Chapter 4
Deacon was slowly losing his mind.
“And?”
The question from his partner, out there watching the house, hung waiting to be answered. Deacon wished to hell he had an answer for Evie that would get him out of this city and back home to New York. Six months was long enough, and he’d started to forget what his own place looked like. What did Evie want him to say? That Arlo had made a deal with some shady nebulous bad guys and he had evidence of it? Or that he’d seen one of Arlo’s sons do something bad enough they deserved to be arrested? Because fuck if either of those things had happened. Apart from baiting Rafe, there was nothing he could find that would lead to any kind of conviction. Beating Rafe wasn’t going to get the charge he wanted. Of course, when he’d arrived here, he’d expected to be pulled into the fold, but then he realized he’d been called in to babysit Arlo’s nephew.
Arlo’s sexy, confusing, brilliant young nephew.
“Need more time,” he typed into the encrypted software, and pressed send. The word sent and vanished like it had never been there.
“Shit,” came the flashing reply, which disappeared instantly.
Shit was exactly right. There was a damn good reason why he had nothing to report, and that reason was sitting at another table in the restaurant, papers spread around him in careful piles. Rafe Ramirez, with his clear green eyes and his open smile, was the one thing that Deacon was not losing sight of.
For the wrong reasons altogether.
So he lied. Right there and then, he told Evie the biggest pile of shit. Bryan had wanted to talk to him – maybe that would be something new to follow up on.
“New lead,” he typed, keeping the message short. Not that anyone would see him typing, or be able to read it. Certainly not Rafe, with his head in his books and with the whole length of the restaurant between them. Deacon was by the door, between him and the exit, watching carefully, and he’d been treated to Rafe turning and looking at him with a confused expression on his face at least three times. The last time had morphed into a hesitant smile, and Deacon had had to lower his gaze. That damn kiss was like a landmine between them, waiting to explode.
He was clearly losing his mind here if a smile and the memory of a kiss could pull his focus from this case. Rafe’s uncle was the target, and Deacon had to focus on that. Of course, it didn’t help that being hired by Arlo had been the easy part; following him was impossible when he’d been handed babysitting duty instead.
“More?” The message appeared, and Deacon had to think before he remembered the question was about a missing person. The disappearance was exactly why his section had been called in to handle this case. When a body had turned up a year ago, it had become Deacon’s case. Now he was so mired in the family to get an in with them that he was clearly losing all perspective.
The only thing that worried him was the case of a missing person. Bryan, one of the younger guys here, had been at the house yesterday. Deacon had found him, looking fucking terrified, in the wine cellar and nearly broken cover to talk to Bryan. Instead he’d added Bryan to the list of people he was looking out for. He was some distant cousin, but this morning he’d been gone. Deacon wanted to think he’d run, but Felix had been strutting this morning, like the cat who’d drunk the cream, and that didn’t bode well. So that was a case. Right?
“Soon,” he typed and sent, then shut down the secure connection when he saw Rafe stand up and stretch tall, his T-shirt riding up. He was shorter than Deacon, slim, a little gangly, as if he hadn’t grown into his body yet, even at twenty-three. He kept fit running on the elliptical in the small gym in the basement, never did weights. He was young, fit and toned, and Deacon couldn’t help but stare.
Because Deacon was a fucking idiot who, instead of keeping his head in the case, was focusing on the wrong thing.
Only they’d kissed; they’d moved closer and Deacon had been this close to kissing Rafe again. And he was confused.
He pocketed his cell and caught Rafe miming drinking from a cup looking right at him. He nodded, and a few minutes later, after Rafe had played with the dials on the huge espresso machine that was front and center of Milo’s, he placed a coffee in front of Deacon.
“I’m nearly done,” he said, but there was no hint of a smile now. “I’m really sorry my uncle thinks you need to babysit me.”
“Don’t be,” Deacon said.
“I still don’t get why I need it.”
