Bareback

THE HUNTSMEN: BAREBACK

Amber Green

® www.loose-id.com

Warning This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id® e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

The Huntsmen: Bareback Amber Green This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by Loose Id LLC 1802 N Carson Street, Suite 212-2924 Carson City NV 89701-1215 www.loose-id.com

Copyright © January 2008 by Amber Green All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including, but not limited to printing, photocopying, faxing, or emailing without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC.

ISBN 978-1-59632-617-0 Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket, and MS Reader

Printed in the United States of America

Editor: Judith David Cover Artist: Croco Designs

www.loose-id.com

Chapter One

Brian Gardner stood in the doorway of the efficiency, his new jail-cell-sized home, trying not to breathe the hot, musty air.

Three weeks until payday. Idiot that he was, he’d refused the fistful of hundred-dollar bills Pop had tried to hand him with the last box off the old pickup. “I’m officially grown up, Pop. A certified, licensed paramedic. A working man. I don’t need an allowance.” “Take it as a loan, then, from one working man to another.” “I have plenty in savings,” he’d lied, and wondered why he was doing it. Because I’m an adult, and adults don’t let their parents smooth over every mistake. The window’s ancient air conditioner tilted inward. It might work as well as the overhead light -- which had flared once and died. Exploded itself rather than illuminate his five boxes and bedroll, the worn carpeting and tired appliances, the threatening slit of the doorway to the can. Florida, in July, with no AC. Fun, fun, fun! Above the air conditioner, sheet lightning flickered. He wanted to cross the room, pry the metal box out of the window, and let in the cool wind before the rain. Except that would mean entering the room again. And, since he had no more boxes to bring in, meant shutting the door. Shutting himself in this room.

I picked it. I get to live with it. Even if it is more run-down than the ad said. Pop thought he’d committed suicide, a huntsman moving to a new territory barebacked -- with no feeder, no brother, no support network at all. Of course, Pop only fed on females, which limited his options. Guys came a hell of a lot easier; Brian seldom had much trouble finding a guy willing to provide a little sexual energy. And, for the worst-case scenario, he had the number of the local huntsmen’s matriarch.

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Thunder rumbled. He pulled at his sweat-sticky shirt, looking at the evening sky on the other side of the soiled glass. If I want a run to settle my nerves, I’d best take off now. He tucked his wallet into the bedroll, pocketed the key to the dump, retied his shoelaces. Shutting a door between him and that room lifted his mood. He hesitated at the lock. Locking the door made the shit-hole his. Face it, Jinx. This is home. He loped eastward toward a convenience store parking lot, where boom boxes blasted competing lyrics and where young women danced on the roofs of two cars while loose knots of other youngsters laughed and gesticulated. Rippling currents of energy washed over his skin. He drank in the energy as he passed. Cool water on a hot day. Alarmingly satisfying. Stupid not to have noticed how drained he was, how the move had worn at his reserves. After his run he should shower and ease back in this direction, see if the party was still on, see if any of the eyes watching him were as hungry as his own. One of the cartop dancers waved her little bit of a blouse overhead, and the mostlymale crowd below roared encouragement. She laughed happily. Brian took in her build -- too slim in the hip and too round in the face. Jailbait. She waved her blouse again, like she was flagging down the as-yet-absent cops.

Fucking A -- I don’t want to be anywhere close when the cops come. He kicked up his speed. At every second or third corner, young men -- salesmen -- eyed him sullenly, hands in their low-hanging pockets, rearranging whatever was there. One after another gave a shadow of a sneer and looked past him. Oddly enough, most of them stank of fear. Brian frowned. Gang war? He dropped the frown. An oblivious face was less likely to provoke a confrontation. I’m not a rival, nor a customer -- I’m a running advertisement for

the power of clean living! Worse, I look like a little brown cop, don’t I? A tall woman in a short frilly skirt and high, high heels staggered in the road ahead of him. Headlights picked up her jewelry like brass stars. She fell to one knee. Right in the path of an oncoming SUV. She gaped at the oncoming truck. Brian lunged past her, scooping her up as he passed and using his momentum to sling her into the line of parked cars on the other side of the road. She landed across the hood of an ancient Triumph GT. Brian landed in the gutter. A cell phone struck his nose, not hard but sharply, and clattered to the cement. The sun-heated road scorched his skin. The SUV’s horn blared in passing. No sign of braking. Fucker had to be going sixty. The woman reeked of stale alcohol, and the burned-chemical tang of crack. She crumpled over Brian and moaned. “I’m ’on be sick.”

Not on me you won’t! He scrambled crab-style to get out from under her. She leaned back on the hood of the Triumph and stared at the red taillights of the SUV, then wiped her hands on her flippy little skirt. Her top was, he realized, one of those leather-

The Huntsmen: Bareback

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look corsets that really pushed up her boobs. She wore a scattering of thin braids in her reddish hair. She had applied fresh deodorant instead of showering since the last time she’d been laid. He smelled one of those cinnamon-flavored lubricants that heated when blown on. Usually the thought of that stuff, what he could do with it, torqued his balls and crossed his eyes with need, but…not tonight. Call them cooties or call them crabs. He didn’t want any. He brushed road trash off his legs and picked up the woman’s phone for her. “I’m Tina,” she said with unexpected dignity, taking the phone and offering him a manicured hand. She had French nails, painted with tiny rosebuds. “Princess Tina. If you real nice, I’ll let you walk me to the Midnight Library and buy me a latte.” His hunger pulsed, but ebbed without any effort on his part. He took her trembling hand. Once she stood up, he could look straight at her throat, down at that cleavage, or up at her face. Gently, he pulled her away from the car before someone who cared about it noticed them. “Good evening, Princess. I’m Brian.” Thunder rumbled, kettledrum loud, and when it stopped he felt eyes on him. He turned, pushing Tina safe behind him, and faced the street. A big man in black stood there, straddling a big, black-on-black motorcycle. On the other side of the bike, a sidecar carried a stack of pizza boxes, shock-corded in place and oozing a pepperoni-garlic aroma that yanked knots in Brian’s gut. How much does pizza cost here? Never mind -- until payday, peanut butter is as fancy as it gets. The biker raised his visor and studied him with a huntsman’s eyes, or maybe just a cop’s eyes, pale and flat and assessing -- then looked past him. “Tina! What are you doing this side of the Library?” “Who you to ask?” she demanded, but grabbed a fistful of Brian’s shirt as if to keep him in place between her and the big guy. The big guy tightened his mouth, as if suppressing a grin. “Princess…”

Yeah, it probably does look funny, tall as she is and short as I am, but if you start to get off that monster bike you’ll see how fast I can break your kneecap. Tina held Brian tighter. “Don’t you ‘princess’ me in that tone! You sure ain’t my daddy and last I checked you wasn’t my husband either! Why cain’t I go where I please?” “Because every time you come to this end of town you get into something you should be arrested for.” The measuring gaze returned to Brian. “Who are you?”

You’re not my daddy either! But -- “Are you a cop?” “Yes, I am.” “I’m a citizen.” He started to reach for his ID, but he didn’t have it. He really did need to start conversations with a more respectful tone. “Brian Gardner. New paramedic in town. We’ll be working together, here and there.” The devil in him added, “If you’re really a cop.”

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“Huh. Well, Brian Gardner, citizen, I would greatly appreciate your escorting the princess back to the Library.” He stared a moment. “Safely.” Brian’s face heated. “I haven’t put her in danger.” “So she’s bleeding from the knee because…?” Tina laughed. “Because I fell down, Joe. You cute when you jealous, you know that?” The big cop glared at her, and at Brian, but just then a cool breeze kicked up, chilling Brian’s limbs and whipping strands of Tina’s hair against his ear. The cop slammed down his visor, gunned his motor, and roared away before the rain could hit his pizza boxes. “C’mon, Brian,” Tina said, plaiting his arm with both of hers. “Shortcut to the Liberry through here.” Bemused, his mind on the cop, Brian let her lead him into the dark, fetid mouth of the next alley. The wind changed, bringing him the smell of old piss and rotting garbage. He paused, waiting for his huntsman’s night vision to adjust to the alley shadows. The princess fumbled with her cell phone and activated a tiny flashlight beam -- just enough to mess with his eyes. “You gon’ buy me that latte, sweetie? Spend a little time with a princess? I bet we could get along real good together.” The hunger didn’t respond. She wasn’t really interested, just playing her role. She would fake her orgasm too, and sex he couldn’t feed from was no better than jacking off. Besides, she still smelled of her last man, who might have left her all kinds of creepycrawlies. Only the most virulent germs affected a huntsman, but catching the crabs wasn’t an experience he ever wanted to repeat. “Sorry, Princess. I don’t have the flow for a latte, much less your next pipe.” She was quiet a while, maybe hurt. They cut across the next street, which was fairly busy, and into another alley. He took mental notes. If the matriarch let him settle here, he’d need an intimate knowledge of all these back ways and hidden places. Looked like Tina already had that knowledge. The next alley was just a gap between buildings, barely wide enough to walk through single file. He took Tina’s cell phone/flashlight and stepped ahead of her, flicking the beam about to check the pale brick walls to each side, the surprisingly uncluttered ground with puddles of mold where the window air conditioners dripped, the masonry where basement windows and the occasional ground-floor window had been blocked up. He could run flat out through here, ducking about six inches to keep from ramming any of these the window AC units. Someone as big as Joe-the-cop would have to turn sideways and also duck under the AC units. Rain spattered on metal overhead. Tina nudged him. “Pick up your feet, sweetie. One more block and we’re practically uptown.”

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He stepped out onto a deserted street with tendrils of steam rising like ghosts from the tarmac. The lights on the west side of the street were dead, a string of at least five of them, and the garbage truck hadn’t run this week. Uptown my ass. “Where’s the Library?” Tina strode past him, catching hold of his wrist. For a woman, she had huge hands. The hands went with her height, which would top Brian’s even without those fuck-me heels. “We passed that,” she snapped. “I want to see the park by moonlight.”

Moon -- ? Tiny, hard raindrops spattered across the street. She was stoned, he reminded himself, and sighed. “You wanted to go to the Library, Princess. You wanted to even before Joe-the-cop mentioned it.” “He changed my mind. He’s too bossy, for a man with no call to be.” Brian lowered his voice, put some seduction in it. “He was trying to trick you, Princess. Make you think you didn’t want to go there. You do want to go to the Library.” “Trick me?” She stood with her hips cocked, a distant red light seemingly caught in her hair. “Trying to trick you into walking so far you’d break a heel or something.” He played the tiny light over her glittering, painted toes. She shifted her weight. “I feel like these heels done broke my feet.” “Let’s go to the Library, then, and you can kick them off under the table.” The rain started abruptly, hard and cold. “Yeah, let’s go to the Library before my stays rust.” She took off down the street. “Gimme my light. Shortcut this way.” Brian grinned, shook his head, and followed. Getting soaked was the least of her problems tonight, and for him it was no problem at all. He’d see her to someplace safe, or safer than the street, and try to get her to settle there. Passing the next alley, he heard a strangled sob. And then a low, mean laugh. Tina swung about, tottering on her heels, and threw her little bit of a light right in his eyes. “What’s that?” “Hush!” “What?”

Stoned. You picked smart one this time, Jinx. He grabbed her and clapped a hand over her mouth. Bad move. She fought like a fury, throwing back an elbow and a vicious stomp so fast he barely evaded both moves. “Take this,” she hissed, and thrust something at him. He automatically took it, which let her snatch free of his grip. She left her shoes and pelted barefoot -- and screaming -down the alley. “Fiiiiire! Help! Help! Fiiiire!”

6

Amber Green

Lights flooded the alley. Brian ducked into a shadowed nook. The wind shifted, bringing smells of blood and shit. In the rain, he saw a man hung spread-eagled on a ten-foot chain-link fence, his naked pale skin crisscrossed with bleeding lines. A man deliberately sliced another diagonal line across the hanging man’s chest, and then turned slowly, grinning, toward Tina. The red knife gleamed.

Tina! No! He had to -Two other men stepped into view and grabbed her. She turned to one of them, her mouth open. The red knife flashed toward her, and she staggered. In the same heartbeat, one of the two other men raised a pistol. The pistol flashed twice. It cracked, but made no more noise than a tree branch snapping.

Tina! He had no hope of saving her. His fists ached. He had her cell phone. Was it a camera? He flipped it open, and aimed it blindly at the lights. Would it capture any image? Would identifying any of those men do any good? “Hey, you!”

Fuck. “Nail him.” He snapped shut the phone and thrust it down next to his dick, in the support liner of his shorts. Spinning on his heel, he ran. Through the hammering rain. Down the street. A car screeched its tires behind him. Chasing me with a car? He ducked into the nearest alley, dodging two hollow TVs, a beanbag chair, half a toilet, and other piles of junk left and right. In front of him, his doubled shadow leaped and danced like a crazed cartoon. Behind him, the car kept coming. Not fast, but -Street! The busier one! Crowds are your safe places, Jinx. But the people had vanished in the pouring rain. He raced down the sidewalk, barely able to see ten feet in front of him. Past the cross street, he found a kill zone of a parking lot on each of the three blocks facing.

Fucking A! He doubled back, and a man lunged for him. He dodged like a quarterback, letting the guy hit the wet sidewalk. Brian aimed a throat-stomp as he passed, but the guy rotated from under his foot. Adrenaline surged through his system -- a glory too close to the feel of feeding. Meaning he would have to feed tonight, one way or another. Another guy knocked him against a cement planter stinking of cigarette butts. He tucked and rolled, ready to hit the ground running. Except that his left foot stayed behind, hooked in a tenacious hand. The sidewalk bashed into his face. Pain-stars peppered his vision. He kicked hard with his right foot, planting his heel in the grabber’s nose. Blood sprayed to his shin.

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Another man leaned over him, a shadow in his smeared vision, and light caught the edge of a rain-slicked blade arcing in. Before the blade reached him, Brian put a fist under the man’s chin, and felt the tiny throat-bones crunch against his knuckles.

Fucking A -- I’ve killed him. In the back of his head, his brothers’ voices laughed harshly. Think later, Jinx. Again he rolled, wet grit grinding into his skin. His shirt ripped in someone’s grasp. He skinned out of the clinging cloth, saw a narrow opening that might be an alley, and ran for all he was worth.

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Amber Green

Chapter Two Joe stood on his desk, laughing, holding the stack of pizza boxes so the top one pressed against the ceiling panels. At his feet, the guys on duty -- and a good dozen off-duty buddies -- howled and barked and pawed, laughing, at his knees. Fifteen years on the force was worth a hell of a party. Not many men made it this far, and by tradition he was Top Dawg for a week. Had to feed the guys at least once, and had to let them sniff his butt and make doggie-sex comments as often as they wanted. Had to remind them of the little rituals and in-jokes that kept them all sane on this job. A sergeant whistled. Joe looked over the guys’ heads to meet her eyes. She looked back at him grimly, and twitched her head. He squatted and set down the stack of boxes. “Bunny,” he said to the nearest uniform, “make sure it’s shared out, would you please?” “Dibs on the Canadian bacon!” she crowed, snatching a box from the middle of the stack. He hopped to her desk, one boot heel skidding on a sheet of paper, and caught his balance. He came to the floor and elbowed through the fringe of the cheerful mob. “You need me, Sarge?” “Yessir. Boy come running in a minute ago. Brown with black hair, maybe twenty or twenty-one. Dirty, bloody, and sopping wet. Miami accent, or one of those. Ast for ‘big guy named Joe, rides a black BMW with a sidecar’ which sounds kinda sorta vaguely like you. We put him in I-2.” He thought of Tina’s boy, Brian Gardner. Then he thought of the Guatemalan boy the Red Diamonds had half-flayed and apparently used for attack-dog training a week and a half ago. The chewed-up boy’s brother looked a lot like Brian, but was sitting in a safe house until he could come up with a story that didn’t involve a swamp ape, Florida’s version of Bigfoot.

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Then he thought of the new kid down the road, gender undetermined, who’d written PIG in pool salt through the grass of his front yard. Right on the first guess. Brian huddled under a white cotton blanket in the smaller interrogation room. He half-turned as Joe eased open the side door. Most people didn’t hear him enter a room; Joe liked it that way, liked checking what expressions crossed their faces in that naked moment when they did notice him. This kid was scared and angry, but not startled. Joe nodded a hello and took the folding metal chair at the kid’s right hand. The boy had a wet cloth to the side of his face. Looked like Tina had left her claw marks in another one. If he expected to press charges, he might be surprised at how unresponsive the system could be. The Princess might come up pretty often in conversations about what was wrong with people these days, but she was an old-time local. Joe lowered his voice to a confidential level. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon, citizen. What’s wrong?” The boy looked at him levelly. “Tina’s been shot.” A high-pitched hum started up in the back of his head. He kept his tension there, and let his hands fall loosely on the table in front of him. “Is she in the ER?” The kid’s lips whitened, and his face hardened. One last layer of boyhood stripped away from him. “No. She’ll go straight to the morgue. She took two in the face, probably .22s, subsonic loads. I know how weak those are, but one of the other guys had a honking big knife.” “Any chance of catching them on-scene if I send people now?” “Not unless they’re stupid.” The hum intensified. Tina.

Damn… Tina… Tino. I kept telling you somebody’d kill you on the streets at night. Is that why you kept going out at night? He studied the kid. Brian Thomas Gardner, age 20, valedictorian of some high school in Brooklyn and then cum laude at one of the better Miami tech schools. If he was lying about any of this, he had to know he’d just kissed his credibility -- and his job -- in the ass and pitched it out the window. The kid didn’t smell of booze, or crack, or even weed. His eyes focused. They weren’t bloodshot, not pinpointed or fixed in that thousand-yard stare. Until events prove you a liar,

I have to believe you. So what kind of person are you? The kind that doesn’t fall apart when his date gets butchered. How bad was he hurt? Joe reached for the cloth, but the kid flinched back. With a mental sigh, Joe pulled his hand back a little and softened his voice. “May I?” The kid blinked, and held still.

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Joe took that as permission and peeled the cloth away from his scraped, battered face. A lump the size of a deviled egg bulged below and beside his eye. “You need an X-ray of that, kid.” “With all due respect, Lieutenant, I’m not your kid and that’s not what I need. You try to shut me up in some ER at an hour when the knife and gun club is in full swing and I’ll walk out against medical advice.” Joe refolded the cloth to put a clean section facing out and laid it gently against the damaged skin. As soon as he let go, the kid’s hand covered the cloth. Short nails. Thick, callused knuckles. A fighter’s hands. Matched his spirit. “I remembered where I’d seen your name, Brian Thomas Gardner. You’re one of those four new paramedics the skipper browbeat the city into hiring.” Of course, he probably

didn’t tell you half our paramedics quit when their Lieutenant Rodriguez was gutted like a pig. “I assume you have some ability to judge whether you need medical care. Did you actually see Tina get shot?” The kid exhaled slowly. “Yes, and I got pictures -- maybe -- of the guys who did it. We came across them while they were slicing diamond patterns into some guy they had spreadeagled on a chain link fence.” The Red Diamonds. Tina had stumbled into one of their scenes. “Pictures?” The kid reached into the folds of the blanket and pulled out a cell phone. Water beaded on the pearl gold skin of it. Joe grabbed it and pulled the battery. The thing would have to dry out completely before they dared turn it on. The phone itself was warm to the touch, and smelled…warm. He pocketed it. Step one: get a location. Step two: send people there; secure the scene. Back up. Step 1.5: call in a face artist to get at least one face out of the kid’s head. Nat was off duty right now, but Larry was bad -- he suggested details over and over until they got imbedded in the memory of the witness. Eyewitness testimony sucked generally, and a misidentification went a long, long way with the wrong jury.

Tina. What do I tell her -- his -- mother? The original star of that fence scene might still be breathing. “Put your head back out there where I left you and Tina heading to the Library. How would we get from that spot to that chain-link fence?” The kid didn’t answer. He was groping about the blanket. He stood and shook it, and his shorts sagged to reveal a section of muscled haunch that riveted Joe’s attention. The kid patted his already-dry shorts and swore. “What’s missing?”

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“My key. I lost it, probably when that guy tackled me.” He looked up, his eyes black with a new depth of fear. “It has my address on the tag. If those guys find it, they know how to find me. Any time they want me.”

***** After Joe the Viking Warrior cop left, Brian had to tell his story four times to a tape recorder. The talkative one of a pair of uniforms was cajoling him to tell it yet again when a sleepy-eyed woman showed up with one of those sketch-on-screen laptops. She reached between the uniformed cops and hit the recorder’s stop button. “Shit, Nat!” One of the uniforms -- his tag said Howell -- grabbed the woman’s wrist. “We weren’t done!” Brian lunged across the scarred table at them, remembering belatedly to tuck his fists under him and be a shield, not a weapon. He rested the unscraped side of his face on the recorder, beside the woman’s white-knuckled fist, and batted his eyelashes at the uniform. “You weren’t manhandling a lady, were you, Officer Howell?” They stared at him. Without even moving all that much, they formed a solid wall of stares. The two uniforms used the same kind of gun oil, thick and sweet. The woman used a different-smelling brand, a lighter kind. He tried to keep his eyes wide despite the swelling. Tried to look harmless. I’m small. I’m next to naked. You don’t need to defend yourselves against me. The force was a family, and he’d just interfered in a family spat. Great going, Jinx. Mom had always warned him not to take sides in any family’s internal squabble. His skin prickled, and with that blanket left behind he had a lot of bare skin prickling here. But instinct had driven him, the need to protect a threatened woman. Fucking A -that meant the woman had reacted to Howell as to a threat. Recognizing that fact brought another spike of adrenaline. His palms stung and his vision blurred as the hunger raged through him. The hunger didn’t care he had to work with these people, or that his position was indefensible.

Divide it up, Jinx, his brothers had said, usually while pinning him ignominiously to the floor. You won’t drown if you can identify the components of what’s coming at you, and handle each one separately. The empty stomach he could simply ignore. The eye-blurring, nerve-burning emotional hunger he would outlast, barring any more outbursts. Adrenaline was the toprank enemy here.

Okay, then. He forced his eyes to focus, his muscles to unknot. No huntsman could survive puberty without being able to survive a spike of adrenaline.

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He shrugged back up under his dampish blanket. The only adrenaline taste left in the room was his own. The woman, Nat, had reacted as to a threat -- he couldn’t have imagined that. She’d been furious. Nearly instantly, though, she’d sucked in all that vibrating anger. Like a matriarch. Was she Mrs. Lupino, the matriarch he was to contact? The woman broke the tension with a laugh, and shook off Howell’s now-loose grip. “What a sweet Galahad! Gentlemen -- and sometimes I use that word very loosely -- you may leave.” They swore and grumbled, but they left. The woman wore a crisp button-up pink blouse and khaki shorts with creases ironed in them. She smelled of cucumbers and honeydew and other cool, fresh, green things. The men had smelled of pizza, a lingering reminder he hadn’t eaten since lunch. They probably would have offered him some if they hadn’t figured the topic of conversation would kill the appetite of any normal person.

Cool…green. He set his focus on that image. The woman regarded him with a thoughtful, ladylike half-frown. She’d said something, and he hadn’t reacted properly. He swallowed. “Pardon?” “I said I’m Natalie Wentworth.” The woman offered him an elegant hand to shake. “I hear you’re one of our four baby paramedics?” He took her hand as briefly as possible, then sat back down, hoping she hadn’t noticed his boner, or how he quivered with the need to touch her. Howell had left her a bracelet of red finger marks. Don’t look at them! She had pierced ears, but no earrings. She ought to wear peridots, cool green to match her scent. “Yes,” he managed to say. “I’m to report for duty at seven tomorrow. Thank you for stopping the talk marathon.” Speech was difficult. Speaking civilly should get him some medal for heroism. “You’re welcome. But to get this job done you’ll have to tell me part of the story. How many people are we putting face to?” “Three. Male. The guy closest to me had a strong Irish profile.” She settled in a chair beside him and powered on the laptop. “Facing left or right?” “Left.” She pulled up a string of outlined profiles. “Pick the best.” “Third from the right.” She touched it, and filled the screen with an outline of a man’s face. “What’s not right with this picture?”

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“Older -- in his fifties, maybe.” Two keystrokes enlarged the nose just a touch. Another gave the tip of the nose a slight bulb. Two more thickened the eyebrow. Softening the jawline took three. She had nice nails. Not too long or too short. Polished but not colored. The face, doofus! The face! “Yeah, that’s what I meant. Short hair. Thick neck. Shoulders like a fullback. Also, the bottom lip was swollen, bulging out. Maybe an abscess.” She pulled up a variety of kissers, but none was just right, so she drew in a heavier bottom lip with a few strokes of her gleaming sapphire stylus. “Skin tones?” “The light sucked. Caucasian. Didn’t see any huge scars. Some degree of baldness -- the light reflected off his head. Could be a comb-over.” “This him?” “That’s him.” It had better be. His pulse beat in his aching cock and the screen was a fuzzy, glowing rectangle with marks on it. He blinked, forcing a focus. He had to feed, soon. Jerking off would purge the darkening energies that snarled and tangled inside him now, but he also had to refill himself to meet the next challenge.

At this hour, what are my chances of finding a streetwalker who’s still human enough to come at a man’s touch? Not knowing the streets, the people, his chances were vanishing small. Which narrowed his options to just one: he had to contact the local matriarch, throw himself on her mercy. At least he’d had the sense to drill that number into his head, into his muscle memory. He’d punched her number into a dead phone a hundred times, just to make sure he could do it at need. He’d also looked through the phone listings for a strip club, where he could passively feed under the right circumstances, but he hadn’t found one. “Brian?” “Sorry… I just barely caught glimpses of the others. How soon will you let me go home?” His stomach growled.

Please don’t offer me any pizza. Taking food would just extend the time he was trapped here. He had to get out before the rest of the second-shift cops came back from dealing with what was left of Tina and the hanging man. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself from feeding on their emotions. And unless every one of them was a complete burnout, their horror and fury would push him right to the edge of his humanity. If not over. “Sometime before the next hurricane, I hope.” She smiled with just the right rueful touch. “The lieutenant will probably want to talk to you again before you go tonight. How many other people were on the scene?”

I already said two! He took another breath of her cool green scent, and let it out slowly. “I caught glimpses of two other perps” -- no, she’d said, “bad guys” -- “bad guys, although there might have been more. The lieutenant is Joe?”

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“Yes, that’s Joe. Tell me about the person you got the strongest details of.” He saw them in silhouette, with the naked, diamond-sliced man dangling between them. “Two men about Tina’s height, in her heels. Younger than the Irishman, one lean and one top-heavy on the muscle. You know the guy who’ll bulk out so much that his arms don’t hang straight? Make a cartoon bulldog and give him a flattop crew cut. Skinny wore a doo rag, but I’m pretty sure he was white. They all had plain dark clothes. That’s all I know!” “Brian, hon, you’re doing great. Mister crew cut: did you see his face full-on or in profile, or what?” “Hey, I have a buddy who can maybe put me up for the night, but his mom wouldn’t like me coming in too late. Plus I do have to show up combed and coherent at seven in the morning. Any chance we can finish this tomorrow?” She smiled, drenching her face with sympathy like a stage actress projecting to the back-row seats, but she spoke firmly. “Look, Brian. I know you’re tired -- let’s just make a stab at the other faces and -- are you ill?” “Bathroom!” He could jerk off there. Rid himself of some of this sickening darkness. She skidded her chair back. “You’re having a delayed adrenaline reaction. This way. You need help?”

Not the kind you’d be willing to give. He shouldered past her, only to find she had to key in a code to open the door. Her other hand pressed against the small of his back.

Lady, you don’t want to touch me just now! But he gritted his teeth and let her guide him to the first right, to an unmarked door with the unmistakable reek of a men’s room.

***** He came out drained, but in control. The artist leaned languidly against the wall several yards down the hall, not looking at him. Too much a lady, he guessed, to hang out at the door of the men’s room. Or maybe the reek had repelled her. Or maybe she really was fascinated by the black-grouted floor tiles around her feet. He surreptitiously examined the hallway in the opposite direction. No exit in sight, but he saw an old-fashioned wall phone labeled “Please Limit Your Calls to Three Minutes” and “Domino’s Does Not Deliver Here.” He eased through the door, and got to the phone without incident. His fingers punched the matriarch’s number. A sleepy voice answered. A kid, sounded like. “Let me speak to your mom, please. Or your grandmother.” An older woman promptly took the phone. “Who are you to call at this hour?”

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“My name’s Brian.” He buried the last of his pride, and leaned his head against the wall. “I’m sorry to wake you up. Really, I am” -- even though it isn’t fucking eleven at night yet! -“but I’m alone, and I’m hungry.” His mouth watered at the scent of pizza from somewhere down the hall. His heart beat with an ominous slowness. The matriarch hadn’t offered comfort. Was she planning to brush him off, gambling he would feed elsewhere? Or maybe thinking one bareback huntsman who wasn’t her kin would be no loss if he crossed over? Or maybe she was thinking that hunting him down after he crossed would be a great opportunity to train any teenagers she had around the house? He swallowed. “I’ve never been hungry like this. Please…I don’t know where else to go.” “Calm down, Brian. Where are you now?”

Calm down? I don’t need anyone to tell me that! Do I? He took a long, slow breath through his nose. “A police station. A two-story cinderblock building. On the corner is a Shell. In the other direction is a brick three-story, and then what looks like a park.” “The new main station on Feldman.” Her voice sharpened. “They’re not jailing you, are they?” “No -- I’m just a witness.” She whistled tonelessly. “Can’t bitch about small blessings; you might find yourself with none at all. Should I give you directions -- we’re only three blocks off -- or do I need to send someone down there to get you?” “I can get three blocks on my own.” “Come out the eastern door and look east-southeast. The tallest tree in sight is an Australian pine. Unless the cloud cover thickens again, that tree should have the moon hanging in its branches. Zigzag toward it until you see a two-story coquina/limestone house with brick chimneys behind a privacy fence. Mailbox right by the gate. 508 Via de Luna. Got that?” “Got it.” Now all he had to do was get there. And, later, find out what he had to pay for the rescue. “We’ll see. Come directly here. Meanwhile I’ll turn the water heater back on and see who’s in the mood to feed you.” “Thank you,” he whispered to the dead phone. The smell of pizza intensified. He could taste it, and his empty stomach twisted. He turned and found the artist holding out a paper plate with a huge, steaming slice of triple-meat pizza. “I nuked this for you real quick. If you’re vegetarian, we can swap out for mushroom and black olive or for the garlic/spinach.” Her tone was brisk, her eyes direct. She’d heard him begging, but didn’t humiliate him by mentioning it.

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“Thank you,” he said for the second time in less than two minutes. Addressing the lesser hunger would help him control the dangerous one. “Also -- I’m terribly sorry to have to tell you this -- but the lieutenant says you’re going to a safe house tonight.”

The fuck I am!

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Chapter Three In the blood-splashed alleyway, Joe stood back and watched the periphery, the whole scene, while he let his people find and catalogue the details. Their white paper coveralls flashed red and blue with the cartop lights, and shimmered psychedelic purple under the black lights used to illuminate the splashes of body fluid.

Why can’t we get black scene suits? Every one of us would be a glowing target, if anyone had a reason to shoot and a place to hide. They found Tina’s studded tongue tucked under the laces of an old rotten shoe. Bunny set markers by it and photographed it from three angles under white light and three more under black. Then she raced back up the alley to elbow a place at the designated puking can.

Tina. One bullet in each eye. Dead instantly. No reason to dismember her, except to show that the Diamonds had felt no need to vacate the vicinity at panic speed. The Dies had, however, curtailed their usual work on the initial victim. He hadn’t had diamonds of skin peeled off yet, although both his hands had been peeled. The rain washed them to make anatomy models.

Meat. Meat was a lot easier to look at than pieces of people. No! Meat was what the victims were to the dogs, or the pet gator, or whatever it was the Diamonds let chew on the dying. The first victim’s gag was still in place, bloody enough to glow under the black lights even with all this rain. Might get prints, too. Never had before, but that was no reason to stop checking. The gag looked like a standard sex-shop product, something they might sell in the little shop next to the Double Deuce. Note: Ask Deuce if this is one of his.

Wouldn’t that thrill the creep? I call him for the first time ever and it’s to ask him for help? Ask Mom, instead. She probably knew the stock as well as anyone else.

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The Dies had planned a long session with this guy. The stab to his heart could be considered a coup de grace. Good karma for Tina, or the kid. Or both.

Shortest way to a man’s heart is through the stomach. Then you give the blade a quarter turn. Where did I hear that? The Diamond knifeman might have heard it the same place. “Dios,” someone moaned into the puke barrel, the sound amplified by the barrel and echoing against the brick walls. “Dios!” The horror-stricken voice perversely soothed him. I don’t ever want to live in a place where cops can take shit like this in stride. Which might become problematic. Lakeland’s sprawl had eaten most of the pastures and woodland to the east, and more people now lived in any two of the new condo complexes than had lived in the whole town when he was a boy. More people, more crime. Someone sobbed quietly.

Time to change the mood. He sauntered to the ring of flashing red and blue paper coveralls around the barrel. The ring parted for him. He pretended to look in the barrel. “Who was it talking about a potluck? Plenty a soup right here.” He skipped back in time to avoid a spattering of fresh puke. Not that puke would get through his white paper scene suit, but with bad luck he might track some of it back into the scene. His phone buzzed. Dusty, the uniform in charge at the kid’s apartment. Joe stepped out of immediate view to answer. “Whatcha got?” “Busted open the apartment door. Didn’t take much. Looks like nothing’s been disturbed. Wallet still in the sleeping bag.” Joe nodded, not that Dusty could see him. “Check for fingerprints anyway. They might have gone through it for info and tidied behind themselves.” Not much chance, given the timeline, but any chance had to be considered. “Gotcha, LT. Expensive stuff, ratty place. Fresh college grad, right?” Expensive? “Belay the dusting. Bring the boxes and the bedroll to the station. We can dust it there, and dust the apartment empty.” With the door busted in, the kid’s stuff would be “liberated” by daylight unless secured elsewhere. Most likely, the kid hadn’t been ID’d by the Diamonds. Not unless they had spoken to the building’s owner, who was probably neither local nor a native speaker of English, or had somehow found the building’s manager sober enough to answer the phone at this hour. Letting the kid go back to that place, though, would definitely finger him.

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Since Rodriguez’s murder, every possible material witness had been put in safekeeping -- even though it meant finding some kind of parole violation for the three witnesses now in solitary confinement. What-all places do I have left to put the kid in?

Besides home. Where did that idea come from? But it was an idea. The guest room might be uncomfortably frilly for the kid, but the twins kept bypassing the window alarm in the bedroom they used, and no unknown male was going to sleep in Kellie’s room even if she was hundreds of miles away.

***** Hours later, dozing but not fully asleep yet, Joe heard a movement. He hit the bedside light switch, both of them. Focused beams struck the bedroom’s doorway. The mansilhouette loomed between him and the splash of light. Way too close! Joe reached for his weapon without thinking. The gun filled his hand, cold and solid and good. He thumbed the cylinder past the empty while focusing his aim. “Joe? Don’t shoot me.”

The kid. Backlit, mostly naked, the kid looked like a sculpture. Michaelangelo’s wet dream of David.

How the fuck did you get so close? Joe turned off the halogen spotlight and angled the reading lights to reflect off the ceiling. “What do you need, kid?” “I have to feel you come,” Brian said hoarsely, kneeling by the bed. His cheek brushed the pistol barrel. The barrel quivered, whether from Brian’s shiver or Joe’s was anybody’s guess. “I don’t care how you want it, we’ll do -- I’ll do anything you say.” Joe eased the weapon to safe and tucked it away. Brian leaned closer.

Back off, kid. Joe wrapped his hands around the boy’s taut face, careful to avoid the raw scrapes and the swelling around his left eye. “I hate to tell you this, kid, but guys don’t turn me on.” “I’ll do anything you want. You want handcuffs? We can do handcuffs.” Handcuffs would bruise him. As it was, the kid’s cappuccino skin would be obscene with red and blue-black marks this time tomorrow. Besides, that offer wasn’t the sort of thing a kid would remember with any fondness when all this was over. He just needed relief, and at his age sex would be the first thing he thought of. Shit, the boy was twenty -- sex was probably every second or third thought flashing through his head.

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Joe sighed. “Didn’t you take trauma psychology in paramedic school? Your little lizard hind-brain has just figured out you escaped death, meaning this is a dangerous place and a dangerous time, meaning if you want to spread your genetic material, you need to do it right fucking now. Go choke your chicken, kid, and dream of somebody prettier than me.” The kid’s jaw muscles bunched, and he swallowed. He looked purely desperate. “I already jerked off. Twice. Now I have to -- please, I need to feel you come. Or I have to leave.” He looked away. “Take a run or something.”

Shitfuckpissdamn! Like Tina all those years ago, running away and finding -- being found by -- a pimp. Predators can always find you when you’re down. The kid was alone, and scared. He needed a good, hard hug as much as anything, someone to tell him everything would be okay even if they both knew it was a lie. But where does a grown man go for comfort when he’s so far from home? Come tomorrow, he would be pissed as hell at anyone who’d come to know just how scared and desperate he had been tonight. He didn’t need to go find something that passed for comfort and wake up with a cockload of VD too. “I’ll blow you,” the kid offered. “You can turn off the light and pretend I’m a girl.” Low Joe stirred. But the image that roused him wasn’t a girl -- it was Brian’s head bobbing in his lap. He brushed his hand over the kid’s head. The kid’s close-cut hair was warm, plush, organic velvet under his fingertips. Petting the kid like a cat won’t chase him off, jackass. The kid tried to smile, and failed miserably. “I don’t have herpes or hep or anything else. I have a rubber if you don’t believe me” -- he set two rubbers on the night table, metallic blue foil and red -- “but it’s harder to eat a banana with the peel on. Plus you wouldn’t like it as much.” “You don’t have ID, money, or anything else, but you have a pair of rubbers?” “Essentials of life, man.”

I guess so. He looked at the kid’s wide-open face, not at the packets on the night table. He’d been propositioned by guys before. He and Tina -- Tino back then -- had even gone into the shed a few times to jerk each other off. And what happed at Subic Bay didn’t count. Wasn’t part of his life. In real life, the life he had now, he’d never really been tempted by a guy. Until now.

It’s not like women sneak into my bedroom, begging to spit-polish my pipe. Or like he’d have any interest in the kind of woman who would. If a lap dance here and a hand job there didn’t count, he’d been celibate since…way too long. Brian’s dark eyes held his while a hesitant hand eased under his covers. Delicate fingers opened his fly, and caressed. Low Joe squirmed in for more of that.

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We are going to do this. He sat up, careful not to dislodge the warm hand down there. Low Joe strained, tugging his balls up close and tight. Hey, whoa. Wait a minute. A blowjob is pretty good inducement for me to drop my boxers, but what’s in it for the kid? Tina’s laugh echoed in his memory. When you’re just setting out the ground rules, JoeBoy, y’can bet whoever starts out getting sucked ends up taking one straight up the ass. Coming loosens all the muscles, y’knoooooow? Low Joe shrank. “What’s wrong?” “Just thinking, kid. You may be young enough to get hard off a stray thought, or a stray breeze up the ol’ pants leg, but an old man needs more.” Brian laughed, his relief pitifully evident. “I’ve got brothers your age, old man.” “They poke around your prostate at night?” Did they teach you possession equals

protection? “Nah. By the time I was old enough to get curious, they’d moved out on their own.” Brian licked his lips.

Would kissing you feel different? “Handcuffs, Joe? Or just a vanilla blow?” “We live in different worlds, if a blowjob from a guy you met four hours ago is your idea of vanilla.” Especially without twenty-dollar bills involved. Brian laughed again, more freely now, but his eyes moved too fast, flicking here and there in a small, anxious dance. The borrowed boxers sagged a bit, baring the crest of one hipbone. No joystick poked out the front, though. “You’re freaking because I’m a guy. Close your eyes. I’m as much a girl as you need me to be right now, tonight.” “I like my plumbing the way it is, kid, and my anal sphincter is strictly a one-way valve.” The nervous eyes fixed on him. Then the boy squared his shoulders and put a hand pledge-wise over his heart. “I most solemnly promise to stay at least one full inch away from your sacred one-way valve.”

