” Lance growled. “You were like a frog in a pot of water. The water’s fine at first. But then it keeps getting hotter and hotter, and you don’t even notice until finally you’re boiled alive. Only you were smart. You noticed. You got out.”

  “Don’t try to make me heroic,” Henry told him firmly. “Don’t try to make me brave. If I was a fuckin’ hero, I would have told him no the first time.”

  “Oh, Henry, you’re a hero because you told him no at all.”

  Henry grunted. “Whatever.” He yawned. “God. There was so much I wanted to do today. It all got completely derailed. We on for tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Lance seemed put out that Henry wasn’t going to whine anymore about Malachi, but Henry just couldn’t. Who deserved to be subjected to that crap, right? “What are we doing tomorrow?”

  Finally, something to smile about. “Well, you’re going to get me into your work, and we’re going to break some laws. You ready?”

  Lance buried his face in his pillow. “Henry, you’re killing me.”

  “Hey, maybe when we get back, the place will be empty. You ever think of that?”

  “No.”

  “It could happen.”

  Lance glanced at him sideways. “Who says I want to?” he asked, clearly wanting to.

  Henry actually chuckled and ran a gentle knuckle along the side of Lance’s neck. “I do.”

  “God, you’re cocky.”

  He wasn’t, not really. “I just really, really, want it to be true.”

  Lance’s shy smile peeped out from the pillow. “It is,” he whispered.

  Henry chuckled gently and lay back on the mattress. “I am so damned glad.”

  Not My Job

  “SO HERE’S the thing,” Henry explained as they were leaving the apartment. “You can’t do anything that would put your job in danger.”

  Lance paused and looked at him in the much-laundered white scrubs he’d gotten that first day of the investigation. “You know, when we’re done with this case, you can probably wear those as sweats or something. You seem to like them an awful lot.” Truth was, he looked good in white, and Lance liked to imagine him in his tighties underneath the loose bottoms. He really liked to imagine Henry naked under the fabric, but it seemed best to curtail all sexual fantasies until they actually had some time alone.

  “I’m serious, Lance. You need to watch yourself and your license to practice. Don’t let me go over any lines, okay?”

  “Like what?” Lance asked.

  Henry rolled his eyes. “Look, you’re the one who worked your ass off to be a medical professional. So, stop me before we do anything that would violate a rule or something, something you cannot do. I really want to wrap up this loose end, okay? Jackson’s going into surgery in the next couple of weeks—”

  “Hold up.” They had gotten this phone call that morning. “Aren’t we going to, like, some sort of party next weekend? At his house?”

  Henry grinned. “Look, I’m just saying if the guy’s gonna die, he’s gonna do it in style. Besides, between you and me, I think that’s Cramer. He seems to want to… I dunno, spoil Jackson. Like Jackson has a bank account and his own money and shit, but Cramer won’t let him pay for anything. And they’re always arguing about clothes—”

  “Good!” The thing Jackson had been wearing when Lance had sewn him up had predated Lance’s high school graduation.

  “Yeah,” Henry agreed, looking thoughtful. “It is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Henry shrugged. “He’s let some stuff slip, not really complaining, though. I was like, ‘My father’s an asshole,’ and he’s like, ‘My mother was a junkie—we’ve all got damage.’ I get the feeling Cramer spoils him because he’s going to need a lot of spoiling before he believes he deserves it.”

  “I know a guy like that,” Lance told him, cursing for the thousandth time their living situation and the fact that he couldn’t greet Henry with flowers and candlelight and a bottle of wine. Lance hadn’t dated since Teddy, and Henry hadn’t dated ever. What would it be like to have an entire evening alone with this man, and let him know he was cared for?

  Lance would have to continue to wonder, because right now, they were busy fighting crime—and Henry was luminous with it.

  “So I don’t put my job in danger,” Lance said, trying to focus. “That’s easy, since I don’t know what we’re doing yet!” Henry had been sort of cagey about that, but then, they were supposed to have done this yesterday, only, well, seaweed exfoliant depilatories and a despondent Randy, who was probably going to spend the next week in either an oatmeal bath or the gym pool until his hair grew out, had kept them busy.

  Henry sighed and waited for Lance to get in the car before pounding emphatically on his phone. “Okay, so here’s what’s going down. Goddammit, Rivers, I’m not a fucking kid!”

  “What’s going down is you’re fighting with your new friend about who gets to play in the sandbox,” Lance said dryly, starting the CR-V. “Anything else?”

  He could practically hear Henry rolling his eyes.

  “Wait… wait… oh! Hey! He called in reinforcements. Oh! Okay. That’s cool. Very good.”

  Henry clicked some more and finally put his phone away as Lance made the turn onto Howe.

  “Look, so I need you to get me into the hospital and past the patient areas. I need access to the offices of the board members—Sampson in particular. That’s where Rivers and I went when we were looking for proof that he was selling drugs. Now, he confessed to the police—but Jackson’s detective friend says they only gave a brief look at the office because of the confession. And one of the things Sampson hasn’t done is mention Summer Frasier’s name.”