Deacon kept his expression neutral, hearing the slight lift at the end of that statement, which made it sound like a question. No way was he opening that can of worms by entering into a discussion of what Rafe’s uncle was or wasn’t.
So instead he focused on the pretty in front of him. He actually had shower fantasies featuring Rafe in all kinds of positions, but he would never act on them, even if he wanted to. God knew what it was about Rafe that had him salivating at the thought of a taste. Was it the absolute innocence in a man so entwined in the mess that was Arlo and his sons? Or was it just the way he smiled? Rafe was trying for a small smile now, but clearly his split lip hurt, as he winced and pressed a finger there, looking down at it to check for blood.
Temper spiked inside Deacon, but he couldn’t blow his cover by getting all serious over one cousin teasing another. Because teasing was what Arlo had called it when Deacon had reported what had happened. Asshole.
Fuck, he felt so protective of Rafe.
In another world, Deacon would have made his move, but this was not that world; this was drugs and despair and a hundred other sick things that made his stomach churn and that Rafe knew nothing about. Or at least Deacon hoped he didn’t. He was having to trust his gut that Rafe was entirely innocent.
Except how could Rafe not know the man his uncle was? He had to know.
“Deacon?”
Deacon looked up from contemplating the world in his coffee, and realized that Rafe hadn’t moved.
“Yes kid?”
Rafe frowned. “Stop calling me that,” he said without heat. “I’m twenty-three, for fuck’s sake,” he tagged on to the end, as though Deacon might not know that. “I’m a fucking adult, and I hate the way people think that just because I look young, I can’t be anything other than a kid. You fucking kissed me, so fuck you for calling me a kid.”
Deacon looked back down at his coffee. “I won’t call you that again,” he murmured.
“Shit. Sorry,” Rafe said, defeated, and sat in the chair opposite him. “I guess you’re not wrong.”
That wasn’t what Deacon needed at this point in time. He needed Rafe to go back to his studying and stop getting all up in Deacon’s space.
“Because you’re, what, thirty? You still see me as a kid,” Rafe said, resting his chin on his hands and staring Deacon down.
Deacon shifted on his chair a little. No, what he saw was a man who had pinned his sights on getting Deacon to chat as if they were close or something. And hell, to kiss him.
Why, Deacon didn’t know. He was twelve years older than Rafe, and he had a lifetime of mess in his fucked-up head.
“Thirty-five. And yeah, you are still a kid in my eyes,” Deacon said simply, and sipped the caffeine that would keep him alert for the rest of Rafe’s study session.
Unfortunately, Rafe wasn’t letting things go.
“I’m twenty-three. I drink, I have sex…” He trailed off and did this thing with his mouth that was half irritated and half the sexiest thing Deacon had ever seen. And he was leaning forward again, and the scent of him – a combination of shower gel and Rafe – was getting to him. Deliberately, he sat way back in his chair. Seemed like Rafe had forgotten to be angry with Deacon for pulling away.
So he decided to shut this down. He leaned forward as if he wanted to say something quiet, and Rafe moved closer, his eyes widening.
“Go back and study,” Deacon half whispered, then quirked an eyebrow.
Rafe sat back with a huff and began to say something, but was interrupted when the door slammed open.
“Fairy taking up your time?” Felix’s harsh, nasal voice resonated in the quiet restaurant.
Rafe, with his back to Felix, closed his eyes briefly, and Deacon wished at that moment that he could reach over and reassure Rafe that Felix was a complete asshole who was really close to spending time in jail.
But he couldn’t.
His cover wasn’t a caring-is-sharing kind of guy – his role was the enforcer, and it was one that was selling tickets in this family, with everyone buying in. Well, all except for Rafe, who looked at him with confusion rather than fear or respect.
“Fuck,” Rafe bit out under his breath. He rose from his seat and went back to his table.
Felix walked past him, flicking at the Dodgers cap that covered his unruly brown hair. Its layers had a tendency to curl in the damp, stormy heat of a Californian summer afternoon, something that Deacon should not be noticing.
