Hard Line

by Sidney Bell

  For some reason, that made Tobias’s lips curl into a tiny smile. “Maybe I am.”

  Sullivan tried to work through the angles, wondering how best to handle things so that Raina didn’t get wind of any of it, because she would break their deal in a finger snap. That urge to push Tobias back on the defensive, to push him until he broke or knelt, grew stronger.

  “Well?” Tobias asked, watching him carefully.

  Sullivan had no idea what was on his face, but whatever it was had Tobias circling back around the foot of the bed toward his original seat. “Good. Let’s move on to the part where we get some work done.”

  It was Tobias’s bad luck that he was right next to Sullivan when that last little bit of bravado sank in, because Sullivan moved without thinking, his hands finding Tobias’s upper arms, his body turning until Tobias was stumbling over his feet, back fetching up against the wall with enough force to knock the wind from his lungs.

  “You picked the wrong guy to fuck with,” Sullivan said quietly, leaning in until they were pressed close together, using his weight to help keep Tobias contained. Not that Tobias was fighting. He was slumped against the wall, his gaze startled and wide. Sullivan could feel Tobias’s heart knocking hard, and the speed of it pleased him.

  “I’m not doing this to screw you over.” Tobias’s voice wavered. “I just need to find him. And I need to be the one to do it.”

  “Stop trying to make it sound reasonable. If you’re going to pull shit like this, be man enough to admit what you’re fucking doing.”

  Tobias’s expression hardened. “Fine. I’m screwing you over. Happy now?”

  Sullivan leaned in closer still, letting his fingers dig into Tobias’s biceps. “Not even close.”

  Tobias’s breath stuttered warm across Sullivan’s skin, eyebrows folding in confusion even as his gaze dropped to Sullivan’s mouth. His biceps flexed under Sullivan’s hands, but he didn’t try to free himself, apparently content with Sullivan trapping him against the wall, controlling him, probably hurting him.

  Tobias’s next breath was more of a sigh, which was...not a normal reaction to this sort of thing, and for a second, Sullivan was tempted. To push. To see. To know what Tobias would do if Sullivan cupped the back of his neck and shoved him toward the floor. Would Tobias go down smooth or fight? Back when he’d thought Tobias was a demure college student, he’d have assumed the former, but now Sullivan wasn’t sure. He also wasn’t sure which he would prefer. He liked the idea of Tobias thrown open, all resistance gone, utterly submissive. He also liked the idea of breaking him open as he struggled to hold the shattered pieces of himself together.

  Sullivan was half-hard in his jeans and getting harder fast. He tightened his grip for the span of two seconds, three, watching the way Tobias’s lips parted, the way he swallowed, and then Sullivan pulled back. Lowered his hands. Tobias’s skin had turned red with the pressure of his fingers, and that...fuck, that hit him good.

  He sounded hoarse when he said, “I won’t forget this.”

  Tobias didn’t sound much better when he replied, “I wouldn’t expect you to. And for what it’s worth, I know this is unfair. You might not believe me, but I am sorry.”

  “Not sorry enough to take it back, I bet.”

  “No.”

  Sullivan stared at him for another second, taking in the flush on Tobias’s cheeks, the way his eyes clung to Sullivan, and Sullivan forced himself to step away. If he didn’t get some space to think, he would do something incredibly stupid. “I’m going for a walk. Twenty minutes. Be here when I get back.”

  Tobias’s expression creased—disappointment first, relief following. Then that dissipated too, and he mostly looked exhausted again. “I will.”

  Chapter Seven

  When the door slammed behind Sullivan, Tobias fell into the nearest chair with rubbery legs. His heart thundered. He’d won, and the triumph at the knowledge wasn’t small. But what stole his knees from him was the way Sullivan had shoved him against the wall, his grip painful and mean. Tobias had silently debated the merits of struggling, but under his worry that he wouldn’t be able to get free had been the terrifying realization that he...didn’t actually want to.