I don’t believe you have the presence of mind for sarcasm. “You do know I’m perfectly capable of breaking in half any part of you that comes within that inch?” “I’m familiar with the mechanics, and I’m in no mood to test out current splinting technology first-hand. Or first-dick. Or even first-finger.” At least the kid was still looking straight at him, was finally relaxing. The kid actually grinned. “C’mon, Joe. You’re as nervous as a virgin.” “Damned straight!” They laughed, easily, as if they’d been friends all their lives.

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Joe finger-combed the kid’s short black hair. Soft. Warm. The kid rested the unscraped side of his face on Joe’s thigh. “You smell good. Clean. I like a clean man.” Joe looked at the nightstand, the foil packets. “Do we need one of those rubbers? I don’t have anything you could catch, but you’d be an idiot to believe me.” “I’m an idiot. Aren’t you?” Brian nuzzled open the fly to Low Joe, but the opening wasn’t exactly in the right place for a fully erect dick. Slightly shaking fingers cured the problem, opening the one snap and freeing Low Joe’s eager head.

Oh, yes. The kid’s rough wet tongue rasped full length across Low Joe’s underside, base to tip. Black-coffee eyes looked up, one on either side of Low Joe’s shaft. Something hung in the air, some communication or communion, something that didn’t need to be said out loud. Brian closed his eyes, and those lips sank down to kiss the head and then envelop it in carnal heat. His muscular tongue pressed against the vee and the sensitive skin below, and moved in unhurried ovals, thrusting somewhat to the left and withdrawing a bit to the right. The dark head bobbed gently, warmth brushing Joe’s lower belly with every stroke. One hand, no longer shaking, clasped the shaft at its base and held firmly, moving up and down in echo.

Oh, yes. Short as it was, Brian’s midnight-velvet hair made a fringe of tiny curls at the nape of his neck. How can the back of a guy’s neck be an unbearably erotic sight? Suction struck, hot and wet and strong. Joe groaned, a noise pulled from balls-deep. Brian chuckled. The vibration heated Low Joe when, logically, it couldn’t. This isn’t a time for logic. Brian pulled slowly back from the shaft, but kept the head. He rotated his mouth left and then right, while maintaining firm suction and firmer grip. Then he relaxed both suddenly, and that brought another rush of heat. Or maybe the heat came from Brian’s mouth -- he sucked in most of the shaft until that soft barrier at the head had to be the roof of his throat.

Oh, lord. Brian swallowed repeatedly, a gentle milking motion, then twisted his head and rotated his fist to match, using only enough pressure to hold on. He backed off to hold only Low Joe’s head in his mouth, with his hand keeping the next few inches warm, and flick-licked the slit and vee hard until Joe grabbed him by the hair. Brian looked up, calm and waiting, maintaining suction. Joe let go. Brian slowly sank in close, sucking deeper and deeper until his fist rested against Joe’s pubic bone and Low Joe’s head again prodded his soft palate. Swallowing several more times,

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he increased suction just enough to notice. Again he retreated, and again he sank in. Then he did it again, maintaining a lip seal and increasing the suction at the start of each retreat. All the time, his tongue worked like he was French-kissing instead of sucking cock. No, like he was giving a cock massage, using his tongue. Only this massage knotted up every muscle in Joe’s belly and legs, and arms, and in his fists. Each long slow suck up and down tightened those knots, and brought a need to groan. The suction slowly built to just this side of painful, then relented abruptly. The released pressure brought another surge of heat. Unbearable heat. Brian’s tongue danced lightly around the sides and the underneath. Joe wanted to grab Brian’s head and thrust, short-stroking hard and fast. Instead he clenched his fists until they quivered, tendons straining, and rested both those fists on Brian’s shoulders. Brian looked up through sinfully rich, curly lashes. “Go on,” Joe mouthed, not trusting his voice.

Suction! Joe’s knees raised on their own, his whole body curving like a drawn bow. Brian’s fingertips tapped hard just behind Joe’s tight-drawn balls, releasing the bowstring and sending a burning arrow twisting from midbelly to the balls and rebounding to rush along the shaft to that hot, wet mouth. “Bri-an!” Spasms wracked him. Ohh! Oh, damn. Oh, that was good. His prostate fluttered again. He clasped Brian’s shoulders and pulled him close. Dark eyes stared unfocussed at him. Brian hung limp in his grasp, panting, as if he was the one who had just come with damned near vein-busting force.

Oh, damn, that was good. Joe’s heartbeat galloped like he’d just run the obstacle course in record time. In quick, jerky movements, he yanked the bedclothes down and drew Brian with him onto the bed, and hit the button to turn out the light. Then he yanked up the sheet over both of them. Brian’s hand hesitantly touched him over the heart. Joe set a hand over it, to hold him in place. The two of them lay together, feeling Joe’s pulse slow to a thudding march. Brian shivered. Joe leaned in to touch foreheads. “Everything’s going to be okay, Brian.” The kid snorted. “At least for tonight, at least right here, everything’s okay.” “Okay.” Brian turned away. “Thanks.” Joe threw a leg over him and drew him back. “That’s what I should be saying. I don’t think I’ve ever come that hard in my life.”

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“Then you’re welcome.” Brian laughed softly and snuggled in, his ear against Joe’s heartbeat.

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Chapter Four As Joe entered the squad room, with its morning smells of coffee and burnt bagels, Irish Spring and Old Spice, he heard the skipper’s bellow. “Whadda ya mean, protective custody?” The morning babble died abruptly. Bunny smiled and elbowed Joe. “LT, I think that’s your cue.” “Gee, Bunny, ya think?” Good thing I already dropped Brian at the fire station. Bracing himself, he made his way through the packed masses in uniform to the captain’s office. Before the Boom had tripled the population, the skipper had been City Marshal, running the police department, the jail, court security, the fire and rescue department, and the one-ambulance emergency medicine program, all out of the old Feldman Station. Five years back, the police force had split off under Captain Maynard and had moved half a block down the street to here. Then the sheriff down in Bartow had detailed an undersheriff to take over the jail and the courthouse. A stranger. The skipper didn’t like strangers. Two years back, he’d decided to get things under control by running for sheriff, and had stunned half the county by losing. Condos and clusters of McMansions had crowded in faster since then, replacing most of the cow pasture and half the trailer parks and a few surreptitiously drained swamps. The skipper probably juggled full-time to keep three fire stations and four ambulance crews running. But still he seethed. It showed. As Joe entered the captain’s office, the skipper about-faced and roared, “If I didn’t need that man on my crew, I wouldn’t have brought him aboard! If he’s able-bodied, he goes on the street today!” “Aye, sir,” Joe said quietly. “I have an idea or two, if you’d care to hear them.”

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The skipper clamped his wide mouth shut. That bulging-eyed, grounded-grouper look might have cost him a thousand votes in the election, but Joe knew him well enough to take warning. The skipper had a brain behind that mask. Joe looked past him, to his own captain, who nodded. “Right. Plan A: We go back to the old ways and put Gardner on a fire crew. When they’re called out, he’ll ride along. An ambulance and a cruiser will meet the fire trucks at the scene as always, so he’ll have access to the field equipment if he has need of it. Between runs, he can watch the training videos and read the personnel handbook and finish up any paperwork he hasn’t already completed.” The smoke-stompers would be sure to get his hazing taken care of, too -- just to satisfy everyone they hadn’t been yoked in with a broke-dick wimp who’d go crying to the skipper when things didn’t go his way. Brian would stay at the old Feldman fire station, which had been built to withstand both fallout and civil insurrection. Between the firefighters watching out for him, the courthouse with its bailiffs next door, and the central police station here, the Dies would need a machine gun to get to him.

Or a touch of patience and a sniper rifle. You can get any man on earth with patience and a sniper rifle. The skipper nodded, then looked sharply at him. “Without him to drive it, who do you think will get that ambulance to a scene?” “One of the new guys in auxiliary has a chauffeur’s license with endorsements to drive farm and hazmat. He’ll be endorsed for emergency vehicles as soon as the state office opens this morning. He has his CPR certification and some classes toward both first responder and nursing eldercare management. If we use the hurricane/wildfire budget to put him on temp duty, nobody has to fight over who pays him. Send him on anything y’all suspect is a Tylenol run, the crap that doesn’t need any training but that the city isn’t allowed to ignore. If he runs into a situation he can’t handle, he’ll call Feldman Station for backup and the stompers will bring Gardner.”

Don’t ask for Plan B. Anything else that would keep Brian halfway safe might give the old man a stroke. The skipper scratched his thinning white hair. “Your second-best plan would piss me off even more, wouldn’t it?” “I suspect so, sir.” “Then we’ll go with Plan A. For one week, no more. Get this auxiliary man to my office in ten minutes.” Behind the skipper, Captain Maynard nodded. Joe ducked his head at both of them. “Aye, sir.”

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Two phone calls took four minutes total. Then he rocked his chair in the momentarily peaceful room. The night shift had gone home, the morning shift had hit the street, and no one had come back with a sobbing or swearing guest. The quiet hour. He wasn’t on duty for the morning, but he was here and dressed, so might as well see if he could excavate the surface of his desk. Especially when the alternative was a morning on the weight bench, with cappuccino skin on his mind. And probably a bone in his shorts. And no doubt plenty of time to worry if he had gone gay or what. Paperwork. Two hours of intense concentration would just about clear this desk. Fat chance. Just the accumulated phone calls and emails made his jaw hinges ache. The people he had under protective custody were climbing the walls for lack of weed, nose candy, or whatever. The people who okayed the expense sheets for the safe houses were chafing to see results. Bunny had packed Tina’s cell phone in rice (rice?) to dry it but warned it was unlikely to ever produce a court-quality picture. She asked for digital enhancement software, but the cost was… Piss on it! He got the Web site address and the item number for the software, and put the thing on his own credit card, along with the fastest shipment for an extra thirty bucks. Three days for the fastest possible shipment? From Miami? For that price they ought to send it by courier. At ten, he made a final check of his email before heading home. Six were flagged as urgent. What, six new changes to the agenda at next month’s meeting? No! Shitfuckpissdamn! One of the newest cruisers had blown its engine and had to be towed. Joe ordered all other cruisers pulled off the road and checked immediately. Two others were dangerously low on oil. All three of them had been serviced first thing this morning. Three cruisers. He’d almost lost three cruisers for the five days it would take to get their engine heads replaced. The Insty-Lube place that had done the work couldn’t identify which individual pit guy had worked on the cruisers. Heads were going to roll for that, no doubt, but who had hatched the plan to put those cruisers out of commission? And why right now? “Woof! Woof!” He grinned at Larry and TJ. Didn’t feel like grinning, but he had to. All week. Part of the job. “You guys aren’t on this shift. Court?” Larry opened a drawer and pointed with his bad hand. “Those, please, Teej. Right on the first guess, LT. Top Dawg must be getting laid, to have the ol’ brain working so well. Is it a piece we can share? Me and TJ, we’re so horny we’re about to start looking good to each other.” TJ lifted a five-inch stack of folders from the drawer.

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Joe kept his smile in place. “I don’t do groups, but if you and TJ get in the mood, have at it. Just keep it off duty and behind closed doors. I don’t want a senior citizen reporting a nekkid six-legged prowler in her yard.” TJ held the folders awkwardly, looking like he was trying to decide whether he dared say something. He didn’t say it. He just blushed. Hard.

Note: Find a chance to boost Teej Howell’s self-image. Joe looked at the printouts he’d made. “Hey guys, when you finish with that, would you cruise around to all the banks and check cashing places and gun shops for me? Ask them to check their security systems. Ask if any of them have suddenly, I mean today, turned up with security system glitches. Could you do that for an Old Dawg, please?” “Woof!”

***** The hum in the back of his head buzzed loud enough to drown out half the greetings that pelted him when he dropped in at the Feldman Station for lunch with the fire crew. “I tell you,” he growled at Brian over a steaming plate of purple hull peas and cornbread, “something is going on. Three cruisers almost KO’d, four bank surveillance cameras found to be nonfunctional, two pawn shops with missing gun records. One problem can be carelessness. Two might be coincidence. Three shows enemy action.” “Joe always thinks something is going on,” confided Puss Beasley, reaching a hairy arm across Joe’s plate for the pepper sauce. “When we were in high school, he saw conspiracies everywhere. Ask him about the twins.” Brian’s eyebrows knotted, the expression lopsided with one side of his face so banged up. He threw Joe a quick glance.

With that kind of swelling, I bet you cracked or chipped some facial bones. Not that they can put a cast on your face. “No. Don’t ask. And next hand that reaches over my plate gets stabbed. I don’t care if you are shift commander now.” “Ho, ho!” Puss looked about the table, drawing his men in on the joke. “Listen to him!” “Do they still Top Dawg you when you get fifteen years in?” someone called from up the table. “Ain’t you almost there, Joe?” “I --” The siren cut him off. Chairs scraped back all around. “Have fun, boys and girls.” Brian hesitated, but one of the guys grabbed him by the collar. “Lesson one -- don’t never make us wait for your ass! C’mon!” When they’d all gone, Joe set his plate beside the sink and found the gauzy fly drapes in the deep drawer under his left hand. Yup, just where they had always been. Before spreading them, he gathered up the platters of meatloaf to refrigerate. The fact he didn’t like it didn’t make it worth wasting. But to put it up, he had to rearrange six million little containers of yogurt. Speaking of things I don’t like.

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He hesitated. If I’m gay now, I have to like yogurt, right? So if I don’t like it, I’m not? It still tasted like mayonnaise pudding. He downed a glass of sweet tea to wash his mouth. Then he spread a length of fabric over each cluttered table, shooing off the only fly that had beaten him to the food. Technically, that was Brian’s job, but no first-day boy ever remembered to cover the food while being hustled down to the trucks. Besides, covering the food was like paying for his own meal, and the rough good company it was offered in. He stood by the sink and finished his peas and cornbread in silence. The kid would be safe here until four a.m., when they should both get off duty. After today Brian would be working the same emergency shift the other paramedics were doing: twelve hours on and twelve off. Three p.m. to four a.m. Would tomorrow be too hot to light the grill midday? What were the twins up to for the summer? His little brothers were sixteen now, but he hadn’t heard anything about jobs, so probably they were spending their summer on the usual which-of-us-gets-skin-cancerfirst crap. I ought to invite them over, grill some burgers and some of those turkey sausages Mom likes. Nothing like home-grilled --

Home? Don’t fool yourself, jackass. One night of sleeping together doesn’t make you a couple. Especially when you didn’t do a damned thing to get his rocks off.

***** Brian drifted through the rest of the shift, learning faces and names, sorting through customs versus rules versus procedures, happily drowning in adrenaline and testosterone. The ambient energy level kept him overcharged to a degree that interfered with his ability to process the data load. He wrapped a knee and two ankles, removed splinters, made a salt poultice for a boil, rolled hose, listened to an explanation of how his rolling job sucked ass, and rerolled the hose. And rerolled it again. And again, until his back seized up on him -- and again, until a call interrupted and he got to ride in the pumper and sit in the cab, staying out of the way, while somebody’s burned dinner turned into thousands of dollars in smoke and water damage. Then he had to roll the fucking hoses again. All day and all night, pieces of this new life he’d chosen hammered at him, every detail screaming for individual attention. He absorbed whatever he could latch onto before the next flood of information. At four in the morning, he found himself at the dinner table with a huge bowl of “movie butter” popcorn, a line of greasy cards, and a set of rules that seemed to cross unlikely

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aspects of Texas Hold ’Em and Fizzbin. He heard a general hail, muted in consideration of the people who had enough sense to sleep through this part of the shift, and looked up to see Joe slapping backs and grinning with the clique of firefighters he’d mentally dubbed the Motorcycle Gang.

Finally. Don’t look, Ethel! But he’d looked, and his dick had gone to wood from that one glance. Of course, he’d been at half-mast or better most of the night, with both the women on this shift ovulating, and with the way one of them had been eyeing him. How could all these wonderfully alive bodies manage to work together without constantly slipping into the shower or a dark corner for some nookie? The backslapping slowed and stopped. He laid down his cards. “Obviously, I’ve won. What was the bet again?” Something came at him. He dove for the floor, rolled, and scuttled for the room divider. White and gold rained down all around. What?

Popcorn. The guys hooted with laughter. Joe laughed loudest, then grinned and shook his head when they insisted the first-day boy had to clean up the popcorn. “No, guys, he doesn’t. You should have pulled that trick before time. Night, all. C’mon, Gardner.” He picked himself up, groaning as his back cramped. Joe clapped him on the shoulder, and hustled him out into the thick, muggy night. A too-sweet scent, like orange blossoms and honeysuckle together, rode the heavy air. They stood a moment, side by side, listening to the frogs and the wind in the palm trees. Then Joe steered him toward a battered pickup truck. “Where’s the bike?” The truck door groaned and creaked like Brian wanted to. Inside, the truck smelled faintly of mustard and sardines. Smoked oysters, maybe. Things that reminded him of long-ago fishing trips. The ragged seat sagged deeply under him. “Where did this come from?” “Piece of shit, isn’t it? Swapped with a buddy for a few days. Just in case anyone decides to go gunning for you, I don’t plan to ride you around town like the cherry on top of a sundae.”

Is that a double entendre? Let it go, whether it is or it isn’t. “You got a nickname, Brian?”

Bareback. Solo. Jinx. He leaned his head against the seat’s headrest, ignoring how the cracked vinyl itched at his neck. “Besides First-Day Boy, you mean?” Probably Newbie or New Boy tomorrow?

*****

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“Brian? Wake up.” Joe spoke gruffly, and not any louder than the frogs all around. Behind him loomed his house: Split level, brick above and cinderblock below. In the middle of nowhere on a gravel road.

How did we get here already? What’s a single man like you doing with that much house? Then the truck’s door stopped being something to lean on. Brian fell, his limbs creaking and flopping in odd directions. His back -- Fucking A! -- who'd pounded his back with the spiked club? Joe caught him one-armed. Brian groaned. “For the rest of my life, my back is going to kill me, isn’t it?” “You got the opportunity to roll hose, huh? It could have been worse. They must not have had any projectile vomiters today. C’mon inside. If I had a Jacuzzi, I’d suggest you give it a whirl.” “Ha, ha. The Morse code for that is didididi didah --” “I know Morse. The skipper made sure all us Scouts learned it.” “Dididahdi…uh…” “That’s F. U is Dididah.” He hoisted Brian like a drunk teenager and kicked the truck door shut. “You want me to hang you by the ankles off the balcony, let your back crack real good? Or head straight for bed and do the cracking and stretching tomorrow, when the pain really sets in?” “You should win awards for encouragement.” He’d have to remember to exaggerate the pain and stiffness tomorrow, not let anyone know how fast his huntsman’s metabolism healed him. His feet were asleep. If Joe dropped him, he could break both ankles before he found his balance. But Joe’s thickly muscled arm didn’t even quiver at his weight.

Here’s where I could squeal ‘oooh, daddy!’ Except it might mortally embarrass him. Maybe inside, behind a closed door? Hard to tease a guy I don’t know. And damn, you smell good. I used your deodorant and your soap, but I don’t smell like I was carved from some exotic wood. “Maybe you could propose it at the next city council meeting.”

Propose what? Oh, the award. Joe stood beside the door to punch in the security code, and paused a second after the light went green. Then he opened the door, and only then did he step into the open space and maneuver Brian through.

Who taught you to be this careful at your own house? Why do you move like a huntsman? We’re supposed to be the most paranoid people around, but you’re just as bad. Are you one of us?

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“I’d advise straight to bed, kid. You’re tee-totally out of it.” Bed sounded better than it ever had before. Joe hesitated at the stairs up to his big master suite. Oh, no. I do not feel like putting out tonight. Joe tightened his grip and bypassed the stairs. “Now that I’m not scared of you running off into the night, let me show you where my brothers sleep when they stay over.”

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Chapter Five Brian woke up disoriented. Something mechanical rattled and whined close enough to hear but not reach; daylight spilled through a room with a ceiling only a few feet overhead; a smell mingled Simple Green with unwashed laundry and his own thickening body odor. He identified the noise -- an air conditioner’s central unit, just outside the window, with what sounded like a bearing going bad.

Joe needs to deal with that. That thought gelled reality around him. I’m in Joe’s house. And wearing the firefighter-trainee jumpsuit he’d put on more than 24 hours ago at the station. The deodorant he’d applied -- how long ago? -- was no longer doing the job. His stuff had been delivered to Joe’s laundry porch. They said that when opened by the fingerprint people, the boxes had spilled over with cockroaches.

Fucking A -- cockroaches! He felt them crawling on his arms and had to look to make sure it was just his imagination. The fingerprint people had unpacked and dusted everything, and supposedly had cleaned off the dust before packing his things in new boxes. Joe still went squeamish about bringing my stuff inside the house.

Can the resentment. So he had to find the laundry porch, that’s all. Probably wash all his clothes again. At least he wouldn’t have to sit at a Laundromat to do it. The ceiling was in arm’s reach because he was in the top bunk of a kids’ room. Not really a bunk -- what seemed to be a firmly supported sheet of plywood with a futon on it. Joe’s brothers’ room. He’s upstairs and he made it real plain I’m to stay downstairs.

No, he didn’t. He’s just being a gentleman, giving me a choice of coming to him or staying here by myself. Did he lie there wishing I’d come to him, or was he relieved because I left him alone?

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He tried to sit up, but knives of pain slashed his back bone-deep. He bit back a cry and fell onto the hard mattress, gritting his teeth and catching his breath before the hunger could awaken. Stiff muscles. No threat. Sore muscles, is all it is. He stretched, cautiously at first and then with more strength, forcing movement through the pain until the pain lost its sharpness and then its power. He rolled to the edge of the bed platform and looked down. The floor was clear. He dropped lightly to the linoleum floor, but not lightly enough to avoid bouncing his piss-proud morning woody. Peeling off the jumpsuit, he scowled at what should be the lower bunk. The surface was hidden under a piled mass of dirty clothes, comics, bits of wire and solder and hand tools, pens and broken pencils, bent notebooks and rumpled girly magazines, cracked CD jewel cases, and uncased software. Somebody’s idea of tidying up was to clear all other flat surfaces -- by shovel, maybe -and pile everything on the lower bunk. Under the bunk might be a toxic waste site -- except he didn’t smell it, and even over his own easily trackable scent, he would. The top drawer of the dresser had two worn-out T-shirts, both green and both in his size. He picked up the less ragged one. Small italic letters on the pocket read Varsity Sex Team ~ High Scorer. It matched the woody, and his mood. But mostly, it was clean.

Why am I worried about dressing before I find the can? Oh yeah. Because Joe’s place is too big for one person. I might meet someone in the hall. Even though the house had been empty the other night. He’d been in full huntsman mode that night, alert to any possibility of prey. The middle drawer had one pair of shorts made of lightweight stuff like a swimsuit. They were a little tight, but the T-shirt would cover anything embarrassing. The bottom drawer had a single ragged sock. I can shower first, or I can sort out enough clothes to make a laundry load. He looked at the pile on the bed. Shower first. Besides, the can would be in the same place as the shower, and his dick had got heavier with every bend, squat and turn. The hallway was deserted, quieter than his room, but in the distance he heard a drawnout creak followed by a metallic tink. Creeeak…tink! Creeeak…tink! Over and over. Not a threat, whatever it was. Not nearly the threat of his pulsing bladder. He checked the next door, hoping for the bathroom. No -- linen closet.

Fucking A. He was just about needing to grab a choke-hold on his urethra. The next room took his breath in a wash of pink. Pink lace canopied a bed with a fluffy pink comforter. Pink unicorns with lavender and purple wings pranced across the rosebudstrewn walls. A vanity dresser in gleaming white with pink flanked a purple dresser with pink trim and a turquoise toy box with the same pink trim. Miniature blue hammocks hung from the ceiling, each overflowing with stuffed animals. Plastic horses filled a bookshelf.

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Glittering letters read KELLIE’S TURF across one wall. Below the letters, cutout pictures of horses and ponies made a collage of a stripe across the wall, the one touch that looked like it came from a kid’s room instead of a magazine layout. He shut the door carefully. The living room had family-type pictures. He needed to look at those pictures. First, he had to piss. And, luckily, the next door smelled of pine oil and opened to a gleaming clean toilet. He locked the door behind him, for maybe the first time in his life, just in case anyone who felt comfortable in a pink bedroom tried to walk in behind him. The creaking was inaudible in here, but the tink!…tink! resounded in the tile and pipes. He settled for a quickie of a shower. The one door across the hall opened to a utility/exercise room with a cement floor and no AC whatsoever. A rich, wild-animal smell of fresh sweat overlaid the acid-rust scent of iron. Joe lay back on the weight bench, naked but for a pair of black leather gloves. On his hollowed belly and pale legs, the hair ran dark-gold with sweat, and the shadow between his hard thighs left his genitals an indistinct cluster of curves. Wood returned, and piss had nothing to do with it. Joe pressed a bar with three disks at each end, the bench beneath him groaning, and held it at full extension for one rise and fall of his heavily muscled chest. Then he slowly let it down to half an inch above the peeling-metal rest. He paused, and dropped the bar that last half-inch. Tink! Extraordinary control. And -- judging by the length of time he had been making exactly the same noise -- more than ordinary strength. Joe shook droplets of sweat off his arms and hands, dropped his hands to the floor for a heartbeat, then grabbed the bar again. Muscles knotted and moved under his skin, and veins along his arms bulged like pulsing rivers. He exhaled, his chest sinking with aching slowness. The bar rose at the same measured pace, and the bench creaked under the weight of man and bar.

I want a camera. The bar came down slowly, as if reluctant to meet that rising, sweating chest. Tink!

Say something now! But his mouth was too dry. Joe flopped his arms, going completely limp for a moment, then gripped the bar again. Quickly, before that bar rose free of its rest, Brian knocked on the door. Joe twisted and stretched his neck to look square at him. Then Joe’s dick rose as if to get its own clear view.

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Something tense relaxed deep inside Brian, and he leaned against the doorframe, grinning. At least I don’t have to ask whether there’s a pistol in your pocket or if you’re just happy to see me. Joe blushed, grabbed up a towel from the floor, and draped it over his lap. Brian’s grin hung on his face like the stupid thing it was, and he rubbed it with one hand. His fingertip brushed a raw spot, and stung. He wanted to scratch that spot and hide in the pain. Instead he dropped his hand and stood there idle and awkward, the tension snaking about in his gut. Joe used the second towel to mop his face, then his chest, then his arms. All without looking up.

Maybe I fucked it permanently, even without saying anything out loud. “Sorry,” he muttered, and turned, shutting the door between him and Joe as fast as he could.

***** Brian cleaned off the fucking bottom bunk just for something to do. The laundry room was behind some closed door somewhere, and he wasn’t about to open any more closed doors around here, but he could sort the shit. Filthy socks and underpants in a pile to be bleached. Shirts and lightweight pants here; jeans there. Game disks and music put back into jewel cases. Not-yet-tattered girlie magazines, manga, and comics stacked separately. Ragged-to-pieces magazines and unidentifiables crammed in the wastebasket.

Don’t go around breaking hearts, Pop said. Flirt. Make them laugh. Find something to admire in each of them. Make them remember you with a little glow and a smile. Mom ruffled his hair. He’s a born flirt. Youngest kids usually are. He’ll do fine. Mom never called him Bareback, or Jinx. But she watched him, her eyes troubled, and she never let him take the highest dive, the fastest motorbike, the survival trips that gave his brothers scars and broken bones and a shared air of quiet competence. He opened the closet and found a neat computer desk with two chairs, and some ancient junker of a computer. Down the hall, the shower started up. He half-closed the louvered closet door. He could see his hands massaging soap into Joe’s broad back. Could smell the creamy, woodsy lather. Could feel fist-sized knots unknotting under the right gliding pressure. He stopped, and leaned his head against the back of his wrist. I’ve pushed him too hard

already. Another move from me and he’ll throw me into some “safe house” that would be a lot harder to get out of at need. And that wouldn’t have Joe in it. So where did I lose my ability to just flirt? Why the fuck should this one cop matter so much?

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His eyes felt swollen. Were they? Probably he’d kicked up too much dust moving all this crap. Where was a mirror? Besides in the bathroom, where the cop was, and in the pink room, where no huntsman ever belonged.

I am a huntsman. What’s a huntsman? Cross a vigilante with a gigolo and make him a psychic vampire. But don’t make him angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. He wanted to curl up in a tight ball between stacks of hardware and manga. Instead he lay with his aching back pressed to the floor, flattening against the cool linoleum until his back stopped threatening to cramp up on him. I guess bending over as much as I’ve been doing is not a good idea right after I’ve been introduced to the thrill of rolling hose. He rocked to his feet and paced. Found that the empty clothes bar in the closet was heavily braced and just the right height for a chinning bar. Cracked his back thoroughly. Paced some more. Powered on the computer, only to see a demand for a password. He shut it down, and threw out one of the now-tidy stacks of magazines on general principle. Then he found a package of new CD jewel cases, so he moved the inserts from the cracked cases to the new ones with painstaking care. The music ranged from psybient to Goa Trance, with a little Windham Hill thrown in.

Whoever spent money on these CDs probably hits the raves. He could feed himself drunk at one of those. Better than sex, in some ways.

Don’t go breaking their hearts, his brothers sang, off key like always. Their mischievous eyes went sober in the same heartbeat, as if the two men had the same mind in twinned bodies. Be smart, Bareback. Don’t shit where you live and don’t fuck anyone connected to your day job. And don’t ever, ever put your heart out there to get broken.

I am a huntsman. Huntsmen get rejected all the time. Especially by guys raised to think that good sex requires a participant of the opposite gender. Get a grip on yourself and move past it. Find someone -- something -- else to do. Find out where Joe’s brothers party. Find out who shot Tina, and why they were out in that alley, slicing that man up. Okay, yeah. That’s thinking like a huntsman, as opposed to a self-centered bareback. The greatest huntsmen in history have been solo, Pop said, over and over. Especially after the families’ last attempt to pair him up -- with that fuckwad who’d ignored the sign and taken a headfirst dive into shallow water. The fuckwad’s parents had blamed Brian for not warning him enough. Or maybe for not drowning with him. After that, he’d told Pop he would remain bareback.

You didn’t jinx him, son. Doesn’t matter, Pop. I got the label. From now on, anything bad that happens to anyone around me will be part of the jinx. Maybe that’s best. The greatest huntsmen in history have been solo.

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Of course, none of those great huntsmen had started out bareback. It’s different when you have to run one-footed from the beginning of the race. Bad analogy. More like starting a grand prix with a half-sized gas tank and a halflegible map. But now he had a goal. Find out who did Tina, and take care of them.

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Chapter Six After a while, his growling stomach sent him in search of the kitchen. Joe didn’t keep much in the way of fresh groceries in the fridge -- none of the salad mixes and fat-free yogurt a tag-end kid grew up with. No eggs, no milk, no fruit. Jelly, of course, and the usual assortment of mustard, catsup, barbecue sauce. A gallon jug of sweet tea. Some sandwich meat that was going bad, and an egg-sized chunk of yellow cheese going hard. He nibbled at the cheese and threw out the meat. Joe kept his spices in the fridge. Why did that make sense? The crisper drawers were packed with cans of Dr. Pepper, which he reluctantly left untouched. The cupboard by the fridge had peanut butter, cans of chili and tomatoes, a box of instant grits, pancake mix, and high-protein cereal in a neatly labeled plastic box. The cereal had soy in it. Don’t you know better than to eat that, Joe? Soy is for girls -- it softens things on a guy. That cereal must be for someone else. Joe showed no signs of having softened anything. He opened another cupboard. Spaghetti! Regular, linguini, and vermicelli, also in neatly labeled plastic boxes, and a whole shelf of different kinds of pasta sauces. Spaghetti for breakfast isn’t odd when it’s eaten pretty close to one in the afternoon. He found onions beginning to sprout and some frozen Italian sausage, so he sliced them both into thin discs and fried them up together. Only after stirring in a jar of marsalaflavored sauce and setting it to simmer did he start the water for the linguine. “Smells great. I hope you’re cooking for two.” Joe’s voice was casual, friendly.

I can work with that. “So happens I am.” He smiled, the relief singing through his veins. “But I’m not pregnant and eating for two, in case you worried.”

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“What a relief. Thank you for that reassurance.” Joe took a pair of plates from an upper cupboard. That close, with his arm up, he radiated clean male even through the sauce, the onions, the sausage. His bamboo-print shirt did nothing but channel his aroma. Brian had to lock his muscles to keep from stepping through the distance between them, burying his face in that skin. Joe smelled of soap, not deodorant. Why no deodorant? Do you know what a potent pheromone fresh sweat can be? Are you trying to --

China! Think of the china! It was heavy, white stoneware. Looked like it had been bought for a school, maybe back in the ’60s or ’70s. Some era before schools had realized how much less damage plastic plates would do in a cafeteria fight. “What’s the schedule for today?” Schedule -- where’s the timer? Okay, on the back of the stove. A no-nonsense white knob. “I’ll drop you at the Feldman Station on Feldman Street -- hard place to locate, you know -- at four. Hey, would I be stepping on the great chef’s toes if I made some garlic bread?” Brian grinned. “Any tender little feewings I have are encased in steel-toed boots. Do we have the same shift tonight?” “Not tonight. Not usually, as a matter of fact. I’ll be coming in later, after a few of us rebuild Mrs. Grubb’s wheelchair ramp. Don’t tell anyone, though. I haven’t asked whether any of the guys bothered to get a building permit this time.” “Don’t let the law get in the way of a good deed.” Joe barked a laugh. “You sound like my brothers and their dads.” Brian grinned and measured out the pasta, then took a peek at the size of Joe and added another half-helping. “Just something I’ve heard since I was a little kid.” Wait! “Dads?” “Long story. Let’s say there were reasons I left home a bit early. Timer’s on the back of the stove.” Brian set it. So Joe had gone through a string of stepfathers, had he? Or rather his mother had gone through a string of men. “You were a runaway? Where did you go? Relatives? Friends?” “Marched straight across the back yard and through the big garden we had then and right on up to the skipper’s back door. Told him I needed a job so I could earn my own income and get my own place and not have to watch my mother living in sin.”

Fucking A. Joe opened the fridge door. “I was just a little bit narrow-minded in those days.” “Your mother and the skipper didn’t have to fight over you?” “My mom’s only sixteen years older than me. I pointed that out, when she came to drag me home. You want sweet tea or Dr. Pepper in the can?”

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“The can,” he said promptly. “What did the skipper do with you?” “He called me a man and put me to work. Rolling hose, of course, until I couldn’t stand up straight. Polishing anything that didn’t move. Washing dishes. Scrubbing vomit out of the ambulance. Back then you didn’t have to wear a hazmat suit for that.” Joe set a quarter-stick of butter in the microwave and gave it fifteen seconds, then another ten.

Where did I see the garlic powder? Oh, yeah. “Thanks,” Joe said, and stirred a healthy dose into the softened butter, then added a shake of parmesan and pinches of green stuff from little jars.

Oregano, obviously. And…? After a moment in the butter, the licorice smell of basil joined the other scents. Where’s the parsley? Didn’t seem to be any here. “You live with the skipper?” “Too close to home. The skipper talked to Natalie Wentworth’s folks, and they took me in.” He laughed, his pale eyes going bluer. “A few months later, come summer, Nat and four of her sorority sisters marched into Feldman Station and demanded jobs where they could ‘serve the people.’ The skipper spent all summer trying to run them off, but every one of them stayed until their fall semester started.” Joe produced half a loaf of Italian bread and sliced it. “I had more education crammed down my throat that summer than in my first two years of high school. Unless I was in the head, I couldn’t sit down without a college girl plopping down next to me and talking about history, or world politics, or angles, or where a car going fifty miles an hour would meet a train going sixty.” He grinned, and shook his head. “Turn that knob to broil, would you please?” Brian did, then stepped back from the stove to let him put the bread in the oven. Back muscles rippled under Joe’s T-shirt, a hypnotic sight, and Brian’s balls got heavier. He’d knelt or bent over for other men just to get what he needed, quickly and with a minimum of hassle, with a minimum of contact. Joe made him want to touch. Take his time exploring. Maybe do it face to face, so he could watch Joe’s face contort there at the last. He swallowed. If these shorts shrank any more, they’d have to be cut off him. Joe squatted, watching the bread. Brian had to look away from those well-defined quadriceps. “That was something,” Joe went on, and Brian had to remember he was talking about being tutored. “When school started back up and they all left, the Wentworths’ maid got paid overtime to stand over me while I did my homework. I was their social project for the year, I guess. Their good deed for the community.” “Nat Wentworth is old money, then.” “As old as it gets in Florida. You can look at her, can’t you, and tell she doesn’t work for the money? When my grandparents were kids, the Wentworths and the Howells decided what books got taught in the schools, what potholes got patched, what route the school bus

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ran, and what color to paint the water tower. They got Feldman elected as mayor six or seven times before he turned east onto the west-bound lane of I-4. Then they named shit after him that neither family wanted named after the other.” The timer buzzed. Brian lifted the pasta off the fire and rinsed it quickly, while Joe pulled out the fragrant, barely toasted bread.

My turn to say something. “When were you in the navy?” “How did you know?” “The way you say head. I bet you say ‘sleeve’ instead of ‘pussy’ too.” Joe grinned. “Maybe you should be a cop. I was navy from the first day I could legally sign myself in to the glorious day I turned twenty and got handed my DD 214. You ever think of joining?” “Doesn’t every kid?” Brian wiped the stovetop, leaving it as shiny as he’d found it. “When you came home, why did you go into the blues instead of the fire department? Weren’t you still in tight with the skipper?” “The police force had an opening and the fire department didn’t, so I became a cop. What about you? Why did you pick being a paramedic?” “My tuition-free alternatives were teaching and nursing. Either would have me on tranquilizers in the first week.” “Why did you move from Brooklyn to Miami?” Brian laughed. “If you have to ask, you’ve never spent a winter in snow territory. Besides, I was born in Miami. My pop’s family is from there. Where’s Kellie?” Joe hesitated. “You saw her room? She’s at pony camp until tomorrow at eleven. Her mom and her stepfather will pick her up from there and she’ll stay with them the rest of the summer. Up in the Carolinas, where a hot day is in the 80’s.” They snorted, in chorus. Joe settled in a chair and piled exactly half the linguine on his plate. Brian settled opposite him and ladled his own plateful. “So this big house is yours alone for the next six weeks or so?” “Yep. And yours, if you want to stay.” Need roared through him. Hunger. Lust. But mostly a need to stay here. To be near Joe, to fantasize about touching him even if Joe never again let it happen for real. He couldn’t see for a moment. The table and everything on it blurred. He swallowed. Calm down, Jinx. Get a grip. Joe cut his pasta to inch-long pieces on the plate, and shoveled it up with chunks of bread as if it might go cold within the next minute. He looked at the food. Only at the food.

Look at me, Joe.

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But Joe spoke while looking at his plate. “Thanks for wiping the stove. I usually forget. A couple of mornings a week the scariest bitch in the world comes by to clean whatever she thinks needs cleaning. Or deserves cleaning. I keep expecting her to put yellow hazmat tape across the door to the boys’ room.”

You’re avoiding me, aren’t you? Are you scared I’ll make a move on you, or scared I won’t? “We’ll have to talk about rent and a share of expenses if I’m staying. Given the size of my paycheck, maybe a smaller share in return for chores.” “Fair enough.” Joe paused for a last bite of pasta. “I pay the housekeeper the same amount she owes me in rent. She lives in that little trailer you can see out the window there, behind the blueberry hedge.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

I couldn’t look past you unless a herd of elephants paraded by. Joe mopped his plate with a hunk of garlic bread and swallowed with hardly any chewing. “I run her paychecks through an employee leasing company so she can get health insurance at group rates. She watches my coming and going. Makes sure she’s never here same time I am. Works out real well.”

Works out in the nude. Garlic bread stuck in his throat. He struggled to swallow it. Joe looked up, finally. The pupils of his eyes expanded, leaving only a thin blue ring about black pools of hunger. Brian took a sip, forced it down. “Are we going to be able to do this?” Joe blinked. “Fuck if I know.” Brian tried another sip, but it didn’t want to go down either. He wiped his mouth. “Are you waiting for me to say something?” “Yes.” Joe’s voice was tight, but low, like it was being squeezed from a deep place. “What rules I know for this little game are pretty twisted. None of them pretty, really, but I like to think Tina was out there on the edge.” Brian studied him, the rigid jaw muscles, the white-edged lips, and then let his gaze lock on those blue-ringed pupils. Mirrors, with his own face centered in them. “The ‘game’ can get as raw as you want,” he said carefully. “But there aren’t any rules, except that if you hit me I’ll hit back.” “I don’t hit people I care about.”

