Well, probably not.
They came to him only once a week or so, and knowing there was a sturdy stick of rattan under his bed went a long way toward feeling more secure. Sleeping on top of the covers, fully dressed, also helped. Things might come at him, but at least now he wouldn’t be caught unaware –now he was cured of all that jumpy nonsense.
Sean turned to face the source of the welcome heat, but familiar fingers stopped him. He felt their warmth skirt the neckline of the same jersey he’d worn the night before. Hot air blew on his nape, making his honey-colored hair flutter into his eyes.
“The answer is yes,” Asbjorn whispered from behind as he positioned the necklace around Sean’s neck and fastened the silver chain’s clasp. The amber disc settled in the hollow of Sean’s throat with easy familiarity. Its weight was comforting. “There.” Asbjorn whispered in his ear.
“Yes, what?” Sean said. He needed clarification and reassurance. This time around, there would be no missed texts and no misunderstandings.
“Yes, I would be honored to marry you.”
“Okay.” Sean smiled. It turned out to be simple after all. He leaned against Asbjorn’s broad chest, relishing his body heat, his familiar solidity.
Asbjorn had his back.
He had always had his back, from the very beginning, through some very rough and dramatic times, all the way up till now. He felt the scruffy chin push the stray hair off his neck, exposing his ear.
“I missed this,” Sean whispered after a while.
“Me too, sunshine. I just... I guess I have some stuff to work on, but it’ll be okay. I promise I won’t fuck this up again.”
“But you didn’t,” Sean said. “You should have gotten me involved, though. We had this discussion before, right?”
“Yeah. I was actually wanting to talk to you that day when, you know...” Asbjorn paused, and Sean heard him take a deep breath. “That day, when you were with the guys.”
The concept of Sean with Adrian and Don bounced around the room through the awkward silence. “Nothing actually happened.” Sean’s voice rasped, the words barely getting out. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about that. It’s just, I wanted you to talk to me again. I thought you were dumping me, and you wouldn’t talk and I couldn’t concentrate on anything and all I could do was kick myself over that text – those several texts. That was dumb.”
“Y’know it had actually been Ken who answered those texts, right?” The wry grin on Asbjorn’s face didn’t go all the way to his eyes. Not yet.
Sean flung himself onto his back and covered his face with his arm. “Oh God. Kill me now!” He felt the tell-tale flush of embarrassment stain his throat and make its way up his cheeks, the way it always did.
“Yeah,” Asbjorn said. “So, you never really wanted to, you know...?”
“Not really. I just wanted to do this eye-for-an-eye thing to shock you into noticing me again, I guess, and I didn’t think it through because I’m a self-centered moron. I had no idea what you were going through at the time, Bjorn.” Sean propped himself up on his elbow again and looked Asbjorn in the eye. “None.”
Their gazes met. There still was a barrier there, a wall made of hesitation and fear. A boundary that has shifted somehow and had to be set to rights. Yet Asbjorn’s eyes were a soft, warm blue of a tropical ocean and Sean felt his own mouth turn up in a hint of a smile.
“Well, sunshine, “Asbjorn finally said on an exhale, “I guess figuring I’d go hunting with a sword wasn’t something you were supposed to figure out.” He reached out and stroked Sean’s bruised cheek with knuckles that were red and swollen and scabbed over. “In fact, you weren’t supposed to know.”
“I’m sorry.” Sean leaned closer. “And thank you.”
Asbjorn sighed and buried his nose into Sean’s neck, only to yelp in pain and spring away. “Shit.”
“You okay?”
“Forgot about my broken nose.”
Sean twisted in Asbjorn’s arms and looked him over. His eyes were raccooning, his split lip was a puffy, angry red, and his nose was crooked.
“We are a matched pair, I guess. And we should have our noses straightened. But we’ve gotten off topic here. So, in the future... if you’re going to get into some kind of trouble like that, I want to have your back too. Always. Okay?” He pinned Asbjorn with a gaze both intent and serious.