  Sullivan had known, somehow, what was going through Tobias’s head. That narrow, bony face had shifted from fury to surprise to awareness with electrifying speed. Tobias had felt exposed and uncertain and quivering, like a bit of kindling might feel seeing the match approach, and Sullivan had been inches away from doing...something, God, Tobias wasn’t sure what, but he wanted to know. He wanted to push, wanted Sullivan to push back, wanted it to burn.

  Tobias had liked it.

  He was hard.

  “Jesus,” he whispered, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. He should be focused on finding Ghost, on making sure he gave Sullivan enough information to get the job done, but not so much that he didn’t need Tobias’s help anymore. He needed to be on his toes, not distracted by whatever twisted sexual tension had managed to spring up between them.

  His phone buzzed, and he sighed, the irritation bubbling up even before he looked at the screen. Manman again. He’d been avoiding her calls, and it was probably unfair, but he wasn’t sure he had it in him to talk about anything without yelling yet. He let it go to voicemail, deleted it without listening to it, and sent a text: I’m safe, but I don’t want to talk. Unless it’s an emergency, I’d appreciate some space.

  After a couple of minutes, she replied: All right. We love you. Let us know if you need anything, and be safe.

  He stared at the words for a second before putting his phone away.

  Sullivan came back when he said he would, his knock crisp and loud. Tobias let him in and returned to the bed. The brown hair at Sullivan’s temples had darkened with sweat and he had a laptop bag slung over one shoulder. Some of the wild energy he’d been trying to curtail earlier had faded, although his tone remained hard when he said, “There are rules to this.”

  “If I agree, perhaps.”

  “No. If you don’t agree to these, you could get someone hurt—maybe yourself, maybe me—and I’d rather take my chances getting fired or going to the cops. These are my nonnegotiables. If you don’t like them, you can fuck off.”

  The inflexibility in his voice tipped into aggression by that last bit, but when Tobias lifted an eyebrow, Sullivan took a deep breath and reined it back in. “All right?”

  “No promises,” Tobias said slowly. “But let’s hear them.”

  Sullivan dumped the laptop bag on the desk, then turned to lean against it, folding his arms. “Rule number one. If you lie to me, even once, we’re done. I don’t care if we’re talking about whether you like pickles on your hamburgers.”

  That made sense enough, so Tobias nodded. “No problem.”

  “Rule number two. You will not display initiative of any kind. Sometimes things like this end up going to court, and that means everything has to be done a certain way. Having a random citizen sticking his fingers into the case would make my testimony questionable. I’m not having someone get away with a crime on my watch because you decided to take a peek at something that wasn’t your business.”

  “And if I have a good idea?”

  “Tell me. You can help plan strategy and you can be present for some things if we agree upon it in advance, but you’re not going to be interviewing witnesses or sneaking into people’s offices to find murder weapons, so get that sort of thing out of your head now. Don’t take it upon yourself to investigate something if I haven’t given you permission because you might end up shooting me in the foot without meaning to.”

  “Okay.”

  “Rule number three,” Sullivan said. “You do what I say when I say it.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. My word is law when we’re in the thick of things. I’m not always going to have the time or the inclin
ation to explain why something should be done to my specifications, but between the law and standard practices and safety, sometimes things simply have to be done inefficiently. We can argue until the cows come home when we’re talking like we are now, but I have the final say. Even if you don’t like it, you need to obey.”

  Tobias’s jaw tightened even as his belly went unnervingly warm and liquid at that word: obey. What on earth was wrong with him? “Fine.”

  “Fine.” Sullivan pulled a laptop out of the bag and booted it. Once he’d found what he wanted, he spun the laptop around so Tobias could see the screen. “Read this. Type your initials below the fee chart. Note that while I won’t unnecessarily reveal information about you, my client, I make no such promises about the facts of the case, particularly if addressed by law enforcement officers. I reserve the right to use my own discretion in these instances. Type your name at the bottom—it’ll count as an electronic signature.”