Does that include me? The thought made him dizzy. The food-smells were too rich. Joe was probably radiating pheromones all over the place, but all Brian smelled was garlic and sausage -- the wrong sausage -- and tomato sauce. He stood. “This table won’t hold a man’s weight. Floor, couch, bed, shower, or what?” Joe pushed back from the table. “Bed. I want you in my bed.”

Guess I’m no longer exiled to the kiddy floor. Brian turned away from the steaming food. He still had a hot chunk of garlic bread in his hands. He pictured rubbing it down Joe’s

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body, so he could lick it off, and his shorts shrank another size and a half. He laughed unsteadily. Joe’s hand brushed his arm, hesitated, and pulled back. He laughed again. After I practically attacked you last night, you can wonder if you

have a right to touch me? “What?” Joe asked, his voice harsh. “I was just thinking…” Brian pulled off the shirt and pointed down. “I hope you’ve got a pair of scissors handy, because I don’t know if these pants are coming off the normal way.” Joe grasped him by the shoulders and turned him to face the archway that opened to the family room.

What? Heat spread across his back, and Joe’s thick arms came around him. He reached for the sides of the arch, confused, surrounded by Joe’s heated scent and way too aware of the erect cock pressing against his lower back. Joe’s hands met at the center front of the shorts, and ripped them apart.

Wow! “Problem solved,” Joe growled. “Get upstairs before I decide how comfy the floor looks.” A thrill jabbed through his lower belly. He kicked out of the rags and ran, stark naked, with Joe thundering at his heels, both of them laughing like kids racing for the playground. At the upstairs landing Brian thought about a rubber, and lube. He half-turned. Joe looked startled, and knocked him against the wall. “Sorry!” Brian rolled with his shoulders and found a hand planted on the wall to either side of his head. He tried to duck under one of those arms, then remembered his butter-rich garlic bread and raised it threateningly. “Beware my power of garlic fu!” Joe grinned, then scowled. “Avast ye, landlubber! Your garlic fu will not work on a pirate!” This close, he was overwhelming -- so big and so golden, surrounded by a man-smell that was fresh and hot and highly aroused. Brian’s vision lost focus. “Sure it will,” he managed to say. “No man can resist garlic fu.” Raising the bread slowly to the big man’s neck, he squeezed out an oily amber drop. He blinked, trying to clear his vision, as the drop trickled an inch over tanned skin, toward Joe’s collar bone. Then he couldn’t watch any more. He leaned in and sucked the skin clean, rasping with his tongue, tasting Joe and garlic, and wishing the garlic wasn’t there. Joe mashed him against the wall, grinding that hot cock against his bare abs. He couldn’t breathe under that pressure, and it didn’t matter. He wanted to wrap one leg around Joe’s tree-trunk leg and hump it. Wouldn’t take thirty seconds.

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But more than that, he wanted Joe utterly naked against him. “Clothes,” he whispered, pulling one-handed at the button of Joe’s worn cutoffs. “The way this works is, you’re supposed to take your clothes off, too.” Joe crouched slightly and rocked from the hip, stroking Brian’s bare cockhead with the entire denim-covered ridge of his own. A wild shock of electricity jolted along his nerves. Every muscle he had knotted, yanking one against the other under his skin. He gasped for breath. Holy fuck! That was intense! Joe let up the pressure but kept contact. “Thought you said there weren’t any rules. I can handle rules, but I don’t like them changing on me.” “I didn’t mean to suspend basic laws of physics.” Garlic butter tickled his wrist. “The garlic fu, it compels you! Take off your clothes. Now!” “How does a guy kiss a guy?” He blinked, and his vision clarified. Women had kissed him, some with great enthusiasm, but no guy ever had. Kissing was personal. Intimate. And if he thought Joe wanted to get emotionally intimate, he really was as stupid as his brothers thought. His ears heated. “However he wants to. If it’s too strange, just close your eyes.” “No. I have the balls to go through this with my eyes open or we don’t do it.” Joe wriggled against him, and the bamboo-print shirt hit the ceiling. As it fluttered silently to the linoleum floor, Joe wriggled again and the denim shorts fell with a rustle and a quick series of thunks. His woodsy scent infused the air.

Incense. Intense. Intoxicating. Without thinking, Brian curled one leg, grinding his cock against Joe’s haired thigh. His foreskin pulled back, nearly touching him off in the new rush of sensation. Coarse hair increased the friction, and the world narrowed down to the cock prodding his abs, the massive thigh against his cock. He felt the bread pulled from his hand, and he didn’t care where it went. He clutched Joe’s biceps, hard as oak, and angled his hips for longer strokes to make it last. Joe made a rumbling sound in his chest, and rubbed back. Lasting didn’t matter. He dug in his fingers and thrust frantically, sliding in the precum and in a sudden slick of sweat. Joe held him. “Joe,” he hissed. “Joe!” “I’m here.” Joe licked his forehead. Fire roared through him. Power and heat poured into his balls, contracted, and exploded. He strangled a cry. The convulsion took him, wracking him helplessly in Joe’s

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arms. Before he could draw breath, a secondary explosion hit. And a third. He was a repeating shotgun, blast following blast. When the blasts faded, the world tilted sideways. His back rested on a thick arm, and then on the cool floor. Garlic and cum and musk filled his head, his chest. I’ll never again smell garlic without thinking of this. Somewhere close to his ear, cloth rustled, and then foil tore. “Go for it,” he mumbled. If that rubber wasn’t one of his Xtreme-lubed ones, he’d pay for it later. But right now it was worth it. Worth anything. “Say again?” He shook his head. Speaking was too complicated. The big body atop him tensed. “Say I can.” Some scrap of thought connected to some other scrap. He pulled his knees up high, spread to either side of that broad chest, where sweat was turning some of the gold hairs to dark amber. “Have a target.” The weight shifted. Shocking cold touched his anus. He flinched, then relaxed. Lube -it heated quickly enough. Joe bored in. Slow enough to let him appreciate each hot, delicious inch. Fast enough to keep him squirming to adjust. He remembered that cock in his mouth the other night, the meaty head against his tongue. His drained dick twitched. Whoever said more than a mouthful is a waste had no fucking clue. Fully seated, Joe paused. Neither of them moved, although prostate pressure nudged traces of renewed life into his cock with every heartbeat, and Joe’s breathing was enough of a muscular ebb and flow to tease his hypersensitive naked shaft. A drop of sweat splashed onto his forehead, ran toward his eye. Joe quickly kissed it away.

That’s one way. Brian grinned, then he frowned. Kissing was for lovers, not fuckbuddies. As a kiss went, that barely counted. Except -- for Joe, a kiss probably always counted. “Is it good?” The concern in Joe’s voice brought back his smile, recentered him in the moment. “More than good.” Powerful arms locked around him, big hands curling about his shoulders. “How hard can you take it?” “I can take anything you can --” Joe wrenched himself most of the way out, and drove in. All the way in. Sparkles showered Brian’s vision, and he would have come if he’d had anything left to spurt. Joe grinned, a feral joy lighting his face. “You sure about that?”

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“Oh, yeah,” he breathed, shifting his grip to Joe’s triceps and clamping his calves firmly along Joe’s flanks. More than one way to ride a horse. But no -- he found out quick this horse was a runaway. Joe stroked hard and fast, pale blue eyes fixed on whatever he saw in Brian’s face. Each powerful thrust rammed Brian’s shoulders against Joe’s sturdy grip. Each hammering impact forced them to grunt in tandem. And each pumped more fire into his burning prostate and everything connected to it. Cock, balls, spine. He burned. The only way to ride this magnificent beast was to hang on and not get pounded into the floor. The heat seared his gut; he dug in his fingers, raising his hips to meet thrust with thrust, reaching for the glory. Hands clutched his shoulders with bruising force, and the driving beat picked up speed with the gathering forces of Joe’s imminent eruption.

Now! The glory burst through him. He threw back his head, smacking the floor hard, and his empty prostate spasmed, jerking him in a convulsive dance, like his body had to somehow make up for the scant spurts of jism. Joe howled, wordless and elemental. The brilliant purity of his climax scalded through every nerve, filled and overfilled Brian until his skin felt like tearing under the pressure hold it all. But his huntsman’s soul sucked it all in. Drank it, ate it, and was sated.

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Chapter Seven The phone rang. Joe groaned, and realized he must be half-suffocating Brian under his weight. He rolled to the side, peeling his skin off Brian’s where the drying sweat had glued them together. The phone rang again, directly below him at the downstairs landing. Just a plain beeping ring. Not the shrill double ring of a call from the dispatcher or the captain, nor any of the personal rings from Mom or the guys. Most likely a sales call. Brian moaned, and reached for him. Joe caught his hand and brushed a thumb over the thickened knuckles, the calluses. Those weren’t a workingman’s battered hands, though. Some kind of serious martial arts practice had shaped that hand, and no doubt the wiry body it was attached to. Yet he’d had the sense to run when outgunned and outnumbered. If Tina’d had that much sense, you’d both be alive. The bruises on his face were already fading, green and violet. Swelling remained only at the eye. You are a remarkably fast healer, Brian Thomas Gardner. I guess there’s nothing in the world like being twenty to get you past the effects of a brawl. The phone rang a third time. Joe waited where he was, admiring Brian’s tightly curled black lashes. Salespeople gave up on the third ring. Answering machine picked up on the fourth. He could hear any message from here. For now he was content to drape a cumsmeared leg over Brian, and hold him close. “Joe? Hey, it’s Roy. Listen, your counterpart over in Lakeland is giving me a runaround. Summer’s sister has disappeared.” He sat up. Brian went tense, and Joe raised a hand to keep him quiet. “She hasn’t answered her phone or email since last night. And she’s missed this morning’s shoot.”

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Nevada wouldn’t do that. The electric hum started up in the back of his skull. Something bad is going down. As he raced down the stairs, Roy’s voice went on. “You know she worked too hard to get her own show to blow it by not showing up, no matter what else was going on. But because she’s an adult, and because she’s not married, and because she’s not cognitionimpaired, and because her condo hasn’t been ransacked -- “ Joe punched the talk button. “The police department won’t take a missing person report, except from a spouse, until an adult has been missing for three days. I know. But there’s ways around that.” I just have to be dialing from an official phone to make most of them work. “Have Summer meet me at my desk in ten minutes. You drive her. Don’t leave her alone anywhere!” He hung up without a goodbye. Roy could waste more time explaining a situation than any situation demanded. He’d been like that when they were kids, and now he was worse. Nevada bragged about having to be at work before 5 a.m. She’d been missing at least 10 hours, then. The Red Diamonds worked their atrocities at night.

Stop there! The flood of new residents in the last several years had brought an influx of crime -- including gang activity -- long before the Dies had become a factor. He couldn’t compromise an investigation by assuming his personal nemesis was behind every vanishing act. He heard the shower, but by the time he got back up the stairs and to the bathroom, Bri was toweling off. Brian stepped out of his way and tipped his head toward the still-running water. “I figured you’d be in a hurry.” “Thanks.” He waved at the towel shelves. “You found your other uniform there?” “Yeah. Nobody’s going to get mad if I show up an hour early for work, right?” Joe snorted, and slid the shower door shut. “Hey!” he called over the water-noise. “Go downstairs and hit autodial eleven, would you? Tell TJ they’ll have to start the ramp without me.” “Autodial eleven. Start without you. Got it. If he asks why?”

TJ always asks: Hey, hey! How come? “Called to the station. Nevada Wells has gone AWOL.” Nevada and Summer were the most identical twins he’d ever met, outside of his own frankly creepy family, and the only female identical twins he’d ever come to know well. In any gathering they drew attention: Two short, curvy brunettes, one noticeably thinner now to suit the camera’s eye, but with identical mischievous grins and eyes that would eventually draw all but the horniest lech’s gaze out of their cleavage.

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As he reached for the towel, he saw two Guatemalan boys. One screamed for help as he beat his bloody fists on the windshield of a police cruiser. The other lay torn apart, chewed, half-flayed, his remains handcuffed to the bumper of a derelict truck. But their faces had looked so much alike. Twins? DNA analysis had shown that two of the other unidentified men, #2 and #5, were brothers. Were the Dies specifically going after twins? He jerked on his clothes and ran down the stairs like he always told Kellie not to. Bri, hanging up, looked quizzically at him but went toward the kitchen without a word.

Speed dial three. “Hello.” “Bunny!” “You have reached the extension of --” He slammed down the phone, checked the dialing chart, and punched in her home number. “Bunny!” “Mommy! It’s for you! It’s a ma-a-a-an! But he sounds mee-e-an!” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. If she had the kids with her, she couldn’t rush to the station to work her cybermiracles. But she had home computers. Whatever she had at hand right now probably could run circles around the department’s dinosaurs. “H’lo?” “Bunny, it’s me.” “Qué pasa, LT?” He brushed off her question. “One: In the past year, how many twins have disappeared within a hundred-fifty miles of here? Two: How many of them were identical twins? Three: How many of the Diamond vics were twins?” “I’ll let you know.” “Thanks.” “No prob.” She hung up on him, or maybe her daughter did. Didn’t matter. He ducked through the kitchen archway to find Brian running water into the sauce pot. “Never mind the rest. Let’s go.” They still had at least an hour before the afternoon monsoon started. Barely time to get movement started in all the right places. Half an hour later, he had Lakeland’s finest and the county deputies looking for a reportedly suicidal TV personality, had a promise from the highway patrol to watch for her “stolen” car, and had simply told his own blues to bring her in on sight. Summer and Roy were on the road to Roy’s brother’s condo on Singer Island, while a pair of hotel-room-style burglar alarms had been set on their houseboat.

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The hum in his head gradually subsided to a manageable level, and he began working through his in-box. Verification that the security cameras had gone out yesterday at the First National Bank and at the main branch of City National; they noticed only because TJ had alerted them. TJ’s list of other banks he’d advised to double-check their recorded footage for that afternoon. We ducked a bullet there. Probably. The reconstructed records of the missing guns didn’t look like a ducked bullet. He emailed TJ a reminder to fax the required notice to the FDLE and to the feds. Bunny came in, a burp-towel still draped over her shoulder. “Hey, LT! Did you know Nevada Wells didn’t show up at her studio this morning?” “Yes. What do you have?” She dropped a printout on his inbox stack. “Second page is temporary disappearances. Wasn’t sure you wanted those. “ “No.” He leaned forward and twitched the cloth off her shoulder. “Short answers?” “I counted the floating body parts and the two who turned up outside Bartow with chew marks and diamond slashes.” “Right. And?” “Two weeks ago, an Orlando man was reported missing. His identical twin brother skipped a court date on Monday. Their blood type matches the latest John Doe. The threefingered dude and the one with all the prison tats, the ones we’d guessed were brothers, were fraternal twins from Miami, both listed as child predators. One vic has DNA identical to a guy doing thirty years at Starke. One vic’s DNA is a near match to a guy on death row in Georgia; the guy on death row has a fraternal twin with about nine identities. I’m not certain on the rest, but they fit the general set. Nice folks.” Joe squeezed the back of his neck. The hum was louder than his desk fan. “And we couldn’t get any identification for these people until today because…?” “Until this last guy, none of them was reported missing. Also, we weren’t particularly looking for twins, or for scum. Not that Miss Wells is scum.” “Lakeland has intersection cameras but doesn’t have the manpower to watch everything. You know anyone who can look -- or a program that can look -- through the recordings for Nevada or that little red car of hers?” She nodded. “I’ll need the afternoon at home.” “Go.” He picked up the burping cloth and flicked it into the air. She caught it, made a face, and sashayed out. In jeans. Not uniform. She’d come in here knowing she would be sent right back home. Probably had her kids parked in the lobby. No, not at this time of day. Too much chance they’d see something ugly. Break room.

Am I predictable, or what? The hum took on a rhythm, pulsing. Twins. Twins. Not his imagination working overtime. Shitfuckpissdamn!

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He dialed his mother’s cell number, but one of her identical twin husbands answered. “Deuce.” He could picture the man in his madras plaids and white golfing cap, his narrow, watchful eyes. “Which one are you?” “Why hello, Joe. I’m doing fine, thank you. Why should it matter to you which one I am?”

Because one of you scares the living shit out of me while the other can be almost human. “Where’s Mom?” “Driving. We’re on our way to Tampa to see somebody about a bareback.”

I don’t need to know about your kinky sex life. “You’ve heard of the murders in these parts?” “Yes.” Deuce dropped his voice to a dramatic bass. “An old-fashioned community! A series of macabre murders! Is this vigilante justice gone mad, or a tourist magnet in the making?” “The gang’s targeting twins. Where are my brothers?” Deuce’s voice went quiet. “Pull over, Sugar.” The connection broke. He redialed. Busy. Just like the jerkwad to hang up on me.

At least he sees the danger, and takes it seriously.

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Chapter Eight The afternoon rain hit a little late, catching the first rush of evening traffic. Most of the traffic calls were scared old people or head bumps, or scared old people with head bumps. At one, a few yards past the city limits sign, Brian got a chance to show off his Spanish for an extremely grateful state trooper. Then he had to write a report on the translation, which wasn’t nearly as gratifying. The next traffic call was a biker with a road rash, slurred voice, and circular, confused thinking. He insisted he did not need to go to the ER. His pupils were equally contracted and nonreactive -- although he denied having any narcotics on board -- and he kept leaning to the left. Brian talked him into accepting a quick mop-down of his bloody arm and leg, and finally got him to agree to go get checked up. Just to prove this know-it-all cop wrong, of course. And to screw the gummint out of the cost of the ER visit, because no way in hell was a free man going to pay for a service he didn’t want or need. Brian shut the ambulance door on the biker and waved good-bye. Then he stretched. As if that were a signal, someone lit off a string of fireworks -- not the legal kind -- and a man screamed. Brian and the bike cop beside him and the two firefighters spun like dancers. From maybe a block to the south, mortars and Roman candles streaked across the cloud-layered sky. Minor bangs, M-80 level or smaller, hammered like rocks in a clothes dryer. Brian ran toward the source, trailing the cop. The fire truck roared off in the opposite direction. Probably going to circle the block. Rounding the corner, he saw a blazing SUV, three women rolling on the ground, and smoke rising from them. A pack of teenagers ran off to the north, arms laden with bright

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yellow-and-red boxes and cylinders. A shirtless man with smoke trailing from his ponytail ran heavily after them, yelling in Spanish about their mothers’ sexual practices. A cop car, one of those grand old Crown Vics, skidded to a halt on the other side of the SUV. One of the officers jumping out of it also dashed after the teens. The other brought out a red fire extinguisher and approached the truck in a duck-walking crouch. A new barrage of small missiles whistled overhead; the cop flinched and fell, but crawled rapidly to the SUV and sprayed his white clouds under it.

Yeah -- keep that gas tank from cooking off! Brian approached the three women, who’d rolled out the fire in their clothes and quickly scuttled into the meager shadow of a palm tree. Procedure said he was to ask them to sit down until he was sure they were okay, but the road was steaming and probably still hot enough to blister, and the scraggly grass was full of sand spurs. Let them stand if they want. “Who’s hurt?” Nobody was, really. The largest of the holes melted in their cotton-candy-colored clothes was smaller than his pinky fingernail. He checked them over quickly while the fires were doused, got the women to sign statements that they did not need medical treatment, then turned them over to the cops. The older woman of the group abruptly forgot her English and decided she must have a head injury. Brian dutifully wrote a second first-responder report on her and translated for her and the cop who arrested her. That, of course, meant he had to write out yet another report on the translation. The next call was for a couple who’d bought a fifth on the third for the Fourth and, after going through a suitcase of beer, had disagreed on when to open the fifth. The woman instead had broken the bottle messily across the man’s head. Brian arrived to find the bloody-faced man standing on the roof of a yellow ’70 Chevelle SS, his arms crossed, while the woman screamed at him to come down. As emergency vehicles lined up in front of the sagging gate, the woman scrambled up into a mimosa tree. She crouched in the branches, maybe a whole three feet up, screaming about how she wasn’t going to come down until someone shot her and killed her dead. She stamped her bare foot for emphasis, and the little tree swayed. “Dead as an armadillo on the highway at hi-i-igh noon!” The man stomped the car roof, and the yellow Chevelle bounced in slow motion under him. “Dead as a road-killed dog that’s swole up with his feet poking out in all directions!” “Dead as that gator they put on the roof of the high school!” she shrieked. Brian squinted at the man. The blood was already losing its gloss and brilliant red color. The man wasn’t going to bleed to death up there, but his right eyebrow had been gashed through the middle. You definitely need stitches. Staples, rather. He spoke quietly. “Why put an alligator on the roof of the school?” The man stomped again, and the car bounced fluidly. “Ast that crazy woman over there! She brung it up!”

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Brian nodded like this was good advice, and leaned forward, cupping his hands around his mouth. “I know that, but I want to hear some sense. Frankly, between you and me, the woman doesn’t sound like she’s talking much sense. You want to come down here and tell me about it?” “You sound like a Yankee! Where you from?” “See, I knew you were the kind of guy who knows things. I went to high school in Brooklyn, New York.” The bleeding man glared. “All you Yankees ought to go back where you come from! Happiest sight I could see would be ever last one of you headed north with your asses on fire! Then we could get the damned Cubans --” One of the cops, a tired-looking woman with sergeant’s stripes, cut him off by planting one meaty haunch on the hood of the car. “Get off!” the man screamed, wadding up his fists. “Get your fat ass off my car! You’re gonna scratch the paint!” “Come get me off,” the sergeant invited. The man dove at her. Brian watched him, calculating force and angle, and caught him with just the twist to sling him facedown across the hood of the car beside the sergeant. The sergeant slid out of the way, then lunged in and quickly handcuffed him, while he was still confused. “That was a pretty move, son,” she said, heaving the bleeding man off the hood and shoving him toward the nearest cop car. “Looked just like something from a movie. Was it pure accident, or can you teach a few of us how to do it?” His flush of pleasure drained away. Accident? I’ve been working on that kind of move

since I was six! “Gardner! C’mon!” a firefighter yelled. “Three boys jumped off a roof onto a trampoline!” “Happy day-before-the-holiday.” The sergeant sighed. “And it ain’t even a full moon. Tomorrow’s Fourth is going to be one for the books.” Dinner was hot nachos and cold sandwiches. Brian had to eat his second sandwich en route to another traffic accident. From the traffic accident they went straight to a slip-andfall, then whipped onto a highway and took off due west, sirens wailing and lights flashing. They hit city limits and picked up speed. “Where we going?” he asked. And why are two police cars following us? The firefighter he was shadowing tapped the code on their routing screen. “Just over the county line, to the Double Deuce. Bar fight, with at least one car set on fire. First responders over there are overwhelmed.” “We’re allowed to cross the line?” Three police cars. And two deputies.

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“We do when we’re asked, and we do when it’s the Double Deuce. Finest strip joint around -- hot women! Except on Thursdays, when the strippers are guys. Also, when Wilma came through they stood up for us. ‘Come by for a cold Coke. Come by for a hot burger. Why don’t you rest in the AC for just a little bit? Plug in your charger over there.’ Probably could have charged half a million, maybe more, for what they gave away in those three weeks.” He rolled down the window and spit a brown stream of tobacco juice. “They first wanted to build it near town, where the Wal-Mart is now, but Skipper wouldn’t let them.” An ambulance passed them, and the driver blasted his horn. “Back in the day, the skipper pretty much ran everything around here. As much as the lah-di-dah moneybags let him.” “He still seems to pretty much run things.” “Not like he used to, when he was police chief, city marshal and everything. No offense, buddy, but this town just isn’t big enough for all the new people coming in. This used to be a real quiet place.” He shot out another stream, then spat the wet plug into the wind. “A real nice place.”

***** Joe stood, thumbs locked in his Sam Browne belt, ring finger caressing the butt of his weapon, while the two dispatchers juggled calls. Pity the uniforms weren’t allowed to wear belts like this any more. Wearing a Sam Browne made him feel pulled together, collected. Like everything he needed was in reach. His cell phone rang. He checked the caller ID. “Mom?” “Joe, something is going on.” “No shit, Mom! Everyone I can spare is on the way now.” “On the way where?” He switched mental gears. “You’re not calling about the mess at the Double Deuce?” “I hope not. Someone tried to grab the kids a little bit ago. Some men ran them off Old Tampa Highway with what sounds like riot gas, or CS gas, then tried to muscle them into the back of a camper truck. I had told the boys to go hole up in the safe room at the DD, but they didn’t see any rush to get there until this happened. Anyway, I just now called to see if they’d arrived, but I can’t get an answer. Are you there now? Have you seen them? Are they okay?”

A setup? Brian’s there. “I’m on my way. Can’t promise I won’t take a belt to them when I arrive.” “Leave a little butt for me to whip. We’re on our way back from St. Pete now, plenty of us, but the Gandy Bridge traffic is not moving.”

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Oh, great. You might see your goon squad of mirror-image freaks of nature as the cavalry, Mom, but the law’s going to see something different. “If the scene’s under control when you arrive, Mom, you’ll need to keep your goons leashed.” “Yes, dear,” she said comfortably, sounding like the kind of mom that existed only in a ’50s TV show, the kind who would vacuum wearing heels and pearls. He cracked out a few instructions for the dispatchers and the sergeant on watch, and headed outside to the old truck. Looked like a piece of shit, but the damned thing ran. Just this side of the county line, his phone played Bad Boys, the dispatch ring. “LT, shots fired at the Double Deuce. All assistance has been summoned.” He hit the gas, and the old truck roared like an Indy car. “Anyone down?” “None confirmed, but the ambulance will need a new windshield.” He overtook a sedan, which sensibly dove for the shoulder and let him pass. “What do you have?” “Fires were put out. Arrests were made. Police cruisers were loaded up but still on site. Three ambulances loaded up double or triple, including ours, and they were just calling the rural trauma center to keep it from shutting down before they arrived. Then somebody yelled and knocked down whatsisface, that guy that’s driving our Number Three ambulance, and the windshield of the ambulance exploded. Shotgun, they think.” His insides clenched, and blood sang behind his ears. I put that guy in danger. I picked him, gave him the job, hung him out in the wind so Brian could hide. “The other ambulances on the scene took off. Our guy bashed himself a bigger hole in the windshield and lit out after them. The law enforcement and fire vehicles were already in defensive formation, so everyone just hunkered down.” “Helicopter?” “On the way from Tampa. They’ll beat you there.” He squinted at a brilliant star. Might be a chopper’s spotlight. Might -- yep, it swung. He heard sirens, and slowed down. Right now my arrival will just add to the confusion. Proper police procedure would be to stay out of this mess.

Except my little brothers are in it. He cruised into the brilliantly lit parking lot, ID held at arm’s height out the driver’s side window. A deputy flagged him down. “Situation’s under control, sir. Um, Lieutenant. Apparently some drunk cracker didn’t like us shutting down his party.” “My teenaged brothers are here, or they’d better be.” “How teen?” The deputy’s tone iced with disapproval. “Sixteen, and if they’re in the business area, I’ll help you shut this place down. But the owners keep an apartment here, and the kids are supposed to be in it. Will I mess up your scene if I go look in on them?”

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The deputy wavered, then nodded. “I’ll escort you, sir. Park right over here, if you would please.” The door to the safe room was locked, and he felt immediately better. He sorted through his keys and opened the deadbolt, but the bar-lock held. He flipped the key ring and hammered on the door with the round ends of the keys. He saw the deputy watch the fake peephole while staying out from directly in front of the door. Didn’t matter. The real peephole, offset like a periscope, would show him and the deputy both. Brian opened the door.

Brian! He had to take a breath to steady himself. Brian stood there perfectly unharmed, although his coverall’s knees were caked with dirt and his hands dripped water. “Deputy? LT?” The deputy pushed open the door and walked inside. Joe followed, looking first at the twin who was holding his bloody hand in the sink, then looking for the other, conspicuously absent twin. Where is he? The boy grinned lopsided. His right cheek was swelling, and a few oozing flecks of blood freckled it. Not half as bad as Brian’s face had looked. “Hey, Joe. I knew you would come.”

I ought to be able to tell my brothers apart. If one was singing, he could. Sometimes he could tell by the way they yawned or stretched. Or what they’d laugh at. But one of them standing there and just talking didn’t give any clues. Brian was staring at him. Brian didn’t need to be staring at him like that, in front of people. This isn’t Miami, Bri. Be a little discreet.

Be fair, jackass. He’s surprised, not besotted. You’re the besotted one. Brian stepped over to the sink and turned the water on. “Get that hand back under the water.” The toilet flushed, and the other twin came around the partition, double-taking on the deputy. “Um…sir? We don’t have any problem in here.” The deputy looked hard at one boy, then the other. “Are these your brothers, sir?” “Yes, thank you.” Alive. Pretty close to unhurt. Joe caught the deputy’s hand and shook it vigorously. “Thank you very much. I’ll take it from here.” The deputy sniffed, and let his gaze travel slowly around the little cement room. Joe inhaled surreptitiously, but couldn’t quite tell if he was smelling a trace of weed in the air. Then again, with the whiffs of CS gas wafting off the boys, the deputy might think he was smelling crack. The deputy looked significantly at him, but turned and left without another word. Joe locked the door behind him. “Your brothers?” Brian asked quietly.

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“Yes. He okay?” “Think so. Now that the road grime’s out of it, it looks better. The sue-me-not checklist says this is where I recommend you take him in for X-rays and a checkup, but if he was my brother I’d wrap his wrist and wait to see if it got worse overnight.” “So he’s okay for now.” “Yeah. Might be a little bit of a sprain here, but something gives me the idea these guys heal pretty well.” The twins looked at each other.

Why that deer in the headlights look? “What’s up, you two?” “We don’t know,” one said hurriedly. They both flashed looks at Brian’s back, but he continued calmly rinsing the boy’s arm and hand. “Mom told us to come here. Said you said the Swamp Ape Killers are targeting twins. Then some guys tried to kidnap us. They had, like, this ancient electric-dart gun and some kind of smoke that made our breathing just cut off.” They looked anxiously at each other again, and at Brian. Brian turned off the water and backed away, looking at them, his face closed. “Your mom is the matriarch?” “She thinks she is,” one twin muttered. “Queen of the World is more like it,” the other agreed. “You do what she wants, when she wants, how she wants, or she…um…” “She lets us go stay with Joe a while. If we’re lucky.” Brian relaxed. And tried not to show it.

What is going on here? “I didn’t bring any Betadine down here with me,” Brian said. “I need to head out to the ambulance to get it.” Joe pointed at the sink cabinet. “Look under there. Should be a big fishing tackle box with first aid stuff.” Brian looked at him, a long inscrutable look.

What? Having a big first aid kit is not weird when you have teenagers in the house. It wasn’t the kit, though. It was the safe room. They said this too-quiet retreat was for tornadoes, but tornado rooms don’t need gunports and this little pair of rooms had five of those. Five he knew of. And two bottles of Betadine. Knowing how much that stuff cost, he winced at the liberal way Brian poured it. But this was what the stuff was for, wasn’t it? He stepped closer to the center of the room and glared at the nearest twin. “Speaking of what she wants, when she wants, Mom said you two took the roundabout route when she told you to hole up here.”

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“Um…well…” The boy looked helplessly at his brother. “Uh…” that one added.

Nothing like a fast, complete, informative answer. Shitfuck. Well, Mom would straighten it out. He climbed on the bed and put his cell phone in the gunport there. Two bars. Better than usual. He dialed quickly. “Joe?” That same raw, sick fear had echoed through Summer’s voice this afternoon. Roy had paced the captain’s office, irritated and anxious at the same time, but Summer had alternated between moaning terror and a fierce eagerness to grab a shotgun and hunt down the Dies herself. “Your baby birds are in their nest, Mom. One has a few wing-feathers ruffled, but that’s all.” Her voice sweetened. “Oh, good. Then I won’t have to hold back when I explain the situation.” “Not a bit.” He grinned, and let the connection die. “Thanks for backing us up, big brother! You could have told her I got shocked by what, a hundred thousand volts, but still managed to get on my feet and fight off the evil kidnappers and rescue my flopping-like-a-fish brother!” “You guys will have to sort this one out on your own,” he said, stepping down from the bed. “As soon as the cavalry comes charging in, I’m gone.” The kid lost his huff in an instant. “We kinda figured we could go with you.” “You kinda figured wrong,” Joe said flatly. “You got problems because your family is freaking you out, you can come to me. You got problems because the home nest is shrinking around you, you can come to me. You got problems because somebody does something that could or should get him arrested, you come to me. But when you’re given an order that could save your life but you’re too adolescent to obey, you don’t come hiding behind me.” “The nest is shrinking around us!” one said hotly. The other looked at him, and he shut his mouth.

What in hell is going on here? But nobody would say. He looked at Brian, who was wrapping gauze. You don’t need

to know exactly how gothic-weird my family is, and if you stay here another half an hour and my mother walks in with her two husbands and her identical twin brothers-in-law and maybe a pair of identical twin nephews, you’re going to see way too much. Brian finished the gauze wrap and pulled a two-inch Ace from the kit. Joe called dispatch. “What do you hear about the situation?” “Sounds like it’s over. They say you’re inside the DD, and your brothers are there too, one of them dinged up. Is he okay? Do you have to take off the rest of the shift? Are they

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going to shut the place down for letting minors come inside even with shooting going on outside?” “They’re okay. They’re not inside. They’re in a sort of crash pad the folks keep here. I need maybe another hour until my mom arrives. Probably less. I’ll help with the paperwork while I’m waiting, see if that gets us any brownie points for the next time we need help from over here.” He looked at Brian. “What’s the word on the ambulance driver?” The dispatcher had a quick answer. “Scrapes and scratches is what he makes it sound like. The ERs over that way are booked for the next few hours, so he’s talking about checking out AMA to come home for a cleanup.” “Belay that. Everything at home would be shut down for the night by the time he arrived. Call the skipper and give him a quick update, the driver’s cell number, and a contact number for the charge nurse in whatever ER the driver’s in.” She laughed. “You are an evil man, LT.” “Sometimes.” He closed the phone. Time to start thinking of preserving what was left of his battery. Brian finished the wrap. “I’m done here.” “Good. You can ride home on the pumper if it’s still here, or with whoever is still here. You two wise-asses stay put. I’m showing him the way out and signing off on your release paperwork, then I’m coming back.” “Lovely,” someone mumbled.

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Chapter Nine He and Joe sat together on the tailgate of Joe’s borrowed truck, filling out paperwork. Smoke hung in the air, nauseating even though it had dissolved too much to be visible. At least they were upwind of most of the parking lot.

You came real close to fucking yourself there, Jinx. What tiny fraction of identical twins in the world are the huntsmen? These two can handle themselves in a fight. So what? Doesn’t mean they’re something other than human. Joe has a daughter, so he can’t be a huntsman. Meaning his brothers can’t be. He bit his pencil, sinking his teeth into the yellow-painted wood. Not supposed to use pencil. Have to redo this in ink later. “Watcha thinking, Bri?” Joe rolled his pen between his hands.

Is Kellie really your daughter? “They don’t look like you.” “The twins? No, they favor my mom. Kellie and I look exactly like my dad. I hope she’ll outgrow that.” A lithe young woman in a bikini and four-inch heels came out with a tray of waterbeaded canned soda pops and headed toward a nearby deputy. She threw them a sultry look and changed course. “Well, hey, Joe! Who’s your cute friend?” She smelled of baby powder and wintergreen. Her eyes sparkled as she gave Brian a lingering twice-over. She had a dancer’s sculpted legs. “This is Brian.” Joe’s voice was gruff. He picked up a Dr. Pepper and laid a ten on the tray. She picked up the money in long-nailed fingers and started tucking it in Joe’s belt, a fucking Sam Browne belt like nobody was supposed to wear any more, but Joe caught her wrist. “I’m on duty, hon.”

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“That’s why it’s no charge, hon.” “Thanks,” he growled. “Keep the money for my drink and his. It’s the rules.” She poked her bottom lip at him and then turned her glowing attention back to Brian. “My name’s Eva and I’d just love to show you some special attention. I work Mondays and Tuesdays, and some Saturdays. You come back soon, y’hear? Ask for Eva.” “I sure will.” Brian put every ounce of honest appreciation into his voice and selected a Mountain Dew from her tray. She smiled back, and sashayed with her tray to where the deputy stood talking on two phones at once. He shook his head. The woman pouted at him and undulated a few yards on past to a knot of officers filling out paperwork on the hood of a Fish and Wildlife SUV.

Fish and Wildlife? “She looked ready to climb in your lap right there, Bri.” “Huh?” He blinked and focused on Joe. “You know she’s a lap dancer here?”

Lap dancer? The hunger turned in him but went quiet, like a dozing lion raising its head and then settling back to sleep. He was well fed, even for a day as tiring as this. But a huntsman needed to know the lay of the land. The most favorable game-trails. So to speak. Joe was still muttering. “With no business she’s probably called the night a wash. You could have got her cheap.” He forced a smile. “Not in public, I hope?” “Hmm. I don’t know that one. Some of the dancers aren’t real shy. I’ve seen a lot of hand jobs in the corners. Been real glad I was outside my jurisdiction.” “She sure knows you.” Joe grunted. “I tip good.” “When I get a paycheck, some night when we’re off duty, let’s come back here. I bet spending time with a few girls like that can really inspire a man.” Joe frowned, blinking. “I don’t know why that surprises me.” He nodded decisively. “We’re both off day after tomorrow. July 5 is traditionally a very quiet day for us.” “I…” His face heated. “I need to wait for payday.” “I’ll bring a little extra. You can pay me back on payday.” “The Swamp Ape Killers are the same thing as the Red Diamonds?” “Yeah. Everyone on city payroll has been forbidden to call them Swamp Ape Killers. Don’t say that where anyone can pick up a quote, okay?” “Since when have the Red Diamonds been targeting twins?” Joe signed his name to the bottom of the last page. “Apparently, they always were. We just didn’t figure it out until today. The captain’s meeting with the city council tonight to

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decide how to publicize the information. Might take him all night; he has to speak to one at a time, since the council members legally can’t speak to one another without public notice.” “Government in the sunshine.” “You got it.”

Targeting twins. The local huntsmen need to know that. The matriarch’s phone number hammered at his brain. But once contacted for that ritual first visit, she would have the right to mess with his life until she satisfied herself he was stable. And he didn’t want whatever he had going with Joe messed with. He sank his teeth into the pencil, feeling the brittle crackle. “What’s a swamp ape?” “Florida’s take on Bigfoot. Woodwose. Sasquatch. Basajaun. The Hairy Man. Sometimes our version is called a skunk ape. He’s man-sized or a touch bigger, stinks to high heaven, and likes to surprise couples making out in isolated places. One of the classes I took at the community college ended up being about how every culture has one. When the tabloids can’t find prophetic frog babies, vampire cows, or Satan-worshiping alien cat-fuckers to talk about, they bring up the Hairy Man.”

Hydes, you mean. Huntsmen who cross over and lose their humanity, whether from hunger or from feeding on the wrong energies. “Alien cats who fuck whatever, or aliens who fuck cats?” Joe stretched. “Either way. Make sure you keep your cat safely locked up during the next meteor shower, or next thing you know Fwuffykins will be staring at you with glowing red eyes and saying --” “Show’s over, folks!” The deputy’s voice rose. “Turn around and go home.” Joe looked up with a smile, and went pale. “Shit. You need to leave now. Take these keys and go. I’ll see you back in town.”

What the fuck? Joe went past the deputy to a minivan. A woman who looked like the twins leaned out her window to talk to him. Brian’s stomach sank. He gathered the paperwork and went around to the truck’s battered door. Hi, Mom. Nice to meet you. Yes, I’m Brian. I’ve heard all kinds of good things

about you, too. Yes, I want to make your son very happy, and oh, yes, I’m fully prepared to help him raise your granddaughter in a warm and wholesome environment. Yeah, right. He tested the springs on the brake and clutch, and jammed the key into the ignition. Good thing I know how to drive a stick shift.

Fucking A.

