by Andrea Speed
Roan ignored him, and not just because he didn’t want to talk about it. Dylan had flopped on the couch and leaned his head back, eyes closed, seemingly tired. Roan went to the kitchen to get an ice pack and proclaimed, “If someone doesn’t start telling me now, I’m calling the cops myself.”
“This total fuckhead queen started bad-mouthing infecteds,” Luis said, finally getting back on topic. “I mean he sounded all Glenn Beck crazy, like infecteds should all be in camps and shit like that. And he said… well, shit, I didn’t hear all of it. Just enough to know there musta been gay Nazis at some point.”
Okay, Luis had deliberately derailed his own answer. Why? Because Dylan must have told him not to mention something to him. And what could that possibly be? Roan sat carefully on the edge of the couch and gently put the ice pack on Dylan’s bruised eye. While he was careful, Dylan still let out a small hiss of pain through his teeth. “He mentioned me by name, didn’t he?” Roan guessed, looking down at Dylan.
He opened his one good eye and looked up grimacing. “If I say no, will you call me on it?”
“Yes.”
He closed his eye and groaned. “I just snapped, okay? I think this week has been harder on me than I’ve been willing to admit.”
“The guy said you were a freak,” Luis cheerfully supplied. From the way Dylan tensed, he’d really been hoping that Luis would keep his mouth shut. (Shouldn’t he have known that Luis wasn’t the type to keep his mouth shut? Even Roan knew that, and he barely knew the guy.) “He said you were inhuman and the fact that you weren’t locked in a lab somewhere was political correctness run amok.”
“Please,” Dylan groaned, but Luis totally ignored him.
“He said you were giving us gays a bad name ’cause now everyone thinks all gays are infected, and you’re just a freak of nature who—”
“Shut up!” Dylan snapped, with so much anger that Luis looked like he’d just slapped him. It stunned Roan too, mainly because Dylan wasn’t a huge yeller. (But then again, when did he smack a bitch for talking smack?)
“Well, sorr-ree,” Luis said, with an edge of sarcastic bitterness. To complete this, he crossed his arms over his narrow chest and cocked his hip, although since Dylan was lying down on the couch he didn’t see this. “But he asked what happened and I was telling him.”
“It was just hater bullshit,” he snapped back, his anger waning but still obvious. “And it’s fucking disgusting to hear it coming from a gay man who should know damn well what it’s like to be stereotyped.”
Roan patted Dyl’s arm, kind of touched he’d give up his Buddhist principles to punch out a bitter queen for him. “There’s bigots in every race, creed, and orientation. Idiocy is universal.”
“I know. But still… disappointing.”
Roan could only nod, although very little that people did shocked him anymore. He was so fucking jaded it was a minor tragedy. He got up and skirted the couch, holding his arm out toward the door. “Thanks for bringing him home, Luis.”
He got Roan's not-so-subtle invitation and nodded. “Dylan, if they fire you, I’ll quit. Fucker needed his head smashed in.”
“I sunk to his level,” Dylan replied, sounding disappointed in himself.
“No way. You can’t sink lower than the sewer,” Luis replied. All he needed to do was give a sassy head wobble and snap a Z formation in the air, and he could have been any gay friend in a sitcom or bad movie. Still, Roan kept that thought to himself as he escorted Luis out, and even though he was only in boxer shorts and it was fairly cold, he stepped outside and briefly closed the door behind him. “What’s his name?”
Luis gave him a measured look. “You gonna beat his ass? Honey, you could break that fuckhead in half with your arms tied behind your back. Hell, if you just spit on him he’ll probably faint in terror.”
“No, I’m not interested in that. I’m just wondering if something’s going on.”
“What do you mean?”
“I almost get stabbed in Panic the night before. Now someone picks a fight with my boyfriend there. Hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Luis’s thin eyebrows quirked up. “Oh, hey, now that you mention it… shit, yeah, that does seem kinda funny, doesn’t it?” He frowned in thought and after a moment said, “I don’t know his name, but I can find out.”
Roan had figured as much, which was why he’d asked him. Luis might have been a standard template for a Latino party boy twink, but it was exactly that kind of presumed harmlessness that got people to drop their guard. It also helped a lot that he loved to gossip, because people often traded in one story for another—gossip was like a barter system, and he was king of the market. “Thanks. E-mail it to me, okay? I’ve got a website, MK Investigations, just e-mail me there. If Dylan finds out—”
Luis held up his hand. “Oh, I know. And I’d get the brunt of it, ’cause he’d expect you to ask, but he’d also expect me not to tell. So keeping this on the DL is cool with me. Now go inside before your balls freeze off.”
He must have noticed Roan shivering. Well, that kind of thing was hard to suppress. “Thanks.”
Luis waved at him as he headed toward his car, but Roan ducked inside without saying anything except commenting to Dylan, “It’s fucking freezing out there.”
“He didn’t tell you his name, did he?”
