It felt like my body was moving through molasses. Evan was half a block ahead of me, walking with his headphones on. Two men with their faces buried in ski masks approached him from the opposite direction. Evan didn’t notice them, though, because he was looking down at his phone typing a text, probably to me.

I tried to shout but no words came out of my mouth.

I tried to run, but while my legs moved, my body didn’t go anywhere.

The two men reached Evan.

Evan looked up at the last moment and flinched when he realized how close the other men were.

My heart raced. I couldn’t help him. I was worthless.

He tried to politely step to the side to let them pass, but they charged forward, each grabbed an arm, and carried him into the narrow gap between two buildings.

I was finally able to scream, but my body still wouldn’t move. I shouted obscenities and threatened to murder the strangers if they so much as laid a hand on my Evan.

One of the evil fucks popped his head around the corner, looked right at me, and laughed. “We’ll take good care of him. Real good care.”

The laughter was still ringing in my ears while somebody shoved my back. Evan’s voice rang out through the night, calmly saying, “James. Wake up. It’s just a dream.”

* * *

My hands tapped out a fast beat on the steering wheel. After the nightmare, I insisted that we get Evan’s car fixed when I woke up. I couldn’t be there to protect him all the time, and he needed a safe way to get himself around town. I knew he’d still have to walk from parking lots to the building, but I refused to dwell on that.

Instead, I focused on what I could do.

It’s not enough.

Evan eventually agreed to let me help him out and called his mechanic friend. Will had an opening, but not until after lunch. The morning had passed too slowly while we’d tried to distract ourselves by doing laundry and playing cards.

A car honked and then passed me and then Evan in one move.

Evan had himself convinced that if he drove faster than five miles per hour, the car would blow up. Maybe he was right, but with only a couple of hours until I had to leave for work, the sooner we got to Will’s shop and the car was fixed, the sooner I could relax a little bit.

I liked telling myself that I would have done the same for any person in the city, but knew I was going beyond the normal call of my police duty with Evan, and just hoped he didn’t think I was trying to trap him into anything with the offer.

But things had clearly been developing between the two of us beyond just a quick hookup. I was anxious to put the menace of the city’s attacks behind us so we could get back to focusing on the fun parts of our relationship. All the worrying for his safety was stressing me out.

The previous night had been a perfect example of the teeter-totter of emotions that I was wrestling with. Between seeing Trey beaten and projecting my own worry of the same happening to Evan, and the incredible night fucking with hours of cuddling between, I couldn’t imagine things being much better or much worse.

Can I survive much more of this?

I wasn’t looking forward to being away from Evan while I went to work, but at least while I was there I could try to do something to help figure out what was going on with the attacks, and hopefully help put them to an end.

Shutting down the voice that said there would always be more bad guys out in the world, I turned on my turn signal and followed Evan into the parking lot.

Will and Hector, the other mechanic in the shop, quickly dove into their work. There was a lull in this part of the afternoon so they wanted to get the work done before any real customers started arriving again.

Evan and I huddled together against a wall, watching, and staying out of the way, but not out of the conversation.

“Will, we missed you at the club last night. You should come down after work.” Evan said.

Will stood up from where he had been leaning over the hood of the car and stretched his back. “I was thinking about it. Might as well check out the fresh meat.”

Evan shook his head. “Pickings are slim, but you should come anyway and say hi to the guys. Business sucks right now. You heard about Trey right?”

Will set down his socket wrench and pulled a part out of the car.

It made me happy to know that Will and Hector were Evan’s friends. I knew nothing about car repairs and always worried about getting scammed.

“Of course,” Will said. “Bunch of bullshit going on down there on The Strip these days. No wonder business sucks.” Will set the part on the rolling table next to him, pointed a finger at me, and said, “You guys make any arrests yet?”

I bristled at the inference that us cops didn’t know what we were doing, but tried not to let it show. Hanging around with Evan and his friends had been eye-opening. I was probably nearly as pissed as all of them that we cops hadn’t done anything useful yet.

Before I had a chance to go into some long-winded explanation about the difficulty of solving these kinds of crimes, Hector, returning from getting a soda from the vending machine, said, “They’ve got shit. But I heard some news.” Looking me square in the eyes, he said, “A guy I know told me something.”

Oh great.

Police are used to hearing about the mythical guy someone knows. It’s never a reliable witness.

Hector must not have seen me roll my eyes, because he continued without pause. “Someone came up to my friend and offered him money. Couple hundred. Told him all he had to do was jump a guy in an alley and shoot the gun the guy had. The guy said he could shoot it up into the sky or into the mark’s head. He didn’t give a shit.”

My ears perked up. It was most likely just a rumor, nothing more real than people believing Batman roaming the streets or fat guys dropping down chimneys to deliver presents, but it never helped to ignore potential evidence either.

Gather it all and make sense of it later.

Hector opened his soda can and took a sip before continuing. “My friend turned it down, of course. Not that he’d do it anyway, but this guy felt really seedy. He got the vibe that a cop was trying to set him up. Someone’s doing this shit, though. Maybe someone did take the money. Maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t a police setup, at all. Maybe it’s just a cop that’s killing you gay guys.”

“Fuck you,” I yelled before regaining my composure. Evan had grabbed my arm to keep me from lunging at Hector. I patted Evan’s hand to let him know that I wouldn’t do anything rash. “Sorry, Hector. But we cops don’t do that stuff, man.”

Hector laughed. “Sure, they don’t. All the cops around here are squeaky clean, of course. But that friend of mine, he’s a good kid. He had no reason to make up that story.”

Hector was protecting his source as fiercely as I would have protected mine…if I’d had one. I didn’t know much about Hector, but he certainly didn’t seem like the kind of guy who mixed with trouble.

At least in the brief interaction I’d had with him.

Profiling is a bitch, but every cop gets their hunches from somewhere. My hunch was saying that Hector’s story had enough truth to it that I shouldn’t discount it entirely.

“James, you gotta go,” Evan said.

I glanced at my watch and saw that I was going to be late for work. I hated leaving Evan here without knowing that his car was going to be okay.

Will must have noticed my hesitance. Or maybe just wanted me to leave so things could get back to normal.

“We’ll have Evan set up in no time. But if not, I’ll take him to the club in my car. It’ll give me a chance to have a couple drinks and do a little dancing, too.”

I nodded. It was certainly better than Evan walking himself to work alone. After giving Evan a much-too-short kiss, I turned back to Will. “No drinking and driving, right?”

Will rolled his eyes and didn’t bother replying. Evan shoved me out of the garage. “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll get an Uber if Will has more than a couple.”

I walked out of the garage, but not before I heard Hector, Will and Evan all laughing at my overly dramatic worry. I blushed realizing how foolish I’d sounded. I needed to get to work and get myself good and distracted for a few hours.