Thirteen
Anguish forced Rook to emerge from the depths of his sleep. His thoughts were fragmented, minnows scattered before the ravenous hunger pursuing him, and his lungs burned as he fought to catch his breath beneath the rippling agonies rolling under his skin and through his bones. There wasn’t enough oxygen in the air, and Rook fought to surface the rest of the way, anything to shed the coat of thorns he seemed to be wearing.
Opening his eyes made it worse.
There was glass in the light. Sliver wide and razor sharp, each drop of sun dug down into his eyes, twisting farther in until his brain couldn’t absorb any more pain.
Then he blinked, and the agony began anew.
“Come on, cuervo. I need you to wake up the rest of the way. I want to get some meds in you before I leave.”
Rook knew the voice calling to him. He loved that voice—Dante’s voice. Its rum-dark pour smoothed away some of the dry roughness on his soul, and Rook forced himself to lift his hand to his face to rub at the prickly sand in his eyes.
“He’s not going to die, is he, mijo?”
That was definitely not Dante Montoya. And Rook shoved himself off the sleepy cliff he’d been walking to plunge into full consciousness. He struck the hard, flat surface of awareness with a clattering headache and a realization there wasn’t a single inch of skin on his body that was left untouched by pain. Even the faint dusting of hair on his arms crinkled in distress, but as soon as he shook off one ache, two more took its place.
Sitting up was an exercise in futility. Nothing in his body moved as it should have, and Rook wondered if Dante had somehow fucked his spine loose, leaving him an unresponsive sack of meat and bones on the hotel’s expensive sheets.
“Let me help you. Don’t try to move without someone helping you up. Not until after you take a painkiller.”
Dante emerged out of the watery background, coming into focus in startling detail. A light scruff darkened his jaw, and as he sat down on the bed, light from the window struck Dante’s face, casting shadows from his long lashes onto his cheeks.
“I’m going to help you sit up. No fighting me.”
“Fighting you? Shouldn’t have fucked you,” he grumbled at the man he’d let have him a few hours before. “You broke me.”
“You were broken when I got you.” Dante wedged his arm under Rook’s shoulders, lifting him up. “And if you remember, I told you… it was a bad idea. The fucking. You are not a bad idea, cuervo.”
Sitting up was almost as big a mistake as opening his eyes. Sure enough, his spine wasn’t having any of Rook’s upright nonsense, and his shoulders seemed to be on crooked. Straightening himself out only made things worse, and Rook nearly toppled forward, saved at the last second by a judicious block of Dante’s hand on his chest.
“Mijo, what do you need me to do?”
Somewhere out in the fuzzy ether beyond the bed, another man spoke up, reminding Rook they weren’t alone. He got the impression of a shimmer of colors and a white smile before the man ghosted back out of his sight.
“Water would be nice, tío. He needs to take some meds. Warm would be better on his stomach, but I think you’d have to run it through the coffeemaker for that.” Dante spoke to the murmuring outline at the end of the bed.
“That I can do. And once we’re done drugging him, you can tell me why you broke him.”
Rook liked the censure in the man’s voice, a barbed sting in his sweet, rolling tenor.
Waiting until the man’s blurry shape faded out of his sight, Rook said softly, “If you’re thinking of getting up a threesome, you’re shit out of luck, Montoya. I don’t play the guess-whose-dick-is-in-you game.”
“Let’s get a few things straight, mocoso. That is my Uncle Manny. I called him here so you wouldn’t be alone while I go interview a few people about the murders at your place.” Dante sat down on the bed, then eased a pillow behind Rook’s shoulders. “And secondly, I don’t share. If you have a problem with that, then… well, get over it. As long as we’re doing… what we’re doing, there will be only you and me. Got it?”
“Sure you don’t have a class ring or something you want to give me?” Rook tried going for a sneer, but his face didn’t seem to work properly. His belly, however, pitched a fit, and Rook rubbed at his stomach. “Who thought this was a good idea?”
