by Rhys Ford
“Okay, ramen shop. Almost there,” Trey panted out through his teeth. “Still, what the fuck is a ramen shop doing in K-Town?”
His stomach growled, probably recalling his dinner consisted of a granola bar and a Diet Coke at five in the afternoon. The ramen place didn’t have a name, or at least not one Trey remembered. It sat twelve people, although there was a table at the back of the long, tight space for employees. More than a few times, he’d wandered in and the shop’s smoking-hot owner nodded his head to the back table, silently giving Trey permission to sit there and have lunch. He’d never spoken to the man, but his arresting Asian European features, silky black hair, and stormy blue eyes were the reason Trey stopped by in the first place. The food put in front of him was delicious enough to bring him back, but mostly it was the sight of the silent, trim-hipped, tall man behind the counter as he pulled together ramen bowls that had Trey eating there more than twice a week.
He ducked into the sliver of a break between the buildings, intending to cut across the small parking lot behind the alleyway beyond. It would shorten his run by ten minutes, ten long minutes of torture and darkness he wanted to leave behind him in a cloud of dust. Problem was, there weren’t many clouds of dust to be had in Koreatown at three-something in the morning.
Trey had to be satisfied with sprinting past a sour-smelling dumpster, startling something with scrabbling claws as it fed on the trash in the deep rectangular receptacle. Halfway across the parking lot, he plunged into a well of shadows, then headed to the street on the other side, cutting through a narrow pass between another set of buildings. Avoiding a pile of smelly cabbage leaves dumped on the walk, he sidestepped quickly, dodging a puddle before unceremoniously slamming into the open back door of an old van parked on the street.
And apparently startled a pair of scowling brawny men loading something heavy into the back of it. Trey couldn’t figure out what they were holding, but his eyes were watering, and somehow he’d smacked his nose hard enough to make it bleed. Too thick around the middle to be a carpet but long enough to need two men to carry it, whatever it was bundled up in the thick sheets of frosted white plastic curved down in the middle when the men stopped moving. The van’s door swung in, striking a thickly muscled giant across the side, and he turned, scowling at Trey from under an impressive pair of bristly black eyebrows. At first Trey thought both were bald, but the one at the other end shuffled his feet and the streetlights teased out the burr of his closely cropped crew cut, its short strands nearly translucent against his pale skin.
“Hey, watch where the fuck you’re going!” Black Eyebrows barked, his shoulders bulging around the thin straps of his grimy white tank top. He struggled to maintain his grip on what he was hefting, trying to push the van’s swinging door back with a nudge of his shoulder.
“You’re going to—” The blond wavered, unable to catch the slithering mass shifting between them. Unlike his partner, he wore a heavy windbreaker, and it flared open when he moved, giving Trey a very good look at the gun holster strapped under his arm. “Fuck.”
Everything happened too quickly for Trey to follow, or at least that’s what it seemed like. One moment he was backing away quickly from the van and its two menacing companions. Then in his next breath, the long package they were carrying dropped, the sheets unfurling as they grabbed at its ends, battling gravity and bad luck along the way.
The men lost, and they stood there, mouths gaped open and hands full of plastic sheet ends, while a paunchy gray-skinned man plopped out onto the street and rolled across the asphalt to rest against the curb at Trey’s feet.
It was amazing how much energy Trey found in his legs at that moment. Apparently, nothing motivated a man quite like having a corpse run over his toes, then discovering two guns being pulled on him by the two thugs trying to move said dead man’s body.
He knew the man was dead. No one could have survived a hole that big in the middle of his chest, and what was worse, Trey knew he’d seen that man before. Many times before. But none of that would matter if the two men trying to dispose of the body caught up with him. He’d be nothing more than another bundle wrapped up in plastic, yet another failed child star who’d gone missing in the middle of the night.
The alley behind him was his only avenue of escape, but it led to the small parking lot he’d crossed just minutes before. If he could make it across the lot and between the other buildings, he had a good chance of losing them along the main road. There were enough alcoves and oddly shaped buildings to hide a man, or push came to shove, he’d be hit by a passing bus and the driver would be forced to stop. Either way, he wouldn’t be dead of a gunshot wound to the back of his head.