Rafe gave Felix the finger, and Felix tapped the back of his head a little harder than necessary. Why the hell was Rafe provoking him?
God, it would be so good when Deacon had enough to get Felix behind bars.
And Chumo, who came in after his brother, forever his twin’s shadow. He was dressed to the nines in a sharp suit, his hands in fists at his sides. He looked pissed, and Deacon tensed. He’d never seen Chumo angry before – quietly, coldly focused, but never cross over anything.
“You’re an asshole, Felix.” He shoved his brother. “You left me standing with her.”
Felix shoved back, only he shoved harder, sending Chumo right into Rafe’s table.
Deacon stood up. There was no way he was letting Rafe get in the middle of some sibling squabble. But it ended as soon as it began, with Felix – bigger, stronger – pinning his twin and putting his weight behind the move.
“Get off me,” Chumo snapped. He shoved back, and Felix let him go, holding his hands up and grinning.
“She was hot for some prime Martinez cock,” Felix said, and held out a fist, which Chumo bumped.
“Well, she’s getting it,” Chumo said, shaking off his brother and suddenly grinning. “We’re hooking up after dinner.”
They bumped fists again. “Way to go, bro,” Felix said.
Then they moved away, up the stairs to the offices that ran the full length of the building. Deacon considered going over to see if Rafe was okay, but that wasn’t part of his job. Rafe did look over at him, but Deacon pretended to have a need to stare at the candle in the middle of the table. Not so much a coward, but a man absolutely focused on his job.
He sat back in his chair after a while, looking at Rafe’s back, at the curls under his cap, and hoped to hell that Rafe got out of this venomous mess before he became like his cousins. Deacon had actually raised this with his handler, but all he’d got in response was an instruction to wait things out. Rafe had only been there a few weeks, but the contagion in the place would get into his blood, and he could change.
Of course, given his last name and his family, there wasn’t any way in hell Rafe was getting out of living there with a clean record, or even alive. Not unless Deacon could be a hundred percent sure that Rafe wasn’t wholly or partly involved with his uncle and cousins’ business. The department was looking at Rafe as part of what was happening here, and all Deacon could do was hope that he could prove otherwise.
And looking at the young man with the smile and the gorgeous green eyes, Deacon knew that if Rafe was involved, it was a tragic waste.
And he definitely shouldn’t have kissed him.
Dinner was the same rowdy affair it always was. Arlo, the patriarch of the family, surrounded himself with those he considered familia, even those with a nebulous connection. Those with the closest ties sat near Arlo, with the hangers-on at the end of the long pine table. The ones at the end were third cousins, or with some link to Cuba, which made them acceptable in Arlo’s eyes.
Deacon took his place, leaning against the door. He didn’t eat with the family; his place was to look menacing and to keep an eye on Rafe. Arlo’s words, not his. Arlo sat at the head of the table, his wife on his left-hand side. A pinched woman, she never really looked as if she wanted to be there, and wasn’t quick to speak on any subject, a fact that seemed to suit Arlo down to the ground. The twins were on the other side, with Felix next to his dad. Deacon had quickly assessed that Felix was the dominant twin, Chumo often showing his belly in arguments. Felix was definitely the favored son.
And then next to his aunt, right opposite Chumo, sat Rafe. He looked uncomfortable sitting there, his gaze firmly fixed on his plate, his shoulders hunched, and he was never the first to make conversation.
“Saw what was left of that homo kid at the ring,” Felix said, making sure his voice was loud enough for everyone to take notice. Which of course everyone did. The family owned a boxing club, and Felix loved nothing more than beating on people smaller than him. Fuck knew why the place hadn’t been shut down yet. “They had to take his sparkly ass out on a stretcher.”
Rafe didn’t look up from his plate; he had to know as well as everyone else at the table exactly where this was going. Rafe had not been backward in telling his new family that he was gay. It was as much a part of him as his eyes, or his ability to sketch cartoon characters in the sides of his course notebooks. Felix was sometimes gleeful in his stories about how he dealt with “the queers”. He was dangerous.