*****

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He parked the truck behind the Feldman Station, close to the door with the doorbell. There he sat for a little while, windows open, enjoying the semitropical night. Frogs, crickets, an owl, more exotic birds. Something sounding like an owl whisper-hooting through a slow fan blade: whootle, wootle, whootle. A guitar player added minor notes in a string of unhurried arpeggios, not that far away. Maybe in the little gazebo on the front lawn of the courthouse. His brothers would have clever, unpleasant things to say about such a self-consciously sentimental structure, but it looked like a great place to spend quiet time with someone. With or without a guitar. Citrus bloomed all around, along with other blossoms he couldn’t yet identify. Cut grass mingled with French fries and car exhaust and other underlying aromas of human habitation. His sinuses and throat still felt scraped from the black-pepper gas taste those boys had carried around. Maybe that’s what made him so restless. He frowned and slid out of the truck, checking the eddies of the wind, picking out the more attenuated scents. Traces of a trash fire, acrid and wet. Mildew. Cat spray. Pine sap. About four feet away from the old truck, his stomach twisted and the skin on his hands prickled. He turned toward the scent, and it vanished. Terrific! Just enough to alert his instincts but not enough for his thinking mind to identify. The keys in his pocket made a noise as he moved. He gritted his teeth and opened the ring, distributing the keys among his pockets to keep them quiet. Then he put his nose back in the night wind and swung wide, questing until it came to him again: a rancid combination of unwashed male and rotten meat that raised the hair on his arms and neck.

You’ll know a hyde when you smell him, Jinx. We ran across a lair when we were younger than you, and we both knew. Yeah, the other one said. Grab your dick if you get any warning. The stench practically made us pee our pants. This wasn’t an overwhelming, pee-your-pants stench. Just an echo of a stench. Not fresh? Not close? Or just not as concentrated as a musked-up lair? He crept through the parking lot, watching for any movement other than the wind pushing leaves across the tarmac, or a cat gliding through the bushes. Listening for any hush in the normal sounds. Sniffing for another trace of that smell. An F-150 truck with a windowless utility shell for the bed squatted beside the Dumpster in the far corner of the parking lot. He maneuvered downwind of it, and gagged. The truck reeked of hyde, and old blood and sickness, and peppery traces of CS gas, and -- a woman? Not a corpse. A woman. Terrified, sweating hard. The hyde wasn’t there any more.

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He circled downwind of the Dumpster, which had traces of spoiled milk but no woman-smell to it, and back to the truck. The tail door was padlocked. He memorized the tag number.

Men approaching! The truck was already partially hidden behind the Dumpster. He huddled in the shadows between the Dumpster and the oleander hedge. One or two men he could take down. Three, if he had surprise and they weren’t armed. He counted footsteps, compared the voices. Fucking A. Four of them. So he couldn’t attack. What were the other options? Disable the vehicle? Even partially? If he had a knife, he could slit a tire or two. As it was -- he grabbed a key, slid it into a crack in the bumper, and used that like a vise to bend the key to a V-shape. The next key he touched was heavy, probably too hard to bend, but the third was lightweight, aluminum. He bent it, too. The men stopped, arguing in low tones, way too close. Brian jammed the two metal Vshapes like chocks in front of and behind the rear tire on his side. The truck could go forward or backward, but it would get spiked. A slow leak, unless the truck tried to turn at speed, but maybe a softened tire would slow it up or reduce maneuverability. Meanwhile, he had no possibility of getting across the parking lot to Feldman Station without being seen. He faded into the hedge and looked about. The police station was close…so close. But just a couple of blocks farther was the matriarch’s house. Huntsmen, who knew what this smell meant and --

Kids live there! If he was seen and followed, he couldn’t chance leading those people to such a treasure trove. Much less having the door opened for him when the bad guys might be close enough to rush it. Police, then. He could say he’d smelled rotten meat and suspected a dead body. No one would question him going to the cops over that. To get to the police station without coming in view of the four men, he’d have to wait for them to leave, or make the block. No time to make the block -- if the truck left, what were the chances that scared woman would come out of it alive? He looked down the side road. If he could get down there, and come whistling back up it as if that’s where he’d come from? He might even wave at the four as he went by. What a lousy excuse for a plan -- but it might work. He melted through a loose place in the hedge, using every bit of body control he had to blend the inevitable rustles into the rhythm of the night all around. Then he bent low and ran, silent as a cat, down the side road, then into the first alley mouth on the left. He stopped there and shook his muscles loose, and tried three times to summon a whistle before the tone came.

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His mind went blank. He couldn’t walk down the street whistling Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. They’d report him as drunk on duty. What else? Something, anything! Okay, even Twinkle Twinkle would do! He sounded a note, and The Rising of the Moon rippled out of his mouth.

“Tell me, tell me, Sean O’Farrell -- tell me why you hurry so?” “Hush a bhuachaill, hush and listen,” (and his cheeks were all aglow) “I bear orders from the captain -- get you ready quick and soon! For the pikes must be together by the rising of the moon!” “O then tell me, Sean O’Farrell, where the gathering is to be?” “In the old spot by the river, right well known to you and me.” “One more word: the signal token?” “Whistle up the marchin’ tune And have your pike upon your shoulder by the rising of the moon!” He sauntered out on the main street with a little skip to his step. Two men -uniformed cops -- met him on the corner. They laughed, and fell in step with him, bracketing him with tobacco leaf and deodorant. Under those smells lingered the faintest traces of gasoline, old blood, and fear. But they sang cheerfully and well.

By the rising of the moon! By the rising of the moon! Our pikes will be together by the rising of the moon! He started whistling the third verse, but they didn’t know the words. Trying to hold his voice steady despite their scent, he sang it out for them.

Out from many a mud-wall cabin, eyes were watching through the night Many a manly heart was beating for the coming morning light! A cry rang along the valley, like a banshee’s fateful croon -And a thousand pikes were flashing at the rising of the moon! They joined him on the chorus again, but it fell apart when he turned with them to the police station. The older cop stood between him and the door. “Were you coming here, son? Garner, isn’t it? Is there something we can help you with?”

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How could they not smell the sweat trickling down his spine? He studied the older cop’s profile against the moonlit wall: strongly Irish with a tobacco lump in his bottom lip, exactly as Nat Wentworth had drawn it. No, I don’t think I want to go inside any building with you. He stretched some kind of grin over his face. “Hey, if you guys are going in there anyway, I don’t really have to. Can you please tell your LT I have the phone number of that girl we were talking about? Or should I write him a note?” “You can come on in and write him a note. If he’s in, though, he’s probably busy as hell. This isn’t the quiet place it used to be.” “So I hear. Anyway, tell him I’ll see that girl before he does, okay?” “What girl?” the other cop asked. “The blonde from Carolina,” he invented. “He’ll know. And he’ll owe me a ten-spot for it, too.” The Irishman spat a stream of dark slime and shook his head. “I thought Joe had outgrown games like that. We’ll tell him, son.” “Thanks! Thanks a million!” He turned, and he ran. That story wouldn’t hold together if anyone picked at it, but it would alert Joe. Would make Joe cautious, and would make Joe come find him. But would that happen fast enough? The truck was coming of the Feldman Station parking lot, turning in his direction.

Where is everybody? Not here! Wherever the cavalry was, it wasn’t here! A block up, a police cruiser turned onto the road and came toward its own station without any sign of hurry. Even at ten miles an hour, the truck would pass by the cruiser and disappear before he could tell enough of a story to make the cop turn around and give chase. Unless the truck driver was crazy enough to swerve into the cop’s lane for a head-on, it wasn’t getting stopped. A head-on…or tagging a pedestrian? That would stop the truck and the cruiser too. Then he’d find a way to get the back of the truck opened. If the truck ran for it, so much the better. He darted across the street, gauging speeds, planning. Three steps: jump in front of the

truck; spin past the bumper to the centerline of the street; then collapse, yelling and flopping. If I miss, this is going to hurt like all fuck. He leaped in front of the truck and spun past the bumper. Something snatched him off course, yanked him alongside the truck. The yank whipped him another quarter turn, slapping him against the dented metal side of the truck.

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Fucking A! Some metal finger had hooked his pocket! He hop-ran sideways a step, and another. If he tripped, he’d get dragged. The hook was a broken tie-down loop. He wrenched sideways, bracing one foot on the truck’s step. The street skimmed by underneath. Don’t look! He wrenched again and fell heavily, rolling like a log. Right in the cruiser’s headlights. He threw his arms over his head, as if that would protect him. The truck’s back tire bumpthumped over the back of his thigh.

Scream! He couldn’t. Couldn’t breathe. The police cruiser went halfway off the road to avoid him and hit one whoop of its siren. Instead of stopping, the truck laid screaming rubber tracks and tore off into the night. The cruiser three-pointed it, hit its wailer and lights, and gave chase.

Good. With stresses like that, the keyed tire ought to blow. The clenched fist in his chest loosened, and he could breathe. Blue uniforms poured out of the police station. He turned face up, wheezing, and tried to look for the Irishman. Too crowded. He tried to sit up, but Howell locked both hands as a brace about his neck and told him not to move, not to move anything, that the ambulance was coming.

Be glad I planned this. If I was as scared as I ought to be, you’d have two broken hands. Tan firefighters’ uniforms joined the blue. He let them all go out of focus. At any moment his body was going to realize it hurt, and when that pain hit he wanted at least a light trance state.

Water. That was the easiest. Deep water. Slide in, without a ripple, and let it close over your head. Breathe deep; breathe the coolness. Sergeant Beasley was yelling orders and questions. Other people were asking him his name, what day it was, who was president. He looked past them, at the third-quarter moon surfing the white-foam clouds. A penlight dazzled his eyes. He slowed his reaction to human norm, and he kept reaching for the deep, cool water that would muffle everything. Skilled hands, many of them, slid a backboard under him, and lifted him into a bodybasket.

Cool water. Deep. Without a ripple. Hands strapped him in, and loaded the basket in the back of a long-bed pickup. Lights flashed everywhere. Red, white. Blue, red. Yellow, blue, red.

Deep water.

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Chapter Ten “Brian.”

Joe’s voice. The other voices he had ignored…lots of other voices? Some of the others muttered to each other still, but not at him, not right here. Wherever right here was. The wheezing and clinking machinery sounds could mean a commercial kitchen or laundry, but the flat, antiseptic smells said hospital. Rough-skinned fingers stroked his cheek. “Brian, wake up. You’re scaring people.”

Joe’s voice. He pressed his face into that hand. “C’mon, Bri. Open your eyes.” He blinked, and squinted. Joe’s face, tilted, hung well within arm’s reach. Lines bracketed his mouth, made vertical creases between his eyebrows. Fluorescent lights gave a muddy tint to his skin. Was the woman here too? “Did you save her?” The lines in Joe’s face deepened. His hand dropped away. “We got her. How did you know?”

Fuck, Jinx! Remember the story! He put on the stupid face that had saved him when his uncle asked who’d blown up the toilet. The room looked like an ER bay: glossy seaweedgreen cabinets behind Joe, equipment to Joe’s left, and a dull-green curtain to his right. A man screamed nearby. Other voices yelled to hold him! hold him still while we get this tube in. He screamed again, “Momma! Momma!” Definitely an emergency room. Not the old Wentworth Infirmary -- cabinets the wrong color. Not the trauma center over by the second-chance school either. But definitely a hospital, which was no place for a huntsman. He touched a dry tongue to his bottom lip. I overdid the trance. Scared them, like Joe said.

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“Need some water, Bri? Can you swallow okay?” He nodded. Pain, thin but startling, stabbed up his neck and ricocheted around in his head. He closed his eyes and ran a quick internal assessment. Headache, consistent with a good whap on the head. No nausea or undue cranial pressure. Some lightly pulled muscles in the back. Deep bruising in his right thigh, minimal bruising elsewhere. “Put an ice chip in his mouth. It’s safer.” The skipper’s voice? He opened his eyes again, turning his head just enough to see the old man. The skipper’s wrinkles multiplied as he smiled. “Hello, son. You ready to return to duty?” A snort from another angle let him know he didn’t have to answer seriously. He played the ice chip around his mouth until it melted. Then he tried his voice. “Anything to get out of a hospital.” “You’ll be here a few hours, son.” The skipper winked, clumsily. “Some of the nurses look like they're looking forward to looking after you.” “I can’t stay here.” The skipper patted his shin. “Relax. You’ve been zoned out since late last night. The rules say they have to ‘observe’ you.” He punched the call button. “Brian Gardner in Bay Four is awake.” “Thank you,” a nasal voice replied. “We’ll have someone down there directly.” Joe put an arm behind his shoulders, lifted him like he weighed as much as a puppy, and set a straw to his mouth. He sucked greedily, despite the coldness of the water and the strong chlorine taste. A draft went down his back, right to the butt crack. Hospital gown. “Where am I?” “Lakeland.” The skipper said. “We got X-ray facilities, but for CT and MRI you had to come here.” “Get me a pair of pants, please sir. I don’t do hospitals.” “He’s coherent,” Joe noted. “I don’t know what they call ‘observation’ here, but he sure isn’t getting it, except from us. Why don’t we take him to the infirmary at home? There we can have uniforms guarding him --” He saw the Irishman ‘guarding’ him. “No! I’ll stay here!”

Fucking A. He shook his head violently to get some blood moving, get oxygen to his brain. Pain bounced around like six-siders in a cup. He seized the pain, used it to ground and center himself. He didn’t need to be voicing suspicions about the police force until he knew how far the rot spread. “How about I stay here, out of your hair, while you guys handle the Fourth?” The silence might indicate he was babbling what they considered nonsense, or might indicate they’d already thought about exactly the same option.

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“You probably won’t be released until five or six this evening.” The skipper sighed. “Crazy as it’s going to be, I can’t guarantee anybody can come get you until well after midnight. Once released, you can’t just hang out here, especially since you’ll probably need crutches.” “Nice hotel right across the street,” Joe observed. “He can check out of here, check in there. Puss can send somebody after him tomorrow morning.”

Maybe I can phone Pop and ask him to spring for a hotel room. Fuck. But Joe pulled out his wallet and extracted a black credit card. “You can owe me for the room, Bri. Hospital’s covered, since you were on shift, but I don’t think the city council would sit still for a pricey hotel room.” Brian looked about for his coverall, but it had probably been cut off him. “If I had a pair of pants, I could put that card in my pocket. Could I talk you into a quick shopping trip before you head home?” “I’ll take care of the hotel and the clothes run,” the skipper said. “I owe you for the return of my truck, after all. What size you wear?”

Fucking A, I wear triple-XL, can’t you see from looking at me? “Men’s small in everything, sir.” Joe hoisted himself to sit on the counter like an oversized kid, rounding his back and shoulders to fit under the overhead cabinets. “I’ll sit with him until you get back.” When the skipper left, Joe came down off the counter and leaned close, planting one fist to each side of Brian’s neck. “He’s gone. Nobody else is here. Talk.” The hunger rose like heat in his bones. The trance had saved him from burning the last feeding out of his system, but Joe was close, and angry, and…Joe. The hunger wanted to eat that smoldering anger, eat the fear lacing the edges of that anger. But those energies were addictive. Didn’t take much before that would be all the hunger wanted, and before the hunger built enough power to arrange for its own feeding. Whatever was left of Brian when that happened wouldn’t be strong enough to hold onto his human face, much less his human qualms.

Get away from me! Back off! But Joe waited, furious. Patient. Patient like a shark, waiting for something to bleed.

You don’t know what you’re doing to me! And you can’t know. We found out with Hitler what happens when the government knows too much about us. Brian took the shallowest breath he could and looked deliberately at one big fist, then the other. He took his time focusing again on Joe’s silver-blue, angry eyes. “Kinnn-ky.” Sparks flashed, and a white line edged those lips, but Joe didn’t back off. “How did you know Nevada was in that truck?”

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The story. Remember the story. “I knew someone was, Joe. That’s all. I smelled something dead -- rotten -- but something else in there moved, made bumping sounds.” “You can do better than that, Gardner. You said ‘her.’ How did you know?”

Keep it simple. Never hang too many details on a lie. “Pure guess, Lieutenant. Half the world is female and if you get to be a hero for rescuing someone, why not for rescuing a pretty woman? Or any woman…old lady…little girl.” “Too late. You said a pretty woman. They don’t come any prettier than Nevada Wells.” “Is that a crime?” “Conspiracy is.” No answer to that. Anything he said would come back on him. Especially since Joe was an insider, an old-time local, and he hadn’t been here a week. The Irishman had been here a long time too, generations maybe. A huntsman knew better than to take sides when natural allies have a temporary falling out. He looked away, trying to take a deep breath that wasn’t Joe. Failing.

Don’t play with your food, Jinx, and don’t let it play with you. Don’t put your heart out there to get broken. He looked back at Joe. “I’m not in on any conspiracy. I haven’t been here long enough to get in on any conspiracy.” Joe’s voice came heavy, iron weight to every word. “What were you doing on the wrong side of the street, heading toward the police station?” “Maybe I was trying to get to the police station.” Joe’s fists dented the bedding a little more. “Maybe you were. Maybe you were pacing, trying to decide whether to tell anyone about that truck. You parked the pickup, walked past the truck, went down a side road, came back singing cheerfully. Like you were making a point of having been down that road instead of where you were supposed to be while on duty. You went to stand on the front steps of the police station with a pair of senior police officers. You gave them a message that sounds a hell of a lot like something in code. You didn’t suggest they check out the truck. Instead, you ran away. Then you crossed the street away from your duty station. Then you headed back toward the police station. Is all of that correct?” “Oh, yeah.” “Then explain this so it makes sense.”

How long can I hold my breath? Not longer than Joe could wait. Not that he would believe anything I say against his bred-here/born-here/raised-here buddies. His brothers. “Do you know who drove that truck?” Joe’s voice went precise. “Two Caucasian males, physically agile, who know how to kick out the windshield of a wrecked truck, know how to make speed on foot through

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swampland and thick scrub, and know how to disappear before the dogs arrive. Who are they?” “The answer, Lieutenant, is behind door number one. Do you have the balls to open that door?” Joe recoiled as if slapped. He paced, and the hunger ached for any taste of the fury roiling off his skin. Finally, he whipped out a cell phone and punched three buttons. “Tell Deuce I need a favor.”

Deuce? As in the Double Deuce? The answer was a buzz, but a brief one. Joe shot him a burning glance, and turned his back. “Hang up and wait for a text message.” The message took a while, and when Joe was done he snapped the phone shut and settled into one of those military waiting positions, feet apart and hands behind his back. He looked like he could stand there for hours. Brian watched him, watched whatever they’d had between them weighed, tested, and found to be less valuable than an old-timer’s loyalty to other old timers. And the hunger didn’t care. The hunger just wanted to feed.

***** Emotional numbness had set in by the time the skipper returned with a bulging WalMart bag. A woman in flower-print scrubs followed him. She wore a stethoscope like a necklace and carried a file folder. She gave all three of them curious looks. “Good afternoon, Mr. Gardner. I’m Dr. Grant. Are these gentlemen members of your immediate family?” Brian smiled at her, and put all his powers of seduction into it. “No, ma’am.” She smiled back, warmly. “Then they need to leave. If you’re moved to a room, they can visit with you there.” “Sorry ma’am,” Joe rumbled. “He’s under protective custody.” Her manner chilled. She turned to Joe. “ID?” He pulled his wallet and flipped it open for her. She studied it, and frowned at Brian. “Hospital security has not been put on alert. Y’all should have said something.” The hunger strained along his nerves. “Ma’am, haven’t you done all the X-rays and other tests?” She flipped open his chart and ran her eyes down the page, clicking a pen repetitively. “We’ve done quite a few. Do you recall what happened to you?”

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“Quite clearly. I had a fight with a truck and the truck won. Am I considered a danger to myself or others, or can I get a pair of crutches and leave? With my police escort, of course.” He threw Joe a challenge, but Joe stood like an oak tree. The woman tapped her pen on the countertop. “The scans and the blood screens didn’t show anything, but you were out quite a long time. We’d like a specialist to come talk to you before we let you go.” “Self-hypnosis, ma’am. I wasn’t knocked unconscious and I wasn’t on any kind of medication. I just put myself under.” She blinked, and looked at him with a more alert expression. “Were you under hypnosis when you walked in front of that truck?” “No, ma’am.” “Then why did you do it?” “My mind was elsewhere, I guess.” “Do you actually remember being hit?” “Yes, ma’am. I tried to get past the thing -- it wasn’t going fast at all -- and I thought I’d made it. But something on the door or the side or something caught my pocket. I yanked loose and fell to the road. That’s when the rear tire went over my leg. I only hit my head when I fell to the road.” “Where does the hypnosis come in?” “When I figured out how much my leg was about to start hurting. I haven’t done well with narcotic or other big-guns analgesics since I was a kid, so my folks had me learn the self-hypnosis.” He smiled again, trying to recapture the warmth Joe had cost him. She made a note, then flipped through the handful of pages in the folder. “We haven’t ever seen you before. Who filled out the medical history here?” “I did.” The skipper grinned, all shucks-ma’am down-home good ole boy. “I’m his chief. My secretary went into his personnel file and told me how to answer everything.” “Chief?” She frowned again. “Are y’all policemen, too? Police officers, I mean. Scratch that. I see it here. Paramedic.” She fitted the stethoscope to her ears. “Do you need help sitting up, Mr. Gardner?” Joe twitched, and pulled out his phone. The doctor spun, and stabbed a finger at the phone. “Off! Or out! Your choice, but do it now.” He pocketed it and nodded to the skipper. “I’ll be outside a minute.” Joe stepped out through the curtain, raising the phone surreptitiously to his ear. Brian paid little attention to the clamp the woman fitted to his finger, or the chill of the stethoscope, straining instead to follow Joe’s voice. But he couldn’t pick out more than an

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occasional “yep” with all the other muttering out there. And with the doctor’s oversoaped but still quite female scent oozing all around him. A moment later, the doctor left. Joe returned, and jerked a thumb at the blade-thin man behind him. “Your private duty nurse is here.” “I’m Cassio,” the thin man said, eyes flicking over Brian like he could see through the loosely woven hospital blanket, the white sheet under it, and Brian’s skin as well. “You can call me Deuce.”

I’d call you Death, if I had to choose a name. He was lean and dark, and the single most lethal-looking individual Brian had ever seen. Good thing I’m not still hooked to the pulse and blood pressure monitor. The skipper’s smile had gone stale. “Afternoon, Deuce. Last I heard, you did security and titty clubs. Or a titty club. When did you go to nursing school?” Deuce took his penetrating gaze off Brian. “Afternoon, Jonah. How’s the wife these days?” The skipper pulled at one ear and grinned sideways, his blue eyes slanting up at Joe. “Busy as always. Right now, she’s conniving with our granddaughter to get Joe here to buy a pony.” Brian closed his eyes, then opened them before he could miss any of the byplay. “Our granddaughter?” “Kellie.” Deuce opened his wallet to a school picture of a blonde girl with Joe’s heavy eyebrows and a stubborn set to her chin. “Your skipper’s granddaughter is also my granddaughter. Joe says you’ve taken over the boys’ room at the old home place. He didn’t tell you how we all connect up together?” “We weren’t exactly exchanging family histories,” Brian muttered. He risked a glance at Joe, who stood like a statue. A violently red-eared statue. So I guess I’m exiled back to the kiddy floor? Fucking A. Joe turned on his heel and left. Anyone else would be stomping. Joe glided like a huntsman. The green curtain swung in behind him, making more noise than he did.

He leaves a hell of a vacuum when he goes. The skipper gave Brian a troubled look, uncomfortably close to his mother’s worried expression, but said something vaguely cheerful and followed Joe. “Have you really been here since you left the club last night?” His attention snapped back to the narrow man. Fucking A. How could I have forgotten you were here? “Yeah.” “What have you had to eat since then?”

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He blinked, and his stomach gurgled loudly in answer. “Nothing, I guess. Think these people will let us sneak out for a bite? And maybe not come back?” Deuce watched him. “You walk out of an ER without permission, they call it Against Medical Advice and your insurance company refuses to pay all the bills you racked up, just by breathing the air in here. Much less the bills for whatever tests you’ve had. He said you were unconscious?” “No. I put myself in a trance. Fucking A, it’s something I do, okay? I’m just not real good at figuring out when to come out of it.” “No prob. You’re out of it now.” He picked at the blanket, more put off balance than calmed by that statement. Are you

humoring me? Never mind. You might be useful anyway, even if the Bad Cops don’t come after me. “You’re my private duty nurse. Can’t you medically advise me I can go?” “Nope. I should have told Joe to grab some eats before he left.” “Do you really have a nursing license that would be endangered if I stole your identity for a minute?” Deuce’s face twitched. “Amusing me is in your best interest. Pissing me off is not.” “Then I hope you are amused. What time is it?” “One forty-six.” Brian hit the call button. When an answer came through the speaker, he said, in a deep, slow voice sort of like Deuce’s, “This is Brian Gardner’s private duty nurse. Mr. Gardner has been a guest of your establishment during both the breakfast and the lunch hour. He hasn’t eaten since last night. When do you plan to feed him?” “Our policy does not include providing meals to patients until they have been admitted to a room. You are welcome to go get a plate at the cafeteria. The lines shouldn’t be too long at this hour.” “Going to the cafeteria would require leaving my patient entirely unattended, which I cannot do.” “That’s your option, sir. Your choice.” “Why don’t you send your liability officer down here to talk to us about that policy, and about holding someone prisoner in an enclosed nook, supposedly for observation but not actually being observed by anyone who works here, where he cannot get nourishment to stabilize his blood sugar, for an undetermined number of hours? And why don’t you suggest he stop by the cafeteria on his way, so he can bring down a double cheeseburger, a pound or so of hot fries, and a chocolate malt?” “I’ll tell the charge nurse you called, and relay your concerns.” “I’ll need your name and the name of the charge nurse. I mark the time as 1:46 p.m. Do you concur with that time?”

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No answer. Deuce grinned, Joe’s scary grin. Brian grinned back. His face hurt, but not enough to stop the grin. “I forgot to mention you are being recorded, ma’am. Your name, please?” “The charge nurse will see you shortly, sir.” “Time mark 1:47 by my watch.” He wasn’t wearing a watch. Where’s my watch? My

wallet and all? He set aside the button on its cord and hauled himself painfully to a sitting position. His leg hurt like all fuck, but really no more than he’d expected. The pain in his head had faded enough he could ignore it. His belongings were in a quart-sized ziplock bag on the shelf directly over his head. And now that he was sitting up, he had to pee. As in absolutely had to, right now. “You see anything around I can pee in, Deuce, or should I shoot a fountain and hope it lands in the sink?” Deuce poked around in a cupboard and pulled out a rectangular urinal bottle. “Since you can sit up, use this. Saves a little more of your dignity than a fracture pan, and I don’t see one of those anyway. You need me to stabilize you?” “I don’t think so, but you’re welcome to stand close in case I’m wrong.” Good thing I’m not shy. He pushed blankets and hospital gown both out of the way, and saw a faint stir of interest in Deuce’s eyes. Shyness hit, full force. The mind/dick switch flipped and -- nada. Here he was ready to burst and not a drop would come out. “Fucking A.” “Pretend you’re on a road trip and this is a Co-Cola bottle.” He shook his head -- once only, because it hurt. “I don’t believe this. I am not pee-shy!” Deuce reached over languidly and turned on the faucet in the little sink. And there it came, practically foaming. Deuce lifted the bottle to the light and made notes on the chart before emptying the bottle. “I won’t bother rinsing it, since they’ll just throw it away. Are you dizzy or anything?” “Nah. If you’re writing in the chart, why don’t you note down you asked for food for me at 1:46 and were told the charge nurse would be here shortly?” “Wanna bet they’ll ignore the call?” Brian shook his head, and this time it didn’t hurt. Much. “Are you fool enough to bet they’ll answer?” “Nope.” Deuce grinned again. “I could get to like you, kid.” “That beats the alternative. Would you please hand me my clothes?”

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Getting the boxers and the khaki shorts on took Deuce’s help, but he behaved like a gentleman, keeping his eyes and his hands where they belonged, or at least off anywhere they didn’t belong. Once dressed, Brian lay back and breathed a minute, trying various leg-muscle exercises in a vain search for one that didn’t hurt. Deuce produced a deck of cards from a pocket. “Play?” Cards wasn’t a Game Boy, but it beat staring at the curtain. The exercises could wait. “Sure.” “Let me see how far that bed adjusts. Knees up and back up should be your most comfortable position.” He might not be a nurse, but that position cut the pain level by more than half. At 2:15 and 2:45 they called for food again, making a notation each time. At 2:55, a harried-looking young man stuck his head through the curtain, said “oops!” and left. Deuce noted that. At 3:15 and 3:45, they called for food again. A different voice answered at 3:45, but (apart from giving her name) she said the same things. At 4:02 a nurse came in, looked at the chart, and yelled at Deuce in some liquid and Latin kind of language that was not Spanish. She hit the call button and yelled at the person who answered. Then she yelled at Deuce.

Is that Portuguese? A mixed group of nurses, aides, and uniformed security guards charged through curtain. Like cockroaches swarming out of a dropped box. They cupped Deuce against wall of cabinets. They think he threatened the lady? Well, yeah. Threatened her or something to me that she had a right to protest. She was still yammering, and waving arms despite the crowd.

the the

did her

The other nurses each gave Brian in his hospital bed a glancing appraisal, and found him no threat. He was right where he ought to be. He gave a lopsided aw-shucks Skippersmile to the only one who gave him a second glance. Deuce showed the palms of his hands, ducked his head, rounded his shoulders, and projected an incongruously harmless image. He handled people just like Pop did, directing their attention away from himself while subtly influencing them with the angles of his head and hands. Pop always said individuals could be unpredictable, but put people in groups and -- for good or ill -- their reactions standardize. When asked for his ID, Deuce made a jerky shoulder movement; as if pushed, and a security man stepped backward and jostled the bed. Brian yelped. The movement hadn’t hurt, but it could have, and the pain-cry divided the interests of the people who had come in. Security faced off against nurses, with the aides backing out of it.

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Deuce pulled an ID of some sort and held it at nose level, his thumb obscuring a good chunk of it. When a nurse reached for it, Deuce smoothly pocketed it and made as if to reach for the chart. The nurse who had been reaching for the ID instead took the chart from the Portuguese-or-whatever nurse, and read it. Her eyebrows went up. She gestured to the other staff to follow her and strode out. At 4:10, after hastily signing and initialing a clipboard full of unread papers, Brian was hustled from the bed to a wheelchair, and wheeled out into the muggy afternoon air. Well, that was effective. Once someone noticed. He looked across the street at the high-rise hotel, then squinted up at Deuce. “I really do not want to go there.” “We’ll get some room-service food in you and then discuss the options. For right now, hold here two minutes. Don’t sign that last form until I get back with the van.” The wheelchair aide grinned. “Too late. Y’all already signed the last line. I’m just here to take the chair back in and certify that any fall-down-go-boom you might do happened off hospital property.” Deuce pulled up in a lot less than two minutes, and lifted him handily from wheelchair to front seat. The van was suffocating-hot, the seat scorching through his new shorts and thin Tshirt. The crutch was handed up to him. It was aluminum, ugly. He’d asked for a cane instead, but this was what he’d got. The wheelchair guy plopped himself in the chair and did a wheelie on the way back inside. Brian turned to Deuce as the driver’s door shut. “I’m serious. No hotel.” “Joe expects to find you there when he comes looking.” “My heart breaks for Joe. I hear that right across the county line a guy can find the best strip club around. I bet on the way there we’d pass at least one burger joint. You got any cash we can spend now, then later charge to the department?” Deuce slid into traffic. “About the club. Are you legal?” “For sex, yes. Not that I’m in any shape to enjoy it. For booze, no.” “No mix of sex and booze in Hillsborough. Not at clubs anyway.” “Oh, yeah? So what goes on in the back room, Deuce?” “Wholesome stuff. Private snogging parties. MILF milking. No booze. Booze tends to make the customers difficult. No smoke. If you don’t want this hotel, is there some other hotel you’d rather hole up in?” “Isn’t holing up far from where I’m supposed to be safer than holing up in a place too close to where people expect I can be found?”

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Deuce asked, softly, “Who do you think knows where to find you?”

Okay, that’s what Death looks like. He kept his voice level, though. “Besides the wheelchair guy and whoever he tells? Joe. You. The skipper. And whoever might have been listening in when Joe mentioned it. A curtain doesn’t stop noise.” “I was about to get pissed, but you’re right. Joe shouldn’t have mentioned it. He should have written it down on a scrap of paper and then pocketed the paper.” “Nah.” He tried propping his sore leg on the crutch. Better. “He should have eaten it, so that anyone who really wanted to see the message would have to slit his belly open and hope he hadn’t chewed good -- and that the stomach acids hadn’t completely smeared the ink.” Deuce looked at him blankly. Then U-turned across the traffic, despite several blasting horns, and headed west into the blazing sunlight.

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Chapter Eleven They found a barbecue place serving the good, greasy kind that makes a man sweat the smell of smoked beast all the next day no matter how many sweet potatoes he also crammed down. Then, after stopping at a drugstore for disposable earplugs, they spent an hour and a half lolling in the unexpectedly luxurious seats of an overchilled dollar theatre. The audience was perfect. Thin enough to have several empty seats between each cluster of people. Loose enough to talk comfortably. Tight enough nobody was throwing popcorn at the screen. They traded comments on the fight choreography, the marksmanship and pyrotechnics, the most likely degree of paralysis Bruce Willis would suffer from an impact like that, and how long he would spend in therapy to put his shoulder or his knee back together. Popcorn, nachos, oversalted hot dogs, and orange-based cleanser seeped into Brian’s skin. The explosions and crashes vibrated everything from his seat to his teeth, but didn’t stab at his ears. Earplugs. I’ll have to remember that trick for the next concert, so I can get right near the speakers. When the movie ended, Deuce led the way outside to the hot parking lot, walking in the long blue shadows as much as possible. The dusk would linger a couple more hours, but early fireworks popped and crackled on the horizon. Deuce hustled him to the van, more intent and focused than he had appeared earlier. Brian hurried willingly, as much as the unfamiliarity of using a crutch let him, but when he saw a hand coming for his free arm, he twitched out of reach. I’m not your kid and

I’m not your prisoner and I’m not your bitch! Well, the “not your prisoner” bit is arguable. But I don’t need leading. “Do we have a timeline, man?”

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Deuce yanked open the van door for him. “Fireworks start at ten. Parking lot fills up between eight and nine. I want you inside before the lot fills up.”

Okay. He eyed the height of the seat. I can do this. Lift, curl, swing, and drop. Simple. He put his crutch inside, grabbed the frame, and hoisted himself neatly in. Ta-dah! Deuce shut the door for him and went around. Brian grinned at him. “You going to stick me in the bunker with the twins, or let me see the MILF show?” “Damn! I promised the twins a new game. Can you help me pick one without taking all night to do it?” “New, hot, and a first-person shooter, right? Do you know what they already have?” “I got a list.” Deuce fished a folded sheet of notebook paper from his shirt pocket and handed it over. As Brian took it, Deuce swerved sharply through a gap in the oleanders lining the road. Brian braced on the door and dash, and kept his bad leg loose over top of the crutch. A strip mall. Okay. Deuce parked in the fire lane.

That’s incentive to hurry. Brian unfolded the paper and looked down the list. Xbox. Okay. “Hold still. I’ll help you down from the seat.” Brian paused with the door open, catching a little breeze. Deuce lifted him bodily -Not an approved ergonomic lifting technique! -- and propped him against the side of the van. Brian flourished the crutch and led the way into the little store. The first package on the first shelf was the sequel to the second title on the list. Again, ta-dah! “Shopping’s over. Did that take too long?” Deuce grinned and peeled a fifty-dollar bill off a wad of them. The clerk looked at the bill but didn’t take it. “You need another three bucks for tax, sir.” Deuce stared dumbfounded at the green numerals on the register, and then dug a crumpled five from another pocket. “No wonder their mom doesn’t tell me what these things cost!” Brian grinned. “The rising price of raising boys. Shall we hobble along?” “Yes. Let’s.” Deuce walked long-legged back to the van. The club’s parking lot was about half-full when they arrived. Deuce circled it once and cross-quartered the circle, his lips moving.

I bet you aren’t praying. “Good crowd?” “For cover charge, yes. For sales, pretty good. For tips, it might suck. We figured tonight would be either elbows and asses or absolutely dead, though, so this is good.”

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“They may clear out in another hour or so, when it gets really dark.” “That’s what I meant by suckage for the tips. But if it rains, we’re swimming in money tonight.” “How much you charge the girls to dance?” “Fifty bucks for each 20-minute set on the front stage. Thirty bucks for the side stage. Two hundred for the back room, four-hour limit. Second girl in a pair pays twenty per set. Anyone who works at least three sets but falls short of a three-hundred-dollar take gets refunded, but three refunds in a year and she don’t come back.” “Does a night like this, when you expect suckage, count against the three?” “Sure. If they don’t want to get banned, they don’t have to ask for the third refund. Hell, they don’t have to dance. I turn away girls every night.” He unlocked a side door. Music vibrated the wall to the left, while the afternoon heat radiated from the wall to the right. Deuce hurried to a staircase and stopped, half-turning to look back at Brian. Brian hung back. That staircase looked steep. “Don’t you have an elevator?” “Damn. Yes, but we’ll have to cut through the business area.” He whipped out his phone. “Sugar, I’m in the back hall with Joe’s guy. Would you please bring that green office chair with the wheels? He’s not too steady on his crutch.”

Joe’s guy. I am not imagining that. Am I? “Joe’s guy?” “Aren’t you? The way you stare at him?” “I don’t stare!” Do I? “He doesn’t stare at you better than you don’t stare at him. But his voice changes when he talks about you.” Brian swallowed. “How often does he talk about people he sets you to guard?” “He doesn’t set me to guard people. It doesn’t happen. I’d expect him to walk naked down Main Street before he’d ask my help on anything. That’s why I dropped everything when he called.”

Joe’s guy. The hallway tilted sideways just a little. Instantly, Deuce caught his elbow. Brian shook him off and stood, propping himself between the crutch and the wall. Solo.

Bareback. Jinx. Grow up bareback and you learn to stand up by yourself. You learn that whoever’s talking to you might have his own agenda, and you might not know all the ends he’s trying to achieve. Even if he’s straightforward, he might not be as perceptive as he thinks he is. Stand back. Observe and judge, and don’t lean on nobody. Deuce hooked his thumbs in his belt and watched him. Brian leaned on the wall, carefully. Even if you do have reason to think Joe and I are…together. What does Joe having a guy mean to you? “It doesn’t bother you?”

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“What, that you might screw his career in that tight-assed pre-seventies slum of an overgrown Hooterville? That you might screw him over emotionally? Or financially? That he could lose custody of Kellie over you? Fuck yes -- all of that bothers me. Y’all will have to be a lot more careful in front of the crackers. Come through here and sit a minute until the chair arrives. That chair over there, with your back to the lap-dance line. Then you get to convince his mother of your honorable intentions.”

Fucking A.

***** Juggling. Joe looked around the packed squad room. In my life, juggling means keeping the flow going when sixty-five on-duty officers -- damned near the entire roster plus most of the auxiliary -- have to share thirty-seven desks. Wouldn’t be a problem if a third of the desks weren’t “private” and if the arrests didn’t come in waves. At the moment, he could throw a dart and hit one woman screaming that she was in labor, another screamer who was sure her arms were broken, one who didn’t speak English, or either of the two who were frantic to be released so they could go check on their children. Or he might hit one of the sobbers. And that was just the women. Dusty shot him a pleading look and waved an empty tissue box. Joe brought him a new one. A noisily weeping woman ripped the box in half and muffled her face in a wad of tissue. Joe stood by her, and caught the wad as she made to throw it away. Sure enough, she’d spat half a dozen tiny white tablets into it. Looked like hydrocodone. He set the tissue and pills on Dusty’s desk. “Remember, I’ll have to sign off on your evidence report.” “That shit’s not mine!” the woman screamed. “You planted that!” He caught her hands, which Dusty ought to have cuffed behind her. “Tell it to the judge, ma’am. First appearance is at 9:00 tomorrow in the a.m.” She lunged face-first at the tissue, scattering the pills and snarfing down one after the other, chasing them as they skittered across the desk, leaving wet patches on the desktop. Dusty put his hands in the way, and was bitten. He howled. “E-nough.” Joe locked an arm about her neck, and wrestled her back into her chair. He held one of her hands straight out. She flailed with her other hand until Larry grabbed it. Joe saw something crawl in her hair. Shitfuckpissdamn! Not head lice again! Oh -- just a flea. Fleas they could deal with. “Dusty, go get your fingie-poo disinfected. Larry, cuff this lady and get her to the stomach pump.” The stomach pump might save her from alcohol poisoning. Or might not. At least it would save her from the hydrocodone.