“We both did. Last night. This morning, I’m beginning to reconsider my actions.”
“Too late now.” His skin began crawling again, sending off little pings to his brain, and Rook sighed. “Really, just kill me the rest of the way.”
“Maybe later,” Dante promised. “Not in front of my uncle. He gets squeamish around blood. Just like you.”
“Low blow, Montoya. Very low blow.” The room slowly got clearer, and Rook spotted the plump older Mexican man coming toward him. “Your uncle, huh?”
There wasn’t any question about Dante’s blood tie to the older Latino. Even with his impossibly black hair and rounder face, the man’s features held a strong resemblance to the cop Rook ached for. Where Dante’s clothes ran to practical and earthy hues, Manny preferred a more vivid palette—one that included dark red pants and a yellow T-shirt stretched over his slightly rounded belly. The clash of maroon and buttercup was startling, and Rook wondered how out of it he’d been if the man’s loud clothes hadn’t woken him up as soon as Manny walked into the hotel room.
“Yes. My favorite uncle.” The hard edge to Dante’s tone was definitely a warning for Rook to behave. “Tío, this is Rook. Pain in the ass, this is my tío, Manny. He’ll be staying with you because he’s a very nice guy. Try not to be too much of an asshole while I’m gone.”
“I can see where you get your smile, ’Toya.” There was a tiny spark of satisfaction when Manny preened a bit, squaring his shoulders before handing Dante a mug. “Looks better on him too.”
“Ah, Dante said to watch out around you because you’d charm my wallet out of my pocket.” Manny’s grin was a near echo of his nephew’s. A bit softer around the edges and without the sexual aggression Rook swore Dante saved up just for him. “You take your medication and sleep. I brought a book.”
“Hell, you could probably dance on the bed. Pills knock me the fuck out.” Rook picked up one of the two pills Dante held out on his palm. “One only. I want to wake up at some point this week. Fuck, even my tongue hurts.”
“Both, cuervo.” Dante pulled on his cop face, failing to hide the spitting fire in his eyes. “Two is what the doctor ordered. That one you took the last time didn’t last.”
“I’m a lightweight.” Rook nearly shook his head, but there was a real fear his brains would leak out of his ears. Instead, he dry swallowed the pill and chased it down with a sip of water. “Don’t argue with me. I don’t like what this kind of shit does to me. I’m old enough to know that, Montoya.”
“Dante,” he corrected, then looked over his shoulder at his uncle. “He has a hard time remembering my first name.”
“That’s ’cause your last name is so cool.”
His hands were trembling, so Rook knotted his fingers into the bed linens, hoping to hide his shaken state from Montoya’s sharp gaze. He might as well have held his hands up to the man’s face, because Dante’s expression turned from teasing to deadly serious.
“I’ll take the other one if I don’t feel better soon.”
“Deal. And don’t think Manny won’t pin you to the bed and shove it down your throat,” Dante warned. “I’ve watched him pill the neighbor’s five cats in three seconds flat without getting scratched. You’d be nothing to him.”
Lethargy began to creep through Rook’s marrow, and he inhaled slowly, testing his lungs and ribs out before sighing in relief. He could handle the fatigue that came with the painkillers, but falling asleep would be—dangerous. He didn’t know Manny, and as the pain slipped away from his body, Rook could barely grasp that he’d fallen asleep in Dante’s arms.
Not something he did. Not a situation he’d ever wanted to put himself in, but somehow the cop went and dug down under his skin. As nice as it was to have the pain leaving him, the drugs also brought a silky stickiness to his brain, and Rook fought to stay awake.
From the long black span across his eyelids and then the startling jump of Dante sitting on the bed to standing by the now upright couch, Rook knew he was losing the one battle he’d chosen to fight that day.