  “And Summer Frasier is…?” Lance was still a little lost.

  “The nurse who didn’t give patients the full dose of drugs because she was saving them for her side business.”

  Lance frowned. “That still doesn’t make any sense. She wouldn’t get anywhere near enough to make a decent amount of money.”

  “We have proof she’s doing it,” Henry said. “We have pictures of her signature on two different electronic documents for the same patient. But we don’t have the pills she’s been stashing. We know where they are—but all Jackson got were shitty photos, no flash, because he was afraid of getting caught.”

  Lance’s blood froze to a sluggish trickle. “Getting caught where?”

  “Getting caught in Sampson’s closet while they were having sex,” Henry said, like, “Getting caught picking his nose” or “Getting caught eating cookies before dinner.”

  “This is going to be your life now, isn’t it?” Lance asked in horror. “I mean, I keep thinking I get a handle on it, but you’re going to be hiding under people’s beds while they do the nasty, and I’m going to be texting you about a date and you’ll be, ‘Not right now, they’re almost finished.’”

  Henry appeared to think about it seriously. “I don’t know, Lance. If you were naked and waiting for me and we had a house to ourselves, I might just stand up, take a picture, and say, ‘I gotta go, m
y boyfriend is waiting.’ I mean, I do want to make you my priority.”

  Lance ground his teeth. “You are being an asshole.”

  “And you knew this about me, and still, we have an inflatable mattress that is almost flat and might never recover. Now do you want to know how this needs to go down or what?”

  Fucking luminous. It was infuriating and worrisome, but Lance couldn’t even look at his face without wanting to bang him. This was who Henry Worrall was supposed to be. Not grim and angry, not hurt and lost. This. Cocky and excited and snarky and fun.

  Lance might not understand it, but God, if this was what it took to make Henry happy, he had damned well better be on board.

  “What do I need to do?”

  “Just get me into the office. That’s all you need to do. Now if you can’t, if it’s going to get you in trouble—”

  “He’s been arrested. There’s no expectation of privacy there,” Lance said. “Now if you were trying to hack his computer, that’s doctor/patient privilege and that could be a thing, but if we’re just, say, going into the closet to get some supplies, I can ask the office manager. No big deal.”

  “I like the way you think, Dr. Luna. This will be much more comfortable than hanging out in the dusty utility closet, listening to two criminals have sex.”

  “I thought you said you were in the bathroom when that happened!” Lance’s stomach roiled.

  “I was! But Jackson texted me a blow-by-blow. It was so not pretty. This will be much easier. Unless, you know, Frasier walks in.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if she knows we’re sniffing around, she’ll have time to destroy evidence before we get the cops in there. I mean, Jackson’s pictures showed a lot of prescription bottles that—”

  “Those should have been locked up!” Lance’s outrage over protocol felt silly, but medical staff was tested repeatedly on drug protocols. Things like what Martin Sampson’s father had done weren’t supposed to happen.

  “Yes,” Henry said patiently. “They should have been locked up. That’s how we know they were illegal. But we also know the police just vacated Sampson’s office—Jackson’s buddy says they didn’t find the evidence so they didn’t search the closet. So this is important. We need to present this evidence to Jackson’s department friend so we can get Frasier out of the medical profession, at the very least.”

  “Not in jail?” Lance asked, his outrage still fresh.

  “Sampson committed murder—two and a half that we know about.”

  Lance was going to kill him. “Two and a half? What is that even—”

  “His son, his old business partner, and his business partner’s son, whom he accidentally overdosed on pills. The kid took them himself, but Sampson was in the room. Anyway, Sampson is up for murder, but there’s no evidence Frasier was in on any of that. She may be arrested—that’s not my problem. I would at least like to see her get her license revoked because she shouldn’t—”

  “She shouldn’t get away with this,” Lance said, coming out of his confusion to go with outrage again.

  “No, she should not.”

  Lance narrowed his eyes and shook his head.

  “Why does this make you so mad?” Henry asked patiently.

  “Because it’s dangerous,” Lance said.

  “It really isn’t.”

  “You don’t know that. Because it’s dangerous and it’s… it’s unnecessary. You’re not getting paid—” God, all of Henry’s desire to be useful, and so much of it had seemed to be connected to his need to provide. This didn’t do any of that, and Lance was confused.

  “It’s important, Galahad. Do you think I’m excited about you working thirty-six-hour shifts? Do you think I don’t worry about you running into a tree or something on the way home? What about the fact that you’re probably living on caffeine and anxiety, even though I tried to feed you fruit and egg white for breakfast? Do you think I don’t worry? But this is important. It’s a loose end I can tie up, and it’s the start of a job I think I might really love. Jackson told me he’s got contacts at the hospital who can get me in if it’s dangerous for you, but—”

  “No, no,” Lance muttered. “No. You pulled out the real name and food, which means this is important to you. And I’m sorry I’m such a whiny baby. I….”