Asbjorn nodded. “Okay.”
“Like partners. Because we are. I got your back and you got mine. No secrets, no being overprotective. No unexplained hunting trips.”
“I was just trying to protect you, in case it went down bad.”
“In case you got dead?”
“Dead. Or caught. I’ve been real careful, though. There is no evidence except for Redfish, and he didn’t see me do anything.”
Sean frowned. “This is sounding better and better. I want you to wait until I get back from the bathroom, and then I want you to tell me what happened. The whole thing. And don’t leave anything out.”
THE TELLING WAS LONG and painful. Asbjorn stopped often to regroup his thoughts before he put them into words and launched them into eternal space. Words were like feathers on the wind: once you let them loose, there was no getting them back. Sean was quiet through most of it, which Asbjorn appreciated. The occasional question for clarification didn’t bother him. And Asbjorn was gaining a sense of understanding of what happened and why, and what might have happened under other circumstances.
Sean broke the silence at the very end of it. “If our situations were reversed, I hope I’d have done the same thing.”
“You don’t have to say that,” Asbjorn said.
“No, seriously. If there was a guy after you, especially connected to the mob, and he broke out, something would have to be done, and fast.” He turned onto his stomach and peered at Asbjorn through his swollen eyes. His broken nose was beginning to bruise. “I feel like I have a life again.”
“You always had a life.” Asbjorn grumbled in a tired voice. He didn’t want compliments. Being turned down by Redfish because he lacked the stomach to be a cold blooded killer had been curiously affirming.
“I can go to classes and focus on what matters. I can regroup and rescue my sliding grades. I’m almost failing a class. I’ve never done that before.”
“Oh no, not failing a class!” Asbjorn said, and his tone was light and mocking. Failing a class seemed like chump change compared to being killed by a psycho stalker.
“Thank you,” Sean said again. Then he leaned over and brushed a light kiss on Asbjorn’s split lip. “I’ll show you the full extent of my appreciation when we don’t feel like we’ve been pulverized!”
Asbjorn chuckled. “With friends like ours, who needs enemies?” He didn’t say how relieved he was that no evidence had been found on Frank Pettel’s body. Failing a class might be chump change, but being charged with murder certainly was not.
DETECTIVE MARK FALWELL did not sit down and did not accept his cup of coffee, a fact not lost on any of them. Sean leaned in his seat and inhaled the acrid smell. He still preferred tea on most days, but on his third day in Margaret’s care, he saw the wisdom of eating and drinking everything that was put before him with due show of appreciation.
“So what’s new in the police world?” Ken asked. He was seated in his place at the round kitchen table, with his back to the wall and a clear view of both kitchen entrances and out the sliding door into the backyard. Sean coveted that seat. The way Mark was looking at them made him feel exposed again, and all the open space behind his back might have been crawling with deadly assassins as far as he knew.
Mark adjusted his service Glock, which he wore hidden in a shoulder holster under his blazer. It was a nervous gesture Sean remembered from before, when his assailant had still been an unknown face and Mark had bent all kinds of rules to keep him safe.
“The forensics lab is done examining the body,” he finally said. His nostrils widened on an inhale, and he scanned all four
of them as they sat around the breakfast table. “The torso didn’t tell them anything and there were no fibers or prints, which is not surprising, considering how long he was in the water. Whoever dipped his hand in latex wanted to preserve his prints and his identity – it’s a bit of a calling card of a certain Jamaican gang that deals drugs in the area – but the chemical composition of the paint shows the brand was different.”
“A copycat?” Asbjorn said.
Sean didn’t say anything. There was a frisson of energy in the air, one that made him feel vaguely threatened.
“That’s what the lab thinks,” Mark said with a nod. “But who’d want to pin the murder on a Jamaican gang? We have a bunch of warrants to look for the paint. Two guys in uniform should stop by today and look through your workshop. They will probably take all containers. Just so you know.”
Ken sighed. “As long as they return them. I have some specialty coatings stored in there, and I’ll want all of it back.”