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Larry looked dubiously at the struggling woman. Oh. He was still on light duty from that alligator bite. Joe positioned one wrist and then the other, despite the wailing woman’s attempts to throw herself to the floor, so Larry could get the zip-ties around each wrist and link them together. About time for that light duty note to expire, wasn’t it? Note: check Larry’s release date. Larry tested the bonds, and nodded. “I got her from here. Thanks, LT.” Joe stepped back to his own desk for a report form and a camera. Shot number one, suspect being taken for medical treatment, drooling and struggling. Shot two, saliva-soaked tissue with one of the pills partially tucked under it. Shot three, suspect biting into Larry’s uniform and the bullet vest under it. Joe called Larry to a halt and went for a close-up of the woman and the wet mouth mark above Larry’s badge. Note: Ask sometime whether she left tooth prints in the vest. She spit at him, which made shot four. Back at Dusty’s desk, he took shot five, two other fistfuls of tissue in Dusty’s wastebasket, each of which -- when lifted -- shed a rattling load of pills: shots seven through ten. He packaged everything separately, with a note to DNA-test the fluids from the wastebasket tissue against the sample on the desktop tissue, and photographed each package. The pills from the can probably couldn’t be used at trial, but having them might make the plea bargain more interesting. If nothing else, all these pills in the can should make Dusty more careful, before someone really vicious killed his ass. Speaking of which -Joe took the camera to the aid station for a few shots of Dusty’s tooth-dented ring finger. Three years’ minimum sentence right there, lady. You’d have gotten out sooner with all those pills. As usual, the men who’d been arrested outnumbered the women four-to-one, but made less noise. Except in the men’s room, where the vomiting noises could drown out a herd of sea lions in rut. The squad room itself smelled like a toilet in a bar. Joe took a can of aerosol air freshener away from TJ. Dusty had said he would file an action next time he was forced to sit here and smell flowery-air crap. TJ had offered to help him look up the word crap in a dictionary, and they’d almost come to blows. Wasn’t going to recur tonight. Tonight, even if the Dies remained quiet, the blues had real problems to worry about. A little old lady had been standing on the corner of Feldman and Main, exclaiming her love for the bystanders and occasionally speaking in tongues. No one had minded. This was still the South enough for amusingly tipsy little old ladies to be given plenty of leeway. But then two young men, less amusingly drunk, had plowed over her in a lowrider. The crowd had pulled the young men out of their vehicle and beaten them half to death. Two officers had been slightly injured during the rescue of the young men.

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Before that settled out, a drag-racer on East Tropic Road had spun out and crashed an antique GTO through the window of a thrift store, the place where the old soda fountain used to be. The fifteen-year-old driver hadn’t worn a seat belt and hadn’t stopped at the windshield.

Next time, kid, get a car younger than you are. There’s a reason they put airbags in cars these days. Not that this kid was likely to ever get another chance. Joe breathed a prayer of thanks he hadn’t been on the scene at that window. And another because his brothers were locked away somewhere safe. And a third because Brian was safe in Lakeland. Bunny danced in a big woolly-bugger who was singing, falsetto, “Oops! I did it again!” “The camera room open, LT?” “Yep,” he said. “Keep it brief. I’ll run the monitor for you.” I need to have a stamp made: Alcohol Was Involved.

***** At shift’s end Joe stepped out into the drizzling rain and yawned hard enough to crack both shoulders and about six vertebrae. The hum in his ears died away.

I can go to Lakeland, to Brian. It’s the wee hours of the night to normal people but even if I could just watch him sleep. Or I can go home for what’s left of the night, not follow Brian around like a high schooler with his first taste of pussy. Like I’m really going to get any sleep until I see him. What are you hiding, Brian? If you’re even in contact with the Dies, you’re in too deep. Then he saw his mother’s van.

Shitfuck. He strode to it, and remembered to stop out of arm’s reach like he told the kids to. “Hello the van.” “Hello yourself.” He spun to locate the voice. A man’s shape materialized from the shadows to his left.

Don’t do that to my nerves! “What’s up, Deuce?” “He’s here, safe. Want a ride home, wanna drive the van while I take your truck, or you want to follow me?”

He’s here meant in the van, then. Out of sight. “I’ll take the van.” Tiredness settled on his shoulders. “Thanks. You have the key?” “I got the truck key. Van’s key is in the ignition. Don’t wreck it. I’m not sure about the insurance.” “Shit, Deuce!”

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The man chuckled, and faded into the shadows again. Joe opened the van, not surprised to see the interior lights had been disabled, and flicked his flashlight over the bed in the back. Brian lay on the bed, arm crooked over his eyes, both legs elevated on a pile of sleeping bags. No seatbelt. His right foot was swollen, and a metal crutch lay on the floor. He snored lightly as a cat, his chest rising and falling slowly. His sensuous lips pursed and then parted, like he was tongue-kissing in his dreams. Low Joe wanted to kiss back. Or something. Bri twitched awake, opened his dark eyes, and smiled. “Hey, Joe.” The phone rang. Shitfuckpissdamn! He checked the screen. Roy. Don’t smash the phone. Roy wouldn’t call without a reason. Not at this hour. He hauled himself into the captain’s chair at the wheel and cranked the engine. “Roy?” “Nope -- Summer. Hey, Joe? That idiot sister of mine insists she’s filming today! Can you stop her, or arrest her, or give her an armed escort, or something?” He sighed, and rested his head on the door. A lone car drove by. He followed it out onto the road. “Let me get an escort together. Someone might try snatching her again, if we don’t. But don’t count on armed. Not in somebody else’s jurisdiction. Where are you and where is she right now?” “At the skipper’s place. We were on your laundry porch, waiting for you, but he walked over and said that wasn’t real safe, so we’re here. Can you come, please?” “You have to,” Brian murmured. “Be there in fifteen or fewer.” He looked at the mostly empty lot. “Damn. I can’t use guns outside of my jurisdiction. I need live muscle.” Brian yawned. “You can’t rely on cops, Joe. You have to rely on people you really know.” Joe fought the urge to turn, because if he did, he might jump on the kid and thump him. “Cops are the people I really know.” “Who do you know better than you know your own brothers?” He looked up the road, toward Wentworth Place. “You mean counting only people who can handle themselves in a fight? That’s a short list.” Only two of those people were female, could follow Nevada all the places a female would go. One of those females had three very small daughters of her own. He called the other. “Natalie?” Sleep made Nat’s precise voice almost Southern. “Joe? Are you in trouble?” “Nevada Wells is being stupid. Needs an escort. A lady, to go with her even on head calls.”

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Nat laughed. “This is the Nevada Wells who used a Cold War-era bicycle generator and radio frequencies to broadcast after the last hurricane. You expected a little thing like being kidnapped to keep her off the air? Silly man. Where and when should we meet up?” He felt his eyes cross, but he held his temper. “Skipper’s house, ASAP.” Nat made a tch! noise. “Certainly, I’ll come. I’ll even bring TJ.” She hung up, leaving him staring puzzled at the phone. TJ lived way the hell out toward Bartow. He put that line of thinking aside. Deuce would have pulled off the road someplace by now, waiting for him to catch up and pass. He called Deuce. “Could I keep your van for the night? I may need to transport a group.” “Sure. I’ll turn around and head home.” Damned if Deuce didn’t sound amused. Joe slid the phone back into its holster. Just about time to put it on the charger. Brian’s voice floated in the darkness. “You want to go for fierce, you could have volunteered your mother. Except she’s busy playing mother-bear protector for the twins.” “I guess you met her?” “I made her cry.” He ran two tires off the road, jarring the van over oyster shell so Brian’s crutch rattled on the floor. He clenched both fists on the wheel and corrected his course with utmost concentration. “How did you do that?” “She asked me if I’d tried girls before I decided I like guys. I said I like girls just fine. Until now, better than guys. I was brought up hearing it didn’t matter what the wrapper looks like. What matters whether what’s inside makes you glow. I was also taught not to compare people to each other. But from now on, anyone who catches my attention is going to get compared to you. I didn’t have to say nobody would measure up. She knew. That’s when she cried.” His vision blurred, and he couldn’t breathe right. “I don’t know what to say.” Bri shifted his legs, hissed, and shifted again. “Then don’t say anything, Joe. I’m not hinting it’s your turn to say something with ‘forever’ in it. Right now, it’s good between us. ‘Right now’ is good enough to go with.” He nodded. Right now. Who really has more than that?

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Chapter Twelve Joe looked around the skipper’s hurricane room, sniffing his coffee and waiting for it to cool enough to drink. Summer was blow-drying Nevada’s hair, muttering about how it was ruined, ruined. She insisted Nevada couldn’t be seen in public until a pro had a chance to look at it. Nevada rolled her eyes and smiled, and said little. She looked twenty years older than she ought to, and the studio lights would make her bruises, chapped lips, and swollen face look even worse. But knowing Nevada Wells, she’d leverage that into another career break. Talk shows in Miami at the very least. Roy, Nat, and TJ were marking a map with Red Diamond activity, arguing about whether this or that reflected a pattern or coincidence. Nat and TJ stood together, their elbows touching, following one another’s movements. He just couldn’t wrap his head around TJ and Nat as a couple. But here they were. Brian dozed on the cool tile floor. Probably showing as much sense as the rest of them put together. The skipper looked haggard, his eyes moving from Nevada to Brian to the map in endless triangles. Finally he looked at Joe. Joe tilted his head, glancing at the door and back at the skipper. The skipper closed his eyes and nodded. Joe took a trial sip of his coffee. Strong enough to strip paint, but I’ll need the caffeine. He casually took it to the hall. Skipper’s office had always been the first right past the head. Still was. He studied the wall of photos. Himself as a boy -- he showed up as often on that wall as the skipper’s daughter. The pictures showed most of the boys he’d grown up with, and a few scattered girls, with the skipper teaching them to tie knots, clean fish, read maps, strip down and tune up bikes, lawn mowers, boat motors. Photos in silver frames showed

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Kellie and her mother on matching white ponies. Showed the skipper, beaming, with Kellie burrito-wrapped in the crook of his arm. Showed the skipper dancing a jig with Kellie on his shoulders, her mother watching anxiously in their shadow. Joe frowned. He had a copy of that one. He saw it almost every day. And never once had noticed his wife was in it. You were right, honey. I didn’t marry you at all. I married the skipper’s daughter. He traced the silver frame with one finger. But we had some good times,

didn’t we? And we got Kellie out of it. How much else is going on right in front of me that I haven’t been seeing? The skipper came in like he was a hundred years old, and went straight to the whiskey cabinet. Joe took a breath. He had to accuse the old man directly enough to strike a spark, if his suspicions had any substance. At the same time, he had to be indirect enough to back off if needed. They had too much history to throw away if he was wrong. “Things have been out of hand for a while now, haven’t they, sir? The victims aren’t strangers anymore. They aren’t scum like they all were at the start.” The skipper sighed and opened his Black Label bottle. “Want some?” “No, thank you. I’ll be driving, and I’m already tired.” The skipper poured a shot glass, and tossed it back. “It’s gone crazy. ’Vada’s a local girl. Erika taught her and Summer's dance classes when they were little bitty things. Your brothers were born here. They’re a little wild, but they’re not scum. That boy who went around dressed as a whore was a lost soul, but he was our lost soul. He wasn’t scum.” “No, he wasn’t scum.” And it was your first wife, not Miss Erika, who gave dance lessons. How much whiskey had the skipper already sucked down? “How long have you known they were going after twins?” “Twins? Besides ’Vada and your brothers? Are you saying some of the others were twins?” “Most of them.” He took a gulp of the coffee. “Twins…” The skipper paced. “I didn’t know about that.” “What did you know, Skipper?” “I know the Diamonds started out dealing with the scum the courts kept releasing. They were vigilantes. We needed vigilantes with all these outsiders coming in, bringing their crack and their ice and their softheaded liberal judges.” The heat in the old man’s voice said it all. He was in up to his neck. Feed him back his words, and invite him to take it further. “More people bring more crime, worse crime. We’ve been flooded with new people and new crimes. What else do I need to know about the Dies, sir?” “We knew there was a risk of the wilder elements going a little overboard, but we had enough solid people to keep them from going too far.”

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“But they’ve gone too far anyway.” The skipper ran fingers through his wild white hair. “I wanted Kellie safe. I wanted all the kids safe. These outsiders have taken over!” “I understand,” Joe said softly. “You had to do something. But the Dies are going after locals now. I need to know how to stop them.” The skipper rubbed both hands over his weathered face. “Don’t trust nobody who isn’t here tonight. Nobody.” “How about everyone who is here tonight? How deep in is Brian Gardner?” “I don’t know anything about the boy being in at all. He isn’t local, so he shouldn’t be. As fast as things are changing, though, who knows?” “Things are changing fast,” he agreed. You have to prove your purity as a local to join? But with Nevada and Summer being counted as local, the lines were pretty inclusively drawn, weren’t they? He vividly remembered the day the girls had came to town. He’d been thirteen, riding home from Scouts with the skipper and with Roy, who was staying with the skipper while his folks worked overseas. They’d turned a corner and seen a pair of tiny beauty queens, perfect mirror images, perched atop a pile of luggage while their father tried to change a tire on a dilapidated station wagon. The skipper taught him and Roy how to change a tire, and he bullied the twins’ father to get a real job. “Skipper, what you know today might be outdated tomorrow. What you tell me now I can use now.” “Let me get some things straightened out. Then I’ll tell you.” Joe watched him carefully. “Does that mean I can trust you?” The old man looked stricken. “You can trust me.” His voice quavered. “Always. I haven’t made the smartest decisions, but I would never backstab a friend.” “I can’t imagine you backstabbing a friend. But then who do I need to watch out for?” Was it time to play the jealousy card? “Does Captain Maynard know anything useful?” The skipper made a face, and pulled at a fistful of his wild white hair. “Don’t trust anyone who isn’t here tonight.”

Shitfuck, I played the wrong card. Now I don’t know if Maynard’s in on it or if the skipper doesn’t want me turning to him for information. Maybe a different card? He set down his coffee cup with a thunk. “That’s too wide an array of suspects, Skipper! It’s like not knowing anything at all. What if they try to take ’Vada again? Or Summer this time?” “Be careful, Joe-Boy. You’re smart. You’ll keep them safe.” “How can I keep them safe from every shadow out there, when I can’t trust my own people?”

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“Give me twenty-four, son. In twenty-four hours you come back and I’ll tell you everything I can.” Miss Erika drifted in, took the skipper’s arm. She spoke firmly, like the schoolteacher she had been for thirty years. “You’re tired, Jonah, and anyone who’s going to Lakeland needs to leave right now.”

***** They ended up with a tight parade. Nat led the way in her surprisingly zippy little hybrid, while TJ brought up the rear in the skipper’s Sunday car. Joe drove the van between them. Roy rode “shotgun,” although he damned well better be unarmed. Summer and Nevada, wearing police-issue bullet vests, perched on bedrolls on the van’s floor. Roy kept dropping his hand beside him and groping backward until Summer caught it and held it a while. Bri snoozed in the rear cargo area. Street lights reflected from a shiny place beside his mouth. Mayonnaise, probably. Miss Erika had fed him three turkey-salad sandwiches in the time it had taken the rest of them to put down one each. The joys of being twenty. What food or sex couldn’t fix, sleep could. And a twenty-year-old body could always eat, could always fuck, could always sleep. Once at the studio, Joe kept to the background and let Nat -- in her I’m Natalie Wentworth and you are lucky as hell to have a job catering to me mode -- snap “suggestions” left and right. If she didn’t own a chunk of the studio, she knew who did, because she was sure enough getting obeyed. Nevada, who was being quiet and probably scripting out her trademark impromptu comments, deferred all variants on “What happened?” to Officer Wentworth, who said Miss Wells would get to that in due time -- she only wanted to tell it once. Summer stayed at Nevada’s side. From the stares, this was the first time most of the studio staff had seen the twins together. Probably the first notice to most of them that Miss Wells had a twin. Not that the sisters looked too much alike at the moment. They wore baggy sweaters, green for ’Vada and dark purple for Summer, to conceal their body armor. Someone commented that the colors “came just this close to clashing.” Someone else said the colors ought to look terrible together, that she couldn’t see how they pulled it off. Joe leaned against a wall. If I was really gay, I’d care about why they don’t look terrible

together, right? All I care about is they’re not naked and they’re wearing shoes they could run in. He pushed himself off the wall and wandered over to Nat. “We already have over a dozen people that I don’t know in this building. Isn’t that plenty to film one show? Can anyone be sent home? Or out on errands? Can you or Nevada have the studio locked down with the smallest possible number of people inside?”

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Nat nodded. A young man muttering to himself as he strode by, one hand cupped over his ear, stopped in his tracks and stared at her.

She must have flashed the smile that dazzled me when I was your age. A local deputy made his way over. “Hey, Joe! Remember me?”

Dickless Pickles, the guy who smeared pizza on my jeans and told everyone I’d forgot my Kotex. “I remember dumping brownie batter down the back of your pants in home ec. Is this where you came hiding when I chased you out of town?” They did the backslapping bit, followed by the arm-punching bit. Pickles offered to arrest him for battery on an officer of the law and Joe pulled his own badge. The deputy whistled. “Whose dick did you suck to be lieutenant?”

Still can’t control your mouth, can you? No wonder you never got past corporal. “If I told you, I’d have to Baker you so no one would ever believe a word you said.” Dickless Pickles laughed.

Best thing I can say about him is that if it comes down to a fight, he ought to obey orders. Fighting wasn’t likely. Dies did snatches in isolated places. He’d done half his work getting the twins here safely, and would do the other half getting them home. But things can change. Nat came to him with a fine vertical wrinkle between her eyebrows. “TJ with his tonfa is making people nervous. So are you, with your glare and your six-feet-plus of musclebound muscle. Their words, not mine. They want you men, except Deputy Pickles, to stay in the waiting room. I’ll sit by Nevada for the first part of the show. Then I’ll sit in that armchair at the corner of the stage while Summer sits by her. Will you trust us to hold the fort?” He smiled easily. “Sure I will. Do I need to put a sleeper hold on Roy to take him out of sight of Summer, though?”

***** The back room was alarmingly quiet. Joe automatically checked his phone. One bar. The battery was real low, though. He yawned and scratched his chin. Bristle. How long has it

been since I shaved? One wall had been done up as a kitchenette with a hotel-size fridge, microwave, toaster oven, a coffee maker, and a sink barely bigger than the coffee pot. A long but flimsylooking orange couch took up another wall, and a little round table perched at one corner of the couch. Stacks of magazines squatted everywhere. Brian propped his crutch in a corner and hoisted himself onto the counter by the sink. “Think this coffee is drinkable?”

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Why don’t you take the couch and prop your leg up? Joe held up the pot. The light passing through it made a red star. “Yup.” Roy shook his head. “It smells like that scorched gasoline the skipper tried to serve us. If there are washable cups up there, I’d rather have water.” TJ laughed. “You sound like me before cop school. Right, LT?” Joe declined to answer. TJ snapped his fingers. “Hey, hey! Did you guys know Summer and Miss Nevada are both going to star in Nat’s Labor Day fund-raiser?” Roy looked up from a pile of magazines. “News to me. What’s she doing this year? Another musical?” “Yes. I tried to get single-performance rights for a great musical comedy based on King Lear, but that didn’t pan out, so I -- ” Roy scowled. “King Lear? A musical comedy based on King Lear?” “Loosely based! It was screaming funny! I thought she’d love it, but anyway, now I’m writing a musical for her.”

Oh, no. Not again. “Hey, hey! They say you know Spanish, Gardner! I can test my lyrics on you.” Joe swallowed his objections with a mouthful of acidic coffee and looked at Brian. Hey, hey! You’ve never been beaten over the head with TJ Howell’s so-called lyrics. Besides, Teej had plenty of confidence in his theatrics. A little buddy-buddy razzing now might thicken his skin for the next time his brothers in blue razzed him. “Give us a demo, Teej. It’s better than the four of us sitting on our thumbs.” TJ grinned, delighted. Sometimes he was such a kid. He struck a pose, then soft-shoed around his tonfa, using it like Gene Kelly’s cane. The thing was, he could dance -- better than a lot of guys on stage. He could sing too, though not as well as he thought he could. He struck his starting pose again and bobbed his head rhythmically.

Ah, the famous Howell countdown. Three…two…one. TJ threw a high kick and then an elevated split -- three feet in the air.

How the fuck do you do that without splitting your britches wide open? Or tangling your jewel-cords? “When you’re Tiburón, it’s Tiburón all the way -From your first delfín babe to your last dying day!” kick Brian made a time-out sign. “Your first what?” TJ stopped dead with one knee up and his heel tucked under his butt like a flamingo. “Delfín -- it means dolphin. See, sharks eat dolphins, particularly babies if they can catch one

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unguarded, but dolphins also prey on sharks. So ‘delfín babe’ can be either a real baby dolphin or a hot babe. It’s symbolic.” “A male dolphin is pronounced delfeen,” Brian said. “Not d’elfin, and a female dolphin is marsopa.” TJ frowned. “Are you sure? I went on Babelfish --” Brian shrugged. “You asked.” Something in those black-coffee eyes had Joe’s hand reaching for his Pocket Tutor. He typed in m-a-r-s-o-p-a. Porpoise. “He’s right, TJ. Marsopa is the cow dolphin and delfín is the bull dolphin. Says so right here. Now, your point is the Sharks are specifically going after little boys, right?” “No!” TJ’s face went toadbelly-colored. “I never thought…but marsopa messes up the meter.” “Oooohkay.” Brian poured himself a cup of the coffee. “And why do you have the Anglo gang singing in Spanglish?” “I have them both as Spanish-speaking gangs. One will be Cuban and one Mexican or Guatemalan or something. I’m using the tension between the social status of --” Joe echoed Brian’s time-out signal. “So why are the Sharks singing the Jets’ song?” “Cognitive dissonance makes people pay attention, makes them remember the ‘wrong’ parts and think about them. Now, will you guys shut up and listen?”

“When you’re Tiburón, let them think if they can With Tiburónes around, there ain’t much to the plan!” kick I bite my tongue. Roy ducked under the little table, and waved his cup. “Tiburónes doesn’t rhyme with macaronies.”

Bite hard. Bri nodded. “He’s right.” TJ twirled his tonfa around one shoulder and then the other. “Get out from under the table.” He raised his voice.

“Ever alone, far from intersected!!!” kick, kick, kick Hey -- he’s throwing a kick for every exclamation point. “But catch blood in the current

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And -- bam! You’re connected! And blood’s always de! tec! ted!” Between kicks, he did the tonfa-around-the-shoulders thing again. He said he’d learned that from “a numb-chuck guy,” but if so the nunchuku guy had learned it from a majorette.

“When you find the blood jets, paint your face in the spray! Tiburón never regrets! We just don’t work that way! Here come Tiburónes! Fanged fish out of hell! Hotblood gets in our way? Hot chunks slide down so well!!!” Brian nodded once for each of that last three kicks, his face serious, his curly lashes lowered over those dark eyes.

You look like some painting of Galahad or somebody. Brian looked up, met his gaze over the gleaming black line of the tonfa.

I wish I could read minds, Bri. I wish I could read yours. Brian smiled, faintly, and cut his eyes to TJ. They’d both missed some lines.

“We’re tracing the lines! So keep your babies hidden! We follow your signs! (Like what you wash your kid in!) Better watch! That! Midden!” Brian raised his hand. “What’s a ‘midden’?” “A medieval…where they dumped their chamber pots.” “You expect your audience to know that? I didn’t have a clue.” “Well you have to mix some highbrow with the lowbrow to keep everyone’s interest.” Bri shook his head. “Why should only the highbrows in the audience know your characters bathe their children in septic tanks?” Roy made the time-out sign. “He’s right, TJ. Shouldn’t a fact like that be pretty crucial to your plotline?” “Don’t be dense!” TJ rapped his tonfa on the dull metal side of the coffee machine. “By ‘midden’ I mean the culture, TV and games, that they -- dammit! Just let it rhyme, okay?” “Forbidden is a rhyme,” Roy observed. “Sit-in is a rhyme, or close enough. Ridden. Did in. Bitten, even. Reanimating some archaic word for a sewer and sticking it in the mouths of gang members who would never think in those terms is a crime. Hey, Joe, can you arrest him?”

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He hid a smile behind his coffee cup. “I’m outside my jurisdiction.” “And if you weren’t my boss I’d tell you to shut up.” TJ struck his pose again. “Now, with your permission!” Kick

Yup -- definitely a kick for every exclamation point. “Tiburón’s hard to sate! So we’re gonna eat! Every last vertebrate -- ! Be it rich! Be it sweet! Chunks or whole! Bleeding -- ! Lonely -- ! Squealing -- ! Sweeeeet!!!!!” He held his tonfa overhead and snapped kicks like he was out for the world championship freestyle cancan crown. Joe bit the corners of his mouth to hide his grin. TJ collapsed abruptly onto the couch, which failed to break. Wasn’t as flimsy as it looked, maybe. He mopped his forehead and neck with a paper towel. “So what do you think? Should I add more Spanish? Or is it good like it is?” “Perfect,” Brian said, deadpan. “I wouldn’t change a word.”

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Chapter Thirteen After the broadcast, Joe vetoed a suggestion to head out for breakfast and then home. Nevada’s condo, a low-rise, wasn’t secure. Summer and Roy’s houseboat was worse. Singer Island was too far off, and the efficiency condo there wouldn’t hold Nevada along with Summer (who refused to leave her), Roy (who refused to leave Summer), and any two people who might be capable of guarding them. Nat yawned. “What’s your idea, LT?” She never called him that. At the not-so-subtle reference to his authority, the others quieted down. He sighed. “High-rise hotel. Someplace uptown here. We’ll need to split up, say three rooms or a room and a suite, but neither of the twins can be left alone. Not safe.” Twenty minutes later, he showed Bri how to work a magnetic card key and opened a stuffy but very secure hotel room. Nat was with the twins next door, and their room had an adjoining door to the room TJ shared with Roy. He set a bag of bagels and mangoes on the counter. He didn’t look forward to peeling mangoes with his good pocketknife, but Bri’s face had lit up when they passed the aromatic fruit stand. Getting that kind of look out of him was worth cleaning mango juice out of the hinges of a pocketknife. Brian limped to the near bed, using the crutch more like a cane, and flopped across the spread. “AC. Pleeease!” Joe turned it on full blast. He looked down at the morning traffic, too far below to hear. After a moment, Brian asked, “How thick are these walls?” “Not very.” He yawned. He felt like he weighed five hundred pounds. I’m not twenty years old. “So when we decide to work up a sweat, we need to turn on the TV, huh?”

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“I’m going to disappoint you. I got just about enough energy left to stagger back to the bed.” He pulled off his shirt overhead and ripped open the Velcro straps of his bullet vest. Can’t drop the vest on the floor. Carpet fibers clog up the Velcro. He felt stupid as well as heavy. Not floor. Chair. Hope I don’t sleep through any

emergency. Guess I’ll have to hope Bri sleeps lightly. Bri sleeps naked. The thought came from somewhere so deep it might as well be Low Joe talking. Low Joe moved, stretching.

Go to sleep, you! But his mind’s eye saw Brian, and Low Joe pumped against his fly. Brian. What am I going to do about you? Brian’s voice came from behind him. “Which bed?” He turned, and stopped in mid-yawn. Brian lounged naked on the bedspread, smiling.

Whoa… Tiredness dissolved like salt in water. Paint that body and he’d make a perfect statue. Little body hair. Less body fat. Compact but well-defined muscles. In the middle of all that perfection, his ball sac draped across one thigh and his cock lolled, slightly curled, on his taut belly. Brian laughed. “A spark of life! Hurray! But you’re still overdressed for this party.” “Lower your voice.” He wasn’t circumcised. Why does that keep surprising me? He wasn’t circumcised before, either. Bri shifted, moving his weight off the blue-black bruises covering his left thigh. The kind of deep bruising that shouldn’t show up for another half-day or more. His facial bruises had faded, leaving no more than a bit of a black eye and a yellowish smudge. You’re a really fast healer, Brian Thomas Gardner. Bri smiled. “My voice is very low. Come closer and see how low I can go.” “No.” Bri flinched, and flushed. The smile dropped away as it had -- yesterday? No, the day before -- in the doorway of the weight room.

Foot in mouth. “What I mean is it’s your turn.” Bri frowned, looking sideways back at him. “My turn?” Joe kicked off his shoes and knelt by the bed. “How did someone as gorgeous as you get so insecure?” Bri swallowed, his throat visibly working. Joe leaned in and teased himself with the faint, clean smell of Brian’s skin, the fainter promise of musk.

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Bri squirmed. “Don’t smell me. I tried to wash off the hospital reek, but the club doesn’t have much of a washroom for guys. I know I still stink.” “No, you don’t.” He didn’t smell of the club either. Not that he’d have been able to enjoy a lap dance with half his lap too bruised to take any weight. Brian’s shaft looked soft and fat, crisscrossed with myriad wrinkles. His foreskin. Guys Bri’s age were not routinely clipped as babies like everyone my age was. The head peeking out was the same deep pink as Bri’s full lips -- and looked like a freshly licked lip, as opposed to Low Joe’s finely sueded texture. Joe reached out to heft Bri’s balls. The sac felt warm in his hand. He cupped it protectively, and the soft, heavy eggs inside it stirred. Bri made a small humming noise, and spread his legs. “Hold still.” How did my voice get so hoarse? “Yes, sir.” “Shut up.” Joe traced upward from ball sac to cock, and toyed with the crinkled skin. The cock within swelled at his touch, smoothing wrinkles as it lengthened. Catching a bit of the foreskin between his index finger and the next one, he jacked it up and down Brian’s hardening shaft. Bri hissed and arched his back. “Too hard?” Bri nodded, eyes closed, face turned away. Joe gentled his touch. The shaft lost its hint of a curve, and kept swelling. Soon the foreskin didn’t reach. He pumped gently, moving the skin as far as it comfortably went, and watched the exposed pink glans grow taut. Still, the shaft kept growing. Bri had a sledgehammer of a tool. Surely he had noticed that before. But he couldn’t remember. Too intent on his own satisfaction. Low Joe strained against his fly, tugging his balls at the root. I’ll probably mess up my pants doing this. He didn’t have anything to change into, if he did. “Hold that thought, Bri. I need a sec.” Took more than a second to undress, but not much more. He threw his pants over the other bed and turned back catch Bri licking his lips. Low Joe lunged for that mouth, but Joe held position where he was. That’s what he did for me. Best mouth I ever felt. Only fair to give what you get. “You have that scared-virgin look again, Joe. What are you thinking?” The heavy dick bobbed, like it was doing the talking. Joe thought suddenly of that dick and Low Joe having some kind of nuzzling conversation, and wondered if he’d slid over some invisible line to become crazy enough to need soft walls and locked doors. He desperately wanted a coffee. A beer. A shot of the

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skipper’s Black Label. Half a bottle. “Wondering if I can make you feel as good as you’ve made me feel.” The sledgehammer slapped Bri’s carved abdomen. “You could look at me, come close enough to let me touch you.” “Oh, I’m coming close.” He couldn’t hold himself back. He crawled across the bed, and rested his weight on Bri’s less-bruised side. Muscles and bones and heat shifted under him. A thick dick pressed against him, pulsing, and a leg folded around his.

Don’t think of it as doing a guy. Think of Brian. Just Brian. He tasted the coffee-cream skin on one tautly muscled shoulder. Brian. The cappuccino skin was hot, hotter at the side of the neck, and faintly salty. Joe tried his teeth against that hot skin, testing the hardness of the muscle so close under it. No marks! He released pressure instantly, and licked the faintly red tooth prints. They’d fade. Bri moaned under him, body stretching and turning like a cat. A puckered nipple brushed Joe’s hand, and Brian gasped.

I can take a hint. He moved down. Both brown nipples were puckered tight. He brushed his palm teasingly over one, and then the other. Firm. Tiny. They darkened as he watched. Darkened more when he rubbed them. Bri wrapped both legs about his thigh and squeezed, then flinched and let go. Joe bit one of those firm little raisin-colored nipples, and spoke around it. “You gotta be smarter than to use the bum leg, Bri. Hold still.” Bri made a strangled noise.

Don’t like being told to be quiet, huh? But you’re doing it. One more thing I owe you for. He maneuvered down Bri’s body, slowly rubbing Low Joe down to knee level. He paused to brush his face across Bri’s six-pack, left and then right. Muscles bunched, knotting under smooth skin. I bet I could beard-tickle you and you’d go bug-fuck. Brian grabbed him by the ear. “I’m on hair trigger. If you got any chance of gagging, don’t do it. Use your hands.” “I said shut up.” A handjob is nothing like a blowjob. I’m a guy, remember? We know these things. “Let go my ear.” He let go. Joe turned his head and faced the monster. Not a monster. Just a big dick. He tested the flavor. Musk, and salt. He wet his lips, wrapped one hand gently around the monster, and brought it to his mouth. Good thing about a blowjob is there’s no such thing as a bad one. Bri moaned again, panting, and pushed from the hip. Joe pulled back. “Don’t do that, Bri. Hold still.”

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He took the head in his mouth again, and explored it with his tongue. He took his time, tracing the slit at the tip, the rim all the way around, the vee on the underside. Again, and again. Brian trembled, his buttock muscles clenching rhythmically, but he did not push. Joe sealed his lips around the shaft just below the head and tried a light suction that created shudders. The taste of musk grew stronger. So far so good. He tried a bobbing motion while maintaining the suction and rubbing the flattened top of his tongue across the mounded underside of Bri’s cock. The cock thickened in his mouth, and fists hammered on his shoulders and back. He sucked harder, jacking the shaft with his fist. Bri arched up from the bed, making a thin, breathless, keening sound.

Now! He squeezed, increasing the pressure for one more jack, and abruptly let go. Brian convulsed against him, spurting strongly salty cum across his tongue and, as he pulled back, over his mouth and chin and throat. Bri curled around him, shaking and sweating, gasping for breath. Joe dug out the nearest pillow one-handed, and used the case to mop his face and throat. Bri clung to him, still shaking and gasping. Joe held him close, and wiped a single sticky spatter off his smooth cappuccino throat.

I’ll call that good. And satisfying. Immensely satisfying, to have that kind of effect on Bri. Then Bri opened those marvelous dark eyes, and smiled at him, and moved sinuously down to kiss Low Joe.

I didn’t mean that. But Low Joe had a mind of his own, and was about three strokes off exploding himself. Brian teased him, licking up and down until Joe grabbed him by both ears. “Do it or don’t do it.” “How can I resist a growl like that?” But he ducked before Joe could answer, and he did it with a will. Felt like he had two tongues going to town in there. Three, maybe. Fast, hard. Wet, hot. Lithe and wickedly knowing. And not a tooth anywhere. Joe held on to his self-control for the three strokes and then for the ten, and still held on. He didn’t know what to count. Didn’t matter. Principle of the thing. He just counted, fixing his mind on each number, making a mental and physical exercise of it, holding off for even more powerful coaxing.

A detonation occurs in three stages. The pressure builds. The pressure reaches a point where matter converts to energy. The energy expands until its force is exhausted. The pressure built fast, but not too fast to watch, to admire the power of it. He squeezed the pillow, since anything else in his hands would shatter.

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The pressure built. He counted, holding it in, biting down on the pillow now. When numbers eluded him, he made Brian’s name the next number, and the next, and the next. Brian… Brian… Brian. Brian took a whistling breath, and swallowed Low Joe deep. The explosion seared through him, ripped loose pieces of his soul. Every part of him from fingertips to skull to heel bone burned with white energy. The explosion thrust that energy through his cock, down Brian’s throat.

Oh, fuuuuuuuck!

***** They dozed, woke up long enough to eat the fruit and bagels, laughing as they licked the running juice off one another’s chins, and dozed off without resolving the weighty issue of whether they could shower together without doing it again. Brian woke sometime later and lay in utter lazy contentment, admiring Joe’s tousled hair. We both reek of sex. If you want to stay in the closet, my golden bear, we both need to wash that smell off and have separate slept-in beds before anyone drops by. He was leaning too hard on these humans. He was letting them go up against a hyde. The responsible thing to do would be to contact the matriarch. Hand the matter to her. Let huntsmen do what huntsmen do. Keep the humans safe and happily ignorant. This group was probably all human. Pop and about half the cousins could tell a human from a huntsman with one look at the man’s aura, something Brian could see about as easily as a New Yorker could see the Milky Way, but there were other clues. Joe moved like a huntsman, watched for ambush like a huntsman, had twins for brothers, took on the role of a guardian like he was born and raised for it. Separately, those were all human traits. But put those traits together… No. All huntsman were born male, in pairs, and all their children were born male, in pairs. Joe might have lost his twin early, like I did, but he has a daughter. Mama’s baby is Papa’s maybe, but that Kellie looked a hell of a lot like Joe. Also, Joe seemed off-balance dealing with his brothers being identical twins. If Joe is a

huntsman, he grew up as a bareback. One I never met or heard of, and I think I’ve been introduced to every bareback east of the Mississippi. Pop had wanted to be sure he knew they were out there. Role models. Maybe Pop had hoped one would reach out to him.

I need to contact the matriarch. I should have done that before. First time I suspected a hyde was involved. The matriarch probably knows what roamed her territory. But she might not. As soon as he went to the matriarch, his life would belong to the local family, or families, until all this was over. Until the family was sure he wasn’t a walking bomb, ready to go hyde in their territory. If he was allowed around Joe at all, it would be to spy on him.

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Brian rolled to the edge of the bed, and hobbled to the shower. His bruised leg cramped fiercely, but thanks to that incredible feeding from Joe, rainbow colors were already coming out of the indigo muddle. A human would take a couple of days to generate as much healing as he’d done in the course of the past few hours. Now all he had to do was eat. Protein, and lots of it. Oh, and not let Joe get suspicious about his healing rate. But for the hunt, he wouldn’t have to worry about Joe getting suspicious. Most humans didn’t know that not all people are human. They didn’t go looking for differences. Didn’t see a difference and promptly think, “Hey, wait! What are you, to be able to do that?” “Bri?” Joe stood there, as silent on the approach as any huntsman. “Let me give you a hand in there. You don’t want to fall.”

Okay… Now I have to keep his attention on something besides the bruise. Brian turned on the water, holding his hand in the spray to judge temp. Joe came to stand beside him, wrapping an arm around him. “I have this nightmare about you falling and that thigh bone shattering into splinters. How is it, really?” “It’s better.” Cramping was a sign of healing. So was the deep, intense itching. If he said that enough, he might believe it. Joe nuzzled his hair. “You shave what, twice a week?” “Depends on how often and how well I get laid. Heavy, regular doses of testosterone can bring it up to…oh, every other day maybe. I bet you’ll have me shaving every day before too long.” “When are you going to tell me about the Dies?”

Fucking A! He opened his mouth, trying to sort through the possible answers, and laughed. Couldn’t help it. Joe didn’t have the slightest reason to suspect him of being what he was…only of being what he wasn’t. He stretched another cramp out of his bad leg and turned to lean his forehead against Joe’s shoulder and laughed helplessly. “Bri?” Joe pulled him closer, and out of the spray of water. “Brian, you’re not hysterical, are you?”

Am I? The thought was sobering. “Maybe a little.” He ran the little soap bar through his pubic hair, working lather through the stinging places and stepped back under the water. “I’m okay, though.” Joe’s voice followed him. “What was your first contact with the Dies?” He soaped under his arms and rinsed. “The night they got your Princess Tina.” Joe pulled him close again, which felt good even though he was out of the spray of water. He gave up on the shower and settled into the cuddle. And the interrogation. Joe felt massive, rooted like a tree, and his voice came from the center of all that mass. “You saw Tuck Callahan that night? He’s the Irishman you described?”

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“Sergeant Callahan, yes. Him and the guy who was with him when I asked them to take you the message.” “Larry? Are you sure? Did you see his badge?”

I might know if I smelled him. “I don’t know, and not really, and no.” “Why didn’t you point them out earlier?”