Providing he could make it across the lot in time.
The first shot he heard nearly broke his stride. It was louder than he’d ever imagined a gun would sound. Even on the set of Down the Tracks, the sound effects were added in later, more to ensure no one on the set handled a weapon with anything loaded into it. Even blanks were dangerous, or so he’d been told. Either way, the boom caught him unawares and he stumbled, catching his balance before he tumbled onto the broken-apart asphalt.
The next shot was closer. Mind-numbingly closer. It hit the ground near his feet, kicking up sharp black nodules into his shin. Suddenly the shadows didn’t seem dark enough, cloudy enough to hide him, and Trey could have sworn he felt the heat of a gun being aimed at the spot between his shoulder blades.
He got into the alleyway just as a dark form emerged from one of the doors.
“Get down,” a deep, melodic voice ordered. “Behind the bin.”
The voice tickled at parts of Trey’s psyche, parts he’d long thought were dead. It tickled other parts too. It was wrong to drop to the stinking, filthy ground with a hard-on but not impossible. But then any arousal that sensual flow of voice invoked fled the scene as soon as Trey got a good look at the menacing piece of steel in the man’s hand. Long legs stepped over him, straddling Trey’s hips. The darkness in the tight alley grew, enveloping Trey, and he pressed his cheek to the ground, ignoring the rank stench of a puddle near his face and the stickiness of something under his chin.
There was a silence in the man’s stance Trey could feel down to his bones. Sneaking a glance upward didn’t do him any good. All he saw were a pair of powerful shins in blue jeans on either side of his body and long stretches of muscular arms lifting up to aim the small cannon the man held in his hands.
This time, the boom was massive, shattering any sense left in Trey’s mind. His ears were ringing when another blast went off and the smell of gunpowder filled his nostrils, the heat of the weapon’s fire smoking the air. Trey closed his eyes, flinching in the tinny quiet left behind after the man’s second shot. He hurt, more from flattening himself against the ground than anything else, but as he lay there, Trey took inventory of his body, noting the throbs and pains along his joints and exposed skin.
It seemed like forever before those long gorgeous legs stepped away and one sneakered foot nudged Trey’s shoulder.
“They’re gone.” The man purred when he spoke, a delightfully rolling undertone to his words. Trey couldn’t place it as an accent. He’d gone to more voice coaches than he could count when he was younger, anything to hone his craft, or so his mother said then. He’d known better. She’d slept with every coach and tutor he had, and none of them sounded like the man crouching down next to him. “You hurt?”
“No,” he admitted, slowly sitting up. “Just my pride.”
“They would have hurt much more than that if they’d gotten ahold of you.” The man’s voice was stronger, layered with a bemusement bordering on mocking. He tilted his head, and Trey got his first good look at the man who’d saved his life.
It wasn’t fair to be saved by the object of one’s wet dreams. It was even more unfair to be helped up off the ground while wearing a pair of shorts that had seen better days and a T-shirt torn in places from being snagged on uneven surfaces.
&nbs
p; Up close the damned man was even sexier, more dangerous, but Trey imagined that the gun he easily held in his hand probably had something to do with that impression. He was beautiful, sleek and sinewy with long legs and a trim waist, jeans slung low across his hips, his shirt riding up a bit, showing Trey a peek of his golden-brown skin. His lashes were long enough to throw shadows across his face, even in the sparse light, but there was enough of a glow from the street to flicker across the amber speckles in the man’s tilted-up green eyes.
Still, the gun made Trey pause, and he sat up, more confused than ever.
“You’re the ramen shop guy,” he gulped out, swallowing hard when the man’s sexy mouth curved into a sardonic smile. “What the hell are you doing with a gun? At three in the morning?”
“Really?” He gestured toward the parking lot Trey sprinted across, chased by a hail of bullets and deadly thugs. “I think the question you should be asking right now is why the hell don’t you have one? Get up off the ground. I’m going to go inside and call the cops.”
