“But they want you for the full month.” He’d gotten that info from Jules, too.
She shook her head. “That’s too long. I’m not willing—”
“You could make your own schedule.” Sam knew that, too, and he’d already done the math. “24/6 it for three blocks of time, with four days off between each.”
“Four days isn’t enough to get me back home.”
“It’s enough to get you to Greece. Or Italy. I was thinking,” he said, tugging her to a stop and pulling her out of the flow of pedestrian traffic because they were just a few blocks from Maria’s building, “that if Ash and I went somewhere safe, but close enough for you to fly into … ? Robin, too. I was thinking of seeing if Robin wanted to hang with Ash and me. You know. While you and Jules are over there.”
She was so surprised on so many levels. It was rare when he rendered her speechless, and this time he clearly had, so he kissed her.
And then, because he couldn’t ever just kiss his wife once, he kissed her again. Longer, lingeringly.
“I’d never ask you not to go,” he told her quietly. “I’m proud that you got called, and I’m glad that the CIC’s smart enough to recognize that you’re the right person for this job. And I want to go, too, I do, pretty damn badly, but… Jules’ll be with you, so—”
“Don’t you touch her! Don’t you dare touch her!”
Sam turned, and sure enough it was the homeless man who was, also surely enough, shouting—at them.
Alyssa turned, too, as the man shuffled toward them, his puffy coat billowing out behind him like the weirdest version of a superhero cape that Sam had ever seen.
“I’ll kick your ass!” he was saying now. And there was no doubt whatsoever that he was talking to Sam. Except with his slurred speech, he might’ve been saying, “I’ll kill your ass.”
Bottom line, there wasn’t much chance of either of those two options happening, given that Sam was nearly six and a half feet tall, and—despite that cracked rib—in the best shape of his entire life.
But his inner caveman—the part of him that often spoke or reacted before employing full use of his brain—stepped in front of Alyssa. And bumped into her trying to step in front of him. She shot him a look of exasperation and he shifted his position so that they were both facing the attack, even as he scanned and analyzed the threat.
The man’s left leg was a weak point, and his limp telegraphed his pain. He was carrying what looked like a piece of paper, and he was waving it at them angrily. His other hand was empty—at least there appeared to be no glint of knife-blade, or handgun, or broken bottle, or even a tin can. And he appeared to have nothing up his sleeve, since the coat was too small for him and the sleeves ended well above his hands, exposing quite a few inches of his bony wrists.
Wads of newspaper that he’d packed inside that coat for extra warmth fell around him in a surreal shower as he charged them.
Alyssa tried reason and called out to him, her voice clear in the cold night air, “Are you former Marine? We’re both former Navy.”
But the man didn’t answer or slow as he shouted again, “You get the fuck away from her!” And yeah, he was looking right at Sam. Anger mixed with a serious dose of crazy in eyes that were framed by a heavily furrowed brow and bared teeth—signs that, despite the lack of weapon, Don Quixote de la Crazy-Pants here wanted to do them—or more accurately Sam—some serious harm.
The old adage “once a Marine, always a Marine” was true even among those that the system had abandoned and discarded, and because of that, Don Q had the unerring aim of a heat-seeking missile.
“Stop right there!” Alyssa stepped in front of Sam.
But he didn’t stop. And it was more than clear that this guy was going to go right through Alyssa to get to Sam, which meant they really only had one option.
Turn and run.
Sam grabbed Alyssa and beat feet toward Maria’s apartment building, as fast as he could move it.
Which was pretty damn fast, despite the obstacle course created by the relentless crowd of pedestrians, despite the fact that Sam’s side shrieked with pain, with every step he took.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Sorry. Coming through!”
Lys was as smart as she was beautiful, and she understood why he’d chosen to retreat, but she couldn’t resist asking, “Didn’t think you could take him, huh?”
Caveman Sam, who had the IQ of a pinhead and the emotional maturity of an eight-year-old, answered with, “Oh, I coulda taken him.” More highly evolved Sam recognized that she was teasing, and turned it into a joke. “But I’ve already hit my quota and beaten up my allotment of old men for the week.”