“Enough, Felix,” Arlo said, but his voice wasn’t strident as it usually was when he told people what to do. No, it was sly and slimy, and Deacon wanted to punch the man in the head. Of course, he’d have to settle for seeing Arlo behind bars, but he would freaking enjoy it if he got to punch him on the way in.
“Sorry, Dad,” Felix said, but continued anyway. “I said they shouldn’t let him in the ring – knew he’d get pummeled by the next guy after I was done with him. Took two men to hold him still for the beating, though – he had fucking fancy footwork when he tried running.”
“Language,” Arlo admonished.
“So they called the paramedics, and it didn’t look good. Hell, maybe the next guy beat some straight into him.”
Rafe looked up at that, his eyes glowing with a combination of anger and hatred, and Deacon saw the moment Felix knew he’d succeeded in hitting his mark.
“Seems to me,” Felix said, silky smooth, “you shouldn’t ever take up boxing, Rafe, being a bit delicate an’ all.”
Felix laughed at his joke, and half the table did as well, including Arlo.
“Not built for boxing,” Chumo pointed out, which made more people laugh.
Rafe said nothing, just as he never said anything, because there was no freaking point.
Dinner pretty much went downhill from there, and Rafe excused himself as soon as dessert was done. Arlo looked at Deacon pointedly and inclined his head slightly, and with a returning nod Deacon left the dining room and followed Rafe. He didn’t want to – he wanted to be in the room where the action was, where he’d possibly overhear enough to take the entire Martinez family down. Rafe included, if needed be. He just had to trust that the bugs he’d personally installed over the last few weeks were actually transmitting as they should.
“You don’t need to follow me,” Rafe snapped when Deacon caught up with him.
He was at a T-junction in the long corridor. To the left were the bedrooms, to the right were the offices that were permanently locked. Deacon had seen the body language in Rafe that had shouted he’d been going right and had changed his mind at the last moment.
“Just looking out for you,” Deacon said.
Rafe muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like “asshole” and “sexy”, but he couldn’t quite hear.
“Stalking me, you mean,” he added, and took the stairs to his room, bypassing it and climbing the next flight to the roof. He held the door open for Deacon as he knew Deacon would be right on his tail.
They exited onto the roof. It was nothing special; a flat space with various ducts and a large metal shed with its doors hanging off. Deacon knew every inch of this rooftop, including the perfect point from which to jump if he needed to get to the next building, where his handler sat monitoring everything Deacon was in the middle of.
He also knew that this was Rafe’s quiet place. In the three weeks Deacon had been watching Rafe, he’d inevitably gravitated to the far corner with views over the river, and he would push his hands into his pockets and simply stare out over the water.
“Why do you do it?” he asked as he stared forward. “Work for my uncle?” He turned to face Deacon, and his expression was a picture of openness; he wanted to know what it took for a man to be a gun for hire, a pseudo bodyguard, the heavy guy to do what needed to be done. How much of what his uncle had going on was known to Rafe? Deacon didn’t have an answer, because even though he had a solid backstory, part of him just didn’t want to lie to Rafe. There was too much confusion between them as it was.
So he said nothing at all.
“I guess you can’t say anything, eh?” Rafe concluded, and turned back to the water. “I just need you to leave me alone.”
Deacon stepped closer to look at the view that kept Rafe enthralled. This was prime real estate in this town, on a slight hill. Built in the thirties it was solid stone, with manicured gardens winding past outbuildings down to the endlessly deep lake. From here you could see the end of the small jetty, and the water was flat and gray in the darkening evening.
“I’m paid to look out for you,” Deacon reminded Rafe. “Your uncle worries about you.”
Rafe huffed a laugh. “Cut the crap,” he said harshly, the laugh turning into a barely concealed snarl. “You know you’re lying.” He turned abruptly and stepped right into Deacon’s space, shoving at him, hard. “You’re all wrong. You don’t fit here any more than I do,” he added, and shoved again.