Two
FIRST THING the cops did was take his gun. Kuro didn’t mind. It was procedure. Just like someone scrubbing at his hands to gather evidence and having to retell the same story to ten different people and three more times to the same detective. He had other guns but only one story. He’d been restless, unable to sleep, and figured he’d start the day’s prep early, intending to go home after a couple of hours and catch some sleep. The sound of gunshots drew him out of his kitchen, and he’d returned fire after telling the blond jogger to drop to the ground.
He’d forgotten how tedious police were, especially baby detectives so new to the job the gold paint was still wet on their badges.
The back of the detective’s hands were freckled, but the spread was not nearly as thick as the splatter of brown across his nose. He might have been in his later twenties or even early thirties, but with his shock of red hair and buck-toothed smile, Detective Max O’Connor looked more like a human reincarnation of an old children’s puppet than a sworn-in officer of the stalwart Los Angeles Police Department.
Kuro wondered if the kid was even old enough to cross the street without someone else holding his hand.
“So you didn’t recognize Trey Bishop?” the kid asked, barely looking up from his note scribbling. “Hard to imagine missing the train wreck he’s been on these past few years. Don’t watch a lot of television, huh?”
“Enough. Mostly the classics like Bugs Bunny, but the Warner Brothers and Sister are pretty decent,” Kuro drawled.
“Don’t watch as much as I used to, but it’s a good way to wind down,” O’Connor replied. “But you’d have to be living under a rock to miss Trey Bishop crashing and burning.”
There was a lot of television about the cop, mostly in the way he held himself. He wore his gun in a shoulder holster, very old-school, small-screen cop, and his badge dangled from a loop on his belt. O’Connor came off as nervous, his eyes shifting and sliding off of Kuro’s face while he spoke, but there was an intelligence behind his guileless blue gaze, a sharpness he’d have to hone in order to climb the ranks. He’d do well, Kuro decided, if he stiffened up his backbone before the system chewed him up and spat him back out.
“I recognized him as a customer who comes in a couple of times a week,” Kuro said. “Never knew his name. I can tell you he usually orders the miso with extra soft shoyu eggs and seared kakuni. Every once in a while, he livens things up by asking for extra kamaboko.”
“I’ll have to try that sometime. It sounds good,” the detective murmured. “So you really had no idea who your customer is? Or was?”
“Before or after I returned fire?”
“Either,” O’Connor replied, glancing up at Kuro momentarily before flicking back to his notebook. “Most people would think twice about stepping into the line of fire for a stranger.”
“Never done it before, but the guy brought nothing to the fight,” he lied. “He came running across the parking lot being chased by two men with guns. Seemed like he was in fear for his life. I aimed to scare them off. Not to kill.”
Kuro was very curious about why the cop kept bringing up Bishop’s name and alluding to something. What, he didn’t know, but it was there. An overt probing at Kuro’s thoughts about the man he’d watched coming into his shop over the past few months, a man he’d silently lusted for even after he’d put away those kinds of thoughts and feelings. The last thing Kuro needed was a complication, and the sexy, lanky dirty blond was certainly that. He wore trouble on him like a cologne, a subtle but evocative scent promising all sorts of nasty things and heartbreak.
Then the cop threw a curveball, one Kuro didn’t see coming, and he pulled his curiosity back, shoving it behind a firm brick wall next to the lust he’d banked there. “So you didn’t see the dead body Bishop claimed was lying in the street?”
“I didn’t see any dead body.” Kuro frowned. “I didn’t go further than the alley. Didn’t have to. I could see across the lot, and once the two men pursuing him went around the building, I didn’t give chase. Was more interested in calling the cops, but you all showed up before I even hung up.”
“Bishop says the men were carrying a man wrapped up in plastic sheets and were loading him into the back of a van when he came across them.” The detective peered down the parking lot, shuffling a few feet to the right until he was lined up with the alleyway leading to the ramen shop. “If you were standing about here—well, further back—so you should have been able to see a van pulling away. Did you see something? Hear anything?”