But then she said, “Oh, no!” as she dug in her heels and slowed him down.
And he turned back to see what she was looking at, and he saw, too, that Don Quixote had taken a tumble and was lying on the sidewalk, motionless and silent.
Alyssa wasn’t the kind of woman who took kindly to phrases like, “Wait here,” or “Stay back.” So Sam didn’t bother to say anything that stupid. He just made sure she didn’t get too far out in front as she jogged back toward the fallen man.
New York was supposed to be the city of zero eye contact, zero connection, but two men and a woman, all apparently strangers to each other, had already stopped to help.
The younger of the two men was either a doctor or a nurse, his scrubs hanging out from beneath a pair of sweats he’d pulled on, on his way either to or from work. The other man was a cab driver, his Indian accent thick as he used his cell phone to call 9-1-1 for help. The woman was digging in her pack and pulled out an energy bar and a bottle of water, offering it up to the man in the scrubs, who was unafraid of DQ’s stench and grime and had loosened the purple coat in order to put a finger to the old man’s neck.
“His pulse is steady and he’s breathing easily,” Dr. Bronx announced in a New York accent nearly as difficult to understand as the cabbie’s, who relayed that information to the emergency operator.
“He was chasing us,” Alyssa volunteered. “He was shouting and seemed angry, so we ran. He’s got a bad leg—it didn’t take much to get away. I think he tripped, though, and hit his head when he fell.”
Dr. Bronx reached to examine the back of the homeless man’s head by touch, and nodded. “He’s definitely got a contusion. Although it’s also obvious that he’s severely inebriated.”
“I’ve seen him around,” said the woman, who looked young enough to be a high school student. “He’s usually got a bottle of something in a paper bag.”
And okay, her backpack advertised NYU, so she was probably a college student. Sam was just getting old.
He shook his head at her offering. “He’s out cold. But thanks.”
“Police and ambulance are on their way,” the cab driver told them.
“What are they going to do with him?” NYU worried.
Alyssa spoke up. “They’ll take him to the ER, make sure he’s okay. And if his blood-alcohol levels come back as elevated as I think they’re going to, they’ll most likely transport him to a city drunk tank so he can sleep it off before they release him.”
The doc looked up at Alyssa, puzzlement on his face. “Are you sure you don’t know him?” he asked her in his extra-on-Rescue-Me voice. “He’s not a … relative or… ?”
“Not all black people are related,” Sam felt inclined to point out.
The doc shot him a no shit you asshole look.
“We’re from San Diego,” Alyssa said, including Sam in her statement with a glance. “I’ve honestly never seen him before tonight.”
“Well, he seems to know you.” The man held out a crumpled piece of paper. “He was holding this in his hand.”
Sam leaned forward so that he could see, too, and his heart damn near stopped in his chest.
It was a photo of Alyssa. It wasn’t a clipping from the newspaper. It wasn’t one of the recent paparazzi shots snapped just last week in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater. It
was, in fact, the photo from the Troubleshooters website. Someone—and it was hard to believe Don Quixote had the money or means—had printed it onto photo-quality stock.
“Hmmm,” Alyssa said, as Sam put it a little less succinctly.
“What,” he said, “the fuck … ?”
The drive from Boston to New York was a relatively easy one.
And, of course, nothing was ever really all that difficult when Robin was sitting next to Jules—not even the relentless traffic at the Mass Pike toll booths at the exit for Route 84, not even the fact that the rain that relentlessly fell was begining to turn into what the New England weather people cheerfully called a “wintry mix,” but was in truth a lot like getting pelted with someone’s syrup-free Slushee.
It was barely eight o’clock, but the late January sun had long since set and it felt more like midnight. The defroster in the car was cranking, and the windshield wipers kept a ragged rhythm as they finally made it through the toll and headed into Connecticut.
“Where would someone go to buy a pig’s heart?” Robin wondered as the road started to open up. “Are there really still butcher shops where butchers actually … butcher, instead of just getting large slabs of already dead meat?”