He couldn’t have heard them, they were whispering, so Dylan had just guessed. He knew him too well. “No.”
“Good. I know he’s a blabbermouth, but he can keep a few secrets.”
Roan returned to the couch, but he sat on the floor leaning against it, so he could put his head on Dylan’s chest. Dylan put an arm around him reflexively, and his cold fingertips on Roan’s back made him shiver again. “So did you leap over the bar, or—”
Dylan groaned in embarrassment. “I am the world’s worst Buddhist.”
“Everybody slips. No one’s perfect.”
“I think I knocked one of his teeth out. Or loose anyways. It was awful, Ro. It was like I found this place inside of me that just wanted to crush his head like a beer can. I almost wanted to lose control, you know? It was like this black well of rage, and it… it almost felt kind of good to let it go.”
“Anger is human. We all have it. You just handle it better than most.”
Dylan stroked his back idly, not responding to that, and they were quiet enough that they could hear the ticking of a clock. Which was funny because he wasn’t sure they actually had a ticking clock in the house, but he’d heard it before, so they must have and he’d simply forgotten about it. Finally, Dylan asked, “How do you fight it, Roan? How do you keep from giving in completely?”
He almost felt like pointing out he was inhuman, but Dylan probably wasn’t in a joking mood.
Eventually, he coaxed Dylan upstairs, where he cleaned the blood off his face and got him to take half a Vicodin for the pain. Dylan had said all he was going to say about the fight for now, so Roan let it go. He’d get it out of him later, when he was more in a mood to spill his guts. He lay with him until he felt asleep, the half a Vicodin kicking in big time, and then he got up and made some phone calls.
First he called Gordo. He got his call messaging, and he figured he was asleep by now anyways, but he told him he was convinced that there was a new anti-cat hate group operating in the city, and it had ties both to his (would-be) assault and the murders that had just occurred. No, he had no name for him, but he was determined to find one.
The sun was now up and the rain had disappeared, at least for now. He got dressed and scarfed down an English muffin while glancing at the paper, aware that he was probably the only person in a twenty-mile radius that got the paper delivered to his house anymore. The killings had made the front page, and yes, cats were named as a possible suspect when Roan knew for certain that wasn’t true. It was possible the cops were keeping that to themselves for now to give the real killer a false sense of security, but it would only increase anti-cat sentiment.
“I haven’t heard from you, which usually means you’re up to something.”
“Little ol’ me? But I’m so sweet and innocent.” At Roan’s skeptical look he grinned maniacally. “Man, even I can’t believe that.”
“So what’s going on?”
“You first. Was that really a cat killing?”
“No. Now it’s your turn.”
Holden invited him in for coffee, but then remembered he didn’t drink coffee too much. Roan accepted a soda, but only for the caffeine.
Holden told him he’d found out Coyote’s last gig was arranged via Craigslist, so he worked at hacking Coyote’s e-mail address. It took a while—much longer than he expected, in fact—but he finally got through and found e-mail messages from the guy he supposedly met, who identified himself as “Billy.” He arranged to meet Coyote at a Burger King over on South King Street, where he’d pick him up and take him to the “film site.” It was the last e-mail Coyote got that wasn’t spam.
Holden looked on Craigslist for the exact ad and couldn’t find it. So he responded to the same e-mail address that Coyote had responded to, as if he was answering the ad. Roan glared at Holden, for all the good it would do. “You did this without telling me?”
“I was going to,” he responded indignantly. “I’m just bait. I’m going to need backup to spring the trap.”
Roan raised an eyebrow at that but shook his head in disgust. Yes, Holden was a surprisingly good detective, but damn if he didn’t like to insert himself into the most dangerous situations possible. “Have you gotten a response?”
“Just last night,” he replied proudly. “Sent him the link to my escort page so he could check it out and make sure I’m not a cop. I expect to get another e-mail shortly, arranging times for the meet.”
Oh, yes, his escort page. He'd almost forgot about that, but the escort agency Holden worked for did have a website and a page devoted to each hooker, along with photos of them in various states of undress (although not full nudity—that you had to pay for). He hadn’t seen Holden’s in a long time, but what had struck Roan was the amount of fiction on the page, all devoted to serving the john. Holden’s name was listed as Fox (of course, as no real names were used), and he was described as a sweet farm boy who came to the big city and became just a bit wicked (he was into light BDSM as the dominator). Supposedly he was from Minnesota, when Roan knew he was actually from Lynnwood. But when you paid as much for an escort as the agency clients, you were paying for a fantasy as much as anything else.
Roan rubbed his eyes and wished he’d taken an extra codeine before coming here. “We need to work out a plan.”
“What plan? I go to the meet and go with the guy. You follow. At the site, we beat the ever-living shit out of these assholes, and if you’re willing, kill them and bury them in cement.”
“Okay, you know how many holes there are in that plan? We don’t know how many people are involved in this, and we don’t know where you’re going or what they’ll do to you on the way there. We’re flying totally blind and you could get hurt.”