Time shifted again. Or space. Rook wasn’t certain, but he’d only taken another breath when Dante appeared at his side again. Gone were the worn jeans and paint-splattered T-shirt he’d been wearing a moment before. At some point between one second and the next, Dante’d donned his cop face, a pair of black jeans, white button-down shirt, and the brown corduroy jacket he’d worn a few days ago.
Rook got another shock when Dante leaned over and his jacket fell away from his side, exposing a black shoulder harness and holstered gun.
He didn’t like guns. Getting shot was no great joy, but guns themselves made him nervous. They were too volatile, too uncontrolled, and from his past experience, handled by people who really just wanted to kill things—or him. The smell of metal and oil made him queasy. His leg muscles clenched, his body remembering another time when he’d woken up to hot shards and torn flesh. The scars were small, the largest a dapple of dark brown on his hip, but even after more than fifteen years, he still hated the smell of guns.
Of course, Rook reasoned, his most recent gunshot wound wasn’t a parade through the park either.
“You okay?” Dante brushed his fingers through Rook’s hair, bringing him back to the present.
“Yeah, just… what’s the saying? Goose walking over my grave.” He tried for a smile but failed. His mouth was too tired to do much more than purse automatically when Dante leaned over. Their lips touched briefly, but the caress warmed away the chill down Rook’s spine. “Just tired.”
“Get some sleep,” Dante whispered into his ear. “And you can trust Manny. The worst thing he’ll do to you in your sleep is cover you with a blanket. You’re as safe with him as you are with me. Okay?”
“Don’t think I really want to be safe with you, Montoya,” Rook mumbled, trying to stay conscious for a second longer, but he was quickly losing the battle. “Don’t do something stupid while you’re out there. We’ve got another condom to go through.”
“Cuervo, as soon as you get better, I’ll buy you a whole damned case,” Dante promised. “’Cause one is just not going to cut it.”
“One job, Montoya. You had one damned job.” Hank’s disgust thickened the air in their unmarked police car. “No fucking the… shit, witness? Informant?”
“Not a person of interest. If anything, he’s now considered a victim in this case. Breaking and entering. Which is kind of ironic.” As reminders went, it was slim. “Things got away from us… from me. It was an accident. Sort of.”
“How do you accidentally fuck a guy? You’re sitting naked on the bed and he trips, impaling himself on your dick?”
“I said sort of. And accident’s the wrong word… look, I knew what I was doing. He and I—there’s something there.” He sighed, suddenly tired of the complications in his life. “He pisses me off, and I like him. I’m also the one he called after he got hit by that car. So it’s not like I’m on a one-way street here.”
“Someone hit him with a car? Okay, so let me get this straight. Yesterday he was exonerated of murder, shot twice—”
“Not badly. But definitely creased.”
“Whatevers. More shot than I’ve ever been, and I’m walking around with a fucking gun.” Hank waved away Dante’s interruption. “He then sneaks out of the hospital he’s supposed to stay in because he’s got some serious control issues, where he gets hit by a car on the way to a hotel he’d picked out years ago to rabbit to in case things went to shit for him. Got sick because he hadn’t eaten anything, then called you? Do I have that right?”
“Pretty much. Okay, I called him. But he’d been ignoring everyone before that.” He nodded. “From there, I took him to the ER, where they said he was fine but needed watching. Then I took him over to a hotel without insects living in its walls.”
“Where you fucked him senseless.” Hank’s laugh guttered in his belly. “Jesus, are you trying to get thrown off this case?”
“Not senseless but mostly… it was rough for him when he woke up. He’s kind of bruised up. I left him with Manny.”
“Of course, because this story needed an ex-drag queen to make it complete.” His partner threw his hands up in surrender when Dante shot him a hot look. “Hey, no judging. Don’t get mad at me. I’ve got a lot of respect for Manny and his friends.”
“Tío’s proud of who he is. And was. Mock him and pay the consequences, Camden,” Dante warned.
