Backward

by Andrew Grey

“But what if one of them was the guy being proposed to?” Harry asked. He was starting to have fun with this. “Then he’d know.”

  “Yeah, but then I’d know who it was, and I wouldn’t tell him. You’re being difficult, and you’re the one who asked me what the gossip was. So who’s the nosy one now?” Tristan put his hands on his hips. All Harry could do was shake his head.

  “Okay. I give up. Are you going to stay around?”

  “No. Zach, Kevin, and Jeremy are all going back to Bull’s for the night.” He yawned and tried to cover it. They’d had a long day. “I thought once they left, I’d go lie down in the office. It’ll be quieter in there.”

  “You could go with them if you wanted,” Harry offered.

  “No. Then I’d either need to get back to your place or crash there, and I’d rather just go home with you.” Tristan yawned again. “Do you think we could go to my place tomorrow? I need to check on things and… maybe I can go home soon.”

  “Yeah….” Harry couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for that prospect. He hated the thought of Tristan going back to his apartment. He liked having Tristan staying with him. But Tristan had his own life, and he deserved it. Maybe once this was over, they could date and stuff. Harry sighed. That wasn’t what he wanted at all. He liked having Tris in his bed, going to sleep with him, waking up with him, making love with him. Well, he couldn’t force him, and Tristan was obviously looking forward to going home.

  “Thanks,” Tristan said and hurried over to where the guys were sitting. They talked for a while, and then Zach led the guys toward the exit, while Tristan came back over to Harry. “Can I borrow the office key?”

  Harry was about to say he’d open the door, but a ruckus sounded on the far side of the club, so he unlocked the door for Tristan and took off. He and one of the bouncers broke up a scuffle over whose boyfriend was whose, separating the men. He let the bouncer handle it and went to check on the bar, which was running smoothly. He breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was back to normal, and for that he was extremely grateful.

  “I don’t know why I expected a train wreck tonight,” Harry told Bull the next time he saw him.

  “They’re cowards. They would never approach us when we could see them coming. They attacked the club when we were gone because there’s no way they could face us man to man. We’re dealing with a man with a huge ego and a power complex, but he’s also a scared little child. He’ll break into a club at night, and he’ll send in his lackeys, but there’s no way he’ll get his hands dirty himself.” Bull was growling by the time he was done. It was rare for him to run off like that, but Harry didn’t interrupt. He felt the same way, and at least one of them was letting it all out.

  “What do we do?” Harry asked. “It isn’t like we have the resources to take on a drug kingpin.”

  “You’re right, of course. The police aren’t going to be much help either. Who knows how much of the force that bastard has in his pocket? We know of one, but there could be more.” Bull watched the club floor, arms crossed over his chest. “I hate feeling helpless. It makes me want to go somewhere and shoot something just to feel in control again.”

  “I know, big guy. It’s one of the things that makes my world seem right.” Harry knew that didn’t come out quite right. “I mean, there are things in this world I can count on, and you being in control and taking charge of a situation is one of them.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not in control of this one, and it pisses me off.”

  Spook approached as Bull finished his rant. “I’m not hearing anything about the break-in. They’re talking about an upcoming proposal, and, of course, the kid you kicked out. Apparently the few pills he had have been exaggerated, and now we’ve caught the main dealer for the entire East Coast.” Spook smiled briefly. “Where’s Tristan? He didn’t go with the guys.”

  “No. He went to lie down in the office.”

  Bull’s radio sounded briefly, along with Spook’s, which meant a general call to all security. Bull headed for the door, and Spook began circling the room once again, melting into the crowd. He was great as a set of nearly invisible eyes. Harry continued watching until he saw the bouncers rush outside. Bull stood in the doorway and caught his eye. He hurried through the crowd and peered out through the doorway. A car was on fire just down the street, and it looked like half the guys in the club were streaming out the door to try to see what was going on.