“I don’t care. These fuckers killed Coyote. I want them to mess with me. I want to show them exactly what happens when they target the wrong victim.” He sat forward on the sofa, elbows on his knees, a slightly maniacal look in his eyes. “I’ll take pain as long as I can give it back.”
Now there was a new fantasy category—hooker vigilante. He bet some people would pay big bucks for that.
10
Breed
Technology was putting private detectives out of business. But at the same time, it was making their lives significantly easier. Case in point: the consequence of sharing too much information online.
Brittney did have a Twitter page, and she filled it with the most mundane things imaginable, often misspelled. But that allowed him to figure out where she was whenever she posted. (He refused, on principal, to call it “tweeting.”) A quick read revealed her to be at the mall, complaining about fashion (he thought—he honestly wasn’t sure; she was complaining about something), and a past read of her Facebook and Twitter page had revealed she favored the Bellevue Mall. So as soon as he read she was bitching about it, Roan rushed there and hoped he could find her. Sure, he knew what she looked like, but it was a big mall, and she didn’t exactly say what shops she was in.
He got lucky and found her in the food court, texting as she drank a diet soda out of a cup nearly as big as her head. She looked like she weighed all of ninety-eight pounds, lost in a thin turquoise dress that could have doubled as lingerie and a pink leather jacket that barely reached her waist. Her hair was long and dyed to golden blonde, a pair of large black sunglasses perched on her head like an oversized barrette. She wore way too much makeup and seemed to be trying to look thirty, which perplexed him. Didn’t most straight men go for jailbait? So why try and look older, unless you were trying to get into a club?
He sat at her table without asking and identified himself as she looked at him with an expression that was equal parts bored, sullen, and utterly blank. She interrupted him to say, sounding about two minutes away from a deep sleep, “You’re the guy Jordan’s dad hired, right?”
“That would be me.” He had to wrinkle his nose and hold back a sneeze, as her perfume threatened to both send him into a sneezing fit and trigger a migraine. He couldn’t identify it by scent, but oddly enough, he could smell the trace of chemicals in her bloodstream coming through her pores, in spite of all the warring food smells drifting over the food court. Prozac? An antidepressant of some kind. Perhaps that explained her air of drugged ennui.
She blinked at him, eyelids smeared with faintly glittery purple eye shadow like a metallic bruise. “You come with your goons? Darren said you had goons that attacked him.”
“They weren’t goons, they were hockey players.”
“What’s the diff?”
Ouch. “Hey. I’ll have you know Tank Beauvais is perhaps the coolest straight man I have ever known.”
That almost surprised a genuine reaction from her. “You’re gay? You beat up my boyfriend and you’re gay?”
There was a slight sneer to her voice that annoyed him. It seemed to suggest that all gay men were limp-wristed hairdressers who would scream and faint if they saw a spider in the bathtub. That irritated him enough to reply, “I didn’t touch him. I didn’t need to, ’cause he collapsed like a Walmart endtable. I’m just trying to find out where Jordan ran off to.”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. Now leave me alone.” She looked back down at her BlackBerry and kept texting.
All the competing smells were annoying him more than she was. His sense of smell often fluctuated, usually due to if it was his “time of the month” or not, but since he no longer had a normal viral cycle, he had no idea why his sense of smell was stronger on some days than others. Probably still a viral load variance, but now inherently unpredictable since he could instigate a change at any time. Sharp odors—perfume, teriyaki, beef tallow, french fries, pepperoni, pho, cinnamon rolls, pretzels, overcooked chicken, icing, coffee, yeast, oatmeal raisin cookies, corn syrup, seared animal fat, garlic, a dozen different perfumes, colognes, hair sprays, gels, conditioners, deodorant, acne cream—all combined to make him alternately hungry and nauseous, with some scents traveling straight up his sinus passages and lodging in his brain like a bullet. He hadn’t taken enough painkillers before he came here, and he desperately wanted to swallow a couple more Vicodin, but not in front of this girl. “What I don’t get is why you’d fuck around on your boyfriend and take pictures of it with your cell.”
Now she looked annoyed. “I haven�
��t fucked around on Darren.” She considered a moment, frowning, and then said, “Oh, you mean Jordan. I didn’t take those photos, Darren did.”
“With your phone?”
She shrugged. “His battery was dead.”
Oh sure, that made a ton of sense. He rubbed his eyes, trying to will away the nausea. Did he have some Promethazine with him? He was pretty sure he did.
Brittney noticed his struggle and must have thought it had something to do with her, because she said, suddenly and defensively, “Jordan was a creep, you know. I had to change my e-mail several times ’cause he kept hacking into them and reading my e-mails.”
That made him raise an eyebrow. In spite of the fact that he was being overwhelmed by smells, he knew she wasn’t lying. He hadn’t heard about this side of Jordan before. “He was controlling?”