“Dude, all women should have legs like Manny. I’ve seen him in heels. Deadly.” Hank returned Dante’s look. “A lot like your fuck buddy, Stevens.”
“Don’t call him that. It’s… I’d say complicated, but that’s a cliché. He calls it tangled. But I’m worried less about him than I am the case.” Dante reached over to the pile of papers straddling the console between them. “We have more questions than answers here. And every time we turn around, one of our facts becomes a lie.”
“Like that fucking diamond. Why’d it take them so long to figure out it was costume? Isn’t that kind of shit obvious?” The other detective growled through clenched teeth. “Something’s hinky in all of this. We’ve got three dead, one ex-crook with a target on his back, and we’re going to go see a woman named Pigeon.”
“A pigeon who’s the first victim’s sister,” Dante reminded him. “The rock’s a copy, so the original’s still out there. And from what Rook told me, chances are good the owner either still has the stone, or it was swapped out when things got a little tight in their wallets.”
“He’s off the hook for it even if he did take it. Too much time’s gone by, and no one’s going to nail him for it,” Hank pointed out. “Circumstantial evidence at best.”
“It’s what he was known for. Smoke and mirrors,” Dante agreed. “Also, the DA has a hard-on for Stevens’s grandfather. I might like Rook, but I have a feeling that even if I found him driving a pickax into a toddler’s head, they’d let him walk because he’s Archibald Martin’s little boy.”
“Something you guys didn’t know back in the day when Vince was gunning for him.” Hank appeared to mull things over, then cocked his head. “So where did our first victim get the fake diamond? And why did she bring it with her?”
“I don’t know. He also said he’d never made contact with it, so his print being on it is odd. I asked the lab to see if there were DNA or oil traces on it.” Dante debated with himself for a moment. He’d made a promise not to share what he’d learned from Rook the night before, but there was one key thing the former thief and Charlene said that kept coming back to him. “Stevens’s assistant said something about using some kind of adhesive to mask someone’s prints, but what if they could lift a print from that after it hardens? How hard would it be to transfer a fingerprint?”
“You’re straying into cow abduction conspiracy theory shit here, man.”
“Weirder things have happened,” Dante pointed out. “Take a look at what the lab said.”
“It’s just too much fucking trouble to go through—the print thing. Not the lab work. And for what? Why pin something on Stevens?” Hank picked up the papers, then shuffled their order until he found the lab report. “Fingerprint was smeared, and the partial they got was from Stevens’s pinkie finger. The thing is… what? Three or four inches? How the hell does someone pick up something like that with their little finger?”
“Still thinking aliens didn’t get that cow, Camden?”
Hank frowned. “So Stevens is the cow? I thought he was the white whale.”
“The biggest question isn’t whether or not the aliens took the cow, it’s why they took the cow.” Dante turned down Washington, slowing as the traffic tightened up around them.
“It just doesn’t make sense. There’s a big fat fucking why in the middle of this. I’m thinking we need to see how viable this theory of yours is before I commit myself to the crazy. And more important, is it worth enough to drag me out here on my day off?” His partner pointed at a traffic light ahead of them. “Make a right there. She’s the third townhouse on the right. How are we going to play this?”
“She’s the first victim’s sister and, from all accounts, either knew the couple found in the bin or ran cons with them.” Dante parked the car in a loading zone, then tossed a police placard on the dashboard to ward off zealous meter maids.
“She’s got some priors. Mostly grifting stuff, but not much. Some petty things, but nothing earth-shattering. So either she skims in and out of the system, or she’s so fucking good she doesn’t get caught.” Hank looked around the neighborhood. “Not rolling in dough here.”
“If she’s smart, then she wouldn’t live high,” Dante pointed out. “Sometimes the best criminals don’t start spending money until after they can’t get nailed for it.”
“Kind of like Stevens.”
“Hey, I’ve never said otherwise.” Scanning the street, Dante noticed the overwhelming stillness in the neighborhood. “It’s like a Stepford community here. Everything matches perfectly. How can people live like this?”
