"Lucas? Is that you?"

Lottie sounded near hysterical, and came running to the front door before Lucas could even lock it.

"Yeah, it's me. What's going on?"

She slapped his chest. "Have you any idea what your damn boyfriend has done?"

Lucas frowned at that. Jayden couldn't have got himself killed in the forty five minutes it took Lucas to get home, could he? "I don't think so?" He shrugged his jacket off and hung it over one arm while he worked at his tie single-handed. "What's wrong?"

Tamsin came jogging through and launched herself at him, so he stopped with his tie to catch her and hike her up his chest.

"Mommy's been yelling for ages," she stage-whispered.

"I have not! Maybe. Just a little."

"Lots," Tamsin said with a sage nod.

"Okay, okay. Everyone just calm down." Lucas moved through to his bedroom to ditch the jacket over a chair, then came back out again, Tamsin still sitting on his hip. He unfastened his collar button and regarded Lottie as he waited.

"He-" She huffed. "You wouldn't believe-" Then she crossed her arms. "Tamsin, sweetie, could you go to your room for a minute so Uncle Lucas and I can talk?"

Lucas set Tamsin down as Tamsin eyed her mom.

"Can I get a glass of milk?"

Lucas covered his smirk with his hand as he pretended to scratch his stubble.

"What is this, a hostage negotiation?" Lottie narrowed her eyes. "Fine, okay. But only a small glass."

"Yes!" Tamsin fist-pumped the air then ran away to the kitchen.

They both stood and listened as she rooted through the fridge, then watched her march off to her room with the glass in both hands. Only once the door closed did Lucas shift his attention back to Lottie.

"Go," he said.

"He only damn well sent over some money," Lottie hissed, barely above a whisper.

"Right," Lucas murmured. "He said he would."

"A hundred thousand dollars, Lucas!" Lottie was clearly struggling to keep her voice down, and her cheeks turned bright red with either effort or anger. It was hard to be sure which.

"A..." His voice stuck in his throat, and he grabbed the back of the couch. "How much?"

"That's like two years' earnings after taxes," she hissed. "What the hell is he doing? I thought he was gonna send maybe a hundred, not a hundred thousand!"

"I'll talk to him," Lucas said, but he felt numb, and he wasn't sure his mouth was really working. He peeled his tie off and wrapped it around his fist.

"You better! How do I explain to Tamsin that suddenly we can just afford everything? She'll notice! Kids are smart, and she's smarter than most kids!"

"Yeah," he said thickly. "Yeah. I'm... I'm gonna go to bed. I'll figure this out tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay."

He auto-piloted all the way to his bedroom, then sat heavily on the edge of his bed and stared blankly at the wall.

A hundred.

Thousand.

Dollars.

No. It didn't compute. There was no way Jayden had done that intentionally. He must've meant to send ten thousand and dropped an extra zero on the end.

Shit, even ten grand was a fortune to just casually give a near stranger.

Lucas stripped off and got into bed, but it was far too early, and all he could do was chew over what it might be like to casually throw that much money at people on a whim.

The morning was off to a bad start before Lucas even had a shower. He found a succession of texts on his phone which started sometime around 10PM and didn't end until almost 2AM, and every single one was from a dude he once knew in high school he hadn't spoken to in six months.

Hey, how u you doing? It's Thom, in case u got a new phone.

R u there?

I was thinking we could maybe hang this weekend?

LOL u can't be in bed already dude.

Look OK I hate to ask, but I'm really tight on cash. Can you loan me fifty bucks?

Lucas? R u there?

Fine, fuck u, dude.

Lucas rolled his eyes and went for his shower without responding.

He sat at the desk in Ranjit's office and gazed levelly at his boss. He'd been sent straight up here the moment he walked in through the front door, so either there was a new job in, or he was about to get chewed out.

Ranjit sighed faintly before he spoke, which meant it was a chew-out.

Lucas braced himself for it.

"Going on a date with an active client?" Ranjit began. "What were you thinking?"

"It was the client's idea," Lucas murmured. "To provoke whoever's sending him these letters."

"Right. Which sounds dumb in and of itself. But whose idea was the kissing part?" Ranjit turned his screen so Lucas could see it.

Damn, the paps were great photographers, it turned out.