  Tobias read through the metric ton of legalese, signed, and wrote out a retainer check.

  Sullivan put it in his pocket. “Now tell me who’s in the pictures I took at Ghost’s place yesterday.”

  “Not yet.”

  Sullivan rounded on him with such visible antagonism that a thread of unease crept up Tobias’s spine, and it took considerable effort to hide it. “I want to know about your missing person first. I don’t know what information to give you until I know how it might go together.”

  Very quietly, Sullivan said, “If you’re fucking with me, you’re not going to like what happens.”

  Tobias’s unease grew stronger. “I’m not. I’m just covering my bases.”

  There was a beat of silence before some of the hostility began to fade from Sullivan’s expression. “Okay. Bare bones...back in 1992, an idiot who wanted to be a crime lord got himself and some of his thugs killed in a turf-war thing. He also managed to get his hapless housekeeper killed at the same time. The housekeeper’s ten-year-old daughter, Nathalie, went missing. My client is a family member and he’s been looking for her ever since. I followed a stupid hunch, and got a hit—the dead housekeeper somehow bought property about six years ago. Can you guess which property that was?”

  Tobias’s forehead creased. “Ghost’s condo.”

  “You can see why I’m interested in talking to him. And the people who had keys to his front door.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know who they were? The Russians?”

  Tobias hesitated. From what Sullivan had said, there was a very good chance that the Krayevs were the owners of the condo where Ghost had been living—or someone in their organization was. He’d suspected as much, but he wasn’t sure how they could move forward without confirming the connection first. “I have a good guess.”

  “A guess?”

  “I know someone who can confirm it. I need your pictures, though.”

  Sullivan’s jaw worked as he went back to his computer. He sent the pictures to Tobias’s email, then waited impatiently while Tobias forwarded them to Church, along with the message: Are these two of the Krayev brothers?

  A minute later, Tobias’s phone rang. He glanced at Sullivan and gestured to the door. “I need some privacy for a few minutes, please.”

  After a long, baleful moment of are you kidding me? Sullivan shoved his laptop in the bag and took it with him on his way out, slamming the door behind him for the second time in half an hour.

  “Sorry about that,” Tobias said into the phone.

  “What the fuck, dude?” Church sounded halfway to panic. “What—where—what are you doing? How did you get these pictures?”

  “Is it them? The Krayevs?”

  “Where did you get the pictures?”

  “Church.”

  “Yes, it’s them, all right? Seryozha’s the handsome one and Yasha’s the stupid-looking one. Now how did you get these pictures?”

  “From my private investigator.”

  “You hired someone to find Ghost?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he any good?”

  “His firm has a good reputation. I checked.”

  “This is a horrible idea,” Church said. “You’re going to get yourself hurt.”

  “Your lack of faith in me is duly fucking noted.” Tobias clamped his mouth shut, shocked at himself. He didn’t talk to Church like that. He didn’t talk to anyone like that. He heard Church’s indrawn breath, felt the pause between them as tangible as a wall, and...and he couldn’t make himself apologize. “It’s not like I’m going to wander up to them and ask if they’ve hurt my friend. I’m not stupid.”

  “They almost killed me.” Church’s voice was low, almost tentative. He didn’t sound like himself at all. “They almost killed Miller. You’ve seen what they did to his hand, Tobias. I didn’t mean you can’t do shit, I meant...the Krayevs don’t fuck around. If they think you’re asking questions because of what happened eight months ago, they’ll put a bullet in your brain.”

  “You’re the one they’ll expect trouble from. They’re not going to care about me. As far as they know, I’m a college kid who hired someone to find his buddy. Okay? Let me handle this.”

  Church’s unhappiness radiated through the phone. “This feels wrong.”

  “It doesn’t make you a bad friend to keep Miller safe,” Tobias pointed out. “I’ve got this. I’m only going to see if I can find out where Ghost took off to. I’m not going to start a war with the Russian mafia. You’re doing the right thing by staying out of it. You know I’m right.”