  “I called the fire department,” Bull said. “Everyone please go back inside. It’s safer there.” No one paid any attention to him. “People!” Bull bellowed to the milling crowd. “Please go back inside! The fire department has been called, and it’s safer inside!”

  Some patrons did take Bull’s advice, while others stayed outside, gawking. Harry caught his eye, and they shared a nod, then he went back into the club. The crowd had thinned, and Harry figured with the free entertainment outside, things were about to get a little unpredictable. He reminded himself to remain vigilant.

  Sirens joined the thump of the music, and it wasn’t long before the club began to fill again. The fire must have been put out, and with the entertainment value of destruction lessened, the patrons were coming back to their usual pursuits. Not much took precedence over the search for Mr. Right or Mr. Right Now for very long. The music continued playing, and soon the exterior excitement slipped from the collective memory as the dance floor filled with guys celebrating the end of the weekend and looking for some final excitement.

  Bull came to stand next to him, glaring at the crowd. “If that’s the worst thing that happens tonight, I’ll be relieved.”

  “Did the fire department say what happened? It didn’t look like an accident.” Harry shifted his gaze from Bull back to the crowd.

  “Not really. They did say it wasn’t a crash. There must have been something wrong. The car was really old, so who knows. I’m glad it wasn’t closer. At least this way they can’t blame the incident directly on the club.” Municipalities in the area tended to blame all crime in the area on the nightclubs, and especially the gay nightclubs. That was part of the reason they were so vigilant… as well as the fact that they were proud to run a safe, drug-free club.

  Harry checked his watch and yawned, covering his mouth with his hand. “It’s nearly midnight. The crowd will start clearing out soon.” That was the usual Sunday pattern. Sure enough, almost at the stroke of midnight, the flow of guys started moving toward the door. By one, the crowd was down to the diehards, and within a half hour, Bull and the rest of the security staff were coaxing the last people out so they could close.

  Harry was exhausted. “Let’s close up fast and get home,” he said as soon as the doors were locked.

  “Is Tristan still resting?” Bull asked.

  “Yeah. I haven’t wanted to disturb him.”

  “Go get him and take him home. I can close up tonight,” Bull offered.

  Harry nodded and smiled, yawning once again. Harry turned and pulled open the door to the office area and quietly walked down the short hallway past the storeroom. Then he pulled open the office door and stared at the empty sofa. Tristan hadn’t said he was going home with the guys. He pulled out his phone and dialed Tristan’s number. It went to voice mail. He turned and went back out into the club as the music switched off and quiet descended.

  “Bull, call Zach and find out if Tristan decided to go with them after all. He isn’t in the office.” A dark dread ran through him. It wasn’t like Tristan not to have told him he was leaving. In fact, he had made a point of saying he wanted to stay to go home with him. Bull pulled out his phone and made the call, shaking his head once he was able to talk to Zach.

  “He said Tristan didn’t go with them,” Bull said as he hung up.

  “Then where is he?” Harry asked and tried calling Tristan once again. He got voice mail one more time. He left a message for Tristan to call him and hung up. Then he turned and hurried back to the office. Nothing seemed out of place at first glance. What the hell was
going on? He called once again and this time heard a faint vibration. He followed it and the sound came again, from the sofa cushions. Harry reached in and came up with Tristan’s phone. He stared at it, wondering what this meant.

  “Harry?” Bull asked from the doorway.

  He showed Bull the phone as the blood drained from his face. “Get Spook in here now.”

  Bull left the office, and a minute later both he and Spook joined him. “Tristan is missing.”

  Spook blinked at him, as calm as could be. Sometimes the man exasperated him no end. He was always so damned calm. “Let’s check the security video, see if it shows us anything.”

  Harry opened the cabinet and stared at the dark surveillance equipment. There were no lights on any of it. “Shit.”

  “Okay, let’s see what we have,” Spook shouldered him out of the way and began turning it back on. The equipment powered on, and then Spook pulled up the last images recorded and began filtering through them. Harry flopped down in his chair and hung his head with worry. He had no idea what in the hell he was going to do.