The street was riddled with a maze of townhomes, each section only slightly different from the one next to it. Ruthlessly green lawns were trimmed to an inch high, and each sidewalk leading up to the front door was pinned with a black mail box, their red metal flags pushed down at nearly exactly the same angle. A short flight of stairs led up to each front door, most painted brown or cream with an occasional rogue olive green thrown in to add a splash of variety. Mottled pansies circled the two-storied structures, half circles of purple and pink providing the only color to the drab landscape. Even the cars parked on the street were sand- or gray-hued, mostly smaller imports, although one turquoise late model VW bug stood out like a sore thumb at the end of the cul-de-sac.
“People like conformity.” Hank shrugged. “Some people like living by rules. She might think she’s safe hiding here. She’s probably on the neighborhood watch and calls in cars who’ve been parked in front of her house for more than seventy-two hours. Blending in is the best thing for a con artist. That’s why people always say shit like but she seemed so nice when their neighbors are caught with dead bodies in their basement.”
“Probably, but I could do without the dead bodies,” Dante agreed. “Let’s go in to console her about the deaths. Captain said there was a next of kin contact made, but we were on the scene, so—”
The first boom shattered the car’s windows, blowing glass inward into their faces. Another followed close by, too soon and too quick for Dante’s hearing to recover from the ringing going off in his ears. Around them, the neighborhood rattled and fell, walls crumbling in as the reverberations continued to shake the street. The unmarked rocked on its tires, lifting away from the curb, then slamming back down onto the road.
To their right, a row of newer townhomes lay in ruins, crumbling inward as Dante tried to catch his breath. He had about a second of peace when a third, smaller explosion blew, and one of the shingled two-storied buildings spat out columns of black smoke and thin fiery tendrils, startling Dante into action.
Covering his face, Dante shook loose of the shock holding him frozen in place. He reached for Hank with one hand while smearing away a trickle of blood falling into his eyes from his forehead.
“Camden!” He sounded tinny, shouting at the top of his lungs, but there was nothing but the rushing echo of his breath in his ears.
Hank lay on his side, slumped down over the console, and was much too still for Dante’s liking. Reaching under his partner’s shirt collar, Dante felt for Hank’s pulse, his fingers numb and shaken from his overwrought nerves. There was a heartbeat, strong and fluid, but the splatter of blood across Hank’s face worried him more than Dante cared to admit.
A second later, Hank coughed, and his eyes opened, wild and frantic, as he pulled himself up. The glass had done a number on his face and neck, starbursts of blood speckling over his fair skin. His partner was groaning but moving, and Dante pulled at Hank’s shirt, looking for more wounds. Pushing away Dante’s hand, Hank shook a handful of tempered glass out of his ginger hair, then reached for the car’s radio.
“Calling it in.” Gasping, Hank grunted and pressed at his ribs.
The explosion had been powerful enough to bend the car’s door inward, knocking the armrest into Hank’s side. He could barely hear Hank, and he nodded, knowing anything he said in return would be lost in the buzzing hum affecting both of them.
“Survivors….”
“Going in.” Dante motioned to the townhomes. “Stay here if you need to.”
“Fuck that. Go,” Hank ordered, his neck muscles bulging as he screamed to be heard through the noise around them. “Right behind you, Montoya.”
Dante went in at a full run, ignoring the hitch of pain along his leg and ribs as he mounted the cracked steps to the townhouses’ raised entrances. Not much was left of the cookie-cutter building, but Dante spotted a pale hand sticking up out of a pile of rubble near a fallen staircase. A quick glance at the townhouse’s ironically intact front door, and he made a connection to the address and the woman they’d come to look for.
“Mierda.” Dante waded into the falling debris, carefully picking his way to the lifeless limb a few feet away. “For fuck’s sake, please don’t be dead, Debbie Pridgeon. We need a goddamned break. Just one goddamned break.”