They did most of their grocery shopping at Whole Foods, or at the Shaw’s at the Pru. Robin couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a butcher shop, let alone shopped in one.
“There’re mostly the dead meat kind left.” Jules glanced at him as he moved the car into the left lane. “But Yashi did some research for me and found out that there are still a few in New York City that do the actual butchering of the livestock. Although he also found out that most of those are kosher, owned by Orthodox Jews, so …”
“Probably not a lot of pigs being slaughtered there,” Robin surmised.
“Definitely not,” Jules agreed, glancing over to give him a smile.
“I love that we’re doing this,” Robin blurted out. “It’s great that we’re going to see Alyssa and Sam and Ash, and … I just… Thank you for letting me tag along, babe.”
Jules reached over and took Robin’s hand, interlacing their fingers.
Every now and then—like right now—Robin got this sudden flash of disbelief, of pure dumbfoundedness, that this truly was his life now. He got to sit here in this car, next to Jules, because Jules loved him, too. It seemed so surreal—and like one of the world’s best miracles—that when they reached the hotel and checked in, he’d share Jules’s room. It was completely, wonderfully incredible, too, that ten years from now, he’d wake up in the middle of the night and Jules—his lover, his best friend, his husband—would still be there, lying next to him, solid and warm and funny and kind, and ready and willing to help him chase any lingering nightmares away.
“Sam’s a little freaked out by the pig-heart thing,” Jules said now, breaking the comfortable silence that they’d fallen into.
“It’s definitely freak-out worthy,” Robin agreed. All of it was—including the fact that the police detective assigned to the case wanted to tap Alyssa, and had tried to drag Sam to jail, after breaking his rib. “So what’s the plan when we hit town? Visit the shops where someone could’ve bought a pig heart and … see if they used a credit card to make the purchase? See if there was a security camera running, see if… ? I’m not sure what. If they were wearing their I hate Maria Bonavita and her ass-face T-shirt?”
Jules laughed. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Yashi got me a list of all the farms and butcher shops and slaughterhouses—the porcine ones—in New York as well as Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. I think it’s more likely that our guy brought the heart with him, wherever he came from.”
“That’s pretty gross,” Robin said. “How do you transport something like that? In a cooler, inside a plastic baggie?” The logistics of it all suggested advance planning, which was creepy.
“Alyssa’s more concerned about the fact that whoever did this got into the assemblywoman’s office with little to no effort,” Jules told him. “Tomorrow she’s going to interview the interns and volunteers who’ve spent any time in the office over the past year—and I’m going to help. Apparently quite a few people have had access to the key. The woman who’s missing did.”
“She’s still missing?” Robin asked. Something Thorndyke. Margaret—that was her first name.
“Yup,” Jules said. “And it turns out she borrowed a key, back during the election campaign, to drop off something for some fundraising party. The assemblywoman’s assistant, Jenn, said she returned it, but…”
“Margaret could’ve copied it,” Robin deduced.
“A lot of people could’ve copied the key,” Jules confirmed. “Alyssa thinks it’s personal—the fact that it was a heart in that drawer instead of, I don’t know, large intestines or brains or liver or …
Yeesh.
“If this were a movie,” Robin pointed out. “Pig-heart-man would be a jilted lover, driven mad by his unrequited love for Maria—”
“If this were a movie,” Jules cut him off with a laugh, “this four-hour drive to New York would be edited down to a four-second crane shot of the Mass Pike, an Entering Manhattan sign, and then the car pulling up to the valet at the hotel.”
“Maybe not. Maybe this is a really boring movie,” Robin teased him back. “Or maybe—I know—it’s porn. We’re going to pull off on some secluded exit ramp and …” He did a little dance right there in his seat. “Get this car rockin’ and rollin’, bay-bay …”
Jules laughed.
“Or it’s a horror movie and we’re part of the alien abduction subplot,” Robin kept it going because he loved making Jules laugh. “Any minute now the alien claw is going to appear and pluck us off the road and pull us up into the bowels of the mothership.”
“Maybe it’s not a pig heart,” Jules said, playing along. “Maybe it’s an alien heart.”