  Henry gave him a fond smile. “You’re a very by-the-book guy, Galahad. I get it.”

  Lance could hear his own eyeballs click this time. “Stop with the Galahad—”

  “Nope. I’m the only one who gets to call you that. Galahad. Not Gally. Just Galahad. My own knight in shining armor.” He squeezed Lance’s knee. “I love that. You want to jump in and protect me. It’s sort of awesome.”

  “Yeah, but apparently, I’m shitty at the job.” Gah! Traffic on Folsom Boulevard—never Lance’s favorite.

  “Who says? Look at me. I’m a student. I’m a… a helper at a law firm. I’m a babysitter of adult children. I mean, a few months ago, I was just some helpless Army grunt—”

  “Sergeant,” Lance retorted.

  “How did you know—”

  “You told me, and I looked it up to see what it meant. You passed up promotions so you and your douchefucking ex could be lower ranking, but you should have been a sergeant for the last two years.”

  “Whatever. I’m over it—”

  “You shouldn’t be,” Lance said. “I’m going to be bitter for you.”

  “Don’t be,” Henry said and his voice dropped, became low and intimate. “Because… because as corny and dumb as it sounds, maybe this was the path I was supposed to be on. You ever think of that?”

  Lance’s jaw eased up just a little. “Mm… maybe.”

  “Mm-hmm? And maybe this will be… well, different, but maybe life this way will be a little more fun.”

  “I’m fun?” Lance asked, not above fishing for a compliment.

  “You’re a whole amusement park.” Henry’s voice shifted again. “Or I assume you are. I’d really like some more time to find out.”

  Lance would really like some private time with him too. It was starting to drive Lance a bit mad. “I know! It’s not fair!”

  “How did you hook up before I arrived?” Henry asked, and Lance realized the answer was a little embarrassing.

  “Same way everybody else did. Found a spare bed and went to town.”

  Henry made a happy little hum in the back of his throat.

  “What?”

  “I’m special,” he said, the pride unmistakable.

  “Don’t ever doubt it.” There was a thick, gooey silence in the car then, the kind that warmed Lance’s chest before he turned his attention to the matter at hand. “So, since we’re not breaking in or doing anything illegal, you’re just going to ride my heel while I get permission from the office manager?”

  “That’s the plan,” Henry said, looking out into the brutal sun with a sort of cheerful anticipation.

  Lance tried to analyze the buzzing in his stomach.

  To his surprise, he realized he was sort of looking forward to this too.

  MARA, THE office manager, was a stout woman in her forties with cheerfully blond hair and cat-eye glasses. She had no problem letting Lance and Henry into Sampson’s office now that the police were through with it, but she warned them that they weren’t to touch anything, and they weren’t to take anything out.

  Henry held up his phone. “Just taking pictures, ma’am.”

  “That’s what you’re using?” Lance wrinkled his nose. “Somehow, I’m disappointed.”

  “I’m sure Jackson’s got a long-range camera if he needs it,” Henry said defensively. “He seems to work a little… I dunno, closer than that. Besides, he sent me his cop friend’s number so I can text the evidence to him.”

  “That’ll have to do,” Lance mumbled. “So, Mara, let us in?”

  “Sure!”

  Sampson had an office in his own practice—his office in the hospital was opulent, but small. Plush rug, glossy oak furn
iture, a clear view over Stockton Boulevard.

  “I wonder why he got one inside the hospital instead of in the office park next door?” Lance murmured. “Maybe he was here before the recent remodel.”

  “Maybe they wanted to shove him in a corner,” Henry muttered. “Lots of awards and shit for show, but seriously, if he’s practicing medicine somewhere else, what does he need an office in here for?”

  Lance thought about it. “Ostentation,” he said, looking at a couple of cases carefully crafted for some obscure humanitarian award. “He has it.”

  “He does indeed.” Henry moved behind the desk to the small utility closet. “You’re the one with the key.”

  “Are you sure the cops didn’t check this?” Lance asked as he opened the door and stepped back. He was hoping to catch the interior with as much light as possible.

  “I asked Cramer,” Henry said. “Neither he nor Jackson had a chance to mention it to their detective friend. Jackson said he’d contact the guy today. The fact is, they wrapped up the main bad guys and all they really have on Summer Frasier is some paperwork and Jackson’s story about sex in the office.”

  “But is this really your job?” Lance asked, hating the whine in his voice.

  “Well, is it really not? I mean, you can have your version of internal affairs check her out—but by that time, she’ll have cleared the evidence. This is….” Henry grimaced. “It’s a loose end, and I don’t like those. And it’s driving Jackson nuts, and he needs to chill and get better. And… and I don’t want to be the guy who’s sloppy. So we’re doing this.”

  Well, Lance couldn’t really argue with that. Henry Improvement was apparently not done in half-measures.