I hadn’t smelled them earlier! “I wasn’t sure until I saw them talking to the guys who got into the truck.” Joe bent down to rest his forehead against the sore eye. Brian flinched, and Joe flinched in echo. “I’m sorry, Bri.” He gently kissed the eye. “Please tell me the truth.” “The truth is I am not entirely human and I recognized them because they smelled like they’d come in contact with -- or shared space with -- a swamp ape.” The big man slumped. “Shit, Brian, what am I supposed to do with you?” Brian grinned. “Fuck me well and often, and trust me when I say there’s things you don’t want to know.” “Let’s take it from another angle. What kind of things do I not want to know?”

You don’t want to know hydes exist, that they’re the root of all those human legends about hairy wild men who live in the woods and ambush people. You don’t want to know I could change into one if I got hungry enough and fed off fear, pain, or anger instead of sex. Or that if I did change, you’d have to kill me, because I’d never, ever change back. But what could I say that you’d actually listen to? “I really don’t know, Joe. Do you want to know it’s the old-time locals whose shit don’t stink that are the core of your homegrown terrorist group?” Joe sighed. The sound echoed oddly in the shower. Brian shivered, and Joe moved him back under the warm rain of water. “Regardless of whether I want to know it, the information I have so far says you are right. Can you give me any details?” “I’ve heard bits and pieces, but don’t know how to put them together. Or even if they’re all part of the same puzzle. A guy named Rodriguez was about to spill his guts when they got spilled for him. Does that mean anything to you?” “Yes. What else?” “Larry -- might be the Larry you were talking about -- supposedly got bit by an alligator. The bite got so infected they thought he might lose his arm…but the tooth pattern didn’t match an alligator’s.” “Same Larry. Hospitalized on April Fool’s Day. I remember wondering if the call was a prank. He’s still on light duty. What do the tooth marks match?” “No alligator. No human. No dog either. Something else.” “The swamp ape angle.” “Sounds like it.”

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Joe’s chest heaved. “If we didn’t have all these wild-goose rumors, we could get a lot further on making patterns out of the real facts.” “Your mythical swamp ape ate another person last night.” Powerful arms tightened. “Who?” “I don’t know, but if people are being eaten, even partially eaten, that means something is being fed on people. Think about it -- something is being fed on people, but three of the most recent feedings were thwarted. The night Tina was killed, that man on the fence didn’t get eaten. Then your brothers fought the bad guys off, then the bad guys were interrupted before they could get to chew on Miss -- ” A hole in his logic. The woman had been held for a day. “Sorry -- backing up, Nevada Wells was held for a day. They weren’t desperate for feeding when she was snatched. They should have been, unless they'd been chewing on some corpse that hasn’t come to light yet, or they woulda chowed down on her immediately.” Joe nodded. “So if something’s being taught to eat human meat, then last night they probably got a fresh piece of meat. If not a twin, maybe some random homeless person. Rinse off. I need to talk to my brothers. I can’t believe I didn’t debrief them on their attack. Who did talk to them, the deputy?”

Your brothers. Your half-brothers. “Deuce is your stepfather?” “Yes. Didn’t I mention that?” “He knows.” He watched me feed off those men getting dry-humped by the club’s lap

dancers. That’s why he sat me down with my back practically touching the lap-dance chair, so I could absorb the energy when anyone got off. Fucking A -- Deuce is a huntsman. He knows what I am. But Joe doesn’t know about Deuce. So Deuce might see me as a security risk for whatever secrets he keeps from Joe. And fuck -- what’s the chance Deuce hasn’t talked to the matriarch about me? Joe stopped breathing. His heartbeat pounded against Brian’s face.

Fucking A. I said something out loud. What did I say? Finally, Joe took a breath. “Deuce is in on it?”

Saved by the human focus. “I don’t think so. But he sure knows a whole lot more than I do.” “Shit.” “Not until I get some solid food in me. Room service or drive-through someplace?” “I’d planned to stay here all day and tonight. We both have the night off. But if those bastards have killed someone else, I need to pick up what clues I can.” “Leave the others here. It’s safer.” “Yes. I’ll assign TJ and Nat to bodyguard detail. You stay with them. Keep the bed warm for me.”

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“Fucking A, Joe! I am not staying here while you” -- do my job! -- “go against your own people! You don’t know who to trust at your back!” “Do you know who to trust?” “No, but I’m used to it,” he said bitterly. “Bare is back without brother.” “That’s what Deuce says when the boys get to fighting. Where’s it from?” “Originally? It’s a Viking proverb. Ask him your questions.” Ask him when I’m not there. I don’t want to see your face when he tells you I been feeding off you. He rocked forward, careful of his balance, and hugged Joe fiercely. “It’s been good. I’ll always remember you with a glow.” Joe’s arms locked around him. “That sounds like goodbye.” “I’m a bareback, Joe. I’m used to goodbye.” “You’re twenty. You’re used to adolescent drama. Don’t get your temper up -- it’s true and you know it. But if you were maneuvering me to get me to say ‘come with me,’ you’ve succeeded. Finish rinsing and let’s get dressed.” The desk phone shrilled. Joe made sure Bri was leaning against the shower wall and hurried to answer. Brian followed anyway, dripping and trailing a towel, in time to hear Nat’s voice, low and very precise. “Jonah and Erika have been murdered.” Joe wrapped his water-beaded arms around his head. His muscles bulged. “Gutted like Rodriguez? Or sliced and chewed?” “Sliced and partially flayed in the characteristic diamond pattern, and chewed. Blood patterns indicate Erika died at or near the beginning. I suspect the autopsy will say heart attack. The skipper’s throat was eventually cut. Probably right as the Dies left.” Joe shook. He put down the phone gently, and shook all over. Brian came behind him, and held him. Joe took the towel and folded it over his face. Still he shook. Silently. Brian held him tight. The Dies were watching us. Or they have the skipper’s house

bugged.

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Chapter Fourteen Joe paced the women’s hotel room. Pacing didn’t quiet the hum in his ears, but when he tried to hold still it was purely maddening. “As soon as we go home, we will be separated and subjected to extreme scrutiny. The scrutiny doesn’t scare me. The separation does.” He stopped at the window. “I was going to report to the station today anyway. It was time for another victim to be found. Events overtook us, though. I propose we keep a base here, at least keep Brian and the twins here.” Nat examined her manicure. “I’ll stay with them. Starting tomorrow, I’m scheduled off through the Sunday after Bastille Day. As for today, I feel a touch of the flu coming on. I do hope it won’t ruin my vacation.” He didn’t have to ask if she was armed. If she was outside her home or car, and within fifty miles of city limits, she was required to carry her service weapon. TJ, sitting on the dresser, fidgeted with his tonfa. “How long can you keep me on special assignment to guard them?” “To guard her: Summer. Nevada is the Lakeland Police Department’s problem, but Summer is legitimately our concern.” The twins, perched on the edge of the near bed, held hands and threw anxious glances from one person to another. Next to them, Roy lounged with his shoulders on the headboard and his hands folded over one knee. He looked completely unconcerned, except the beds of his fingernails were dead white. TJ twirled his tonfa. “Why did the Dies suddenly want someone like Nevada anyway? What changed the pattern?” “She’s a twin. They’ve been going after twins since the beginning, or at least from early on. We just didn’t notice because they weren’t people we knew, and because they weren’t snatched in pairs.”

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Roy’s brows contracted. “According to the media, the Red Diamond murders are drug deals gone bad. Targeting twins is something a mad scientist would do.” Joe nodded. “That’s why the city council decided not to publicize the discovery that the vics -- victims -- who have been identified have almost all been twins. Or people who got caught knowing too much.” Summer swallowed. “You could have mentioned this when we were brainstorming last night, Joe.” “I would have sounded like a tabloid writer, wouldn’t I?” Silence settled in the room. Brian lay on the far bed, propped up on one elbow, picking at a seam on the bedspread. Under the edge of his shorts, tread marks showed. Roy frowned. “Were the skipper and Miss Erika killed just because we were there? So the Dies thought they knew too much?” “The skipper’s been in on the Diamonds since the beginning, but he’s been trying to extricate himself for some time. Remember the truck Nevada was held in was his.” Nevada looked hard at him. “When did he report it stolen?” “Last month, right after Lieutenant Rodriguez was killed. My guess is he’s been trying to pull out since then. He’s been out of the loop with them for longer, though; he didn’t know about the twin angle.” They absorbed that silently. Roy looked up first. “Your brothers are twins. You need to warn…you’ve warned your parents, haven’t you?” He pulled his phone. Dead. “I told them what we knew yesterday. I’d update them now, but I’m out of juice.” TJ tossed him a phone while the others were still reaching for theirs. He caught it and dialed quickly, using the business line for the club and hoping whoever answered would take that choice as a signal for discretion. “Double Deuce.” Mom. Perfect. He didn’t have to deal with Deuce again. Not yet, anyway. “It’s Joe. Watch your backs and stay out of town.” Her voice dropped. “Come here and join us, Joe. I mean right now. Bring him with you. You might not like my ‘goon squad’ but it’s not a bad thing to have at your back. We need to put our heads together on a few things anyway. Personal things.”

No time for personal things. “Not now. I’ll contact you when things improve.” He hung up and dialed in to the scheduling sergeant’s voice mail. Easier to leave a message for TJ to be put on special duty than talk to someone who might have questions. When he hung up

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again, he noticed the full-battery signal. “Anyone bring a cell phone charger that would match mine?” Summer leaned in to check his phone, and shook her head. “That’s kind of an old model, Joe. Have you asked the concierge to check lost and found? I bet they have a bunch of them that people have left behind.” “Not yet. Good idea. Thanks.” “We need food,” Brian said. “Let’s you and I go to the nearest fried chicken place for a family pack and something to drink, then pick up a charger on the way back.” Nat stood abruptly. “TJ and I will go. You can give me the dead phone so I’ll be sure to get the right charger. Everyone likes Caesar, right? Who wants sweet tea, who wants unsweet, and who wants mineral water?” “We’ll go,” Brian objected. “That would be a poor use of resources.” Nat said briskly. “The closest edible takeout is four blocks away. You, Brian, don’t need to walk that far. Meanwhile you, Joe, need to be the first -- if that’s still possible -- to tell the skipper’s daughter what’s happened.”

You’re right. Shit. “I feel so helpless,” Nevada murmured when the door shut on Nat and TJ. “All of you putting yourselves in danger for me. It doesn’t feel right.” “It’s not just you.” Roy’s brows knotted. “Why twins, though?” Joe sat on the other bed, ruffling Bri’s soft hair absently. “I don’t know. Did you hear or see anything, ’Vada, that didn’t seem important enough to put in the reports?” She stared at him, and at Brian, and back to him. Summer’s wide eyes followed the same track. Roy’s eyebrows rose.

What? Brian sighed. “Busss-ted.”

Oh, shit. Why didn’t I just grope him in public? Too late to deny anything now. He kept his hand deliberately where it was, fingers half-buried in thick, soft black hair. “Anything at all, Nevada?” Nevada jumped. “No! Not at all. I got pulled over by a police car, and the loudspeaker told me to step out of the vehicle with my hands in front of me. I thought that was odd, but with those bright lights flashing it’s hard to put much thinking together. I barely got all the way out of the car before those electric shock darts hit me. It hurt something awful, and I fell down. I was jerking and twitching all over the place, and I couldn’t stop it.” Summer hugged her, and whispered in her hair. Nevada nodded and continued. “Two men rushed up to me and threw a carpet over me and rolled me up like Cleopatra. Then I was carried, and I guess put in the back of that truck. I stayed there the longest time. At some point someone stuck a water bottle into the head

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end of the roll. Like a stopper in a bottle. I had to push it out, because I just couldn’t breathe. Sometimes the truck ran and sometimes it parked. I thought I was going to die from the heat, or the thirst, and I kept thinking of that bottle of water. Finally the truck took off at speed, swerving and bouncing, then there was an explosion right under me. The truck rolled over at least once. Ironically, the carpet roll probably saved me. The truck came to a rest at a slant, luckily with my head uphill. Water poured in over me, but it stopped about waist-high. And then the cops pulled me out.” Her story brought the hum back, gave it a singsong rhythm. Shungshung, shungshung. Joe stood, and paced even thought he knew he was pacing to the beat of the hum. “How strongly do you feel about wanting to help?” Her pretty hands fluttered, and reached for Summer’s. “What can I do?” “If we end up setting some sort of trap, would you be willing to act as bait?” She went white. Joe scrubbed his face with his fists. How long has it been since I shaved? “Never mind. It’s too dangerous.” Summer leaned forward. “I’d be bait.” “Too dangerous,” Roy objected. Bri rolled to a sitting position, and stuffed a pillow under his knee. “Dangerous and unnecessary. We have Joe’s brothers.”

No! “They’re kids!” Bri looked up, his black-coffee eyes calm. “They’ve fought off one grab already. They’re not safe whether they’re the focus of current attention or not.” “They are sixteen!” Sixteen might look like fair game from a twenty-year-old’s perspective, but the boys still watched Saturday morning cartoons! They still thought food fights were funny! “Their parents will agree.”

Bullshit! Brian massaged his leg. “Ask them, Joe. Deuce and your mom will hyperventilate a little, but they’ll agree.” Roy cleared his throat. “Would it be possible for me to have a few minutes for private conversation with the girls?” Summer smacked him. He made a face. “The women?”

I bet you have a few private things to say. He nodded, and helped Bri up. Letting time pass wouldn’t make his own call any easier, and he had to make the call before anyone from the media did.

***** Kellie answered, and for a moment he couldn’t speak.

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“I don’t know who it is,” she said, her voice distant. “The number on the screen says it’s from home, but it’s not Daddy’s number and nobody’s talking.” Her mother took the phone instantly. “Who is this?” “It’s Joe.” “You’re okay? You’re not dead?” Her voice rose. “Don’t you ever scare me like this! You son of a bitch! I thought I was getting your -- whose phone are you calling from?” “Never mind, honey. Sit down. I have bad news.” “The twins? Your mom?” The hum returned, like a hurricane wind in the trees. “Your dad and Miss Erika. Put Kellie out of the room, please.” “Oh, no. Oh, no.” “I’m on the extension, Mom. What’s happened to Mimaw and Skipper?” “Hang up, Kellie,” they chorused. “No! I got to talk to Mimaw!” “Hang on, Joe. I’ll lock her in her room if I have to.” He hung on, the shing, shung of the hum muffling Kellie’s increasingly frantic demands for information. We can’t do it like this. She’s already halfway to a meltdown. “Kellie, when your mother comes into the room, hand her the phone and sit quietly while we talk. If you can listen like an adult, you might not be sent to your room like a child.” “Daddy, talk to me now. Are they gonna live? Did he get caught in a fire? Did he burn up? Where’s Mimaw? What --” She took a deep, noisy breath and blew it out in a gust. “Hello, Maternal Unit. Here is the telephone unit. Daughter Unit will sit quietly and make no fuss while the Maternal Unit speaks to the Paternal Unit, okay?” “Joe?” “I told her to sit tight. She’s going to find out anyway.” “Are we planning a funeral?” He rubbed his eyes. They were sore. “Two of them.” “What happened?” “It’s too ugly to tell over the phone.” “Alcohol? Or just bad luck?” “Neither. Malice. Premeditated malice.” “Dear God. Is the perpetrator on the loose?” “Very much on the loose. You’ve heard of our Red Diamonds?” “I read the Sunday paper online. Is Kellie safe?”

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“All the way up there, I think you both are. I’ll want y’all to fly down just for the services and then fly right back out. The autopsies and all will take up at least a week. I can’t hurry things, and I wouldn’t want to. Listen, do you know if they preplanned anything?” “A week.” She took a ragged breath. “Cremation. Burial at sea. Whoever did the Rodriguez funeral would be in charge. I’ll get that info off the Net and make the arrangements from here. Are you safe?” “Is Daddy okay?” “Tell her I’m okay.” “Daddy’s okay.” “What happened to Mimaw and Skipper?” Kellie’s voice was thin, soft. So very young. “Tell her ‘bad guys killed them.’” She repeated that, word for word. “Will Daddy nail them?” “Tell her I’m working on it.” She did. “Tell Daddy to get Grandpa Deuce to help him. Daddy’s a good cop, but Grandpa Deuce carries a knife.” “How do you know that?” Again, a chorus. They always seemed to be in sync where Kellie was concerned. Just not when anything else was concerned. “Um…lucky guess?” “We will discuss this in detail later. Go to your room now.” “Aw, Mom!” “Don’t Aw, Mom me! Go.” She paused, and lowered her voice. “I’ll change the message on the answering machine, in case the media finds us.” “Good, and make sure Kellie doesn’t answer the phone for a while.” “Ask Daddy -- where’s Mrs. Ewing?” “Shh, honey. Got it, Joe. Anything else you can tell me?” “You’ll need to be holding her when the facts sink in.” And she’ll need to be holding

you. “Mom! Daddy! What about Mrs. Ewing?” “I know it. Call me as soon as you have more details, okay?” “I’ll call when I can.” “Where’s Mrs. Ewing? She’ll be scared!” “Joe, tell her the damned cat is fine!” “I don’t know and I won’t lie.”

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Almost always in sync. “Shit, woman! That can come back to haunt you!” “Yes, we’ll take care of each other. And Joe? Watch your back, please?”

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Chapter Fifteen Brian watched the humans cluster and rearrange their clusters, and listened to them talk around in circles. TJ and Nat returned with the food, but no charger for a phone as old as Joe’s. They talked, ate, and talked. Joe, TJ, and Summer used the same gun oil. Nat used something different, less flat and less sweet. Nat and TJ had shown up at the skipper’s smelling of sex as much as of soap. Now they barely looked at one another. So, were they fighting? Or just that cool? Nevada was on the rag, and kept looking at him like he was a chocolate sundae. She looked at Joe the same way, hungry and hopeless and stiff-lipped. Joe didn’t look back at all. So, did Nevada stand a better chance of getting beaten to a pulp if she jumped Summer’s guy, or if she jumped Nat’s? Most likely, she wouldn’t jump either of them. She’d just suffer through, the way humans do. In a way, it was funny. Group One was a huntsman teamed up with a set of humans trying to define Group Two. Group Two was a hyde teamed up, however involuntarily, with another set of humans. Mirror images, and the most either group had figured out was that twins were involved.

How bad did those fuckers hurt a huntsman to make him reveal enough to send them looking for twins? On the one hand, his duty was to surreptitiously contact the matriarch. Not from the hotel phone, which probably recorded every number called. Not from anyone’s cell phone for the same reason. He had to get back in town, and make a call from a plain land line. Even a public pay phone. On the other hand, how much trouble would he cause by contacting Joe’s family of huntsmen instead? Joe was physically a human, but his family would be thinking of him as

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one of them. As a huntsman, he was effectively solo, bareback; his people might be happy to assign a wandering bareback to be his companion. But, especially if Joe’s family and the matriarch’s family didn’t get along, bypassing the matriarch might tilt a delicate political balance. For all he knew, the families might be feuding, or working hard to stay out of an open feud state.

All this would be simpler if Joe’s mother was the matriarch. Thinking of the matriarch, living a couple of blocks from the absolute center of town, brought up another question. Why, in all this talk of twins, had no one mentioned a family living right downtown that was overrun with twins? “How many twins live in town?” “Hey, hey! Good question!” TJ spun his tonfa between this hands. Joe sipped his tea. “Not one I think we have any way of answering, considering the large number of adults moving in during the past several years. If you wanted homegrown twins, that’s easier.” “Us. Joe’s brothers. Joe’s steps. The Lupinos.” The sisters looked at one another. “Surely there are more.” “My steps aren’t homegrown. Nor do they live in town anymore.” Nat pursed her lips. “Most of the Lupinos have grown up and left town too, but they come back here and there. I saw a pair of them the other day, at the grocery store with the Forrest girl, the one who was so much trouble as a juvenile. Living with the Lupinos certainly did settle her. Of course, she looks like she’s ready to give birth to another pair of Lupino twins any day now.” Roy opened another bottle of Pellegrino. “I always wondered if your steps and the Lupinos are related. The literature says expression of the twinning gene tends to skip a generation. Twins don’t usually have twin children, but often have twin grandchildren. Yet here are two families in a relatively small population who produce twins and nothing but twins for two or three generations running.”

Time to change the subject. “In Kentucky you have populations of people who are born blue. In Moscow, there’s one residential block that has maybe a dozen kids with short left arms. Genetics can get weird. When there’s something in the water, it can get weirder.” Roy tapped the green glass bottle against his teeth. “Still…I bet I could get a master’s thesis out of your genealogies. Think you could help me talk everyone out of a blood sample?” Joe grunted. “Like you need another degree. In the time it’s taken me to get one, you’ve collected how many?”

Joe’s sensitive on the subject. He knows something’s odd, even if he won’t acknowledge it. “If someone will dig out a phone book, I’ll earn my keep by calling Radio Shack and all for a charger.”

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Joe rocked forward, and stood. “Don’t bother. I have to head home anyway. See if the skipper’s damned cat is under my porch or in my shed.” TJ grinned. “If all else fails, we could scour the animal shelters for a temperamental orange marmalade cat and say she’s the skipper’s.” Brian reached for his crutch. “I’m coming with you.” Joe emptied the ice from his cup to the sink, and crushed the cup to a palm-sized disk. “No need. We’re keeping the room and you can rest there. I’ll be back in a few hours.” “I’d go stir-crazy. Plus I need clean clothes. C’mon. Humor the guy with the crutch.” Joe looked hard at him. Brian made a point of not looking at anyone else. But everyone sat suspiciously quiet as he and Joe left. In the elevator, Joe turned and loomed over him. He stepped back automatically to fighting distance, but his back met the corner of the fake-wood-paneled box. “Look, Bri. I’m only going to stop by the house long enough to grab the charger. Then I’m heading for my folks’ place. I have to see what info I can get off the boys. Then I have to see whether Deuce will talk to me. You wouldn’t be safe staying there alone. I’m not sure you’d be safe on the road either. You need to stay here. You don’t have to face people if you don’t want to. We do have our own room.” “No, Joe. I need to talk to your folks.” “We both need to talk to my folks?” “Yeah, that too.” As hoped, Joe looked puzzled, then shook his head and leaned against the wall of the elevator. He made a noise that could have been a grunt, a laugh, or even a sob. “Bri, Bri. Anybody else double-talks me, it pisses me off. How do you manage to sound funny?”

***** They took the van, since the skipper’s car was probably BOLOed, with every law enforcement officer in the county looking for it. The afternoon monsoon started about the time they left, and fell in blinding gray and white sheets of water. Neither of them spoke. Joe drove. His ever-moving eyes seemed to be watching for suspicious behavior on the part of other drivers. Situational awareness, he’d probably call it. Brian concentrated on not stomping his foot all the fucking way through the imaginary brake pedal in front of the shotgun seat. He didn’t mind traffic-dancing, but driving blind on wet roads in gusting wind in a fucking full-sized van with its high center of gravity was a different subject entirely! Finally, noticing they were doing eighty in conditions better suited to thirty, he spoke up. “Faster, Joe! Some Indy drivers want to pass.”

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“Sorry. I go fast when I worry.” He did let up on the gas. A little. “Don’t you worry about a speeding ticket? Or Gramma Pokesalong who can’t get out of your way fast enough?” “Gramma doesn’t drive in the rain.” “Tickets aren’t given in the rain either? Or do you just figure anyone who stops you will be an old high school buddy who’ll let you off with a warning?” “Shit.” The radio turned itself on. “Will the pilot of the borrowed four-wheeled jet please slow the fuck down before somebody’s mother has a stroke?”

Deuce? The van swerved. Brian put both feet on the imaginary brake, hard. Owww! Joe brought the van under control, slowing down some more. “Some kind of GPS, I bet.” “Of course,” Deuce said. “We’re at the turnoff to your place. We were planning a chat with y'all there, but the area is a little crowded. And colorful. This is an open channel.”

Like we needed a reminder. Joe leaned forward over the wheel. “You still have that old cell phone I gave y'all? The one that matches mine?” “Still works. Why wouldn’t we?” “I need a charger.” “Come to the shelter,” Deuce said. “We have talking to do. Bring him.”

Fucking A. Joe turned off the radio, then turned it back on and found a rockabilly channel. A loud one. “You okay there?” “Me?” “No, your thankfully nonexistent identical twin brother Skippy. Yes, you. You look unhappy.”

His name was Kenneth Alexander, not Skippy. “Yeah, well, let’s talk about it later without Big Brother and half your family maybe listening in.” “Screw them. If I wasn’t afraid of who’d drive up our tailpipe, I’d pull over and kiss you so hard your tonsils would rupture.” Brian laughed, one of those surprised hoots that didn’t have much to do with finding anything funny. Then he laughed again, because the look on Joe’s face was funny, and because with everything else going crazy a guy might as well laugh. Joe shook his head. “Now that I said that out loud, it sounds sick as hell.”

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“Not to mention painful.” They laughed together, and the rain let up some.

***** Joe pulled in near the door of the club’s crash pad. At least Bri wasn’t wearing a cast, because whatever they were wearing was sure enough going to get wet. Before he got his seat belt off, the twins came running out with an overnight bag between them, their heads down in the rain. Brian stretched backward, a twitch of pain flickering over his face, and opened the side door for them. They piled in, steaming and laughing. “Head for St. Pete, big brother. Then for Gulfport, over by Stetson. We got a meeting to attend.” Joe turned and looked at the two of them directly. “This is not what I had planned.” “Here’s the charger for your phone. We were told to pack a change of clothes for everyone, including your -- uh, buddy, and bring you the charger, and tell you to come to the meeting place.” Joe plugged in the phone and rested it in the ashtray to charge. Then he watched the boys, waiting. They just grinned at him. He threw a glance at Brian, who was watched the boys in the mirror. Looked tired. Resigned? Bri glanced at him, and quickly away.

Shitfuck. “Meeting who, and where, and why?” The boys adopted identical theatrically serious expressions. “We are not authorized to convey that information.” “Don’t fuck with me right now, guys. Stuff is going on and I have to deal with it.” The theater dropped from their expressions. “Change your plans, bro.” “I don’t have time for this.” The twins looked at one another. One gave a sour smile, his “eating collards in public” face. “Seriously, bro. We’re not fucking with you. We were told to bring you. We were told not tell you why.”

This is getting old. “Why can’t you tell me?” Brian spoke. “Because they think you wouldn’t come if you knew.”

Real old. “Tell me something that isn’t obvious.” “We’re not allowed. Please do it, Joe.” “And if I don’t? What’s the ‘or else’ here?” “We can’t tell you. Mom says you have to. Isn’t that good enough for you any more?”

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Brian adjusted his seat belt. “Cut the manipulation, guys. You’re bringing me for inspection, Joe.”

Mom already met you, and nobody else counts. “You and I don’t owe explanations to anyone. We are going inside, and the boys are going to tell me about what happened the other night.” The twins shook their heads violently, spraying rainwater, and talked over each other. “You can’t blow this off, Joe! Y’all got to go! He’s got to go!” Brian spoke woodenly. “Ignoring the summons would be the same as failing inspection. On top of that, my family and yours would both be dishonored. I’d have to run, and I could never return.”

When do I get my copy of the secret code book so I know what’s going on? “Run from whom? The Identical Twin Cabal? Ain’t gonna happen.” “We’ll look after him, Joe! We won’t let anything happen --” Brian interrupted. “You boys haven’t passed your trials yet, have you? Don’t say words someone else might have to eat for you.” “We wouldn’t let them --” The other twin pinched him. They looked at one another. “Uh…” Brian’s voice hardened. “You’ll stand quietly, out of the way, or your family will be punished for raising uncontrollables.”

I have had just about fucking enough. He cut the ignition and turned sideways to put his back to the door. “Talk. Now. English.” The boys fidgeted, looking at each other and throwing glances at Brian. “It’s like this,” Bri said softly. Joe turned to him, and saw a fist, and a bright light.

***** The shock slammed up his arm, but Joe’s face went instantly slack. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “There are just some things you can’t know about, much less control.” “Booyah!” The boys hooted. “Pwned!” “Get him out from behind the wheel.” Brian hitched his seat all the way forward to give them more room to work. Joe’s seat was already as far back as it would go. Even in the best of circumstances, moving a limp Joe-sized weight would be a trick. One of the boys made a face. “Give us a hand?” “Take it as an educational experience. If you didn’t bring cord, use the ties from the sleeping bags.”

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“Got everything short of handcuffs under the back bench seat.” “Good.” Don’t hate me for this, Joe. But of course he would. Brian pried the service revolver out of Joe’s holster, and pocketed it. Trust Joe to pack a revolver with a four-inch barrel, and with Pachmayr grips to make it take up even more room. “Get the other gun out of his boot and hand it to me.” Fucking A, I can’t walk into a meeting armed. He stripped the revolver, and put just the cylinder in his pocket. “Where can we put these? Under the seat?” “I can carry them.” One of the boys pulled the boot gun, a little J-frame Taurus with a bobbed trigger, and smiled admiringly. “You’d think Joe would spring for one of the new SIGs. But this isn’t bad.”

Gunstruck idiot. “You carry that thing, and sometime after he wakes up he’ll make sure you know what a J-frame suppository feels like.” The other boy brought out about a twenty-foot hank of clothesline-weight rope. “He’s right, numbnuts. Stop wasting time.” “How about I dismantle it and carry a couple of the parts?” Brian rubbed his knuckles. “Works for me. Hurry up. He’ll be awake in a minute. How had you guys planned to keep him quiet during the meeting?” “With a whopping dose of ketamine.” “Fucking A! How did you think you were going to poke a needle in him?” Even just

aiming for the muscle? He’d break it! “We have a stun gun to quiet him down long enough for the shot to take effect.” The other one nodded. “We were to nail him as soon as he got the van parked. Then we’d only have to drive this whale-on-wheels a couple of blocks to the real meeting place.”

Fucking A. “You got the same action plan for me?” “Deuce said you wouldn’t need it.” A vote of confidence. How far would -- uh-oh, Joe’s lips were moving, like he was swearing in his sleep. “Get the K in him now. He’s stirring.” The boys looked at each other. “This dose was planned to last through the meeting, not through the drive there plus the meeting.” “Your choice. You can risk him waking up in an empty van, all tied up in a neat package, sometime after we get there. Or you can sit beside an alert, awake, and angry Joe for the trip there. While he thinks of what to do with you later.” They popped him the shot, right through his black jeans and into the quadriceps. Brian maneuvered over the hump to the driver’s seat and hitched it forward. “Your mom is the matriarch, isn’t she?” The twin with the pistol clambered into the shotgun seat. “On the Hillsborough side of the county line, she is. On your side, Mrs. Lupino’s in charge, and she’s the one who called

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this meeting. Just hope her piles aren’t acting up. Even the guardian won’t try to stand up against her when she’s blown her O-ring.”

What kind of matriarch lets such a private matter go public? Brian gingerly tried the clutch with his bad leg, and brought the seat up even closer. He guided the big van out of its parking space with no grace, but with no real jerking either. “Give me highway directions, so I can shift as little as possible.” “Okay: I-4 westbound, then take 275 across the bay and south through St. Pete, then west on 22nd.” “You have guardians and matriarchs? How does that work?” “Tampa/Clearwater/St. Pete -- the Bay Area -- has a guardian. Out in the sticks we make do with matriarchs. We think Mrs. Lupino filed an extermination order on you. We know Mom filed a counterclaim that you belonged to her through Joe. The meeting’s to hash it all out.”

Fucking A. Just…Fucking A.

***** Brian rolled down the window, despite the humidity and the diesel-heavy exhaust fumes. Most of the traffic was headed in the opposite direction, away from the densely populated peninsula across the bay. The wheel felt good in his hand. Steady. Solid. He gripped it in both hands until his hands ached. Then he steered one-handed, reminding himself here and there to relax the death grip. He also kept catching himself caressing the wheel with his other hand. Nerves. Nerves were not his friend. But touching expressed his nervousness. The alternative would be sweating, and the stink of nervous sweat would follow him into the meeting. Relax, Jinx.

Yeah, right. Relax. Even if he’d had to fight traffic, the van sat him high enough to see well, and these drivers as a group seemed substantially less reckless than Miami drivers. Every second or third driver even used a turn signal. He was making good time. He had incentive. He wanted the van parked, and wanted to be well clear of it, before Joe fought his way out of the Ketamine fog. He mentally kicked himself, at least once per block, for not reporting in. A huntsman moving to a new area was allowed to wait as long as a week before he had to seek out the matriarch and formally introduce himself, but it was polite to make the ritual visit earlier. Not to mention safer. If the locals discovered him before he announced himself, they could assume he’d been there longer than his week. They could blame him for anything that had been going on lately. And plenty had been going on.

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Okay, what all could he be blamed for? Talking in front of Joe? They’d need to prove it, and how could they do that without their questions giving Joe more information than was allowed? Most huntsmen who had children would adopt girls, raise them to be the future wives of huntsmen. Joe was a human raised by huntsmen. “What does Joe know?” “We never asked.” The voice was flat. Okay, the boys had gone distant on him. The one up front had run his seat all the way back so he practically sat in his brother’s lap. They couldn’t accuse him of any link to the hyde, could they? He had the impression this Red Diamond thing had been going on for a few months at least. A few months ago, he’d been in school in Miami. “How long have you known a hyde was loose in the area?” “Right after spring break, they --” His twin butted in. “Shut up.” Brian watched them in the mirror. They had their heads together, muttering under the sound of the wind. If even they were distant, what kind of chances did he have with a bunch of complete strangers? He cleared his throat. “If this goes bad, will you call my pop, let him know?” Their eyes widened. Didn’t they think he had folks too? People who cared about him, who might come asking questions and demanding answers? The one in the front seat stretched nervously and scowled. “It’s not like they’d kill you, Bareback. Tell him the good news yourself.”

Not going to kill me? Then what does an extermination order do? He’d heard of some places where he might just get the beating of his life. Might take a while to recover, if he ever fully recovered, but it wasn’t dying. “Don’t be ugly,” the one in back said. “You know a lot of them suicide after they’re neutered.”

Neutered? Fucking A… Neutered? “Shut up. You didn’t exactly have to say that, did you? Take the next right.” He relaxed his double-handed grip on the wheel, and flexed his fingers. Behind the boys, Joe lay loosely curled on the floor in front of the back bench, his neck at a sharp angle. “Straighten out Joe’s head, would you? He doesn’t need a stiff neck on top of everything else.” “Joe was born with a stiff neck.” But he adjusted the big man’s head, and smoothed his golden hair. “I guess it’s time to blindfold him.” “I forgot the hood. Use your bandana. Watch the road, Bareback.” “Kiss my ass. Once you’re eighteen, that is.” Fucking A. Neutered… What kind of

mindset do people have around here?

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The closer boy looked at him through half-closed eyes. “I never thought Joe would go queer. You must really be something else.”

I bet they do suicide. “Let’s go back to ‘shut up.’” “Right again here, then the first left. Find a sign that says ‘School of Psychology Twin Testing In Progress’ and park as close as you can to it. There’s supposed to be shade available.” “If there’s not, we find shade or one of you stays with him. Or he comes out of the van.” They looked at one another. Bitten tongues. They had spent the last forty minutes trying to be big bad bosses over him; they wouldn’t like taking orders now. But this, they had no room to argue.

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Chapter Sixteen Joe heard aliens talking. Cartoon aliens. Snakes coiled about his wrists, twisting and writhing, and hissing at him to be quiet. He couldn’t decide whether to believe the snakes or shake them off and try talking to the cartoon aliens. He chose the snakes. They felt smooth and warm on his skin. He lay on a huge vibrating bed. It shook him, and he held his teeth just far enough apart to let the vibrations click them. Morse code. He couldn’t decipher the message, but it felt really, really good. A guy could get a hard-on from code this good.

What if the aliens decipher it before I can? He clenched his teeth. The aliens jabbered at each other. Some kind of tonal language, it sounded like. Something composed of telephone beeps, except it was people making the beeping sounds. Wow -- what if that beeping was a code too? He started to ask, but the snakes tightened on his wrists, hissing, warning him not to speak or move.

That’s right. When in doubt, Joe-Boy, keep quiet. Dad? He looked down, the cloth over his eyes no barrier at all. His father crouched by his feet, dressed in his best motorcycle leathers, the ones with the slanting stripes of water-moc hide. It’s a sorry day when snakes give a man his best

advice, but you do need to hold still. You need to think. You’ve put aside your suspicions too long. Something’s wrong. Very wrong. I need to knock some heads together, Dad. My brothers -- they’re just kids, but they’re in the middle of this. Whatever this is. There’s brothers and there’s brothers, Joe-Boy, and you can’t save everyone.

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My brothers! Hush, hush, Joe-Boy. Play possum. Wait for your chance. Joe kept quiet. He waited. The world solidified around him, the talking first. His brothers’ voices. Brian’s. Brian made one of the twins straighten out the angle of his neck, loosening what had promised to be a hell of a crick. They turned off a highway and went through some moderate in-town traffic. What town? Not Tampa. Wrong smell. Too much wind. The twins gave directions. Brian swore with every change of gears -- he was operating a clutch. This was the van. The twins didn’t say anything when he swore. They hated driving the van. After flunking the parallel parking test in it, they’d talked Mom into renting a Miata for their driving test. Nobody had trouble parallel parking a Miata. The one giving directions finally said, “There’s the sign. And plenty of shade to park in.” “Fucking A! That is not plenty of shade. You can’t leave Joe in here…he’ll cook!” “We got foil-backed curtains for all the windows. Also, when you crack a couple of windows and crack the sunroof, the heat chimneys out. He’ll sweat, but he won’t die.” Brian muttered fucking A again, but didn’t really object. When the engine cut off and the first door opened, Deuce spoke. “Here, son, let me get you down from there without jarring your leg.” So Bri was son now? Since when did Deuce turn into the solicitous type? Deuce’s approval pretty much established, if the right hook hadn’t, that Bri was in the middle of this situation. “Just stand where I can use your shoulder. Please.” Bri sounded tense.

What Bri? Don’t want to be seen getting lifted down like a toddler from a merry-goround choo-choo? Who’s watching? He made himself hold still. You didn’t mind me lifting you down from a truck seat. Remember that. Fuck. Why bother remembering it? What’s the chance that, when all the dust settles, you’ll be one of the ones facing hard time? If you live. “Meet my brother,” Deuce murmured. “Also called Deuce.” If Bri had any sense, his balls would be trying to crawl up inside his belly from pure fear. The other Deuce didn’t leave the club often. Brian snorted. “How many times a week do you hear someone say ‘Gee, I wonder why?’” He could imagine Cassio-Deuce’s dangerous half-smile, but then again the man could be rolling his eyes. Bri sighed. “Would one of you guys hand me my stick?”

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“Here.” Two of the van doors opened, and shut hard. The boys moved as quietly as Deuce. Even quieter than he did, and he’d worked at it all his life. But doors were doors, boys were boys, and boys slam doors. One of the boys spoke. “We’re not sure the shot will hold Joe very long.”

Shot? The little shits popped me a mickey! “This shouldn’t take long. You boys go upstairs and babysit.” One growled. The other snarled.

Upstairs where? Babysit who? Nobody answered. This wasn’t the club. Where was it? Right near the sea. Fast-moving traffic. Guardian. Matriarchs. Brian had asked about Mom being a matriarch. No one had squarely answered him, but then nobody had asked what he’d meant either.

Who would consider little Brian Gardner a threat? In the universe of people he hadn’t coldcocked, who? Only the Diamonds, the ones who’d killed Princess Tina and cut out her tongue. Are the twins in with the Diamonds, or what? Where’s my hallucination of Dad when I need him? Other people went by the van, talking quietly. All in the same direction, ten o’clock from his present angle. Bareback, they kept saying. Hide. Lupino. Lupino, the other freak-family of twins. Coincidental mention of some unrelated Lupino was, right now, outside the realm of possibility. Bri was the bareback, or a bareback. He’d been hiding? Why? Joe’s hands had been tied in front of him and linked to his belt. Brian must have done that -- the boys knew better. Getting a pinkie and ring finger into his pocket took some doing, but once he had the knife out, it was easy enough to open. And not that hard to use. Another group walked by, one person limping heavily and two or three of them arguing. One tense voice carried. “Never mind the bareback! One hide is bad enough. If a nest gathers we’ll be back to the old days! You don’t know how bad that was!” A woman spoke. “You’re right, Grandpa. We need to neuter this one and get on to the real business. If Lupino can’t control her area, she needs to be replaced. If I hear one more word about her piles -- ugh!”

Neuter? Lupino…control? Neuter? A boy spoke up. “Gives me the creeps to hear you talk about snatching a guy’s balls like he was some stray dog!”