Robin held his hand up to his ear. “I think I hear Oscar calling …
But it was Jules’s phone that suddenly rang.
“Wait a minute,” Robin said. “He’s supposed to be calling me!”
“Shhh!” Jules was laughing as he put in his earpiece. “It’s Yashi. Hey, Yash. Whatcha got for me, babycakes?”
But then, as Robin watched, Jules’s smile vanished. In fact his entire face and body language changed. He morphed from Robin’s husband and lover into pure FBI agent.
“What?” Jules breathed into his phone. He checked the rearview mirror for the traffic behind them, signaled, and moved all the way over to the right lane as he said, “Holy shit, are they sure?”
He kept the turn signal on because there was an exit coming up, as he asked Joe Hirabayashi, aka Yashi, who worked for him at the Boston FBI headquarters, “Are we running the DNA—” He cut himself off, nodding as he listened. “Yeah,” he said. “Yes. Shit.” Another pause, then, “No, no, I’ll call Alyssa and tell her… No, it’s going to take me longer to get there, then … No, I’ve got Robin with me and I’ve gotta … Yeah. Yeah. Call me as soon as you … Thanks, Joe.” He ended the call. “Jesus.”
He took the exit, glancing at Robin. “We’re turning around. I’m taking you home,” Jules said, even as Robin spoke past his heart, which had lodged tightly in his throat.
“What’s going on? Why do you have to call Alyssa? Are Sam and Ash all right?”
Something was horribly wrong, but Jules glanced at him again to say, “They’re fine.”
“Thank God.” Robin’s relief allowed Jules’s words to penetrate. I’m taking you home. “What happened? Why can’t I—”
“Shit,” Jules said again, the muscle in his jaw jumping as he braked to a stop at the traffic light at the end of the ramp. It wasn’t obvious which way to go to get back on the highway in the reverse direction, and he jabbed at the GPS screen, trying to get a better-proportioned map.
“Jules,” Robin said as the light turned green and the car behind them honked. He pointed across the street to a restaurant with a
nearly empty parking lot. “Pull over there.”
Jules took his foot off the brake and pulled into the lot, jerking to a stop and throwing the car into park. He canceled their current route on the GPS, and pushed the button that would program the thing to return home. Only then, as it was calculating the route back to Boston, did he look over at Robin.
“It wasn’t a pig’s heart,” he said quietly. “The lab report’s in. It was human.”
CHAPTER
NINE
When Dan took off Jenn’s glasses and kissed her again, and she didn’t push him away, he knew that he was in. He knew, too, that he couldn’t hesitate, that he shouldn’t give her too much time to think this through and maybe change her mind.
Which meant that he had to get enough of their clothes off to get himself inside of her as quickly as humanly possible.
But Jesus, her mouth was so soft and sweet, and he wanted her to kiss him like that for about three hours. But right now that was going to have to be something to look forward to. It would happen. He was as certain of that as he was of the fact that once he made her come, he would be getting it on as often as he wanted until the day he said good-bye.
She was, after all, pragmatic—and he knew that not just because of the lines on the palm of her hand. He knew because he knew women. He knew, too, because he truly liked women—all shapes and sizes of them—provided they had a brain and a healthy sense of humor. A pretty face and a bikini-worthy body was a bonus, sure. But if had to choose between fucking a woman who looked like a supermodel but was in fact a royal bitch on wheels, or fucking someone who looked like Jennilyn and made him laugh and enjoy the non-sex time, too, well …
Here he was, wasn’t he? With his hand up her shirt, beneath her bra, her breast so soft, her skin so smooth, and yeah, she liked that he’d found her nipple. He liked it, too, and Jesus, she was so freaking hot, the way she was moving beneath him, as he pushed himself more tightly between her legs, as she let him come closer, welcoming him.
Tomorrow was his scheduled night off. He could’ve waited one more day, hit a bar or two tomorrow night, and absolutely, positively gotten his ass laid with someone prettier and skinnier and allegedly sexier, but probably not smarter or funnier.
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