Lucas pursed his lips.

"All right." Ranjit turned his screen back. "At least you took yourself off the case pretty quick after. I mean, I would've preferred next-day, but it is what it is." He reached for a ballpoint pen and began to chew the cap. "What'm I supposed to do with this, man? Nobody wants to hire a security firm to fuck their wife."

Lucas nodded sympathetically. He could see Ranjit's problem clearly. Trust was the primary currency in the private security market, and if a primary wanted his family protected, they wanted to be sure that family was safe in all ways.

Engaging with a client so publicly was likely a PR nightmare.

"For what it's worth," Lucas murmured, "I was off-duty for this." He gestured toward the screen, even though it was turned away from him now. "Any and all personal relations with Jayden Deus have been conducted off-duty."

"You're a professional, Lucas. You've been here two years and never a misstep. Deus has got to be something crazy special for you to step out of whack like this." Ranjit frowned at him. "Is he worth it?"

Lucas sucked in a breath. "I wanna say yes?" he said, unable to keep the question out of his voice. "I want to find out. I think I need to find out."

Ranjit watched him, then nodded again. "Okay. I'll give you a week off to figure it out. If anyone contacts us I'll no-comment them. Let's see if this blows over."

Lucas had just blown his get out of jail free card, and he knew it. He reached across the desk to shake Ranjit's hand as he stood. "Thanks, Ranjit. I owe you big time."

Ranjit tipped his head slightly. "You do," he agreed. "Good luck."

Lucas thanked him and left in case Ranjit changed his mind.

Hey. R u there?

Lucas groaned at the text as he headed for the subway. Thom had apparently forgotten the whole 'fuck you' incident and was ready to go again, and Lucas debated not answering, but then he decided to hit dial and paused by the subway entrance as he listened to the dial tone.

"Hey, Lucas, man! How's it going?"

"Not bad." Lucas idly kept his attention on his surroundings. He was too wired for threat detection to do otherwise. "You?"

"Eh, you know how it goes!"

Lucas listened as Thom rattled on with his inane woes, most of which were the very reason they weren't really in touch these days. It was hard to have any shared frame of reference with a guy who drank too much, ate his own bodyweight in carbs, and thought that college football was life. As expected, Thom mostly talked about which teams were doing what, without once mentioning whether or not he'd finally managed to get a job at all.

"Mmm," Lucas interjected at what sounded like appropriate moments.

"Yeah, so anyway, I don't suppose you could front me fifty bucks, could you? I'll pay you back."

Lucas blinked and returned his attention to the phone call. Had Thom really just gone right for the hit-up without even asking how Lucas was doing?

Wow. That was impressive.

"I'm sorry, man, I don't have a spare fifty just laying around."

Thom made a snorting noise, and laughed. "No, but seriously."

"I'm serious. I don't have it."

Thom's laugh died down. "Bullshit. You're dating some super rich pharmaceuticals guy and you can't loan me a measly fifty fucking dollars?"

"Okay. This call is over." Lucas hung up, then blocked Thom's number for good measure.

But the irritation remained.

He began to feel hyper-aware on the subway. Aware of every look that came his way, every time someone eyed his clothes or tried to start a conversation. For a legendarily taciturn bunch, New Yorkers could still be surprisingly chatty on the subway, especially when Lucas put out his best 'don't talk to me' vibes.

They couldn't all recognize him, could they? Jayden was hardly an A-lister. Hell, he was a businessman who wasn't even working right now. There was no way the idle subway curiosity was at all because of some paparazzi photographs from Sunday night. No way.

He jumped off at 86th Street, then took stairs up to Central Park West two at a time once he was through the turnstiles. He passed a small squad of buskers as he went, and tried not to add them to the pile of people who suddenly seemed to want this illusory windfall he definitely did not have.

Shit, it hadn't even been a week since the date.

What was it Jayden once said to him? He was used to people changing on him once they figured out who his dad was?

Yeah. Lucas was starting to get a tiny taste of what that had to be like, and he didn't like it.

The irony was that Jayden wasn't even his boyfriend. They'd had one date. They wanted another, but then Jayden had started getting weird, and Lucas...

Lucas had leaped to some pretty dumb conclusions which, after a good night's sleep, looked even dumber still.