That’s enough. But he had to hold back until the voices passed. His ears strained to sift the fading words out of traffic noises and the humming wind in his skull. He found a crack in the foil

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curtains, and identified the group. Three pairs of twins, all of them kids, with one of the boys in a walking cast, an old man, a woman, two teenage girls. The boys looked vaguely familiar, tickling his cop sense and making him think of searching a backpack for weed. That would have been right before spring break, when they had the gun scare at the second-chance high school? The other boys hung out at the gym that had the rock-climbing wall and the archery range. The old man he knew, but couldn’t place, except he should be wearing a fishing hat. The area looked like the back of a strip mall. A wide alley with several Dumpsters and a wall with five industrial metal doors, all with peeling green paint. The closer three each had a keypad beside the door and a battered camera pointing from overhead. The door didn’t have an obvious peephole. No telling if the camera was functional or not. The wall and the doors seemed to ripple in the heat rising from the asphalt. The old man was talking. “He is a stray dog. That’s how barebacks go. Dangerous, every one of them. What would you be like without your brother to know when you’re ready to explode and how to rein in your temper before it goes too far? How could you take any risk without a brother at your back? A guy in his thirties or older can make it alone, but they say this one is real young, early twenties at most.” The woman tapped a code into the keypad beside a green door. As the door opened, the boy with the walking cast put his crutch beside the door and leaned on his twin instead. Another crutch was already there. Generic, tin-colored -- nothing to say it was or it wasn’t Brian’s. Most of those keypads defaulted to a six-digit code. The first numbers that woman had tapped were 33 or 333. The other numbers were lower on the pad, and tapped quickly, without any obvious sideways movement. Probably 66, 666, 99, or 999. He’d bet on the nines. The woman’s hand would barely have moved to go from three to six. He raked fingers through his hair and got out of the van, slamming the door like anyone else would. He strode directly to the green door and put his hand on the burning-hot keypad. The 3 button was slick with skin oil. The 9 was dry. The 8 button was slick. He punched 333888, and pulled open the door. Someone wanted a degree of privacy, but not enough to put up with any inconvenience. Was that confidence, or what? He stepped sideways immediately inside the door and waited for his sun-dazed eyes to adjust. To his left was a steep staircase. To his right, a dozen or so stacking chairs and a ceilinghigh stack of floor mats. The place smelled like a gym. In front of him were two unusually narrow doorways. The fire marshal would shit. Mom’s voice came through both doors. “Brian says he has been in the area less than a week, and I see no reason to disbelieve him. I find him quite stable.” “Does this sound stable?” Mrs. Lupino.

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A recording started. Bri’s voice, shaking and uncertain. “My name’s Brian. I’m sorry to wake you up. Really, I am. But I’m alone and I’m hungry… I’ve never been hungry like this. Please. I don’t know where else to go.” His gut tightened. Bri -- scared, desperate. Mrs. Lupino spoke again. “Where did you go, Bareback?” Brian answered calmly. “To Joe. Joe fed me.” Brian had pizza on his breath that first night. All I fed him was dick.

Hungry, hungry and feed, feed settled in his ears, echoing the zhrung, zhring of the hum. A man spoke. Old man Lupino, who owned the gator farm. “I’ve been watching Joe for years. He has never shown any interest in feeding a huntsman, and he’s certainly been given plenty of opportunities. You think this skinny little scrap could --” Mom’s voice cut in. “Does Brian look hungry to you? Huntsmen! Does he smell hungry?”

Huntsman, huntsmen, like it was a title. Someone who can smell hunger, or a lack of hunger. Mom, Brian, what are you two mixed up in? Bri fed off me. Somehow, Brian fed off sex. No kind of reality I recognize, but no other way to make sense of what they said. People don’t -- they’re not human. So what are they? A low growl rose, words he couldn’t make out past the pulsing hum in his ears. Bri yelped. Joe lunged through the nearest door. A big gangbanger type in a Seminole shirt and long black braids had Bri by the collar of his shirt, lifting him so only his toes brushed the cement floor. Bri’s fists stayed down. His face was dark. In two steps Joe had Braid-man’s forefinger bent way back. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” The guy’s twin materialized in front of him, a fist swinging in. Brian’s sneakers moved faster, one slamming into the twin’s chest, one knocking back the face. Blood sprayed everywhere. Bri howled. Joe broke the finger he held and pivoted, his elbow punching into the first guy’s solar plexus. Brian fell, and bounced to his feet, and gasped when his left knee gave. Joe caught him. Pairs of men walled a circle around them. Red Diamonds. Had to be. Or…something else? These faces…all of them had been at the edges of his awareness for years before the Dies showed up. He hadn’t known most of them as twins, but he’d known the faces. Who

the fuck are you? What the fuck are you?

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Mom was talking, but the hum drowned her out. “Hold!” Took a second to realize that powerful voice hadn’t come through a loudspeaker. Brian’s hands covered Joe’s fists. “Control your temper,” he whispered through the hum. “If you want to live now, you have to do what you’re told. We have to do what we’re told.” Brian took up his whole field of vision. Brian with his dark, compelling eyes. Bri’s calm fought his adrenaline, like their hormones were flowing into one another. The Brian calm was deeper, stronger than the Joe anger. As the hum receded, his field of vision expanded. To his left stood Mom and her men -- the double Deuce the club had been named for, along with the familiar goon squad of their brothers, uncles, cousins, older nephews. Ten men, arranged in pairs, with their women. To his right stood two of the three pair of Lupino twins, the ones who were supposed to be living out by Orlando now. Old Mrs. Lupino and the Forrest girl, who was very pregnant, sat on folding metal chairs. The twin with the braids knelt quietly beside the pregnant woman. Someone brought her a huge tackle box just like the ones Mom kept; without looking away from Joe, she pulled out a finger splint. Braid-man tilted his head and gave Joe an openly speculative look. He didn’t look pissed at all. His name, what was it? A name more suited to a mutt or a clown than a biker.

You ride a riceburner, don’t you? Funky turn signals? The man with the bloody nose lay on the floor. Two women crouched by him, telling him to calm down. Chanting at him to calm down, like the world depended on it. The bleeder made a noise between a whine and a wheeze, and his brother slid away from the pregnant woman and grasped his shin, calling to him, telling him to come home.

Come home? In the center of things, a man sat on a bench, and his twin stood behind him. They were the only wholly unfamiliar faces in the room.

I feel like I’ve walked past a closet door in my house for years, making up stories about another world being on the other side of it, and then one day I open it and find out it’s the door to a different house -- that might really be in another world. Brian turned, holding onto Joe’s fist, wrapping Joe’s arm around him, and faced the room. “For any of you who don’t know him, this is Joe. Can anyone say he doesn’t belong with me? Can anyone say either of us is out of control?” The man on the bench cleared his throat. “The matter of Brian Gardner is closed. Brian, take your…him outside or upstairs, please. We have other matters to discuss and they are, unfortunately, very private.”

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Joe locked eyes with the man. “If you’re talking about the Red Diamonds and their swamp ape, it’s my business more than yours.” Deuce dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Go upstairs, Joe. Or outside.” Joe shrugged him off, but held Brian close. “I’m an officer of the law. I don’t need to be protected from dangerous or frightening information. If you people have a way to hunt down and exterminate this monster, I need you. And if you’re going to hunt on my turf, you need me.” Shitfuck -- I just volunteered to join a vigilante action. That’s how the skipper started. If

you start one vigilante group to fight an outside evil, then another to fight the first when it becomes an evil, you end up with open warfare: Gangs and warlords instead of order and law. A self-perpetuating cycle of violence. He swallowed, holding Brian close enough to feel the velvet tickle of hair against his throat. “Tell me you know what the swamp ape is, and how to deal with it. Just tell me that.” Lots of eyes moved back and forth.

If I haven’t gone off the deep end, these people are not human by the standard definition. The swamp ape doesn’t fit standard reality either. They have to have a link of some sort. You call yourselves huntsmen. Please tell me that’s because you people hunt things like this swamp ape. Brian took a breath and spoke calmly into the silence. “Joe was raised like a sister, wasn’t he? Only he’s a brother. Hasn’t he earned some trust by now?” The man on the bench stood. “Will the ladies join me for a brief chat in the back room, please?”

Ladies apparently meant only Mom, Mrs. Lupino, and one other woman. Those would be the matriarchs. The men whispered together as the ladies left. Deuce leaned his head close. “Go back to the van and wait.” Brian turned. “C’mon, Joe.” “Why?” Bri spoke through gritted teeth. “Just come.” They stepped out into the brilliant light and the heat of the parking lot. Nearly five in the evening, and it still had to be over a hundred degrees out here. “I got the van key, Joe. Let’s turn on the AC.” “Them talking will take long enough for the AC to be worthwhile?” “Maybe.” Bri grabbed his crutch, and dropped it. “Fucking A!” “The thing’s been in the sun, Bri. Of course it’s hot.” He squatted easily and used his shirttail to pick up the scorching metal. “Aren’t they worried we’ll run off or something?” “Run where? Your mouth looks bruised to hell. Sorry.”

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He hadn’t even thought of it. He licked the split place and put his arm around Bri to take enough weight he didn’t need the crutch. “We can get into that later. My head’s a little full right now.” Brian hooked a hand over his shoulder. “You’re taking things pretty well. When the sister my folks raised found out what was what, she freaked. They had to sedate her.” That brought up what seemed like a safe topic. “You twin-people are all guys, right? Are no daughters ever born?” “None. Here’s the key.” Joe unlocked the front passenger door and boosted Bri up to the seat. “Why?” “We don’t really know. Maybe it’s something to do with the testosterone levels, or the high levels of pheromones we put out. This trick of cracking the windows and the sunroof really works. I have to remember it.”

You’re lousy at changing the subject, Bri. The AC finally blew cool air, and then cold. In the ash tray, his phone beeped. Unanswered call. He automatically checked the number. Lots of calls from dispatch, one from Captain Maynard, one from TJ. One from the skipper. Maybe the last call the old man had ever made.

Shit. Fuck. Piss. Damn. He played the skipper’s message. A horrible wheezing, bubbling noise came through the tiny speaker. Just exactly like a sucking chest wound. Skipper. Some attempt at a whisper, not coherent. Then two scratches. Then a tap, and a scratch. Scratch tap scratch scratch. Brian whistled. “Morse --” “Shut up!” Scratch tap. The phone clattered. The wheezing thickened, and bubbled to a last gagging rasp.

Skipper. “I need to get on the Internet,” Brian muttered. “Some old-timer will have Morse code somewhere. We can’t let this go to waste…” “Don’t need it,” he said. Is that my voice? “Skipper taught us all the code, years and years ago. We used it at work, too, when he was in charge.” “I’m sorry, Joe. I know -- so what’d he say?” The oscillating hum screamed in his ears. Zhring zhring, zhring zhring! “It says M-a-yn, and would have said a-r-d if he’d had time.” “Captain Maynard. Fucking A.”

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“I was hiding you from Captain Maynard. What a joke. He knew where you were all the time.” “He thought he knew everything and that we didn’t know anything. Bad part is, he was right.” The hum died, leaving a peculiar clarity. “But he isn’t any more.” Bri touched his arm. “If I were him, I’d frame you for the skipper’s murder. Others, too. Somebody’s got to take the fall, and with the skipper gone only you’re big enough to hide behind.”

Makes sense. “If I were him, I’d do the same.” Facts, pieces of facts, fragments of conversations fell into place. Of course. He saw the lines of force and potential lines of force, like in a chess game. If the Dies concentrated on him, he was dead. If Maynard drew crosshairs on him, he would go down. But now he knew enough not to make a static target of himself. “I’ll have to kill him before I go down. Want a piece of the action?” “I have your back, Joe. Always. But we’re not alone, and you’re not going down.” His focus changed, became less painfully sharp. Not alone. “The goon squad?” “Yeah.” The phone beeped again. Do I have the guts to go through the rest of these messages? He had to know everything he could. Unfortunately, none of the other messages told him anything. They just all wanted him to report in. Except TJ’s, which he heard last because it was most likely bullshit. “LT, this is Howell. It’s sixteen hundred hours on the fifth. I’ve been given an overriding order to report to Captain Maynard at his hunting camp over in the tri-lakes area. Don’t know what’s up, but he said he has info you need. I parked the sedan at the airport, long-term parking, and rented something anonymous. A subcompact since it’s just me. Don’t know when I’ll be back.”

Shitfuckpissdamnpuppyfucker! “Maynard’s got Teej. Specifically, Maynard sent for him in a way that was a message to me.” “He’s not a twin, right? So he can’t go hyde.” “What is this ‘hide’ business?” “Think Dr. Jekyll and… But the change is permanent, and there isn’t any potion.” “And the Dies are keeping a tame one?” “Not tame -- just not running loose. Legend says they’re pretty easy to contain if you keep them out of sunlight and feed them well.” “They feed on human meat?” “Less human meat than human fear. Human pain. They bite for the emotional response.” “So Teej is food. Or bait. Or both.”

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Brian grinned. “I don’t think Captain Maynard expects to lure a pack of bull gators with his little mouse of bait.”

Or a goon squad. Wait a minute. A twin can turn into a hyde? Before he could ask, he saw movement on the other side of the rippling asphalt. One of the goon squad twins beckoned to them. Brian pointed with his chin. “You know him, Joe?” “Deuce’s nephew, I think. I can’t keep them straight, especially since I haven’t seen most of them since they were about ten-twelve years old. He looks friendly enough. Let’s take that as good news.” Of course, a friendly wave is the easiest way to get us out of the comparative safety of this vehicle. Didn’t matter. They had to come out -- they couldn’t run blind, and didn’t know enough to plan a truly effective run. Bri opened the door on his side and maneuvered down from the seat without his stick.

Independent little cuss. “Stop there, Bri.” What did I say that for? But Bri stopped in the open door, leaning his butt against the van seat. Joe came around the front of the van and stopped, looming over him, casting a shadow. Bri visibly relaxed in the shade. He cocked his head and squinted up. “Whatcha need?”

What do I need? What a psychologist calls co-dependency, and bad, a biologist calls symbiosis, and good. “You figured I’d cut and run when I found out you were feeding on me, didn’t you?” Bri flushed, crossed his arms over his chest. “Most humans would consider that a sensible thing to do.” Humans. As opposed to…a huntsman. Something that fed on humans. Or human energy. “You wanted to make it easy for me to dump you? Is that it? Or were you dumping me now that you have alternatives, because you don’t need me like you did, and I’m too bullheaded to figure it out?” “Don’t! Don’t put words in my mouth, Joe. Yeah, I have alternatives. Especially now that your folks have stood up for me. Yes, I used you that first night. You were good for me. We were good for each other. No, I didn’t actually need you after that first night. I stay because… Because. I don’t want good-bye, Joe.” He stared for a moment. “But if you want loose of me, I won’t cling to you like pavement bubblegum.” “Shit.” Bri grinned. “That either.” Joe laughed and wrapped an arm about his waist so he didn’t need the crutch. “Come on, then. Let’s face the -- whatever. You got my back, and I got yours.” “Yeah, but I meant that part about ‘not alone.’ We’re going in for rigmarole, but we’re coming out with a posse of bull gators.”

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Of huntsmen. And I get to pretend there’s a difference between this group’s vigilante action and any other group’s. The meeting went upstairs to the kids’ loft, which had some computers, and while the kids were sent downstairs to play basketball. Once uplinked, they located Maynard’s hunting camp by tax records, then by longitude and latitude, and then homed in by satellite photo. Joe remembered the place from a few trips in the era PK -- Pre-Kellie: three hundred acres of ponds, cypress swamp, hardwood hammock, and palmetto scrub in the middle of nowhere, with twenty acres of abandoned orange grove gone to thorn. Reasonably good deer territory, but the feral pigs -- those were worth hunting. They fought back. The satellite photos showed three cabins and, in a cleared area centered among the cabins, a pair of chikkee-type picnic shelters. Off to the side slouched an old barn with, as he remembered, a long-dead tractor and some rusting pieces of other things. An old road ran to the grove and then past the buildings to the buildings to the barn. A few dirt-bike trails undulated through the scrub. A pair of tire ruts for a road circled the place. One satellite, from this afternoon, showed one large sedan. Not the subcompact TJ had mentioned. A download from a different satellite, apparently from around lunchtime, showed four pickup trucks parked amid the trees near the larger cabin. No telling who was there right now. The newest shots were more than three hours old. “Look at the lines,” someone murmured. They shifted from image to image, and found one with starkly straight lines across the road and the driveway, each line angling straight to the larger cabin, white sand showing through the vegetation. A few shifts and tweaks and downloads from the past winter showed lines across two of the bike trails as well. “Weight sensors,” someone guessed. “The lines go to a battery and an alarm.” Old Man Lupino scratched his chin. “You don’t think they’re booby traps?” Deuce grunted. “Do people hunt there?” Joe nodded. “As recently as last week, yes.” “Then probably just sensors. Rigged to an alarm in the main cabin here. Nobody’s driving up that road without ringing a doorbell.” “Then we go cross country.” Joe traced the broken line of one of the less-used bike trails. “We can send a diversion down the main trails, guys pretending to be kids on dirt bikes, revving their motors, jumping and racing, generally cutting the fool. Let them be noticed and chased off, while the rest of us come this way on foot. Or bicycle -- just as quiet on a trail and at least five times faster.” “How close is the terrain to Tate’s Hell?” He’d just missed a four-day weekend in Tate’s Hell with the guys once, years ago. Was packing when handed an ultrasound picture of the mutant shrimp that had eventually become Kellie. “Never been to the Hell, but from what I hear, terrain and vegetation are pretty damned close.”

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“Everybody else here done the summer in Hell?” The twins all around nodded, grunted, did the elbow thing. “I haven’t,” Bri admitted from the edge of the crowd. One of the Lupinos snorted. “You’ll need to stay home anyway, Bareback.” Brian flinched. Joe rolled his shoulders and stretched a bit, taking physical charge of the space in front of the computer, then looked pointedly at Bri. “You’ll stick with me. I’ve been all through that place.” Bri looked steadily at him, and nodded. Calm. What was this obsession with calm the

twins all seem to have? “Not exactly bareback anymore,” Deuce murmured. “How’d you lose your twin, Brian?”

Brian’s not a twin! “Born preemie,” Bri said quietly. “In a hurricane shelter. He died; I didn’t.” All the twins turned and looked at him. The one with the splinted finger grinned. “You’re that one.”

Adapt, jackass. Pretty Boy Brian is as much a freak as the rest of them -- but he’s still Brian. Another Lupino nodded. “The Gardners’ baby brother, the Miami Jinx. I heard you went up north somewhere, years ago. Killed another boy or two up there.” “Definitely, he’s staying behind,” one of Deuce’s nephews muttered. “We don’t need any jinx on this run.” Joe smiled, and the gangbangers next to him backed away. “He goes.” “Actually,” Deuce drawled, “in case it goes bad and we have to run, I’d really rather put Brian in charge of getting the kids back to the shelter and making sure they stay there.” “Mom can do that,” Joe said Mom gave him a measuring look, then looked at Bri. At the bareback. Joe’s ears burned. “Y’all are not doing this without me, and I need Bri at my back.” Besides, if we cut and run early, we’re all fucked anyway. This is a one-chance deal. Someone grunted, and that seemed to be an okay from everyone. Mom peered at the computer screen, leading the general attention back to it. “What’s the best exit?” “Here.” Joe tapped the screen with the back of his fingernail. “The grove road as far as the turnaround here is county-owned. It’s used as a drop-off/parking zone for carpools headed to Lakeland. It should be empty at this hour. We can put a few pickups here, with ramps up the tailgate, for the evacuation.” He looked around. “Bri, can you work a clutch with your leg?”

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Bri made a face. “I say I can. Getting down here, the last few blocks in traffic were tricky.” Someone snorted. “Ever drive in the woods without headlights, city boy?” “No, but I drove a bus-sized ambulance through last year’s hurricane with one headlight and fifteen ninety-year-old backseat drivers.” The old man -- Dammit, what was his name? -- barked a laugh. “I have automatic transmission in my new king cab. He can keep it running and ready for us. I’ll drive one of the trucks that has a standard.” Two trucks, at least one of them a king cab. Likely the Deuces would take the van. A dozen people could cram into it if they got real chummy. Without bikes, two trucks and a van would be plenty. With bikes. Bikes take up a hell of a lot of room. “Maybe we need to have everyone but the diversion move in on foot. Slower, but less chance of a fuckup.” “He has a point.” “The diversion -- the dirt bikes -- who’s available?” “Ma boaz,” Scary-Deuce said, his voice thick and rusty. Maybe he needed his Thorazine or whatever adjusted. Mom stepped in front of him. “No.” The other Deuce put a hand on her shoulder. “Sugar, they’re old enough to be involved. This way they can be useful but still on the periphery and poised to run away. They have the equipment and they’re good with it.”

Are you nuts? They don’t have the sense to run away! “Their bikes and helmets and all are locked up in my shed, remember? And that area is probably still crowded and colorful.” Red and blue and white lights, and yellow crime scene tape. Skipper. Miss Erika. “We can get bikes,” Deuce said, looking around. People nodded. Mom crossed her arms. “These are rogue cops with guns, or they’re gang members with guns, or they’re wild-eyed militia with guns. The operative phrase is ‘with guns’ no matter what else is involved. Plus a hyde, from who knows where, and by the time you arrive it’ll be dark enough for the hyde to be fully active. I have a right to veto any job until the kids turn eighteen. You can exclude them, or you can put off this assault for the next year and a half.” She was right. Kids didn’t have any business being part of an assault on an armed camp. But Mrs. Lupino said, smugly enough, that she had three motocross champs who would take the job. The relief made Joe feel guilty. Why were Lupino kids more expendable than his brothers? He sighed. Because the Lupino kids aren’t my brothers.

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The first kink in the plan appeared half an hour later, when they went downstairs to sort the children among the designated babysitters. The twins had disappeared. With the van. “Shitfuckpissdamn! Mom! Which of you has a cell phone on you that has an open line to the boys?” “I do,” she said grimly, staring at her display. “They just now hung up. They are so going to regret this.” Cassio-Deuce smiled faintly. “My guess is they’ll head to Joe’s for their bikes, hopefully getting arrested in the process. If not they’ll meet us at the grove road. They know the place?” “Every dirt-biking kid in this part of the county probably knows that end of the place. Or knows of it.” “So we’ll have two groups of diversion bikes. Not a bad thing.” Mom hissed. “Cassio, if I had any suspicion you were helping them, I’d have your left nut for it.” He grinned and swooped in for a kiss she warded off with both hands. He kissed her palms. “Madam, you have both of my nuts any time you want.” “I meant sprayed with catnip oil and thrown in the tub as a cat toy.” Generalized hooting drowned out his muttered response. Blush spots appeared in her cheeks. She grinned, or rather showed some teeth. Her eyes remained ominously narrow.

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Chapter Seventeen My first hunt. Brian swallowed, and concentrated on breathing exercises to keep calm. He wasn’t to be in the middle of it, but most guys stayed on the periphery for their first few hunts. Of course, most guys started around seventeen, but he was in. Finally in! Right now he was driving a brand-fucking-new truck with eight men crammed into the back of it. If only his brothers were in on it too. But Joe was here. Joe, who’d gone through the huntsmen’s collection of arms and armor and selected only a cup and a tonfa. Very much a huntsman’s kind of choices. A quick look sideways caught Joe’s smile. Joe wore a navy T-shirt. Next best thing to black. The huntsmen had all changed to dark shirts. Dark blue, dark green, dark red. Just as good camo in moonlight, and certainly better social camouflage than black-on-black. Pale lashes lowered. “You look excited, Bri. You twin-people traditionally fuck before a mission?” Brian reached up the leg of his shorts and adjusted his swollen dick, glad he’d opted against a cup himself. “The Miami group does. The Brooklyn group doesn’t. I bet there’s plenty of hand jobs going on in the backs of these trucks. Why else did all our passengers duck under the camper shell instead of jostling over who got the back seat?” “Need one?”

One what? He threw another glance at Joe’s half-shut eyes and enigmatic smile. Fucking A! “Joe, this truck had a whole hundred and twenty miles on the odometer when we left the meeting. The owner is driving right behind us. I bet he paid cash for the truck and I know he has a shotgun on the rack behind his head. What do you think?” “I think you want at least a hand job.” “I want more, but let’s wait, okay?”

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Joe laughed, and put two fingertips on the swollen place where he’d been hit. “We’ll have all the time in the world, later.”

Fucking A! And they call me a jinx! Do I have to pick a fight to break the jinx? Or is it too late? He couldn’t find any wood to knock on. Except maybe Joe’s tonfa, and he wasn’t sure what lay under its shining black lacquer. “How have I upset you, Bri?” “Jinx.” “I don’t believe in jinxes.” The tonfa, cool and slick and hard, caressed his jawline. “I do, however, believe in you.” Fucking A. His face burned. He was blushing like a kid. Fucking A. Joe smiled, his pale eyes still half-closed. “I do hope something kinky is going on behind that blush.” He looked back at the road and concentrated on driving properly. On breathing properly. His dick wanted to take over. Nothing kinky. Just…well… “Define kinky.” “I suspect you’d be much better at that than I would. Concentrate on the road, if you can, while I explain why you’re driving instead of me.” That was a challenge. Joe set aside the tonfa and unzipped Brian’s fly, unsnapped the snap.

Whoaa! “Hold right there, big guy.” “What? Nervous?” Brian swallowed. “Not as much as you should be. I got a price on my balls.” “A price.” Joe cupped them. His hand was warm, rough-skinned, and dry.

Sure I’m objecting. That’s why my knees are a yard apart! Took a minute to remember what he’d meant to say. “A challenge. A dare. Call it what you want. I bet I can maintain control of this truck, no matter what you do down there. You have free rein, but if I stay in my lane, I get what I want.” “What do you want?” Joe asked, his face amused but his voice wary. Brian kept his voice light, his eyes on the road. “I want to show you why your sacred valve shouldn’t be one-way.” “Fuck.” But his hand was still in place, still warm. He was thinking about it. “Not tonight. Not even tomorrow. A week from Friday, say. By then I ought to be able to do any kind of gymnastics without the leg giving out on me. Meanwhile we have more than half an hour of road time. You think you can win?” Joe looked out the windshield. “Blowjob’s not good enough for you?” “Just raising the stakes. Right now you don’t have a reason to blow my mind. Take the bet and you run a risk over and above what I’m running. You think you got what it takes?”

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From the back of the truck, a huntsman cried out. Traces of orgasmic energy washed through the cab, riding the muted growl of the men close enough to feed from it. Oncoming headlights intensified to dazzle his eyes, but only for a few seconds. He blinked, and could see. Joe sat quiet a minute or so, oblivious to the sounds and the taste of the energy washing about him. Then he unhooked his seat belt. “Tilt that steering wheel up some, Bri, and prepare to lose your lane.” Joe maneuvered his head and broad shoulders under the steering wheel, and entwined his hands and wrists in Brian’s seatbelt. “You got a bondage fantasy going there, Joe?” “Nope. Just want something to hang onto when you wreck this truck.” Oncoming traffic. Two cars visible on the whole road. Luckily, the traffic since Tampa had been light. “Yeah, you’re scared. You really think you can make me wreck.” “Don’t lose hydraulic pressure here, Brian. Concentrate.” “Maintaining my hydraulic pressure is your job, isn’t it?” Brian kept his gaze locked on the taillights of the vehicle ahead. So long as the roads had names, Joe’s mom was driving point. Then, since only Joe knew which of the unmarked turns off the last named road led to their destination, she would drop back to second. Cool air touched his belly, raising chill bumps on his arms and legs. Then warm breath poured over his lower belly, pumping the pressure into his cock again. He kept his gaze on the taillights. As Joe inhaled, the chill bumps raced along his limbs again. Warm air wafted over his cock and now his balls. “Concentrate, Bri. Concentrate on the road. Although your bondage comment makes me think. You’re restrained, aren’t you? You can’t move around. You can’t speed things up. You can’t slow things down. Except in as far as your mind wanders, I am completely in control of what happens to you. Isn’t that the point of bondage? Giving someone else entire control of what you feel, when you feel it, how intensely you feel it?” Each word puffed a touch of warm air over the sensitive underside of his cock. The taillights were closer now. He’d accelerated. Wet heat swallowed his cockhead. The taillights swelled alarmingly. He took his foot off the gas. A truck with this many bells and whistles should have cruise control, right? The slick underside of Joe’s tongue ran small, deliberate circles on his frenulum.

If that was my upper head, would he be licking my Adam’s apple or the nape of my neck? Dorsal aspect when soft, ventral aspect when erect? But no, you talk about parts of the

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body as if in presenting form, so for a penis that would mean erect, right? So he’s licking my throat? The headlights steadied. Matched speed, safe distance. He flicked the cruise control. Bingo. Now he just had to react to any change, not actively work to maintain a steady speed.

They never covered dicks in anatomy class. Much less that glorious moment when a dick becomes a cock. The small circles continued, soothing rather than stimulating, really, now that he’d recovered from the shock of the first mouthing. Joe’s breathing made less noise than the wind rushing past the mirrors of the truck, but the breathing caught and held his attention. Joe breathed with control, like an athlete. Like a huntsman. Did you take on a career as a cop

because it lets you be in control? He disengaged the cruise control to negotiate a red light. Joe sucked gently while maintaining the circles. The traffic light glowed red on his left arm and side, with small greenish spots from the dashboard lights, while his face remained in shadow. He shifted his angle. Now the flat, rough, top of his tongue drew those light circles. Red turned green. Another huntsman moaned, then gasped, Rich energy flowed. Brian’s balls tightened in reaction. Not yet! I’ll come with Joe, not some guy six or ten or twelve feet away. He blinked, concentrated, oriented himself. Then accelerated with the point driver to cruising speed. Flick. Cruise control to the rescue. Joe shifted his angle again, taking in more cock, lessening the suction, now using the side of his tongue to make those same small circles in that same little spot. His jaw would be tiring by now even if he hadn’t been cold-cocked two hours ago.

Him cold-cocked. Me hot-cocked. Brian couldn’t tell if he was laughing or whimpering. He’d become entrancingly sensitized by those circles. He peered down into the dark under the steering wheel. Joe’s eyes were closed, but his strong-boned face didn’t look at all asleep. More like a saxophone player intent on the next arpeggio. Up and down again. Perfectly up, perfectly down. Perfectly timed.

These little circles are making me drunk. He forced his gaze back to the road, and carefully eased the truck back to his side of the dotted line. Good thing this road didn’t have reflectors between the dots, or their bumping under the tires would have alerted Joe. But he couldn’t force his concentration to stay on the road. The circles enthralled him, dragged at his attention. His muscles twitched, and his balls ached. He wanted to pull his gas pedal leg up a little, opening a better angle for Joe to reach. But Joe noticed things, and Joe paid attention to what they meant.

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Joe shifted again, and if the light was good enough it would show the bruise on his chin, the light stubble on his jaw and powerfully muscled throat. He looked like he was nursing. That thought knotted Brian’s leg muscles, bringing a protest from the bruised ones. He groaned. Joe suckled, and kept up that relentless circling. Nothing unknotted. Brian’s back bowed, and his legs wouldn’t hold place. He writhed in place, but between the straps and the wheel and Joe holding him down he couldn’t move more than an inch here or there. He moaned again, and Joe sucked harder. Fire rushed through him. He couldn’t bear it. Heat flooded to and from every corner of his body. Pulsing. Burning. He yelled, and the truck bounced wildly around him. Fucking A! Where was the brake? Where was the fucking brake? He hit a pedal. The engine roared. The bouncing continued, and trees danced in his headlights. He hit the next pedal, and the brakes locked. Seatbelts bit into his shoulder and just above his kidney. Joe gasped. The truck stopped moving. Joe rocked with silent laughter. He untwisted the belts from his wrists and sat up, and bent over at the waist laughing, all without a sound. The sound was from the back of the truck. Hooting and howling and laughing. The point truck, with Joe’s mom, had pulled over to the side of the road. So had the third truck and the horse trailer in the rear. All waiting to see if he could get back on the road without help. Fucking A. He eased back onto the road, glad he wasn’t trying to ride a bike with his muscles so weak and wobbly. Laugh away, big guy. Just think about everyone who knows exactly what you just did. The skin on his face tightened. Don’t! Don’t think about anybody knowing! Nobody knows. Someone from the back yelled, “You guys okay up there?” “Fuck’em.” Joe grinned, and stretched, and pushed his head against his fist to crack his neck. One side and then the other. Brian glanced at the clock. Eleven minutes. He’d never lasted eleven minutes into a blowjob before. Fucking A. Ten minutes later, they took point and left the blacktop. Shortly after, Joe said, “Slow down. The turn isn’t marked. There, see the gap?” “Got it.” He cut off the headlights and turned in. A penlight flashed in the brush. “Your brothers?” “Better be. Pull over here and let me talk to them a minute.”

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I will stay safe up here while you do that. But he cut the engine, rolled his window down, and breathed in the deep green warmth of the night. Frogs creaked madly all about, whether in rut or challenge or the sheer joy of making noise. The other trucks glided in. Not one of them spewed the stink of poor maintenance or worn engines. Not one flashed a cab light when the doors opened. Silent shadows spilled out of each of them, stirring the air and spreading the urine-musk scent of fresh, hurried sex. Joe’s shadow loomed by him. He rolled down the window, and Joe’s hand came in to touch his shoulder. “They left one of my weapons back in the van, but I do have five shots.” Brian nodded and pressed his face into that hand, smelling a trace of his own jism in it. Come back safe, Joe. Come back safe to me. But he didn’t say a word out loud. Not to distract Joe tonight, nor to draw taunts later. He’d already done that to some extent, but not as bad as it could be. The boys, plus two Lupinos and their youngest sister, took the long road through the middle of the grove, toward the sandpit and the trails beyond. Maybe a hundred yards out, one of them whooped and hit the lights. They took off in a string, every one of them yelling and laughing. Some of them popped wheelies, their headlights flashing up through the thorny wild orange and the far-off palms as if reaching for the moon. The girl yelled something about having roman candles, and the boys yelled for her to show it, and she yelled back about how they needed to find something original to say, not always show it, show it, show it! Four of the engines buzzed like two-hundred-pound mosquitoes. The fifth hammered like a street drummer on ice. He turned his truck in a quick three-point to face the open road, just one turn out of sight. The other trucks followed suit in the dark, except the horse trailer that had brought three bikes and had plenty of room to leave with five. It had backed in to start with. Someone using his -- or her -- brain. Brian limped around his truck, opening every door in readiness for a quick reload.

Now it’s time to wait. The frogs hesitantly regrouped around them, a chorus growing stronger by the minute. Overhead, some bird or bat whootled by, making a hollow, fluttering sound. The rising moon sulked amid clotted, torn clouds. The wind came, and went. Mostly went, at least at treetop level. At ground level, not so much as a breeze whispered against his sweating neck. He released the steering wheel, and massaged his bruised thigh. Someone nearby swore softly about the mosquitoes. He smiled in the dark. Don’t eat bananas and the mosquitoes won’t be able to find you. Of course, not being human helped too. Plus being in the cab instead of the back of the truck, where the spunk smell hovered thick and rich. Faraway laughter and revving motors suddenly stirred the air, like a door had opened to the sound. And then the door shut again.

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A mosquito found him anyway. Fucking A, right on the eyelid! He slapped it dead, and flipped the tiny carcass off his hand. In the dark, his brothers would have automatically tasted it, to see if it carried blood and to get back their own. He never could bring himself to do that. If the bug had sucked some blood out of him, it wasn’t his blood any more anyway.

Besides, he’d always asked, how do you know it wasn’t someone else’s blood? Maybe someone you don’t like. You want that blood in you? They’d once held him down and fed him a slapped mosquito, to prove they could. In return he’d found their bottle of cheap red wine and poured in an ounce of ipecac. Idiots had swilled down the whole bottle: the first third because they wanted it, the middle third because it was there, and the last third amid groans that maybe it would settle their stomachs.

Oh, it settled them all right. He heard a bullhorn, far away. Something …private property. Something something…trespassing…something. Another mosquito found the hollow behind his knee. He mashed it while listening for any other word to penetrate the frogs’ raucous briarfield of noise. A ball of light soared into the night sky. A roman candle. A second ball. A third. A fourth. A fifth. Better hope the huntsmen don’t think that’s a distress signal, kids. Then again, the huntsmen would probably decide that if meant as an SOS, three balls would have arched into the sky and two into the ground -- or into the enemy. A faraway shout carried laughter, and taunting. “Come and get us!”

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Chapter Eighteen The yawning burp of a bull gator rumbled through the scrub. Uh-oh. He shut the driver’s side cab door. He’d never heard of a gator climbing into a truck, but that didn’t mean it never happened. This was mating season for them, wasn’t it? The door closing had a distant echo, the high crisp bang of a rifle. Double uh-oh. He turned the ignition key, felt the engine catch, and waited. Two more of those birds or bats or whatever whortled overhead. The kids were supposed to return as soon as the first gun fired. The horse trailer was to take off as soon as the kids loaded. Or, in case things got hot right here and the kids didn’t return in a single group, when the first group of returning bikes loaded. Any of the trucks could take one straggling bike. A fusillade of gunfire crackled in the middle distance. In the next truck, the old man chambered a round. The shik-skik! echoed among the metal sides and doors of the waiting trucks. I hope his eyesight holds. Following it came a delicate snikt! Joe’s mom taking the safety off her rifle. He dropped a hand to the spotlight, his own weapon of choice. The thick, deep red lens was supposed to protect human night vision, but a hyde was supposed to be more sensitive into the red spectrum. Easier to blind. Supposed to be. He hoisted it to the door, and clamped it in place with the lens pointing as close to the truck’s six as he could get it. Spotlighting was illegal, but getting arrested for spotlighting was far and away the least of their worries. He flicked the on switch once, to check the aim of the beam and signal the kids to come on in whether they thought it was time or not. The world turned red, brilliant and

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crisp-edged, but when he flicked it off his vision was still at least half what it had been before. The prior clarity, or most of it, returned in a few blinks. Screams tore the night air, shrinking his skin. The noisier dirt bike approached from a little too far to the left, eight o’clock where the angle of the center track was six. That frantic drumming motor brought a wave of dopplering screams and bike engines. Brian adjusted the angle of the spotlight, and tightened the clamps. The old man turned his wheels and pulled his truck a little farther out into the road, giving him a better field of fire toward the grove’s center track. Of course, his truck now took up the middle half of the narrow road! He also blocked Joe’s mom’s field of fire.

Don’t adjust, lady! Let him take the prime angles. We don’t have room to jockey for positions here! The near-human howl of a hyde jerked at his guts. Between us and the kids! Distant gunfire, and a man’s scream of agony, jerked his attention left and right. But the hyde was closer. And the kids heard him too, because their engines took on curling, jerky sounds -evasive action -- and they cut out the panicky shrieks that were guaranteed to draw the hyde. Their headlights flickered through the scrub. “Don’t react,” he muttered, getting out of the cab again. No one reacted. The other drivers waited quietly in the dark, waiting to find out what he was doing. Good. He took a deep breath, and squealed out a high-pitched, tearing paincry. Guaranteed to draw a hyde. Or so his brothers said. The hyde answered.

Oh, fuck. If the air would move I could smell him from here! “Mom? We’re coming, Mom!”

Fucking A! “Evade!” he screamed. “It’s in your way!” But the bikes lost their irregular revving, and came roaring straight in. Four headlamps formed a cluster in the undergrowth, and picked out the slouching shape of the hyde. Too close to human to call anything else, but still…inhuman. The thing ran shuffling, sidewise. He turned away from the bikes’ headlights, and howled again. He’d gone a long way from human, this one. Had also lost one arm.

Four bike headlights! Why only four? The hyde blocked their path to safety. Brian squealed again, and the thing spun to face him. He slapped on the spotlight, painting the undergrowth bloody.

Crack! Rifle. Boom! Shotgun. Shick-shick Boom! The hyde spun halfway, and bellowed, and turned back, and came at him.

Crack! The hyde staggered, one leg crumpling.