Deacon’s chest tightened. That sounded a lot like an accusation. He grasped Rafe’s hand and pushed him away, acutely aware that if Rafe came too close he’d say fuck it and drag him in for a kiss.
Rafe yelped at the same time Deacon realized he was holding Rafe’s hand way too tight. Deacon immediately let go, which made Rafe stumble, which led to Deacon holding him way too close to stop him from hitting the ground. They were alone up here. He was playing a role. His team wouldn’t care; they’d expect him to use every avenue he had to dig into what was happening here, and if that included kissing the nephew who didn’t quite fit into the family, then they would understand that. It wouldn’t be the first skin job he’d undertaken and it wouldn’t be the last.
But what if someone came onto the roof?
No one comes out here except Rafe.
What if Felix decided to track Rafe down?
Felix is with his father, which is where I should be; right at Arlo’s side.
He’d run out of excuses, and Rafe was looking up at him, gripping his shirt, with naked need in his eyes.
And Deacon couldn’t help himself.
One more kiss wouldn’t be wrong. Right?
But when their lips met, it became long, drawn out, a battle of wills on his part, a greedy, breath-stealing grab of a kiss from Rafe. They didn’t move, wrapped around each other in the dark, kissing as though they were in another place, and it was another time, and it was okay for them to be doing this.
He didn’t know why they pulled apart; he thought it must have been him, but he wasn’t sure. He wanted another taste, but there was too much distance between them and he wasn’t ready to tug Rafe back.
“Who are you really?” Rafe asked, his fingers touching his lips.
God, he wanted to tell Rafe so badly, wanted to trust Rafe didn’t know anything about his uncle, or the kind of criminal activities that were paying for the remainder of Rafe’s education.
He couldn’t.
Deacon had a best friend, a former marine and the man next door to whom he’d grown up, Mackenzie Jackson. He’d always said that Deacon was an enigma.
When they’d gotten drunk last, too many years ago to mention, kids who didn’t know better, Mac had summed Deacon up in three words: “marshmallow hard-man”. Which, of course, had led to an in-depth discussion about Ghostbusters.
Ultimately, he never had fully asked Mac what he meant, but standing here looking at Rafe, he had an idea. He’d been undercover on this case for nearly a year in various lowly positions – grunt work and the like – and he was standing here nearly blowing all that hard work. He’d moved slowly into the circles that would catch Arlo Martinez’s attention, and when he’d finally got a way in, he’d known he was so close to getting Arlo behind bars.
He couldn’t lose sight of that now in the face of a man too young for him with innocence in eyes that sometimes flashed fire.
“We need to go back in,” Deacon said, and turned to go inside.
At first he thought Rafe might argue, but then he heard footsteps behind him. He saw Rafe to his room, heard the door lock, and after a while he went back downstairs. His room was next to Rafe’s, and unknown to the younger man, his uncle had it bugged with both audio and video feeds. Deacon could see Rafe there, lying on his stomach on his bed, his arms crossed under a pillow. There was nothing creepier than having this window into Rafe’s world.
He dozed, woken by the soft alarm that warned him Rafe had left his room. A quick glance at the clock, and it was a little after three a.m. The house was quiet, and Deacon eased out of his door. The place was big enough that it was a rabbit warren of stairs and corridors and small rooms, but Deacon instinctively knew that Rafe was heading right back to the office.
Idiot.
He would catch up with him, get him back to his room, and hell, maybe he should be honest about what he was doing here…but he was too late.
Rounding the corner, he came across a tableau that made his heart stop.
Rafe on his knees, and Felix with a gun to his temple, the door to the office wide open behind them. Felix looked up at Deacon. He looked unfocused in the light spilling into the hallway, as if he was high, and his mouth was set in a line.
“I’m gonna kill him,” he said, and the gun shook a little right against Rafe’s skin.
“Felix—”
“I’m gonna fucking kill the son of a bitch.”