  “There isn’t anything,” Bull muttered.

  “I wouldn’t say that. Whoever did this was pretty clever. They didn’t destroy the equipment. They didn’t have to. All that had to happen was for them to power it down, and they were in the clear, or so they thought.” Harry lifted his head. “This system has a backup power supply in case of power blips and things. Anyway, they cut the power here and….” Spook continued forward. “We got our last image there.”

  “Okay,” Harry said.

  “Look at the man being helped to the door. He looks drunk.” Spook zoomed in on the image. It wasn’t some drunk guy—it was Tristan. Harry would know that head of dark curls anywhere.

  “Fuck,” Harry moaned.

  “Check the time. That’s in the middle of all the excitement this evening. That fucking car was a diversion so they could take Tristan,” Spook observed.

  Harry went stone cold and couldn’t move. Someone had taken Tristan. What in the hell was he going to do? He’d been trying to protect him, and now…. “What do we do?” he asked, his throat as dry as a desert. It hurt to swallow, for God’s sake.

  “Call the police,” Spook said. “We have to. This isn’t something we can handle ourselves. As much as I’d like to.”

  Bull got on the phone as Spook continued reviewing the tape. “They’re on their way. I tried Ken first, but he isn’t available, dammit. We should leave the office so we don’t contaminate any evidence, though I really don’t see much here. But you never know. I can only hope that whoever answers the call isn’t someone in the bastard Eddie’s pocket.”

  “He’s gone too far this time,” Harry said. “There’s no way this will be kept quiet, and he’s going to have a media firestorm. A kidnapping is too hot to handle.”

  “This wasn’t supposed to look like a kidnapping. It was supposed to look like a disappearance.” Spook moved away from the video cupboard. “If there hadn’t been a battery backup that they didn’t know about, the police would have called this a disappearance, and they would have waited to see if Tristan returned. Without direct evidence of a kidnapping, they would say he’d left on his own, and that was within his rights. The whole thing would have been muddied and a huge mess.”

  “So what do we do now?” Harry asked in near panic.

  “All we can do is wait for the police.”

  “Great.” The last thing Harry wanted to do was simply wait for someone to do something while Tristan had been taken. It felt as though he was getting further and further away with each passing second.

  Chapter 6

  TRISTAN WAS woozy as hell. He must have had way too much to drink, but he didn’t remember anything other than a beer at the table with his friends. He’d been tired and had gone to lie down in the office—that much he remembered. The sofa there hadn’t been the most comfortable, but he’d eventually fallen asleep. Things were still jumbled in his mind, and he tried to organize his thoughts, but everything was like puzzle pieces that refused to fit together. Eventually he gave up and lay still.

  How much time passed he wasn’t sure, but his mind slowly began to clear. As it did, he became aware that he was lying on something hard and cold. He definitely wasn’t on the sofa in Harry’s office or, as he’d hoped as his mind had floated, that Harry had taken him home and tucked him into bed with him. Tristan forced his eyes open.

  White walls met his eyes, stark and cold. He lifted his head and shivered as he tried to piece things together. He wrapped his arms around his naked torso. Tristan gasped and looked down at himself. He was wearing only his underwear. No wonder he was cold. He shivered again, this time from a combination of cold and fear. He slowly tried to get to his feet, but the room spun and a wave of intense dizziness overtook him. Closing his eyes once again, he waited for the room to stop spinning and then slowly opened them once more.

  The room steadied, and he took in his surroundings. The walls were indeed white but made of concrete. The floor was tile, and there was a single window high up on the wall across from him. From that he deduced he must be in a basement somewhere. He turned to a door next to him when he heard footsteps outside it. He had no way to fight and no defenses, so he lay back down and closed his eyes, trying not to shiver. He figured if whoever had done this to him thought he was still out of it, they might leave him alone. The window looked big enough for him to crawl out of if he got the chance and could lift himself up there.