He strode toward Jayden's building and shielded his eyes from the sun as he looked up toward the penthouse. He didn't know whether Jayden was in, hadn't even thought to contact him. He'd kinda just come here on auto-pilot because he had nowhere else to go right now.

His cell rang just as he was about to enter the lobby, so he stepped away from the doors and checked the number.

He didn't know whether or not to be surprised that it was another old school buddy. Was Thom spreading the news, or had they seen it for themselves?

Lucas picked up. "Hey, Carl. What's up?"

"Hey, Lucas! How's tricks? I heard you were back in town!"

Lucas did what he could to prevent the eye-roll trying to bust out. "I've been back in town for two years."

"Seriously? We should catch up sometime! I thought you were a SEAL for life, dude!"

"Only on weekends," he said absently.

Was he being over-cautious now? Maybe Carl really had only just heard Lucas was back. It wasn't like Lucas hit up every last high school buddy just to say hi. He'd buried himself in looking for work, in trying to take care of Lottie and Tamsin.

Maybe he'd just dropped the ball, and Carl really did just want to stay in touch.

Shit, he was second-guessing everything now, and he hated it.

"Ha, weekends! Hey, so, I heard you had a windfall-"

The eye-roll got out at last. "Gotta go," Lucas said.

Another number blocked.

He pushed the door open and headed in to the front desk, offering a wave as he walked. "Hey, Tony."

"Mr. Neal!" Tony smiled warmly at him. "Here to see Mr. Deus?"

"Only if he's available," Lucas said. "I'm not here in any professional capacity today."

"No problem. Let me find out for you." Tony reached for his phone, so Lucas concluded that Jayden was at least in the building, or Tony would've seen him leave.

He idly scanned the lobby while he half-listened to Tony's side of the call.

"Mr. Deus is available," Tony said as he hung up, "and says you can go on up."

"Thanks," Lucas said with a smile. He headed for the escalator and, while in it, dug out his driver's license ready for the team to inspect once he was up.

It was Kinkaid on the door today, with a couple other guys, and they checked Lucas' ID despite having worked with him for two years. He expected nothing less, and they probably knew he'd be right on the phone to Ranjit if they didn't. Kinkaid notified Marcus, who opened the door from the inside.

Lucas felt a brief, useless flare of jealousy that he wasn't the one protecting Jayden right now, but he crushed it back in its box. So long as Jayden was protected, that was what truly mattered.

"Lucas," Marcus said as he stepped back out of the way. "He's in his office."

"Thanks." He patted Marcus on the arm as he walked past, but of course, Marcus tailed him right into the office.

There was no privacy with a team around, that was for sure.

Jayden looked like hell. He was pale as moonlight, eyes reddened and hair a total mess. He wasn't wearing his glasses, though they were by his laptop on his desk.

Lucas stopped in front of the desk and frowned. Worry surged through him. Had something happened? Was there another letter or, worse, attempt on Jayden's life?

"Jayden?" He said it softly.

Jayden rubbed his eyes and tilted his head back to squint up at Lucas. "Hey," he croaked.

Lucas frowned and circled the desk, sitting on the edge and reaching to cup his cheek. Surely the place would be crawling with cops if anything had happened? Or Tony would've mentioned it, at least? So maybe something else was going on here. Maybe it was still the jitters that had grabbed him yesterday and made him push Lucas away.

"What's wrong?" Lucas murmured.

"I can't..." Jayden sucked in air and leaned against Lucas' hand. "I just can't stop crying," he whispered. "It's all... It's too much, and I don't know what to do or why I can't stop this."

Lucas nodded softly, then leaned in to kiss his forehead a moment. "Okay. Stand up."

He stood as Jayden did, and then he gathered Jayden into his arms, lifting him clean off the floor and starting toward the door. Jayden curled arms around his neck and didn't even start to complain.

"We're gonna need privacy," he said to Marcus as he left the room.

"But-"

"Just this once, Marcus."

Marcus' gaze wavered, then he sighed.

"Just this once," he agreed.

Lucas carried Jayden through to the bedroom and nudged the door shut with one foot, and then he sat on the bed with Jayden in his arms, and held him close.

"Talk to me," he whispered.