“I’ll let them know,” Mark said.
Sean started to relax. Paint was nothing. From what Asbjorn told him, it was the Ukrainian mob that had disposed of the body. This wasn’t a problem at all.
“There’s another thing,” Mark Falwell said. “A chip of metal has been found in the radius of the severed right hand.”
ANOTHER TWO DAYS PASSED. Asbjorn and Sean took the bus to school and back, and with no stalker on their tail, they enjoyed the freedom of being able to do so. The police collected all containers of paint from Ken’s workshop. Asbjorn hated the fact that somebody else might be on the hook for something he had done, and he even considered stepping forward, but Ken told him to can it.
He sat on the bus next to Sean, reviewing his class notes for his metallurgy class. The ride back took almost an hour, during which he had ample time to appreciate the irony of the fact that he was learning to analyze various steel grades according to their microelement distribution and the crystalline structure of the metal.
He had not realized he had cut Frank Pettel’s hand off – he thought he merely severed the tendons in his forearm – but Tiger’s old sword was sharp, and human bone was relatively soft. Softer than deer, for instance, and he knew that because Ken let his better students dismember their hunting kills with one of his old and already chipped blades.
The bones must have been cut, and the soft tissue that held the hand on was scavenged by crabs. Thus, no hand. Yet his cut must’ve been imperfect. Even the slightest twist of the blade could chip a bit of metal off and leave behind telltale evidence. He was certain the forensics unit would identify the fragment as antique Japanese steel, folded over many times and high in carbon. The question was whether the fragment could be matched to the small chip he tried to polish out of the blade while cleaning it. He didn’t know whether one blade could be discerned from another based on elemental analysis, but if so, he was screwed.
They got off the bus and walked through Newtonville, along the main drag, before hanging a right into an older neighborhood of full-grown trees and stately white houses with black shutters. They saw two police cruisers from down the street. They squatted in Ken’s driveway like they belonged there.
Sean stopped. “Bjorn?”
“I see them,” he said. “Let’s go and see what this is all about.”
“It’s about the fragment, isn’t it?”
“We don’t know that. They could just be returning Ken’s paint cans.”
IT WAS ABOUT THE FRAGMENT. The sword was identified as “Japanese, very old,” which covered a lot of territory.
Detective Hastings sat next to Mark on the sofa. He was the one who had been looking for an excuse to shoot Frank Pettel during the arrest. He was also the guy who busted up a bunch of rookie cops for beating Asbjorn up for allegedly resisting arrest, when Asbjorn was mistaken for Pettel some months ago. He was a loose-cannon guy with a low tolerance for bullshit and with a Marine tattoo on his arm. This could be either very good, or very bad.
“And here comes Navy and his girlfriend,” Hastings said as they entered the room.
“And there sits the Marine, with his personal manager right next to him.” Asbjorn mouthed off right back.
“The Marines beat the Navy any day.”
“The Navy runs a tighter ship.”
They stared at one another, performing a ritual like two dogs who raised their hackles, only to sniff their butts in a greeting afterward.
“Are you two done yet? Because this is work, not a social call.” Mark’s voice was full of stress and irritation.
“Yeah, we’re here to bust the killer of Frank Pettel, who was once known as ‘Joe Green.’ He was a mean, serial, psycho sonovabitch, but the Chief has a bug up his butt over some crazy vigilante taking him out before he could assemble a team pulled from our already overworked and stressed anti-gang unit and mount a posse. Like in two months or so.”
“It’s not as bad as that,” Mark said, but Sean noted the deep circles under his eyes.
“Okay,” Sean said, hoping all this would blow over soon. “What do you need, guys?”
“We know the perp was killed with an antique Japanese sword, so we are looking for the murder weapon. The lab wants to match the chip to an existing blade, and they can run analysis to see if the metal is the same.”