  “The hell I do. I know Ghost and I know this sort of situation, and I know... I know I can’t let you get hurt.”

  “I’m not asking for permission.” That snap had come back to his voice, and again Church’s side of the conversation went tentative.

  “Let me come to your place, yeah? We can talk this out, I’ll eat some of that beef stuff that your mom makes and we’ll figure—”

  “I’m not living there anymore.”

  “You’re—you moved? Why does everyone keep moving without telling me?”

  Sucks getting left out, doesn’t it, Tobias thought, but only said evenly, “You’re not my babysitter.”

  “I know, but—”

  “I moved because I don’t want to live at home anymore. I’m tired of the bullshit.”

  “What’s going on with you, man?” With uncharacteristic, awkward gentleness, Church asked, “Is it like what happened before, the shit that landed you in Woodbury?”

  “So if I’m angry, it’s because I have a mental health issue?”

  “That’s not what I meant—”

  “I’m not talking about it right now.” Even this had been enough to get that red, raw anger broiling inside him again.

  For a long minute they breathed silently into the phone.

  “You better not disappear on me the way Ghost has,” Church snapped finally. “Dude, I fucking mean it.”

  “I won’t,” Tobias promised, affection rising within him as it always did in the rare moments when Church’s sharp edges thinned enough to reveal the good heart he tried so hard to hide.

  “Send me updates.”

  “I will.”

  “Damn it,” Church muttered, and hung up.

  Tobias collected himself and tugged the door open. “I’m done.”

  “Swell.” Sullivan came back inside, his movements jerky. He threw himself into the chair at the desk and raised his eyebrows. “So? Ready to talk?”

  “Within limits.”

  Visibly exasperated, Sullivan pulled a small digital recorder out of the laptop bag, setting it between them. He pressed the record button. “This is Sullivan Tate, private investigator, beginning interview one with Tobias Benton on the matter of Nathalie Trudeau’s disappearance. Interview is taking place on August 3rd, 2017, at 10:28 a.m. Mr. Benton, you’r
e aware that I’m recording this and you give permission, right?”

  “Yes.”

  He turned his laptop to face them, tipping the screen so they could both look at the photograph of the Russian men from the day before. They were both dark-haired and somewhere in their late twenties or early thirties. The hulkish big guy had a vapid expression on his face, while the other, movie-star handsome, looked far cagier.

  Sullivan said, “This is a photograph that I took outside of 2435 Ann Arbor Drive at the Riviera Condominium Complex on August 1st at roughly 4:00 p.m. Do you know who the men in the picture are?”

  Tobias nodded. “They’re Seryozha and Yasha Krayev.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “You’ve heard of them, I guess.”

  “The Krayev name pops up from time to time when you’re looking for scumbags, but...” As he spoke, Sullivan opened his browser and ran a quick search for a name. A second later, he spun the laptop one more time in Tobias’s direction. “But in this case, it’s because Vasily Krayev’s body was found in a shallow grave on Lookout Mountain about a month ago. He’d been there for quite a while apparently.”

  “Oh.” Tobias’s eyes flew over the first few lines of the search results, all article names like Suspected Meth Dealer Murdered, Man Guilty of Assaulting Cop Found Dead, and Shooting Victim Found on Lookout Mtn. Has Mob Ties. He and Church had kept an eye on the news for weeks after everything had gone down eight months ago in case something that could bite them in the ass ended up in the hands of the press or the cops, but as time had gone by without reports of meth, dealers or related violence, they’d eventually quit monitoring. “Oh, that’s bad.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.” Sullivan pushed the laptop back. “Don’t suppose you have any thoughts about this dead meth dealer?”

  Tobias paused. “I never met him, but I know who he is.”

  “Do you know his relationship to the guys in the picture? Seryozha, you said? And Yasha? Vasily’s brothers? Cousins?”