He was getting old. Or the sight of Trey Bishop lying facedown on the ground distracted Kuro more than he’d like to admit. The shorts he’d worn running bordered on indecent, or at least that’s what Kuro thought when he’d glanced down and caught sight of Trey’s butt under the silken fabric. He seemed to be mostly leg, firm calves and lean thighs, but there was a hint of nice shoulders beneath the ratty T-shirt stretched across his back. There hadn’t been enough time to get a good look. It was hard to ogle a man sprawled out between your feet when bullets were flying around in the air.
But he’d given it his best shot.
Literally.
“I didn’t hear or see a van, but to be honest, I wasn’t listening for one. There wasn’t exactly time to talk about what was going on,” Kuro said, glancing over his shoulder toward the edge of the parking lot where Trey stood speaking to the other detective, a handsome blonde with a sour look on her face. “I was more concerned with Bishop’s safety and then getting LAPD on the scene. And of course, handing over my gun.”
“Handy for Bishop you were armed, but that’s kind of a funny thing, right? I mean, you make ramen. What’s a guy who cooks noodles up for people doing with a concealed carry permit and a small cannon?” O’Connor shifted the conversation in a quick dodge of words, obviously meant to throw Kuro off stride. There was no way the young cop could have known Kuro cut his teeth on that kind of slice-and-cut interviewing, and the detective’s narrowed glance up at Kuro simmered with a barely held back curiosity.
“Rats. Ever since they laid down the new waterlines, they’re getting into everything,” he replied, keeping his face schooled into a flat, serious expression.
“You got off five bullets from that gun. An Eagle, right? Kind of overpowered for rats, don’t you think?”
“K-Town grows them big. Baby rhinos, really.”
O’Connor’s expression soured a bit, and Kuro knew he was reaching the end of the cop’s patience. Clearing his throat, the detective took a breath and once again shuffled up the dumb kid expression he’d used a moment before.
“Did some checking up on you. Quickly, you know, because here we are at a shooting and you’ve got that conceal license.” O’Connor was fishing, fishing hard enough for Kuro to see the massive, glittering hook badly hidden behind his opening gambit. “Thing is, usually if someone’s got that kind of paper, I get more than name, address, and serial number on them. But not y
ou. There’s nothing there, Mr. Jenkins. No parking tickets. Not even a citation for jaywalking. Or even a health violation for your restaurant.”
“Considering it’s been three hours since I called the shooting in, I’m surprised you dug down that deep.” He shrugged, his attention drifting back to Trey and the detective interrogating him. “And I’m pretty sure we were cited once for not having enough ice on one of the prep stations. Or at least warned.”
“Thing is, my partner and I get a bit leery when a guy who makes noodle soup for a living has a weapon big enough to stop an elephant, and when we call it in to check on his license, we find out he’s licensed for an armored tank if he wants one, and oh by the way, if he wants to tuck it into his jacket, the state of California’s okay with it.” O’Connor nodded toward the far wall where a forensic tech was standing on a step stool and extracting bullet fragments from the building’s exterior bricks. “It also makes us pretty itchy when a noodle shop guy lays down five shots in a perfect line exactly a few inches higher than the heads of the guys he says he was shooting at.”
“I figured it would be easier to identify them if I had an exact measure of the tall one’s height,” Kuro rumbled, his voice deepening. The female detective was poking Trey’s chest with a stiff finger, right below his collarbone, and Trey was taking it, mostly. His face was turned away from her, even though his shoulders were squared off to face her, but his spine was rigid, tightening his body into a hard, firm line. “So two things; when can I get my gun back and are we done here?”
“You planning on answering any of my questions?”
“They’re not relevant to what’s going on, are they?” He cocked his head slightly, taking advantage of the few inches he had on O’Connor.
O’Connor’s lips peeled back into a mockery of an aw-shucks grin, but the newbie sheen wasn’t holding up. The man probably played this game often enough, skilled enough to maneuver an unsuspecting person into coughing up tidbits of information he could use to piece together something solid.