“Which is bullshit,” Ken said from the frame in the doorway. “The steel is folded, right? That means every fold has slightly different chemical composition. That, in turn, means you can get a false positive as well as a false negative, depending on which layer you analyze. You can tell a modern steel made in the traditional Japanese way, or a Middle Eastern folded steel blade, but only in general. You’ll just take my swords into custody and some guy in the lab will break off a piece of each one, irreparably damaging it and lowering its value as an antique artifact. When it comes to folded steel, you’d have to melt it all down to make it homogeneous for the analysis to make any sense. And you’ll hear from my lawyer before that happens.”
“And you’re some kind of an expert on swords?” Hastings asked.
“You could say that.” Ken hadn’t moved.
“Okay. Tell you what. If you can put all that in writing, I’ll pass it on to the lab.”
“My lawyer will put it in writing,” Ken growled. “I’m calling Don as soon as you clowns leave.”
“Clowns.” Hastings smirked. “Mark, he called us clowns.” Then he turned to Asbjorn. “Now listen, and listen closely, Navy. Do you, or do you not, have a Japanese sword in your possession?”
Their eyes met. “No, I do not,” Asbjorn said.
“That’s right, all your shit got destroyed in that firebombing.” Hastings nodded. “Good enough for me.” He got up. “You ready to go, Mark?”
“Yeah.” Mark did not look like a happy man to Sean just then. “Time to go write up those reports.”
“Long reports.” Hastings nodded again. “Exhaustively long reports. It’s a wonder anyone can find any clues with all this paperwork they have us do these days.” He gave Asbjorn a hard look again, and Asbjorn returned it in kind.
The door slammed shut behind them, letting a gust of cold air inside. Sean felt a sudden chill and realized he was sweating. “Now what?” He asked, looking around.
“Now nothing,” Ken said. “We go and live our lives like normal people do, and Don will write something up to make sure my swords don’t get fucked up. It’s not like we have anything to hide.”
As soon as Sean nodded, he realized Asbjorn had not lied. He didn’t have Tiger’s sword in his possession. It got left behind with Adrian. Neither of them knew where it was right now.
CHAPTER 14
Sean woke up to a pleasant realization. It was weekend.
“Hey, sunshine.”
Sean shivered. Asbjorn’s moist, warm breath caressed his earlobe right before sharp teeth nipped at it, and he savored the sensation of being in Asbjorn’s arms. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back as Asbjorn’s hands smoothed their wa
y from his shoulders down to his elbows, only to capture him in a possessive embrace.
“Asbjorn.” The word escaped from Sean’s mouth without his own volition, full of longing and heavy with desire.
“Yeah.”
A nip, a kiss.
Sean felt his back arch, his buttocks pressing into Asbjorn. He sighed at the evidence of his arousal, and slid his nimble fingers along the top of his boxer shorts, venturing under the elastic. Asbjorn did the same to Sean, painfully slow and teasing. Sean moved to help, only to find his hands restrained.
“Shhh... have some patience, sunshine.”
“It’s been forever,” Sean gasped. They had been in this house for a whole week but didn’t get far. Healing and sleep and catching up on work took precedence, and the police investigation was a constant drain on their energy reserves.
“It’s been even longer for me,” Asbjorn mumbled.
At this, Sean froze. The situation from before – they spared just a few words about what happened before Asbjorn stormed off into the driving snow. Sean didn’t expect to entirely get away with even a threat of a retaliatory threesome, yet his expectation of conflict resolution ran more along the lines of a heated argument.
Not this.
Not a thinly veiled exercise in dominance.
Yet it had been Asbjorn who accepted Sean’s proposal of a permanent bond, and who had, in turn, proposed back. It had been Asbjorn who stuck up for Sean in the ring. It had been Asbjorn who had spilled blood on Sean’s behalf and suffered for it. Who might still suffer for it.
Sean was being held in the arms of a man who was accustomed to command, who had borne responsibility for the life and well-being of his men in the Navy, who had ventured forth into the world and traveled to different countries, unafraid to embrace new customs and struggle with new languages.
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