  The door opened, and Tristan did his best to stay still and quiet. “That shit should have worn off by now,” a deep male voice said. Tristan was toed lightly and then lifted off the floor, rather roughly. He groaned and kept his eyes closed, doing his level best to pretend he was still in some drug-induced stupor.

  He wanted to scream and fight, but the man was obviously stronger than him, and Tristan felt as weak as a lamb. No, he felt the best course of action was to appear helpless for now while he tried to work out what the hell was going on.

  The man lifted him over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Since the guy couldn’t see him, Tristan opened his eyes and did his best to look around for clues to where he might be. The man climbed a set of stairs out of the basement. At the top, he turned, and Tristan caught a glimpse of the kitchen in the house. He had to stop a quiver of terror when he recognized it. He was at one of Eddie’s drug houses. He hadn’t known what it was the one time he’d been here before, but he would never forget that sickening death smell or that puke-green kitchen. That visit had been the thing that had clued him into what Eddie was. What the hell was he doing here?

  Thankfully the last of whatever was in his system seemed to be wearing off, and his mind was beginning to function normally. God, Eddie had kidnapped him and had him brought here. Why in the hell would he do that? There was no way Tristan could be that valuable to him.

  Before he could think very far along those lines, the man carrying him opened a door and stepped inside, then dumped Tristan on a bed. “I know you can hear me. Stay here and don’t move if you know what’s good for you. The boss isn’t gonna be happy if you try anything, and he’s already mad enough at you.” The guy turned, and the door closed. Tristan heard a lock slide home.

  He was afraid to move at all. Was someone waiting outside the door? How long did he have before Eddie showed up? And who knew what he was going to do to him when he got here? Tristan figured it wasn’t going to be pretty. He needed to get the hell out of here and get some help. He supposed he was lucky he wasn’t tied up, but that luck would end if he tried something and failed.

  “What the fuck have I gotten myself into?” he whispered and slowly uncurled his legs, making sure the bed didn’t creak. Then he slid down off the mattress and went over to the window. He had never lived here, thank God, but he had spent plenty of time, mostly nights, in this place. It was old, and it stank of God knew what. Eddie, for all his ego, lived in a crappy place, probably to keep a low profile.

&
nbsp; He pushed the dingy old curtains aside just enough to look out the window. He had a great view of the brick wall across the way in what he thought was the early-morning sunlight. It was straight down to the ground from here, so going out the window was not an option. It was likely that Eddie had his friends in the house, so getting out that way was also out of the question. He was well and truly trapped. He sat on the edge of the bed and wondered what the hell he was going to do. He hadn’t even realized he’d been taken. What if his friends didn’t realize it either? He could be here for a long time. Somehow he had to get a message to them, but how? He had to keep his eyes open and try to figure out a way.

  A shiver went through him once again, and Tristan pulled the old blanket off the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders. At least it provided some warmth and made him feel less exposed.

  Tristan listened at the door but heard nothing. He knew it was locked, but he carefully tried it anyway. It wouldn’t open, of course, so he fell to his knees and peered under it. He didn’t see feet or the signs of someone guarding him, but that didn’t mean much. They could be out of his limited sight range.

  Heavy footsteps sounded in the distance, and Tristan stood and went back to the bed, sat down on it, and waited to see what was going to happen.

  Nothing. The footsteps continued to outside his door and then seemed to stop. The lock didn’t slide back, and the door didn’t open. He sat and waited some more, but the room stayed quiet with only the slight dripping of the plumbing from somewhere in the house to break the silent monotony.

  HOURS PASSED. He was getting hungry and had to go to the bathroom. Finally, when he could take no more, he knocked on the door. “I need to go!” He waited and then shouted it louder.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Tristan groaned. No one had been outside—he’d wasted that time being quiet. Now they all knew he was awake.

  “What?” came a deep grunt through the door.