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“Hold fire!” Brian yelled, ears tuned to the bikes and to gunshots in the middle distance. “Bikes, come now!” The girl came in first, leaning in so low behind her fairing she might be riding blind. She passed within two yards of the hyde. Her passage jerked at the monster as hard as the shotgun had. The thing crawled brokenly in her wake, gnashing its teeth. She passed Brian at speed and hit the trailer ramp hard. Her brakes squealed, echoing from inside the trailer. Her bike went down clattering as the first young Lupino boy passed the hyde. The kid passed Brian a second later, leaving a sharp apple-cider smell of piss in his wake. The second Lupino boy whooped and swung some kind of stick at the huddled hyde in the road. The creature grabbed the stick, and stuck it in the next boy’s front wheel. The spiked bike stood on its nose, and the last bike crashed into its undercarriage. Brian ran to them, forcing his heavy, aching leg to take his weight and to thrust him forward, but Joe’s mom passed him. One of the downed boys screamed. The hyde had him. The kid screamed again. Joe’s mom jabbed the butt of her rifle in the hyde’s face. It bellowed, and fell.

Keep it busy! Brian flipped the top bike, and grabbed the kid by the armpits to drag him free. The kid’s lower leg bent the wrong way, and he shrieked. Scorched cloth and hair stung Brian’s nose. The other kid, trapped underneath, lay quiet. Brian laid the first kid in a thick bed of red-lit ferns and went back for the quiet one. The girl, smelling of fresh blood and gasoline, crouched beside Brian and helped drag off the second bike. A crowbar flipped up. Brian grabbed it and limped into the monster’s range. The monster swung a clawed, once-human fist. Brian ducked the swing, gauging the movement and the limits of it. At that instant of stiffness when the monster had to retract his force, Brian swung hard at the elbow. It gave, messily. The thing moaned, oh, and oh. It tried to rise on its one good leg. Again Brian swung, this time at the hyde’s kneecap. Crushed it. Grunting now, the hyde scrambled toward him, using the breaks in each limb like joints to crawl on. Red-lit teeth snapped, and red drool dripped in ropes. Brian circled off to the right, drawing the hyde away from the wounded, careful not to trip. One waitaminnit vine snagging his ankle would have him down and damned near helpless. The rifle cracked again, the muzzleflash dazzling his eyes. The hyde bounced off a tree but kept coming at him.

A hyde that’s freshly crossed over dies like a man, Pop said. But the old ones, the bad ones, have to be put down like bears. Even a heart-shot might take five minutes to drop an old one. Until then you stay out of its reach or you bust it up limb by limb. Damage to the face did little good, except blinding. Damage to the front of the skull did less. The frontal

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lobes would be unrecognizable as human by now anyway. Arguments over the effectiveness of damage to the back of the skull were fierce and unending. A rifle butt swung in, but glanced off a hunched, too-meaty shoulder. The hyde turned, its wail pitiful and confused. And too fucking human.

Go back to being a thing! Brian’s leg buckled under him. He grabbed a tree branch, and thorns stabbed his hand. Startled, he cried out. The hyde turned back to him. A boy snatched the crowbar from his other hand and danced behind the creature. “Duck!” Brian ducked. Everyone ducked -- except the hyde and the boy slamming a home-run swing into the back of its skull.

Watermelon bursting. That’s what it sounded like. Smelled like wild pig. No time to think! “Get everything in the trailer! Hurry!” Joe’s mom looked at him, a red fury in the black-and-red night, but didn’t say anything. The kids were already dragging the crippled bikes to the trailer. The order had, probably, already been given. He just hadn’t heard it. Or processed it. Something bear-sized lurched through the brush toward them.

Shick-shick! “Guns down!” Joe growled. “To the trucks now!” He had a limp man over his shoulders. A misshapen man trailing blood and an ichorous, rotten…not a man. But Joe was alive. Unhurt? Please, unhurt! More shadows flowed through the scrub. Two of them carried Howell between them. Another stooped and hoisted the dead hyde. Two others bent to the bed of red ferns. The boy shrieked as they lifted him.

I need to assess him! But not right now. For right now, they had to get away from here before the law -- or any witness -- arrived. He limped to the truck and swung into the driver’s seat. Joe slung the not-a-man onto the back bench seat, and scrambled in behind him. The space wasn’t meant for a man Joe’s size, so his bulk pressed against the back of Brian’s seat. Deuce claimed shotgun. Tears ran down his face, and he wheezed hard between clenched teeth. He didn’t look into the back seat. Doors slammed all around as Brian unclamped the spotlight and rolled it to the floor between where Joe’s feet should be. Deuce planted a boot on either side of it. “Go, son!” He pulled out behind the trailer, and at Deuce’s direction turned north when everyone else went south. The smell of terror and death oozed through the truck’s cab. A hyde. A fresh…a newly turned hyde. The corpse of one.

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Just as they reached the hardtop road, a deep explosion punched the air behind them. A fireball climbed into the sky. Deuce wiped his nose and adjusted the rearview mirror. “Good call on the gas tanks, Joe.”

Who did that hyde used to be? But he couldn’t ask out loud. Nearly all the men had worn black jeans. Including Deuce’s brother, who had been hanging by a thread. Most likely, a thread spun from powerful psychopharmaceuticals. “How are the kids?” Brian saw headlights in the distance, and slowed to a reasonable speed. “Dinged up. We need to pull over sometime soon so you can drive and I can go in the back to do some first aid.” Deuce slid down in the seat, head below window-height. “Russ is a nurse-practitioner. How bad are they dinged?” Brian hesitated. The man looked stable now, but would too much bad news push him over? “One of your boys might be okay. The other might be walking again by the time school starts.” “Fuck.” His eyes went toward the back, and closed. He coughed, and spoke in a more normal voice. “But they’re all accounted for?” “Of course.” The approaching car turned off well ahead. And here was the safety of the highway. With traffic. Lots of traffic. Not bumper to bumper, but plenty of vehicles to hide among. Camouflage. Brian sucked at the ache in his hand. The thorns hadn’t gone all the way through his hand, but it felt like they’d tried. Might still have the thorn tips in there. Maybe he needed to put a real strong salt pack in a glove, and wear it to draw everything out. Not like I could

complain about my sticker-owie when too many people have something worse, though, right? The smell of the hyde made breathing difficult. I have to ask. “Who didn’t make it?” Deuce stretched in the confines of the cab, and wiped his nose on the back of his wrist. “The bad guys didn’t. You should have seen Joe’s tonfa break. The tip end of it went spinning right past my face. That was when he saw they’d been feeding the hyde on his buddy, the young Howell.”

If he’s trying to not talk about it, it’s bad news. “Two dead victims. Two still alive: Howell and an old lady ranting about angels and demons and goats’ dicks. She can be dumped anywhere in the county. They’ll take her for treatment until they find out she can’t afford nursing home care, and then they’ll let her loose to fend for herself. But she’ll get three days of food and baths and a clean bed out of it.”

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His hands ached. He was holding the steering wheel too tight. “There was just one of them?” Deuce rubbed his face with the hem of his black T-shirt. “Just one hyde, until it grabbed Joe. Then my brother turned, and things became ugly for a while.” Scary-Deuce. He’d been real close to the edge. Losing him was no doubt a loss to his brother, but probably a relief too, depending on how long he’d been in that state. How did Joe feel, though? Joe was being too quiet. “You okay, Joe?” “Is this condition contagious?” Deuce half-turned and spoke gently. “Not unless you’re one of us. Then, in the right circumstances, it can be as catching as a yawn.” “One of us.” His tone was flat. Dead. Brian looked in the rear view mirror, but Joe had his face down, his shoulders curled forward. “A huntsman, Joe. You’re not. Trust me, you’re not.” “I don’t need to pour holy water on my arm or anything?” Deuce smiled sadly. “Can if you want to. Betadine would do more good. You’ll need to report an alligator bite and take more antibiotics than you know exist, because of the bacteria on their teeth, but you don’t have the genes to turn into one of them. You’re human, like your mother.” “I never wanted my mother entangled in your freak show of a family.” “Yes.” Deuce’s tone remained soft. “You made that plain from the beginning.” He adjusted the air conditioner. “You’ve never killed before, have you?” “No. And I never thought I’d do it with my bare hands.”

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Chapter Nineteen A few miles down the highway, the first batch of lit-up emergency vehicles passed in the opposite direction. Bri pulled obediently to the edge of the road, along with about half the other drivers, to give the road to the two fire trucks and the deputy’s cruiser. “That reminds me,” Joe muttered. “Please check the glove box for a gun cleaning kit and a rattail file or something.” Deuce passed back a miniature cleaning kit and what looked like a round ceramic file. Joe did a quick wipe-through, then ran the file down the barrel twice with faint but toothgrinding noises. Brian flicked looks at what little he could see of the work. “How about the test for gunpowder residue on your wrist and arm? You need a solvent?” “Hell no. I put five bullets in the gator that bit me, didn’t I? Too bad they won’t find that gator.” Joe’s grin unknotted Brian’s nerves. He was going to be okay. It was all going to be okay. At least for tonight. After running a clean patch through the barrel, Joe nodded. “Okay. We now have a new ballistic signature.” “You usually clean your gun after shooting a gator and getting bit?” “Shit. I must have lost my mind there.” Deuce grinned at that, then looked back at his brother and closed his eyes again. When he opened them, he was cold, a huntsman. He looked at Brian, then back toward Joe. “You need immediate antibiotics. So does your buddy Howell. We have a friend in the business, so to speak, who will recognize the wounds and see you get maximum treatment.”

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Brian passed someone going ten miles under the limit. “Being human, you’ll need it. Remember how long that Larry guy has been on light duty?” Deuce nodded. “She’ll also see that any inconvenient evidence -- anything short of a bullet -- disappears. Your buddy should be able to walk. Can you shepherd him and any other walking wounded while carrying your brother a little distance to the ER door?” “Can, maybe, depending on distance. But the two that were on the bikes that crashed -they both need their necks and spines checked out, and neither should be carried a step farther than absolutely necessary. Bri needs to back this truck up to the ER loading dock and call for stretchers, neck collars, backboards. All that.” Brian swallowed. “Most hospitals have cameras monitoring the entrance to the ER. We can’t bring the truck within range of those cameras, especially if we don’t know whether anyone is carrying a bullet inside. Bullet or no bullet, we can’t have everyone in the truck questioned. We don’t invite anyone to link groups of us together.” Deuce turned to put his back to the door. “The two men with bullet wounds will get care up the road. If you ask them, they’ll tell you no hospital. Your story, Joe, or part of it, is that you went looking for your uncle, who has been wandering off lately. Remember our old fish camp by the lake? Say y’all were looking around there. Y’all were attacked by an alligator. You hitchhiked to the hospital with the wounded and were dumped just off the grounds. You carry them, or they walk, or you all sit on the edge of the street until someone calls 911 on you.” “Deuce, if one of the kids has spinal cord involvement… He can’t be jostled without risk. If I carried him, any unlucky shift of his weight could cripple him. Tell him, Bri.” Brian watched the traffic. “We haven’t stayed out of the history books and the biology books by letting everyone know we’re here, Joe. We hide; we lie; we do whatever we have to.” Deuce’s voice softened even more. “We make hard choices. We make sacrifices.” “Sacrifice?” Joe grabbed the headrest of Brian’s seat. His voice came closer, a hot whisper. “Not my brother!” Deuce watched him. “Your brother. My child. There’s a reason all the injured are in this truck, where none of the mothers are. Sit back and think, Joe, and remember we don’t actually know how badly hurt anyone is. The only ones guaranteed to get no hospital care are the ones with bullets or bullet tracks. Don’t get mad until you have a concrete reason, and think about it then.” Brian reached up and caught his hand. “Please, Joe. Think.” Joe snatched his hand away, and moved out of reach. Brian brought his gaze back to the road, to the blue sign with the circled H indicating medical facilities at the upcoming exit. The guardian is going to ask me how you reacted, Joe. Don’t act like a threat. Huntsmen do not coexist with threats.

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***** Joe stared at the corpse of the monster. Brian was that. His brothers were that. As was Deuce. Never mind Deuce. Deuce was cold enough to sacrifice his own sons, if that’s what it took, to keep secret the existence of these twins. These huntsmen. These freaks. So was Brian.

I bought those bikes for the boys. I taught them to ride when Mom said they were too young. I took them in when they couldn’t handle life at home. Did I teach them to disobey their orders? If that was my doing, any harm that has come to them tonight is also my doing. If anyone has any chance of a spinal cord injury, I’ll lay him out on the sidewalk and yell until someone calls 911. Acting a little crazy might be good cover anyway. They parked in an unlit, thickly hedged parking lot for a group of ear-nose-throat specialists. The top of the hedge bordered an emergency room sign across the street. Coming in, he’d seen an ambulance with no lights squatting beside the loading dock, barely three hundred yards away. Joe went around back to the tailgate, Brian at his heels. TJ was handed out first. Blindfolded with his own shirt. His mouth was grotesquely swollen. He prayed out loud, sobbing, incoherent, holding his mangled hands in front of him as if he couldn’t stand them being close. One of the twins came out next, huge-eyed. Instead of the normal angle of his left shoulder, he had a rounded slope from neck to arm, and cradled his arm close to his ribs. One of his shoes was torn or something, and he stood leaning against the side of the truck with the damaged shoe not touching the ground. Brian took off his own T-shirt and tied the boy’s elbow and forearm firmly to his chest. “This will help a little.” Then he crouched by the bad sneaker. “Second degree burn and lacerations, probably no worse than you've had before. I don't smell gas in it, or ichor, but they'll have to wash out the sand and crap. Consider it practice for your trials.” The other twin leaned out the tailgate, reaching like a six-year-old in need of comfort. “I broke my legs, Joe.” Brian stood, wobbling a little, and leaned into the back of the truck. “Talk to me.” The boy’s wide, dark gaze went to Brian. “Cousin Russ said closed fractures. They cut up my jeans and tied my legs together all the way up and down. What’s ‘closed fractures’ mean?”

Shitfuck. He sounds like a little lost kid. “It’s good news,” Brian said, his voice softening. “It means you’ll heal ten times faster and better than if you had open fractures. Your legs are pretty much splinted to each other.”

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And the little boy’s patient uncle. Joe shook his head. Brian was not even human. He was something near-human that fed on sex and willingly discussed sacrificing children to keep secrets. The warmth was an act he put on to quiet the patient. He’d probably taken a class in it. Cops took the same classes. Building rapport. Didn’t necessarily mean a thing. “Hey, Russ -- any chance of spinal cord involvement with either of them?” “Not that I can tell. No reduced sensation in the extremities or other alarming symptoms, but they’ve both been thrown around and haven’t had time for much swelling to set in yet.” Joe enclosed both his brothers in a loose hug, careful not to put pressure in it. “I was scared you’d both broken your fool necks.” “No,” grumbled the one with the torn shoe. “But I have burns on my leg and my ass hurts like all hell when I try to sit down. Can you break your ass bone?” Brian nodded. “Believe it or not, yes. Tell the doc when you get inside. They’ll probably X-ray. You sure you don’t have any numbness in your fingers, feet? Toes?” “I wish.” TJ wandered down the driveway, rustled the hedge, and went along the edge of it. “Hell be. Hell be shongbody.” Brian threw Joe a crumpled-eyebrow look, which was probably supposed to convey more than it did, and limped rapidly after TJ. “I’ll help you, TJ. Here, come with me. We need to get you to a doctor.” TJ spit out a tooth and tugged at his blindfold, pulled it partly down. It stuck in the blood on the right side of his face. “Who ah you?” Brian scooped up the tooth, and struggled back upright. “My name’s Brian. You showed me your dance, remember?” Deuce rolled down his window. “Brian, we need to go.” Brian pulled TJ’s less-damaged arm over his shoulder. Between them they had three good legs, three usable arms, and pleasepleaseplease let them have more than three eyes. “Brian! We can’t stay.” Brian looked back at the truck calmly. “No, sir. You need to go. I’m not a twin; I’m not a local; and I won’t draw any dangerous comparisons to anyone’s mind. Could you please hand me my walking stick?” Deuce’s voice went soft. “Your orders are to drive.” “I drove. Good night, sir.” Brian didn’t come within easy reach of the truck. His lips made a straight, stubborn line, although his eyes flicked from the front of the truck to the rear, where at least two members of the goon squad lurked. The goon squad kept quiet.

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“Had be dowd by ‘alkind shdick,” TJ sang with plaintive cheer. “Had be dowd by caind!” He tried to high-kick. Brian staggered under his weight. “What the fuck did you give him?” Or is this brain damage? If he’s like this for life, it’s my fault. They wouldn’t have singled him out if I hadn’t first. “Vodka,” someone said from the depths of the truck. “He needed it.”

Fuck. Joe gathered his brother in his arms, steadfastly ignoring the boy’s choked whimpers of pain. The other one leaned against him, not quite in shock but not quite all there either. With Brian to herd TJ, they could get to the ER. The truck started, and pulled quietly away. “Joe? Where’s my daddy going?”

Probably to your aunt’s pottery kiln. It would make a jim-dandy crematorium. “Never mind. You stick with me, bud. Some college kid in a red mud-truck brought us here, not your dad. Remember that. Now let’s go see the doctor.” Right then he didn’t really care if he never saw Deuce again. We can do this. We can even rehearse our story on the way. “C’mon.” TJ leaned on Brian. “Dey ndodt gunda gi’ be a shodt, ah dey? I don andta shodt.”

***** “I’d heard Officer Howell was going to see Captain Maynard,” Joe said patiently, hours later, not for the first time and not for the tenth. He sprawled in a rocking recliner in a tiny sitting room in the hospital. Teddy bears and balloons and baby animals decorated the wallpaper, but the occasional scream echoed faintly from the emergency room. His heavily bandaged left arm was totally and mercifully numb. The hum in his head made up for the lack of arm pain. Sometimes the hum got worse. Sometimes he didn’t notice it as much. But he would have pounded the back of his head against the wall if experience didn’t tell him it never helped. A deputy sat in a plastic-and-chrome chair. Not good psychology, to have the interviewer less comfortable than the interviewee, but Joe needed a chair with something to rest his bandaged arm on. The deputy had been left with a dragged-in chair and what looked like a changing table to use as a desk for a miniature tape recorder working on its third tape. Joe went on. “I didn’t expect to find him. I hoped to find my uncle. I heard yelling and went toward the noise and found Howell on the ground, with two alligators fighting over him. I didn’t find my uncle. Have you found my uncle, yet?” “And exactly when did Gardner enter the picture?” That was Bri’s part of the story to tell. Joe patiently skirted it. “I noticed him doing first aid after the shooting was over. I don’t know how much earlier he came on the scene.”

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The deputy sipped a paper cup of the sludge this hospital called coffee. Joe didn’t see how anyone could drink the stuff. Tasted like it came from burnt pecan shells instead of coffee beans. Probably didn’t use foam cups because the “coffee” would melt them. The deputy set the cup down, and pushed it away with a forefinger. “I’d expect a police lieutenant to come up with a better story than that.” “I don’t know what you expect, and frankly I’m in no mood to figure it out. I want to know how my brothers are doing and I want my uncle found.” “What kind of medication is your uncle on?”

Not my part of the story to tell. “Like I said before: I don’t know.” “Why would Howell be out in the swamp, if he’d been called to work?” No way to tell what Howell would come up with, so no way to coordinate with it. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Officer Howell, or whoever sent him. My cell phone died sometime this morning. Scuze me -- yesterday morning.” “If your cell phone died, how did you know about your uncle wandering off?” “My brothers told me. Look, I’m tired and I’m pissed and I’m worried out of my skull. You need to tell me I’m arrested or you need to let me go deal with my family.” “Should you be arrested, Lieutenant?” “For what? Shooting a pair of gators out of season, without a permit? Not arm-wrestling the Good Samaritan who’d picked up a bunch of bleeding hitchhikers -- not making him stay with us and give a statement? Hell, he could have been out in the swamp checking his marijuana crop! Oh, hey -- do you think I staged the gator attack, maybe? Or that I made my brothers wreck their bikes when they came to rescue me? Maybe I planned to get rid of TJ and my brothers, but right at the point of succeeding I chickened out and thumbed a ride with my three victims to the nearest emergency room?” A vein pulsed beside the deputy’s eye, and the zhrin-zhrin of the hum seemed to take that as its drumbeat. More like a zhriin-zhrin, zhriin-zhrin. They both waited, staring at one another. I learned how to sit quietly and pretend to listen at city council meetings, deputy. You’re never going to outlast me. More, the deputy had been drinking this fake coffee substitute drink for a long, long time. Even if he’d only been taking a mouthful at a time, he was on cup three and his bladder couldn’t be a whole lot bigger than two cups. The tape recorder beeped. The deputy took out the cassette and put in another. “Eventually, we’ll have the digital recorders, but for now, you’re on tape. This is tape three. Do I have your permission to record?”

It’s tape four. “You may record.” His attention wandered while the deputy identified him, the date, the case number. “Can I call you Joe?”

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Oh, is it time to get chummy? “Everybody calls me Joe.” “Okay, Joe. I don’t believe in were-alligators, swamp apes, or any other kind of cryptozoologists’ wet dreams.” “Cryptowhats?” “Cryptozoologists. Bigfoot hunters.”

Umm, hmmm. This tape is going to turn up missing or defective, isn’t it? That’s why you didn’t bring a digital recorder. “They’re the people who do believe in were-alligators and swamp apes.” “Right.” “And you’re not one. How nice. Why are you keeping me here to talk about things that aren’t there when my uncle is still out wandering in the night?” “People are looking for your uncle. I don’t think they’ll find him, though.” Joe hunched forward over the hospital table. Most definitely, this tape was destined to be lost. But someone wanted his reactions recorded first anyway. “Why not?” “Your little corner of the county has been turning up with ‘alligator-chewed’ corpses at an astonishing rate. Now two of those corpses have been found indoors. And the tooth marks don’t fit any alligator pattern on record.” Joe stroked the bandages. The cleaning process had distorted the bite marks, but they’d been photographed with measuring tapes. They sure didn’t look like human bites. ScaryDeuce’s teeth had gone long and fanglike when he changed. What had they looked like before? Have I ever seen his teeth? “I have personal knowledge of what bit me,” he said. “Do the biologists have some idea why local gators have been turning up with abnormal teeth? Or what the Dies might have done to the gator they’ve been hauling around to chew on their victims?” “You talk like a sensible man, Joe, and your record is so clean it looks suspicious. Here’s the situation. Not all the chewed people have been sliced.”

They haven’t? His guts clenched. Note: Find out how many of those things are out there. The deputy went on. “The sheriff keeps hearing frantic, wild-ass alarms about werealligators and swamp apes. The press is like a pit bull in heat, and strange guys with foreign accents and video cameras are asking for guides who know the swamps around here. Then you come in with an emptied pistol, your arm and shoulder all chewed up from a hell of a fight that precisely coincides with the timing of a firefight you claim to have no connection with. Are you at least going to tell me the weed’s been yanked out by the roots, that we’ve come to the end of this series of attacks?” Joe studied the ceiling tiles. They had the little holes in them that were supposed to cut down on echoing. “Deputy, you know good and well that part of the problem is the sheer number of people moving into gator turf, building roads and driveways and flower gardens

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in areas a bull gator has to cross in order to find himself a lady love. Part of the problem is the mating season, which happens every year.” He was talking too loud, trying to talk over the zhring-zhrin the deputy couldn’t hear. He hitched his weight around and lowered his voice. “But tell the sheriff we’ve killed fourteen nuisance gators in the past two months, not counting the two I shot. Since Easter we’ve relocated about fifty others. You don’t have to tell him they were mostly relocated to commercial gator farms if you don’t want to. The attacks won’t end until alligators are extinct, but these particular bad boys aren’t coming back like movie monsters.” “You talk about shooting two gators. Your brothers only mention one.” Joe stroked the bandages covering most of his left arm. The debriding nurse had mentioned that the mouth with the missing tooth had been dirtier than the other. Two distinct bite patterns. So the story’d had to change. “I got bit by two of them. I can’t answer for what a pair of scared teenagers saw or remember. Was their mother with them when they were questioned?” “Officer Howell says the men who tortured him included five of his fellow officers -plus your chief Maynard -- and a swamp ape.” “Officer Howell sounds like he needs a long, well-supervised rest.” The hallway intercom muttered something about Dr. Blue. A call for security. He couldn’t hear where Dr. Blue was needed, though. The hum’s frequency was too close to the intercom’s. The deputy stopped to listen to it, too. Then he refocused. “You don’t know anything about the chief of police, five police officers, two firefighters, and a handful of local businessmen being shot, hacked apart, or bludgeoned to death at the chief’s now-incinerated hunting camp?” “I heard people in the hallway talking about it while the sadistic nurse of all sadistic nurses was taking a scrub brush to my bare, naked, skinless flesh. You trying to tell me the sheriff thinks I beat to death or shot a dozen men -- including five cops -- and then tried to murder my brothers and Howell with a pair of were-alligators as my accomplices?” “The sheriff wants you to tell him what he can think. Preferably something that makes sense.” “The sheriff is too smart to need me to do his thinking.” Don’t you have to go pee by now? “Am I being accused of a crime? Because if not, you need to let me deal with my folks and then bag a few zees.” The deputy watched him a while, then sighed and got up. He pocketed the tape recorder. “I guess we know where to find you when more questions come up.” Joe lay back, aching all over. Zhriing-zhrin, zhriing-zhrin!

I won’t get any better sticking around here. He hoisted himself to his feet. How many times will I have to flash my badge before they’ll tell me where my brothers are?

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Chapter Twenty The twins had been assigned a room. Mom dozed curled up in a chair in the corner. Deuce, haggard and aged, leaned against the wall beside her and stared at the sleeping, heavily bandaged boys.

We got the bad guys, but not fast enough. TJ was in surgery still. Or again. Deuce looked at him, and looked back at the boys. One of them whimpered. Mom sat up groggily. Deuce put a hand on her shoulder, and she leaned her head against his leg. For better or for worse, they belonged together. Had belonged together all these years, really.

How many times did I wish the other Deuce didn’t exist, so we could be normal? An ugly tin-colored cane leaned against the wall by the bathroom door. Joe pushed open the door and walked into a fogbank of steam. Bri perched on the stool, wrapped in a towel, carefully drying between his toes. The towels glowed white against his cappuccino skin. The zhring-zhrin hum ended abruptly, the relief as strong as walking from blasting sunlight to deep, cool shade. Dark eyes fixed on Joe’s thickly bandaged arm. Bri bit his lip, and those black-coffee eyes came up to meet Joe’s. “Was the cleaning bad?” Joe pitched his voice at the same barely audible level. “Not as bad as listening to them work on the boys.” “Yeah.” A pale line traced his lips. “I don’t know how people can work around that level of pain day after day.” “Go ahead and get dressed. We’ll go out and find a burger or something.”

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“Sounds good. We’ll need to bring something back here. The boys will need more than twice what the hospital wants to feed them.”

Because they’re not human. But they’re my brothers. As much as they ever were. They haven’t changed. Just what I know about them has changed. They’re the same people I swore I’d take care of. Bri wobbled, pulling on his mud-streaked shorts, and Joe automatically steadied him. Bri leaned against him, head to stomach, and shivered. Low Joe woke up, shoving urgently to get past his pocket to full-up. Bri nuzzled in, wrapping arms about him, nipping lightly through his pants. “Yknow what, Joe?” Joe clapped a hand over his mouth before he could say anything lethally embarrassing. Then stood there, stunned, every class he’d ever taken on domestic violence and “what constitutes battery” jangling in his head. He’d crossed a line. Saying I’m sorry wasn’t enough. What was enough? The classes never covered that. Cops weren’t there to monitor recovery, only to step in when lines got crossed. A startlingly strong hand pinched his fingertips, peeled his hand back. Bri licked his palm, and grinned up at him. Dark eyes sparkled with mischief. Low Joe reached for him. Joe followed, grinning like any fool. A voice came through the door. “Your mother needs you to pick up a few things for her, too. Lady stuff.”

Shit. Lady stuff. Low Joe gave in as suddenly as he’d jumped up. Embarrassment isn’t actually lethal, he reminded himself. And it’s not like I have to buy that kind of stuff all the time. Yet. How long is it before I have to buy “lady stuff” for Kellie? Kellie… Is living openly in a homosexual relationship grounds to lose child custody in this state? What if Kellie hates Brian as much as I hated the Deuces? Don’t make me have to choose between Brian and Kellie.

***** At the drugstore, Brian found Joe staring blankly at a familiar display of lubricants, lotions, gels, pregnancy tests, and rubbers. “What do you want?” Joe flinched. Brian couldn’t help smiling. “Try a more basic question. What do you want it to do?”

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“I --” Joe’s voice was hoarse. He swallowed. “I want it to feel good to you, keep you from getting sore, or…or anything.”

Oh, man. “Yeah, a chapped ass in round one tends to put a damper on round two.” And the way you go at it, we need something nice and thick. “Let me pick out two or three kinds and we can test them to see what you like best.” “I’ll like anything that keeps you close to me.” Joe swallowed again. “The closer the better.” Brian saw movement in the corner of his eye. The cashier at the pharmacy-area checkout counter. A heavy young woman with all the right curves and bright purple hair. Blushing. Blushing and bug-eyed. He made a kissy-face at her, and her mouth fell open. He picked out a couple of silicone-based lubes and turned to drop them directly on the checkout counter. The cashier fumbled at the packages and bottles, but finally found her stride. When she got to the “lady stuff,” however, she again hesitated. Bri lowered his voice. “Please be careful, ma’am. None of us can afford to make a mistake when the Big Man’s on the rag.” She gaped at them, eyes dazed and uncomprehending. Her hand hovered in midair, holding the Easter egg colored package of lady stuff. Joe crowded up behind him, cock nudging his lower back. “Step it up a bit, miss. If you would, please. I only have him for two hours, then Big Harry wants him back.”

You only act out like this because we’re miles from home, right? Is it hard being goodbuddy Joe, hey-Joe, to thousands of people? Should I just stand here and blush? Hell, no. Brian planted his hands on the counter so he could stand on his toes to thrust his butt against the base of that cock. The cashier dropped the package. She picked it up hastily, clumsily, and hit the button for a total. Outside, Joe whistled at a cab, and three immediately stopped. Joe yanked open a door and hustled Brian in. “Motel,” he growled. “Now.” “Cheap or plush?” “Close by,” Joe snarled, then added, “Clean.” “Sure thing, buddy!” Brian had never seen a hotel check-in go that fast. In minutes he was skirting the kingsized bed to reach the AC. He turned, and pulled his shirt off over his head. The skin on his back puckered with the AC’s first cold breath. Joe hesitated between dresser and bed, set the shopping bag on the dresser, and cleared his throat. “Look. We have lots of things to settle out.” He looked frustrated. Desperate. Vulnerable in a way that didn’t suit him. “I don’t know how to say this.”

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Brian kicked off his shoes, then his shorts. “Shut up and fuck me.” Joe scowled. “Not everything can get settled with a round of suck-and-fuck.” “Sure it can.” The AC would carry his pheromones, but maybe he needed to be closer for a human to notice. He drifted closer. Smell me, Joe. Humans talk about fight or flight as if

that’s the whole story. But whichever one you do, you got to fuck afterward to burn that tension out of you. Otherwise the memories encyst in your soul, getting harder and bigger until they kill you. “Brian, will you listen? We are both employees of the city, and --” Brian grabbed his jeans fly. “Hey! Cut it out!”

No fucking way will I cut it out. Brian fought off Joe’s warding hands long enough to flip the brass button out of its tight slit. Then he dug for the zipper tab, but Joe clapped a shielding hand over it and Brian couldn’t push the hand out of his way. He gave up on the zipper to squeeze the hard shaft beneath. Ah ooh gah! Then he let Joe push his hands away. He turned slightly, so he wouldn’t smell Joe’s scent and go crazy himself. “Not a problem, Joe. Deuce has offered me a job at the club. Pays better.” Even breathing upwind of Joe, it felt like every breath bypassed his lungs and pumped pressure into his cock. How could Joe pretend he didn’t have major wood in those jeans? He turned to Joe and reached for it again. Joe recoiled. “That’s not a job! You’d be turning yourself into a walking tease for Deuce and all the other --” “I know! Deuce offered to…” He stopped and looked up through his lashes, flashing the half-smile he’d used to push his older brothers’ temper from smolder to explosion. Get mad, Joe. Otherwise you’ll talk yourself out of what you need most: a good, hard fuck. Joe’s voice lowered dangerously. “Offered to what?” “Offered to ring my bells like they’d never been rung,” he lied. And smiled. Joe reddened. His mouth twisted. “What, my dick isn’t big enough for you?” “You’re plenty big. If size was everything, I’d be happy. But you’re just so controlled, so contained. For all I know, I got more from you in that garlic fu episode than I’ll ever see again.” Get mad, Joe. You need it -- even more than I do. “You’re saying you’re not happy.” Joe’s big shoulders hunched.

Fucking A! He was turning away. Backing down! Brian dove across the foot of the bed and jumped, ignoring the jolt of pain, to stand directly in front of the larger man. “Don’t you walk away from me! Not ever!” “Brian, Brian, we can’t talk right now. This was a --” Brian bitch-slapped him. And don’t you ever call me a mistake!

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Joe stood still, his eyes glazing, and the red mark bloomed in the golden stubble, well away from his swollen, split lip. Brian popped him again. Same spot. Double the sting. Double the insult. Joe shook his head slowly, like it was heavy. “Don’t try to make me hit you, Bri. I don’t play those games.” Brian swung again. This time Joe caught his hand and threw him back.

Hah! Almost there. Brian rebounded, sent up a feint and then landed a flurry of light, taunting slaps. Pop-pop-pop! His hands tingled. Pop! Pop! Pop -Joe caught both his wrists and yanked them far to the sides, lifting Brian to tiptoe and then higher. “Don’t push me, Bri,” he growled, face to face. He smelled of gunpowder, iodine, and the intoxicating sweat of a strong man. “Don’t. You might not like where I go.”

You might be surprised. Brian swung up both legs and wrapped them around Joe’s trunk. At the same time he leaned in to latch his teeth to that swollen bottom lip. Bristles prickled at his lip and chin. He undulated, rubbing his barely-covered cock against the thick ridge that strained Joe’s fly. If you ever buy five-button jeans, I swear I’ll cut every button off them. Joe’s bandaged arm sagged. With a groan, he wrapped his good arm around Brian. Together they toppled to the bed. With Joe on top. Naturally. Always. Maybe not always, but for right now. Brian pinched Joe’s waistband with his toes and shoved the jeans down below his butt. Joe rolled to one side, fighting his shoes and jeans off together. Brian rolled to the other side and lunged for the dresser. He plunged his hand into the shopping bag, and snatched out a tube of lube. Who fucking cared which kind? He turned, dropping to his knees, and came nose to glans with Joe’s rampant cock.

Oh, man. What a beautiful sight. A droplet shimmered at the tip. Brian flicked it with his tongue; the rich, bitter-salt taste filled his mouth. Joe’s shoulders and left arm had been cleaned and painted in broad stripes of ruddy-amber, but the hairy lower half of him smelled of blood, gunpowder, adrenaline-laced sweat. The taste suited his lower half. Brian smeared a lavish layer of lube up that thick, muscular shaft, corkscrewing his hand playfully at the top. Joe gripped his shoulders. Pale eyes burned with barely controlled violence. “You wanna fuck? We fuck.” He shoved, hard. Heart pounding in anticipation, Brian let go his balance and fell.

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In midfall, Joe switched his grip to the fly of Brian’s hanky-cloth boxers and yanked, ripping the crotch wide open. Clever words failed him. And anyway Joe was on top of him, heavy, forcing his legs out of the way. “Fix the aim,” Joe snarled. “Or it’s gonna hurt.”

Going to hurt anyway, he thought, using his lubed hand to position Joe’s cock. Even so, the rough entry emptied his lungs in a cough. Foreplay. Someday I’ll show you how foreplay works. Brian looked up into wide black pupils with a thin ring of pale, pale blue. In those black mirrors he saw himself, mouth open to taste the raw sex steaming from Joe’s pores. This isn’t going to take a minute. He closed his eyes to fully savor the other sensations, opened them again in time to see hurt flickering across Joe’s face. He touched Joe’s temple. “I don’t need my eyes to know who you are.” “Good.” Joe’s voice was guttural, animal. He withdrew, as smooth and hot as flowing blood, and angled his hips before again driving forward. This time his cock rubbed the prostate just right, a long, hard stroke that showered stars across Brian’s eyelids and wrenched tight every muscle he had. Brian planted his elbows by his sides and braced Joe’s chest on his hands, then dug in his heels and curled up to meet the next thrust. “Harder!” Burn it out all at once! Joe drove in harder. One hand abruptly moved to Brian’s cock, cupped it against his curling belly. They arched together, finding a rhythm that worked. Primitive, gruntpunctuated, it worked. The pillows bounced and the heavy green bedspread rippled with each fierce, pounding thrust. Joe’s mouth dropped to seal over his.

Nowww! Time stopped, turned deep crimson. Tornado-force winds pushed his skin from inside, and burst through. Brutal need met brutal satisfaction. He spasmed under Joe, around Joe, and Joe’s mouth sucked the scream from him. Joe clenched, trembling, his hip bones grinding in. He moaned something into Brian’s mouth. Pure human life poured through Brian. He breathed Joe’s gasping breath and gorged on Joe’s energy, his ass milking Joe’s cock. Joe lifted his head, and in unison they took a long, shuddering breath. They settled chest to chest, Joe’s slow pulse thudding against Brian’s chest, belly, face. Joe took another breath. “If I ever come closer to an out-of-body experience, you’ll be picking my tombstone.” “Nah. Your folks might not appreciate my…honesty.”

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“Your smart-ass mouth.” “Same thing.” The food was old enough to throw away by the time they’d showered, so they bought more on the way back to the hospital. Then they went back to the motel and made sure the price of the room was very well spent.

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Chapter Twenty-one Natalie and TJ were married on the Friday after Labor Day, with Kellie as junior maid of honor. Nat had always championed outdoor weddings in the autumn, but September was a long way from autumn enough to allow formal wear in the Florida sun. Or even the Florida shade. Joe sat directly behind the elder Howells, sweating and itching in his formal uniform. He was acting police chief, but still lieutenant until Nat could get the rest of the city council to approve the promotion. Their sticking point was Brian. The tone of the open discussions made it pretty plain some clandestine meetings had been going on, government in the sunshine be damned. The newspapers, meanwhile, had used the Joe/Brian pairing to shove real news deep into the inner pages of the paper, and the talk radio people wouldn’t leave it alone. Not that it was anybody’s business. And no, the two of them would not pose arm in arm, much less holding hands. They’d reluctantly appeared on Nevada’s new Miami-based show, but she’d left her hints and double-sided comments vague enough to ignore. Joe sometimes felt he and Bri were the only people in town who weren’t arguing about whether he “deserved” the top job because of Bri, despite Bri, or regardless of Bri. If he did get it, his first or second announcement would be who was to attend city council meetings in his stead. If he didn’t, he’d have fewer occasions to wear this itchy, overstarched wool blanket of a uniform in the Florida heat. Note: Look into new styles of dress uniforms. To his left, Summer wept delicately into a hanky. Everything about her was delicate, including the swelling, if there really was one, under her brand-new maternity dress. Roy held her hand. To his right, Brian lounged in the light-brown suit Mom and Kellie had picked out. Brian had argued that it didn’t fit his season, whatever the fuck that meant. Kellie had

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laughingly argued him down. You’re a guy, she’d said. Guys don’t understand colors. He’d given in, as usual. Sometimes Bri seemed to pick fights with Kellie just so he could give in and get a consoling hug from her. Especially after one of the near-daily lost-homework showdowns. Don’t go there. This isn’t the time to get mad about the homework. The suit was a safer topic. Even after buying the suit, the ladies -- and Kellie -- had spent unbelievable amounts of time arguing whether the color should be called “camel” or what. Joe had suggested calling it “pony,” since it pretty much matched Kellie’s pony. They’d thrown popcorn at him. Then Bri had beat him to the chance to call the pony a camel. Whatever the color was, the skipper’s cat could shed all over it without visibly grunging him up. Which was a strong argument in favor of wearing it. Bri would look good in any color, anyway. He certainly looked good wearing nothing at all. Or just a fine layer of sweat. Low Joe agreed. Brian tilted his head and whispered, “Down, boy. We have plenty of time.”

Amber Green Being a bespectacled were-grammarian as well as a professional paper-pusher, I submerge myself in fiction in an attempt to find high adventure (as opposed to anything involving actual expenditure of sweat), lots of nookie, or sometimes just a reality that makes sense. Really. Visit me at www.ShapeshiftersInLust.com or at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention!