In Hot Pursuit

In Hot Pursuit

Kate McMurray

In Hot Pursuit Copyright © February 2010 by Kate McMurray All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions. eISBN 978-1-60737-517-3 Editor: Venessa Giunta Cover Artist: Croco Designs Printed in the United States of America

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Prologue I couldn't believe it had come to this, but there I was, staking out a hospital. Some stakeout, though; I was sitting in plain sight on a bench, and I was wearing my fucking uniform. I waited forty-five minutes, and I started to fret that I'd miss visiting hours entirely before I remembered that the whole point of wearing the uniform was to render me immune to the rules. So I hunkered down on the bench and bided my time. As if on cue, right at four, I spotted my targets. Mr. and Mrs. Robert Grady strolled out of St. Vincent's, and that was my cue to stroll in. I took the elevator up to the fifth floor, and before a nurse could stop me to tell me that visiting hours had ended, I gestured toward my badge. “I need to speak to Josh Grady,” I said with all the authority I could muster. I was banking on the theory that a cop was a cop was a cop to hospital personnel. The hospital was not actually in my precinct, but these guys couldn't have known that. I got nods from various doctors and nurses, as if this were routine, as if anything were routine about a man with a gunshot wound. When I got to Josh's room, I asked everyone to leave. A reluctant nurse eyed me, and I said, “I have a few questions; that's all. I just need a couple of minutes with him.” I had an excuse cooked up about her presence compromising the investigation, how she was not allowed to be privy to police business, but the uniform did its job. She left Josh and me alone. Once the room cleared, I closed the door. I pulled a chair up to Josh's bed. His eyes were closed, but I could tell by his ragged breathing that he wasn't asleep. I sat down and took his hand. “Noah,” he whispered. He opened his eyes slowly. “Hi, babe,” I said, trying to sound cheerful despite the fact that Josh was just barely hanging in there.

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“There's that sexy uniform.” His voice was barely there, and as soon as he spoke, he coughed. “Are you in pain?” He shifted his shoulders in what I guessed was meant to be a shrug. “A little,” he said. Several minutes went by where we didn't talk. There wasn't really much to say anymore. We'd gotten a lot of that out of the way during my previous visit. After that visit, I'd had a vicious fight with Josh's father out on the sidewalk that culminated in his forbidding me from seeing Josh ever again. Seems they blamed me for what had happened to him. Funny, so did I, although for different reasons. Of course, Mr. Grady also told me that I'd destroyed Josh's whole life, that I was a faggot who'd planted ideas in Josh's poor head, that I'd somehow tricked him into thinking he was gay. Josh's orientation was something I couldn't take credit for. The rest of it, though… I sighed and held Josh's hand up to my face. I needed for him to be okay. I needed for him to recover and come home with me. I needed to see him lounging on the couch in our apartment, laughing at something on TV. He'd been so beautiful, so vibrant, so full of life just three days before. I could easily picture him there, a big grin on his face, his cheeks flushed, his arms waving in the air as he told a story. That night in the hospital he looked gray, like half his life force was gone already. That alone was heartbreaking, but I think part of me knew he wasn't going to be around much longer, and I hated that our last minutes together had to be shrouded with secrecy and deceit, that I'd had to sneak in just to have this moment. It was my fault. The bullet had been intended for me. Josh and I had been out at a bar in Murray Hill, just having a quiet drink and watching the Yankees game. Josh had a statistician's love for baseball, could quote any player's numbers at any given time, and he was going on about Andy Pettitte's ERA when Artie Schiffler caught up with me. I'd arrested Artie the previous week for kidnapping his ex-wife's young daughter. I was convinced that he intended to kill that little girl, but luckily I caught up with him before he did. Then he was let out on bail. Artie blamed me for ruining his plot, and he was a little crazy. I found out later that he'd been following me around for a couple of days without my knowledge. I saw him walk into the

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bar, I saw him brandish the gun, and the first thing that came to mind was that I was off duty and thus not armed. Then I thought of Josh. I shouted, “Josh, get down!” but he didn't move fast enough. He looked at me with a puzzled expression instead. Artie raised the gun and aimed it at me. Turned out Artie Schiffler was a lousy shot. The bullet entered Josh's side and put a hole in his lung. It narrowly missed his heart, which seemed like a blessing, but I think it was more like a curse, because it gave us all false hope. It seemed at first like he might make it, but it quickly became clear that the near miss had merely prolonged his suffering. So I sat there in his hospital room, watching the life drain from his face. I kissed his palm. He said, “Noah.” “You don't have to talk.” “I do,” he whispered. “I just… I need for you to know.” I looked down at him, and there were tears in his eyes. I don't think there are words for the horror I felt in that moment. I saw his face and knew he was losing his grip, or that he was giving up, but either way it meant I'd never see him sitting on our couch or in our kitchen or on our bed. This was it. He took a wheezy breath. “I love you so much, Noah.” “I know. Save your strength.” “This wasn't your fault,” he said. “Don't blame yourself.” “If it weren't for me, Artie Schiffler would never have walked into that bar.” “I forgive you,” said Josh. I bent my head and kept his hand in mine, kept it held up to my cheek. “I love you,” I said. “How am I going to live without you?” “You will,” Josh said. “You have to. I want you to live.” He shuddered. “I just want this pain to stop.” “God, Josh.” I missed him already. I could see everything in his eyes when I looked at him. I saw the resignation, I saw the pain, and I saw his love for me right there, so strong despite the fact that he was fading. I

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thought, this is what his parents will never understand. There was nothing corrupt or disgusting about our relationship. It was beautiful. And I was about to lose it. Unable to look, I turned away, holding his hand tightly. We sat there silently for several more moments. Then his hand went slack in mine. I knew instantly that it was over. He was gone, and his pain was over. Mine had just begun. “Good-bye,” I said. It took a moment before the machines started wailing. I stood and ran to the door. I called in the nurses, who ran to him and started working, but I knew it was already over. Without even glancing back to look at him one last time, I walked out of the room and out of the hospital.

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Chapter One Eighteen months later

I hadn't slept in three days, but it was finally over. I felt the tension drain from my shoulders and back. A woman stood at the front of the jury box and read the verdict declaring Arthur Schiffler guilty of the first-degree murder of Joshua Grady. It was being theorized in the press that if Schiffler got the guilty verdict, he'd get a hefty sentence. The prosecutor in the case was a real firecracker; she'd made sure there were plenty of flattering photos of Josh around for the jury to look at, making Josh's death sound like the most senseless crime that had ever occurred in New York. I was in the back of the courtroom when the verdict was read, carefully avoiding Josh's parents. His father had told me on the day I went into court to testify that he thought I should be on trial right next to Artie Schiffler. I had just bowed my head and nodded, because part of me still blamed myself for Josh's death. But I also wanted to shout at him, to punch him, to just put my damn fist through a wall. I lost him too! I would have screamed. I loved him too! But as far as anyone else in the court knew, I was just a friend of Josh's, a cop who'd borne witness to the incident that took his life. I wasn't out to the department. Which meant I couldn't make a scene. I slipped out of the courtroom as soon as the verdict was read. It wasn't hard to get lost in the crowd. When someone young and attractive dies in New York, it always gets a lot of attention. That Josh Grady—a twenty-eight-year-old publishing assistant, a good-looking and genuinely nice guy by all accounts—had been killed in public with a number of horrified people standing around to witness it kept the story in the newspapers for weeks. I wondered how public opinion would have been affected if his parents would have let it be known that he was also gay.

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I had to collect my gun from the security desk, which meant fishing my badge out of my jacket pocket. I was still adjusting to wearing a suit instead of the uniform. There was the great irony of my life: I managed to get my boyfriend killed, and they promoted me. I showed the security clerk my badge, and she handed me back my gun, which I tucked into my shoulder holster before leaving the courthouse. I lucked out: there was no sign of the Gradys, who were probably still upstairs in the courtroom granting interviews to the press. I was almost thankful for them for that; I had no desire to talk to anyone, but they were happy to play the grief-stricken parents on camera. I took the subway uptown to the precinct. When I walked into the squad room, I was immediately intercepted by another cop from my department, who informed me that the lieutenant wanted to see me as soon as I was able. I dumped my stuff at my desk, then walked into Lieutenant Caffity's office. “Ah, Detective Tobin,” he said when he saw me. He pointed to his spare chair, an uncomfortable metal contraption circa 1972 that was partially upholstered with green vinyl. I sat and braced myself. Caffity rarely wanted to see you unless there was bad news. “You got the verdict you wanted?” he asked. “Yes, sir,” I said. “The jury decided Schiffler was guilty of murder one.” Which was probably not actually fair; a better defense attorney would have gotten it knocked down to manslaughter, given that Schiffler had never intended to kill Josh. That he had actually intended to kill me, though, was probably something the jury kept in mind. That he'd kidnapped and tried to kill a two-year-old girl probably influenced the verdict also, although he was being tried for the kidnapping charges separately. Not that I gave a shit. Schiffler did shoot Josh. I hoped he would rot in prison. “That's good,” Caffity said. “How are you doing?” The question confused me, particularly as it was asked with some measure of compassion. Caffity didn't know about me and Josh, so I couldn't imagine what would have compelled him to ask such a question. “I'm okay,” I said. “I mean, I'm glad justice was done. It meant a lot to see this case closed.”

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And it did. I'd been after Schiffler for a long time. That, and I'd finally gotten to the place where it wasn't physically painful to think about Josh. I was sad to admit, though, that as I sat there across from Caffity, I didn't feel the closure I'd been expecting before the verdict was read. Josh's killer was going to go to jail for a very long time. Shouldn't I feel something? “How are you really?” Caffity asked. I blinked. “I know Josh Grady was a friend of yours.” That was the official line. We'd gone out for a drink together when Artie Schiffler crashed the scene. “Yes, sir,” was all I could say. “Look, Noah,” Caffity said. “I appreciate everything you do for this precinct. You're a good cop, and your dedication to the job is unquestionable. But I know you've been under a lot of stress.” I had no idea what the lieutenant was getting at. I worried that he'd found out the real reason I was so invested in the Schiffler case. I sat silently, but my insides were churning. Caffity went on. “You're no good to me if you're burnt out, Detective. And you are, for certain, burning out as we speak. You put in a lot of hours on this Schiffler case—” “Because I wanted to,” I said. Because I couldn't go home. I'd had to move soon after Josh's death; I couldn't be in our apartment without constantly thinking I saw him out of the corner of my eye. My heart broke all over again every time I remembered he wasn't actually there. But even the new place didn't feel like much of a home, not without Josh in it. “And you worked around the clock on the Matthews case.” “I got the job done,” I said. The Matthews case, at least, had a happy ending. An Upper East Side teenager went missing, but it turned out she'd just gone out of town with her boyfriend and neglected to tell anyone. When they heard on the news that Lindsay Matthews had gone missing, Lindsay and the boyfriend thought it would be funny to send a ransom note. They weren't laughing so hard when they were arrested for giving false and misleading evidence. “My point, Noah, is that you've worked like hell, and I appreciate it, but you need a break.” “Sir, with all due respect—”

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“Which is why I'm giving you two weeks' paid leave, starting immediately.” That surprised me. The only thing I could do was protest. “Two weeks? I don't really think that's necessary.” Lately I couldn't go two days out of work without feeling crazy. “I strongly suggest you get out of town for a while.” He lowered his voice. “Look, you need a break. I can see on your face how exhausted you are. So go on vacation, get some rest.” He opened a drawer and dug around in it for a moment. “I was thinking, if you're interested, my wife and I have a time-share. We own this great place in Tampa. A big resort and spa combination. We've been there many times; it's very relaxing. I think you'd like it. You're welcome to stay there for the two weeks.” “Oh, sir. I really couldn't…” “It'll sit empty otherwise. You'd be doing me a favor by checking up on the place.” Right. He handed me a brochure. As Caffity went on about how easy it would be to make the arrangements, I resigned myself to my fate: two weeks in Florida, starting as soon as I could get a flight out of New York. It was March, we'd had almost constant rain or snow for two weeks, and I was pretty tired of the New York winter anyway, so it was just as well. I flipped through the brochure as Caffity talked. The resort it advertised looked nice. It wasn't South Beach, but maybe that would be good too. Still, I hadn't been on a vacation without Josh in probably six years, and it was hard to imagine that I'd have much fun alone with my thoughts. I interrupted Caffity's speech and said, “Are you sure you don't need my help on the Anderson case?” “No,” Caffity said. Then he kept going. “This place is right near the beach. Lots of young girls in bikinis.” Yeah, as appealing as that sounded. “I don't have a choice, do I?” “No,” Caffity repeated. He looked at me. “You know I think you're the best there is. But you work too hard, and you're beat. Take the time off. Get out of this blasted winter. Enjoy yourself for a change.” I shook my head at him, but the stern look on his face kept me from saying anything more.

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Chapter Two That's how I found myself on a plane to Tampa. I landed in the late afternoon on a Monday, three days after I'd been ordered to take vacation, and took a cab straight to the resort. The room was nice. It was actually a suite of two rooms, one a combo kitchenette/living room, the other a bedroom with a king-size bed and huge bathroom. It rivaled my little Lower East Side one bedroom in size. Everything was painted salmon pink or palm tree green, but it was Florida. I figured if I had to stay somewhere for two weeks, I could have wound up in a worse spot. I got settled, took a shower, then went down to the restaurant for dinner. I spent most of the meal ignoring the very attentive waitress and flipping through the travel guide I'd bought at the airport. I hated myself a little bit when I looked up to make sure no one saw me flip to the gay/lesbian section in the back (demarcated by a purple tab, of course) and look at the names of the bars listed. I was never really one to hang out in gay bars—Josh and I had met through a mutual friend—but I needed something to do. The prospect of spending my first night in Florida alone in my room was not a happy one. After I ate, I got a cab into downtown St. Petersburg and had the cabbie drop me off a few blocks from a place called Shanley's, which, according to the travel guide, was a well-established gay bar with a mellow atmosphere. That sounded about my speed. I knew I couldn't handle dancing and Europop, but mellow I could do. I figured I'd go in, sit at the bar, have a beer, and observe the wildlife. I hadn't had sex since before Josh died, and I was itching for it, but I told myself I wasn't going to the bar for a random hook-up. I was just going to look. And I'll admit, as soon as it became clear that Caffity wasn't going to let me out of this imposed vacation, the thought had occurred to me that in Tampa, I could go out to the gay bars. The few times Josh had dragged me out in New York, I'd been incredibly nervous the whole

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time, terrified that some other cop would see me and share my secret with the rest of the force. The thing with cops is that a lot of them are homophobic assholes. It didn't seem worth it to me to try to sort out who thought the gay jokes were funny and who laughed to stay part of the club. So I kept my head down and got my job done, and hardly anyone ever asked about my personal life anymore, tired as they were of my cagey answers. There'd only been one incident, when a beat cop I'd once worked with came into a gay bar in Hell's Kitchen to arrest a drunk and disorderly. And I'd said, “Oh, I'm just here with my friend Josh”—you know, as in I'm here in the bar, not I'm with Josh. The beat cop nodded and ignored me. Josh sometimes chastised me for not being honest about who I was, but he got it. I think that, coming as he did from a family that to this day chooses to adamantly deny that Josh was anything but the straightest man who ever lived, he understood my need to keep my personal life private. So I'd kept to myself in New York, but there was not a goddamn soul in downtown St. Pete that night who knew who I was. And I was a little horny. Josh was gone. I wanted to look at least. I walked up the street from where the cab dropped me off and realized that I must have stumbled into a little gay pocket of St. Pete. I passed a bus stop with an ad showing two men embracing. On closer inspection, it seemed to be an ad for a cell phone company; I guess the service provider knew its audience. There were even gay couples holding hands in the streets. I shoved my hands in my pockets. I went into Shanley's and was immediately greeted with atmosphere so thick with testosterone, you could smell it. Something about that woke up my senses. I smiled to myself as I sat on a stool. While the bartender poured my beer, I looked around. The place seemed crowded for a Monday, and mellow was a pretty good word for it. Everyone acted pretty laid-back. Four guys played pool in the corner, drinking beer and laughing, a smattering of couples sat at small tables, and there was a lot of checking out and long gazes going around. A lot of attractive men too, I couldn't help but notice. And it was Florida; it had been muggy and in the upper eighties that day, and everyone was wearing as little as possible. I heard the bartender put a mug down on the bar, so I swung around. He grinned at me,

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then went back to helping other customers. I took a healthy sip of the beer and just sat there for a moment, trying to make myself relax. “Fancy meeting you here,” said a baritone voice to my right. I figured he was talking to someone else, but I turned my head to glance at him and realized with mild horror that he was talking to me. Chatting up some guy in a bar was okay in theory, but in practice it was panic inducing. I took a deep breath and turned my body to get a better look at this guy. He was vaguely familiar, but in that same way that everyone is once enough of your life has passed. He was tall and rangy, with messy dark hair and unnaturally light blue eyes. At my blank expression, he smiled and said, “Well, you're new.” I tried to laugh, but I think it sounded more like I choked. “I'm here on vacation,” I said. He nodded. He ordered a single malt on the rocks, then sat in the stool next to mine. “And how are you enjoying lovely Florida?” “Fine,” I said. “For the three hours I've been here.” He laughed. “Well, you didn't waste any time, did you?” Then he glanced around and raised his eyebrows, like he wondered if I understood the reason there were no women in the bar. “Didn't want to spend the night alone in my hotel room.” The man looked surprised. “Really? No wife and kids you're hiding from? No boy toy back in your room?” “Just me,” I said. I smiled, hoping to demonstrate that I did, indeed, know exactly where I was and exactly what I was doing there. “A solo vacation?” “My boss thought I was burning out.” He nodded and didn't pursue it further, for which I was grateful. He looked around, and I thought he'd give up on me. I peered into my glass and noticed that, because I'd been sipping all through this exchange, the beer was nearly gone. I finished the rest in one gulp. “Can I buy your next round?” the guy asked.

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“Uh.” I briefly panicked again. If he was buying me drinks, did that imply something? That he wanted to have sex with me? If I agreed, would he think that I wanted to have sex with him? Maybe I did. Was I ready for that? “Sure, okay.” I was definitely attracted. He was a little taller and more wiry than the type of man I usually went for—although, who was I kidding? It wasn't like I'd gone for anyone since Josh— but he had a well-sculpted face, and he obviously put some effort into keeping up his appearance: trim body, nice clothes, deliberate-looking stubble. And I couldn't stop looking at his eyes. They were so pale and strange looking, particularly juxtaposed against all that dark hair. I can't deny that I was intrigued. Then he leaned in close, and I smelled him. It's not a smell that's easy to describe, just something raw and masculine, sweat and musk and, I think, Old Spice. Something about the proximity of his body to mine made me want to touch him, and I felt all those months without Josh acutely, like I'd gone for over a year without even basic human contact. He got the bartender's attention and ordered us another round. When my second beer was in front of me, he said, “Well, if we're at the drink-buying stage, I feel like we could be on a firstname basis. I'm Harry.” “Nick,” I said. I was attracted, but I also didn't completely trust this guy. He extended a hand, and I shook it. He had big hands, hands that made my hands seem small, and his handshake was warm and firm. “It is fantastic to meet you, Nick.” He grinned. “Of all the gay bars in the Tampa Bay area, I'm glad you picked mine.” I didn't respond. I just drank my beer. “So what do you think? Should I bring you home, or do you want to just do it in the men's room?” This prompted me to sputter, although I had already pretty much decided that I wanted to have sex with Harry. The prospect of it both excited and terrified me. “Excuse me?” I said. Harry laughed. “Oh don't be so prim and proper. A man on vacation alone only comes into a gay bar for one reason. I figured I'd just cut to the chase.” “Oh,” I said. “Efficient of you.” He swiveled on his stool so that he faced me. “You're from somewhere north, right? You've got the skin of someone who doesn't see a lot of the sun.” He reached over and touched

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my face, letting his fingers trail along my cheek. “Mmm, very smooth. Like a peach. Where you from, peach?” “New York,” I said, thoroughly under his spell now. I looked into his eyes, those weirdly light eyes, and I liked the way he was looking at me, as if I were the best-looking man in the room. His fingers were still on my face, and he said, “Yeah, it would be somewhere like New York. You have nice bone structure too.” He let his hand slide away. God, just the lightest touch and I was hard. Or hard up, at least. I'd been so busy trying not to feel anything for the last eighteen months that I'd nearly forgotten what it was like to desire, to be desired. He had a grin that looked like pure evil, and he shot it at me then. “I am a lifelong resident of this area,” he said. “I always kind of liked New York, though.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Are we making small talk now?” “We'll do whatever you want to do, darlin'.” He took a long sip of his drink. “I've made my intentions clear. You seemed to need some buttering up.” “Men's room,” I said. He smirked. “That's what I'm talking about.” We both downed the last of our drinks. He didn't even try to be coy about what we were up to, just took my hand and led me to the back of the bar. The men's room was empty. It was surprisingly clean too. Three stalls, three urinals, a row of sinks, and of course, a condom vending machine. Harry dropped a quarter into the machine, then held up his purchase. He grinned at me again before shoving me into one of the stalls. I turned away from him, trying to work out the best way to use the small space, but he beat me to it by pushing me face-first against the door. “I want it hard and fast,” I told him. I wanted him badly, and I wanted it to hurt. This was not tender lovemaking. This was fucking in a bar bathroom. I figured it should be quick and dirty. Without saying anything, Harry stood behind me and reached around to undo my jeans. He pushed them down to my knees. I pushed my ass out, making it available to him. He stood close

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behind me and put an arm around my torso. His lips pressed against the space where my neck met my shoulders. I felt him inhale. The stubble on his face was scratchy but welcome, and when he exhaled, his breath was hot against my exposed skin. I could feel the rough fabric of his jeans against my bare ass. I pushed back a little to encourage him to get going. He slid his free hand over my ass. “Your skin is soft here too,” he murmured. Then he took it away, and I heard a plastic clicking sound. A moment later he touched me again, this time with something cool and slick on his hands. It occurred to me to comment on his preparedness, but the truth was that I really didn't care. I pushed back at him again, my hands braced on the stall door. He took away the arm that had been around my stomach and put it on my hip. The slippery fingers of his other hand slid down the crack, and then he slid a finger inside me. It had been so long since anyone had touched me there that it felt strange at first, like an invasion. I was surprised by the intimacy of it too and surprised at myself for letting this man I didn't know get this close. It quickly changed into something wonderful, the sensation of Harry's hands on me, his fingers in me, making me lose my ability to think straight. I moaned and threw my head back. And I was so hard that I worried that if he so much as touched my cock, I'd come all over the stall door. Harry bent his head and went back to nuzzling my neck. We'd both started to sweat, and the slick mixture of our combined perspiration with his sandpapery stubble rubbing against my shoulder made me feel present, made me acutely aware of his body behind me. I was there, we were there together, and I was surrounded by the scent of sweat and sex and Old Spice. I groaned. He murmured nonsense love words against my skin as he added fingers slowly. Too slowly. I didn't want careful preparation; I wanted him to fuck me. “Do it,” I said. He laughed. “Hold your horses, peach.” I heard the sound of a zipper coming down, of a belt buckle hitting the floor, then of a condom wrapper being torn. Then I felt him, hard against me, his cock between my ass cheeks, and I moaned again, the anticipation delicious. He kissed me from my shoulder up to my ear. His cock pressed against my asshole, and it was all I could do not to push back at him. He pushed in with agonizing slowness. When he was all the way in, he said, “Jesus, you're tight,” and started moving his hips.

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I grew impatient. I was so wound up, and by then wanted him so badly, that I was halfcrazy with it, but there was a part of me that also felt some shame, that was worried I'd lose my nerve. This had to move faster. I hit my palms against the stall door. “Hard and fast,” I told him, frustrated now. Except that I was, of course, completely at his mercy. He put his hands on my waist and thrust a few times before he bent forward and nipped at my neck. “I'll get to it,” he said. But then he acquiesced and thrust hard and fast. It hurt, sharp, searing pain where our bodies met, but in the best possible way. I groaned, and he leaned his chest on my back, panting and thrusting. The buttons of his shirt pressed into my spine through my T-shirt. One of them scratched me hard enough that I thought it might have drawn blood, but I didn't care. I wanted the burning I felt to keep going. He surprised me by kissing me. It was a little awkward, given our relative positions, but his lips were magic. As he parted my lips with his tongue, I started to forget that I was in a bar bathroom. I just felt his arms around me, his cock moving inside me, his lips on mine. Everything seemed like it might be okay for a little while. “Touch me,” I whispered. He smiled, and I saw the crow's-feet beside his eyes, realizing that he was maybe a little older than I'd first guessed. “You're a demanding little thing,” he said as he reached around me to stroke my cock. I didn't like his use of the word “little,” but it wasn't like I had time to be offended. It didn't take more than a few strokes before I felt the orgasm building and my capacity for rational thought fleeing. The combined sensation of him thrusting inside me and stroking my cock became completely overwhelming. It was almost too much, but I didn't dare ask him to stop. I came on his hand, stupidly fast, like a teenager during his first time. He moaned when he felt me come, and it was only a few more thrusts before I felt him stiffen behind me. He grabbed me tighter as he came, bending his head forward again, his cheek pressed against mine. It was fast, but it was satisfying. He pulled out of me and tossed the condom in a little trash can; then he shot me a Cheshire Cat grin as he pulled up his pants. “If your hot little ass wants an encore, you're likely to find me here most of the rest of this week,” he said. Then he exited the stall.

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I stayed where I was and listened. I was hit all at once with fear that sat like lead in my stomach, not wanting to face Harry again, not wanting the whole bar to know what we'd done. Water ran at the sink, and after that a whooshing sound told me he had yanked a paper towel from the dispenser. Then the bathroom door squeaked open. I didn't leave the stall until I was sure I was alone. I washed up quickly and walked back into the bar. I half expected to see Harry sitting there, yukking it up with the bartender like we hadn't just had really intense sex in the bathroom, but he was nowhere to be found now. Just as well, I figured. I had gotten what I came for, no need to linger. I left and managed to get a cab to stop for me. I always forgot how hard it was to catch cabs in cities that were not New York. The cabbie made sure to be especially dramatic about how put out he felt, having to drive me all the way back to Tampa, but he did, and I tipped him well. I went to bed that night missing Josh like I hadn't in a while. By then I could sometimes go whole days without thinking about him, but he was on my mind that night. I lay in my bed and talked to him, like I did sometimes. I asked for his forgiveness. “I want you to live,” he'd said to me just before he died. I knew that night that I hadn't figured out how to do that yet, at least not without Josh.

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Chapter Three I woke up late the next morning. Or late for me, anyway; it was just before nine. I got up and found the gym, which was mostly empty at that time of the morning. I did a quick circuit, admiring how clean and modern the equipment looked. I ran on the treadmill like I was running from the devil for half an hour; then I lifted weights until my muscles sang. I felt a lot better about everything after the workout. Maybe it was just endorphin-induced euphoria, but I felt like I could handle anything, that I could face the day. I figured I might as well enjoy my vacation. I went back to the room fantasizing about ways I could waste my time. In addition to the pool behind the hotel, there was a spa that offered the whole range of massages and facials and whatnot. If I were to endure this vacation, I might as well take advantage of all the pampering it offered. After I showered, I flipped on the TV out of habit and kept an eye on it as I got dressed. Whichever channel I'd landed on was showing the local news. As I bent to pull on a pair of khaki shorts, I saw what I thought was Harry's face flash on the screen, and I stopped. I dismissed it, thinking I just had Harry on the brain, given that we'd had hot, if confusing, sex against the door of a bathroom stall. He was the first man who wasn't Josh who I'd had sex with in nearly eight years, so it stood to reason that he'd etched himself onto my memory. But then he was there again. The text over the anchor's shoulder read, Local Man Missing. I picked up the remote and turned the volume up. The anchor said, “And all we know at this time is that police are currently investigating the disappearance of Harrison Knowles, a prominent local businessman. If anyone has information on Knowles or his whereabouts, they are encouraged to call the tip line shown on the screen.” That didn't seem right to me. I'd just seen him not fourteen hours before. Too fast to be considered a missing person, unless they did things differently in Tampa. Who was this guy?

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Had he already been “missing” when he'd fucked me? Perhaps my initial impulse was right and I was correct in not trusting him. But that didn't feel right either. I stood, baffled, as they showed some old news footage of Harry cutting a ribbon somewhere, grinning at the camera. He hadn't seemed to be in any trouble. He certainly hadn't tripped any of my warning signals, and vacation or not, I trusted myself to be tuned into those sorts of things. I wondered if something had happened to him after he'd left the bar. I tried to remember every detail of what he'd done after he left the stall. The fact that he'd vanished after he'd walked out of the men's room didn't bode well. Without giving it a second thought, I picked up my cell phone and dialed that 800 number for the tip line. When the operator answered, I told her I had information about Harrison Knowles. “How do you know Mr. Knowles?” she asked. “I think I may have been the last person to see him before he disappeared.”

*** At the urging of the cop I'd been patched through to when I called the tip line, I drove to a police precinct house in Tampa. I sat in the rental car for a few moments, collecting my thoughts before I'd have to talk to the cops. Funny how you can't escape work even when you're on vacation. I sure as hell hadn't anticipated spending any part of my vacation at a police station. It was not a large building, being a squat two stories, an island in a large parking lot. I got out of the car, then went inside and, I suppose with a cop's knowledge of how such buildings are organized, easily found the squad room. I walked in, and as instructed, I said, “I'm here to see Debra Ruiz.” There was a lot of shuffling—not a well-oiled machine, this precinct—and then a short woman with frizzy, dark hair came out and said, “I'm Ruiz.” “I'm Noah Tobin,” I told her. “I called about Harrison Knowles?” She nodded. “Follow me.” She wasn't in uniform. She wore black cargo pants and a white tank top, but she looked like a cop. She could have been wearing a slinky cocktail dress and still looked like a cop. She had that hard edge about her. She led me to an interrogation room and pointed at a chair. I sat.

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“All right, what have you got for me, Mr. Tobin?” she asked, sitting down. She put her palm on a yellow legal pad that was on the table. She pulled a pen out of her pocket and looked at me expectantly. “I should probably tell you up front,” I said, reaching into my pocket, “that I'm a cop.” I pulled out my badge and handed it to her. She copied down the badge number and handed it back. “What's the NYPD doing in Florida?” “I'm on vacation,” I said. “I just happened to run into Harrison Knowles last night.” “Okay. So tell me about Mr. Knowles. Where did you see him? What were you doing?” “There's not a lot to tell,” I said. “We just met last night. He came up to me at a bar and introduced himself, so we chatted a little.” “Which bar?” It took a lot of effort not to let my panic show. Surely a cop would know the bars in this area and would know everything about me as soon as I mentioned the name. I felt stupid but said, “I don't remember the name of it.” I held up my hands helplessly in what I hoped was universal language for I'm a stupid tourist. What do I know? I threw her a nugget, though: “It was in downtown St. Pete.” She nodded and wrote something down. “What did you chat about?” “Nothing,” I said. “Uh, the fact that I was on vacation. The fact that he'd lived in the area his whole life. It was a short conversation.” “What time was this?” “I got to the bar around nine.” “And you're sure it was him.” A little defensively, I said, “I'm good with faces. I saw his on the news this morning, so I called it in.” It was odd to be sitting on the other side of this table. I tried to think like a cop, to remember what I'd need to hear if I were in Ruiz's seat. I took a deep breath and added, “He's tall, maybe six-two, has thick brown hair and light blue eyes.” She looked up at me. She gave me a brief smile before she blinked and resumed her blank cop face. “Okay. So you met him at a bar. Did you leave together?”

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A wave of nausea hit me. I wondered if I were broadcasting what had happened. Then I realized she just wanted to know if I knew where he'd gone after he left the bar. “No,” I said. “He must have left when I was in the men's room. When I came out, he was gone. That was at maybe nine forty-five.” “Well, okay.” She flipped back through the legal pad and considered her notes. “Let me ask you an indelicate question.” “Okay.” I'm not proud to admit that I started to panic. I swallowed the need to run out of the room and vomit. She looked reluctant to ask her question but plowed forward anyway. “Did he hit on you?” “What?” She sighed. “It's pretty well-known around these parts that Knowles is gay.” She said “gay” like it was a bad word. It maybe says a lot about my state of mind that I wanted to make a flippant joke. Like, Yeah, I got the impression he might be gay when he had his huge cock up my ass. I didn't say anything, though, and instead sank into my chair a little. Ruiz went on, “My current theory is that he hit on the wrong man last night. Hitting on someone like, say, a straight NYPD cop could easily cause a lot of trouble for him.” “Whoa, am I a suspect?” She looked at me carefully for a long moment, then shook her head. “No, I'm just thinking aloud. So Knowles just walked up to you in some bar in downtown St. Pete.” She started to stand. It was pretty obvious that she thought I was useless. “Well, okay. Thanks, Mr. Tobin.” Ah fuck. It had been fear and shame that kept me in that bathroom stall, but what would have happened if I'd just walked back into the bar with the man? Could I have prevented whatever harm had befallen him? I knew also that the little detail of “some bar” in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, was not that interesting. If I'd been in Ruiz's shoes, I'd have been pressuring the witness to remember. I'd have been more suspicious of the motivations of reporting my bit of non-news. “Wait. Can I get your assurances that anything I say here is confidential? I know you can't keep it off the record, but can you keep my name out of it? Call me an anonymous tip?” She sat back down. “Depends on the information.”

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I found myself really liking Debra Ruiz in that moment. She was rightfully skeptical of me, as skeptical as I'd be. She had that weariness about her that cops often had after they'd been on the force for a while and they caught a case that they deemed not worth their time. Still, something made me think that this case was, indeed, worth her time. The longer I sat there, the more convinced I became that something sure as hell had happened to Harry. It wasn't just that he'd picked up the wrong trick. Anything I had to say might be helpful. It occurred to me that she might just dismiss what I told her out of hand and not take me seriously. Although I could at least rationalize revealing myself to Ruiz, because odds were good I'd never see her again. My greater fear was of anything I told Ruiz making it back to my colleagues in New York. I thought odds were good she'd call One Police Plaza and verify my badge number, at the very least, maybe even talk to Lieutenant Caffity to make sure I was a reliable witness. Then again, did it matter at this point if any of it did make it back to New York? “I was in Shanley's,” I said. I watched understanding dawn on her face. She made a note on her legal pad. “Well, that's good to know. You saw Knowles in Shanley's last night, and he left sometime around nine fortyfive.” “Yeah.” She nodded again. Something in her demeanor changed, a subtle slackening of her shoulders. She sat up straighter in the chair and looked down at her notes. “Okay,” she said. Then she looked up at me, the expression on her face indicating that for the first time she thought maybe we were on the same side. “This is helpful, but if this is all you got, why bother to come down to the precinct? Wouldn't it have been easier for you to just leave an anonymous tip?” “I'm a detective,” I said. “I mostly work missing persons. I thought I could maybe be of some help. Plus something about this doesn't sit right with me.” Ruiz gave me that skeptical look. But then she seemed to reconsider. “Well,” she said. “We are awfully short staffed.” She bit the end of the pen she'd been holding. “It may even be nothing, this case. Knowles is probably fine.” “Can you tell me when he was reported missing?” I asked. Ruiz hesitated but said, “This morning. It's not clear when he went missing precisely, just that he didn't make it home last night.”

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“If he's only been missing since last night, why was there even a story on the news?” I asked. “This shouldn't even be a case until he's been missing longer.” She looked at me for a long time, no doubt trying to decide if she could trust me. I think my admission to being in Shanley's got me some leeway; I'd risked something significant to give her information. She took a deep breath. “His sister called it in. He's been staying with her while he gets his house remodeled. He didn't come home last night, and she freaked this morning and called us.” Ruiz put the pen down and rubbed her face. “I just assumed that he went home with some guy. Knowles has got something of a reputation. But the sister swears that he's come home every night since he's lived with her, and she hasn't been able to get him on his cell phone yet. Plus the fact that he's still missing is not a good sign.” I glanced at the clock in the room. It was almost one. “Still, that's not really standard procedure, is it? Sending out the APB when someone's been missing less than a day?” There was a ghost of a smile on Ruiz's lips. “The Knowleses are powerful people in this area, Detective. If Jessica Knowles decides to throw a fit about something, people sit up and listen to her.” What had I stumbled into? “What's the plan here?” I asked. She looked tired. I could tell by her eyes that she still didn't really trust me, but she said, “The department can't really spare the manpower I want to help me find Knowles if he is, indeed, actually missing. So I appreciate your offer and will probably take you up on it. But not on blind faith. Give me a couple of hours.” “So you can run a check on me.” She shrugged. “Among other things.” I nodded and, strangely, found myself smiling. It was no less than what I would have done.

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Chapter Four I'll admit to being a little out of my element. I didn't know much about life in this part of Florida or what the locals got up to in their spare time. There were many possibilities for what kind of trouble Harry had gotten himself into. I didn't even really know much about Harry besides that he smelled good and he was a top. But there wasn't much I could do about any of it, not being a member of the Tampa PD or even being officially involved in the investigation. There was a part of me that felt partially responsible, like if I had just followed him out of the men's room instead of wallowing in my own shame, maybe I could have helped. Had he been kidnapped? Killed? I'd been trained not to think the worst until someone had been missing for more than forty-eight hours, but something in my gut told me that there was more to this than Harry picking up some guy and spending the night away from home. Hell, what did it say about me if he'd gone home with someone else? I felt helpless and tried to remind myself that I had no business sticking my nose in any of it. I hadn't planned to see Harry again. I'd reported what I knew. That should have ended my obligation. So I decided to return to my vacation. After I left the police station, I went back to my hotel and spent a good part of the afternoon alternately swimming laps in the kidney-shaped pool out back and lounging on the sundeck. I was determined to find enough distraction to take my mind off Harry. It was not a bad way to spend the afternoon, particularly since there seemed to be a gaggle of hot twentysomething men staying at the hotel. I kept my sunglasses on so that they wouldn't catch me ogling. It was when I caught myself admiring the very fine ass on one guy in particular that I realized that my encounter with Harry the night before had woken something up in me that had been dormant for a long time. I'd looked at men since Josh's death, sure, but I hadn't craved them like I was starting to now, hadn't realized I needed the human contact I'd been denying

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myself. I hadn't realized I'd missed being with a man, and I'd started to assume it was something I could live without. It wasn't. When Mr. Fine Ass turned to glance my way before diving into the pool, I had to move the book I was pretending to read onto my lap. When I got back to my room, there was a voice mail on my cell phone from Lieutenant Caffity: “Tobin, I just got a call from a Detective Ruiz down there in Tampa. She wanted to ask me a couple of questions about you, so I answered them. I told her you were a good cop and a good man, and she seemed to believe me, but now I'm regretting that a little. If you're involved in something down there, you need to stop right now. Let it go, Noah. Take the damn vacation time.” I sighed and put the phone down. I was just about to head for the shower when there was a knock on my door. I answered it in just my swimsuit, a fairly modest affair, but still, I didn't have a shirt on. I'm normally more the type to keep as much of my body covered as possible, but I guess Florida was rubbing off on me. And I kind of hoped that Mr. Fine Ass had followed me up to my room, frankly. Alas, no, it was Debra Ruiz. She took a long look at my naked chest before her gaze rose to my face. “Hi,” she said. I opened the door wide enough for her to come in. “How are you, Detective?” “I called your LT. Seems you're the real deal.” “Thanks,” I said for lack of anything else to say. I gestured toward the couch, telling her to sit. I went into the bedroom and found a T-shirt. I pulled it on over my head, then joined her in the living room. “So listen,” she said. “My boss thinks this Knowles thing is not a big deal. That Mr. Knowles just went home with some random guy last night and he'll turn up in a couple of days no worse for wear.” This was not a possibility I liked, both because of what it implied about my encounter with him and because it just didn't feel right to me. My instincts are usually right. I would have bet Ruiz's were too. “You disagree.” She nodded. “The longer he's missing, the more I look into this, the more I'm convinced that there's something bigger going on.”

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I sat down in a wicker chair that was perpendicular to the couch. “So why come to me? I'm guessing Caffity also told you that he forced me into this vacation because I'm seriously burnedout.” “He mentioned that, yes,” she said. “But my boss won't give me the people I need to launch a full investigation, and you volunteered to help, so…” She shrugged. “If you don't want to, I understand, but…” “I'll help you,” I said. “It's unofficial, anything you do. But Lieutenant Caffity said you were good at finding people, and I could use the help.” “I understand.” “We could hire you as a consultant, maybe. Make it look more official.” “That would be fine.” “So. Let me ask you a couple of other questions. You went to Shanley's last night, and you talked to Knowles. Is it a fair guess that he did hit on you?” “We chatted, and he bought me a beer,” I said. She raised her eyebrows and looked at me like she didn't believe me. “Bought is relative. Harrison Knowles owns Shanley's.” I must have made a face, because she added, “He also owns Candy Bar, Murphy's, the Big Steer Steak House—eleven restaurants and bars in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area in all.” “Jesus.” “I'm not sure of his net worth, but it's up there. He's been pretty successful.” So I'd been fucked by a quajillionaire. Nice. “He's got a reputation for being a playboy, which is why my boss isn't taking this case seriously, but anyone with that kind of money can throw it at the wrong sort of person, especially in Florida.” “You have a theory?” “I have a few. I'm on my way now to question employees at each of his restaurants, but I figured I'd start at Shanley's since that's the last place he was seen. My general guess is that he did business with the wrong people, then pissed them off.”

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I wanted to ask her if she thought Harry was still alive, but I was afraid. I felt cursed. I was sort of glad Mr. Fine Ass hadn't followed me back to my room, because if we'd fucked, he probably would have ended up facedown in the damn kidney-shaped pool. “I figured,” Ruiz said, “that I'd give you a chance to volunteer any information you think might be discovered should I talk to everyone at Shanley's. I don't want any surprises.” It just didn't seem relevant to tell her that I'd had sex with her missing person right before he disappeared. Or it wasn't relevant to my way of thinking, given that I knew I wasn't involved in his disappearance. Ruiz didn't know that for certain, though. More to the point, someone probably saw us go into the men's room together. At my hesitation, Ruiz's all-business expression softened. “Just tell me.” “I'm not out to my precinct,” I said. “You didn't say anything to Caffity, did you?” “Nothing incriminating. Just told him you might have witnessed a crime. I asked if I could trust you.” I felt ill. I looked at the ceiling and studied the popcorn stucco for a moment before looking back at Ruiz. “Can I trust you?” She reached over and touched my knee. “I just want to find him, hopefully alive. I don't give a shit if you're gay. If you know anything…” I shrugged. “I don't think it's important, but since someone at Shanley's will probably say something, I…” I rubbed my forehead. “He told me his name was Harry. No last name. I had no idea who he was, that he was the owner. I just figured he was a regular at the bar. I'm not proud of this, but I let him pick me up. We fooled around some in the men's room. Someone will probably tell you they saw us go in there together.” I took a deep breath. “I stayed behind when he left the bathroom. When I went back into the bar a little bit later, he was gone. That's it.” She pulled a pad out of a cargo pocket on her pants and jotted down some notes. “Thank you for your honesty,” she said. “It must be hard.” “What must be hard?” “The secrecy,” she said. “I couldn't live that way.” “You've met cops,” I said. “Yes, I have,” she said. She squeezed my knee.

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I wondered a little about Debra Ruiz then. I'd gotten straight vibes off her. She'd definitely been checking me out when I'd opened my door to her. But maybe she knew someone, or maybe she did understand. I leaned back in the chair. She ran a hand through her frizzy hair, futilely trying to smooth it. “I'll keep you in the loop to a point. I would appreciate your help. It really does seem that you were the last person to see him before he disappeared.” When she stood, she raised an eyebrow at me. “For old times' sake, you want to give me your alibi one last time?” I sighed. “When I got back here last night, I asked the concierge what hours the gym was open. That was a little after ten, I guess. You can subtract from that however long it took to get here in a cab from St. Pete. I spent the rest of the night here and didn't leave until I came down to the precinct. There are security cameras near the entrances if you feel the need to check up on that.” She nodded tightly. I guessed she probably would look over the security footage. I tried not to let that bother me; again I tried to see it from her perspective and knew I would have done the same. I would have put myself on the top of the suspect list, in fact. “You're just doing your job, I know,” I said quietly. I stood with her and walked her to the door. “I'll do what I can to help. I hope he turns up.” “I think he's still alive,” she said, which saved me from having to ask the question. She smiled politely. “I'm guessing whichever very bad people he did business with are trying to squeeze him for money. So he's probably in trouble but still alive.” “Okay.” “He's worth more alive. If he dies, his fortune goes to his sister.” That got my attention. “And you don't suspect the sister?” Ruiz shook her head. “I haven't counted her out, but I do think her involvement is unlikely.” She didn't elaborate, but she didn't have to. I figured the sister reporting Harry missing so quickly could be either damning or acquitting. I saw her out the door. When she was gone, I went into the bedroom and sat on the bed. It took a lot of deep breathing to keep me from panicking.

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Chapter Five I got the impression that Debra Ruiz was mostly humoring me, so when I didn't hear back from her right away, I went about the business of being on vacation, watching the news for occasional updates. Harrison Knowles seemed to be something of a local celebrity. There was a lot of archive footage, which the local news channel showed on a continuous loop, of Harry opening restaurants, cutting ribbons, and randomly being interviewed. One reporter made sure to note his philanthropy but was vague about where his money went. I knew by then that he'd given a lot to a local AIDS charity and that he'd endowed a shelter for gays and lesbians escaping abusive relationships. I'd used one of the computers in the resort's business center and found news stories and videos online of Harry marching in St. Petersburg's Pride Parade, of him at a dinner party with a very pretty and very young man draped on his arm, of him giving a speech at a banquet for the Gay Men's Health Crisis. This was not the sort of footage that made it on the local news, though. I started to admire him. He clearly had no qualms about being out. In most of the footage of him I'd seen, he looked happy, exuberant. He was friendly and gregarious in interviews. This was a man who was comfortable with who he was, comfortable in his own skin. I thought it a shame that I hadn't bothered to get to know him better before we fucked in the bathroom. He'd been officially missing for thirty-six hours when I decided to try to find a beach. I got directions from a concierge and took the rental car out. I found a sandy spot on a relatively congested beach, a place where it was easy enough to get lost in the crowd. I managed to procure a lounge chair and figured I'd just lie around and let the sun gently sauté me. I settled in a space about fifteen feet from the edge of the water. I pulled off my T-shirt, slipped on some sunglasses, and was in the process of spreading sunblock over my blindingly pale skin when a shadow fell over me.

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I looked up, and there was a brunette in a bikini. Her crotch was around eye level, but looking up at her face put the sun directly in my eyes. “Can I help you?” I asked her. “Oh no,” she said. “I was thinking I could help you. Are you here alone?” I was reluctant to admit that I was, but I couldn't imagine what harm could befall me on a crowded beach. “I am,” I said. “Because my friends and I? We've been having a little picnic. We've got some sandwiches and a couple of beers that are going to go to waste. Are you interested?” “I just ate,” I said, “but I guess I could have a beer.” A wide grin spread over her face. She ran off, and I reflected on how weird that was, but then she was back with a beer. I sat up in the lounge chair and motioned for her to have a seat on the end of the chair. She made a bottle opener appear out of thin air—God only knew where on her scantily clad person she'd kept that—and popped the top off a Heineken. She handed me a red plastic cup and poured me the beer. “Open-container laws,” she said. I nodded. “Thanks. I appreciate this.” “I'm Angie,” she said. “I'm Noah,” I told her. Funny how I could use my real name with a random woman, but I couldn't when confronted with a man I actually desired. “What brings you to the beach, Noah?” It became clear that she was going to hang out for a bit, not just to deliver the beer. “I'm on vacation.” She shot me a toothy smile and nodded at me as if this were a fortuitous turn of events for her. “I live in St. Pete, but I'm off from work this week. Spring break. I'm a teacher.” I wanted to ask if it was appropriate for teachers to be wearing bikinis that covered so little skin, but I held my tongue. I don't know when I turned into my mother. Angie was a knockout: thick brown hair, tan skin, blue eyes, breasts that were probably fake but not too exaggerated. She caught me looking at those breasts—how could I not? They were right there, and I was trying to figure out if they were real or fake, besides—and smiled at me.

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“So you're a cute boy; maybe you can answer this question for me,” Angie said. I almost laughed. I was thirty-three years old. I hardly thought I qualified as a “cute boy,” but I let Angie talk. “You think it's okay to hit on strangers on the beach?” she asked. I did laugh then. “Is that what you're doing to me?” Angie's mouth curled into a wry grin. “I mentioned to my friend Chad over there that I thought you were cute, and he dared me to talk to you.” I took a sip of the beer—it was warm but not too awful—and grinned at her. “I'm on vacation by myself,” I said, “and so far all of my human interactions have been random strangers hitting on me.” Angie laughed. I dared to look over at Angie's friends. There were three people, two men and a woman, all in their midtwenties, sitting on a blanket. One of the men—I'm guessing this was Chad—was looking at us intently. “Is it possible,” I asked Angie, “that Chad dared you to come over here because he figured I would reject you and then you'd go back over there to seek solace in his arms?” Angie screwed up her nose and looked back at Chad. He jumped a little when she did, like he was surprised she was even aware of his presence. “Chad?” she said. “I don't think so.” Ah, the lot of being the guy who was “just friends” with all the girls. I had played that role pretty well when I was young too, but I hadn't wanted to date my friends so much as I wanted to date their boyfriends. I said, “Well, thanks for the beer, and for the ego boost, but beach hook-ups aren't really my thing.” “No wedding ring,” Angie said. “You have a girlfriend?” “No,” I said. Angie pouted. She was not used to rejection, I supposed. “You seem like a nice girl, Angie. But—” “Is it my hair?” She fluffed up her mane with two well-manicured hands. I shook my head. I could see why she didn't get turned down much. I debated telling her the reason I was rejecting her and decided that honesty would be the easiest way to let her down.

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Funny how that works sometimes. I said, “Let's put it this way. You'd better go soothe Chad's ruffled feathers, or I might.” It took her a moment to get my meaning, but when she did, it was like a lightbulb clicked on over her head. She laughed. She said, “Ah, the cute ones are always gay.” “I'm sorry,” I said. “If I swung that way, I'm sure I'd take you home in a heartbeat.” Angie nodded, looking amused. This honesty thing was kind of refreshing, but I didn't get a chance to contemplate it much, because my cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and looked at the caller ID. It wasn't a number I recognized, but it was a Tampa area code. “I should take this,” I said. Angie stood but didn't walk away. “Tobin,” I said into my phone. “Noah, it's Deb Ruiz. Can you come down to the station house right away?” “Yeah, sure. What is it?” “Harrison Knowles turned up. And someone beat the hell out of him.”

*** I made pretty good time to the police station. Angie had been gracious about my hasty departure, giving me her number anyway and telling me we should get together for a drink later in the week. She seemed to be trying to make poor Chad jealous, and it was working—the kid's face had gone bright red when she handed me the piece of paper with her number on it—so I played along. I hadn't decided yet if I'd get together with her again. And truth be told, my focus shifted as I drove toward the station, now that it was clear some kind of foul play was definitely involved in Harry's disappearance. If someone had beat the hell out of him, then he obviously hadn't just spent the night with some guy. I turned over a few scenarios in my head: he'd done some bad business, he'd had a run-in with some homophobic bullies, he was involved with something illegal. I'd put together enough to figure that in this part of Florida, possibilities were endless: drugs, weapons, the mob. I parked at the police station and went inside. I asked for Ruiz and was directed to the same interrogation room where we'd sat together the previous afternoon. I walked to the door, then watched through the mirrored window as Ruiz talked quietly to Harry. It was him, all right,

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though he looked awful. He had a couple of butterfly bandages on his forehead and a hell of a black eye. I suspected he had a host of other injuries that his clothes were covering up. I didn't want to barge in there and freak him out more, so I hit the Intercom button. “Detective?” She nodded at the window. “Come in, Detective Tobin.” When I came into the room—feeling ridiculous, as I was still dressed for the beach— Harry's eyes opened wide. “Nick,” he said. He looked terrified. “What are you doing here? Are you a cop?” Ruiz's shoulders shook a little, like she was suppressing a chuckle. She didn't seem to be in a hurry to dispel his fears. I smiled sheepishly. “My real name is Noah Tobin. I'm a detective with the NYPD.” Harry looked confused. Ruiz crossed her arms over her chest. Now she spoke. “Detective Tobin called in a tip when your disappearance went public. He specializes in missing-persons cases, so I asked for his help.” I looked over at Harry, who was looking at Ruiz. He took a deep breath, perhaps relieved that it was apparent he wouldn't be charged with engaging in a lewd act in a men's room. During a long, awkward silence, I tried to ascertain just how bad his injuries were. The bruise around his eye looked pretty awful. “Have you been to the hospital?” I asked him. He looked startled. “What? No, no. It's not that bad.” “A paramedic friend of mine looked him over when we got here,” Ruiz said. “He'll be okay. It's mostly just bruises.” “See, I escaped,” Harry said. “According to Mr. Knowles, he was kidnapped. The guys who kidnapped him weren't quite done beating him up,” Ruiz said, looking grim. “If I go to the hospital, they'll find me again.” “The only people who know he's been found are me, the man who found him, the paramedic, a couple of detectives here, and now you.” I was having trouble processing what was going on, probably because my insides were churning. My first instinct was to want to go after these guys, to figure out whoever it was who

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had hurt Harry so badly. He was looking exponentially more miserable as time went on. Part of me wanted to hug him, but I didn't dare. I just stood there, not sure what to do. “Is there a plan?” I asked. “Of sorts,” she said. “We're going to hide him somewhere until we can track down these guys.” “And who are these guys?” I asked. Harry frowned. “I swear, I didn't know the extent of—” Ruiz leveled a glance at him, then turned to me. “Can I talk to you outside for a moment?” she asked. I followed her out to the hall. She said quietly, “Can I trust you?” “Yes,” I said. “By now you know I'm not involved in whatever happened.” “Yeah. Even if Mr. Knowles hadn't said as much, the look on his face when you walked in confirmed that.” “So what's going on?” She took a deep breath. “I'm deputizing you, officially,” she said. She gave me a pointed look and then held out her hand. I shook it and looked directly into her eyes in an effort to show I was taking her seriously. She smiled briefly, then said, “There's paperwork. We'll deal with it later. So Mr. Knowles owns a club called Candy Bar. A man named Horatio Alvarez has been selling coke and other things in the back room with Knowles's permission. Horatio, as it turns out, got his supply from Colombia by way of Cuba.” “Jesus,” I said. I felt in over my head. Ruiz nodded. “Not directly, though. He dealt with a small cartel that operates out of Miami. We think that Alvarez was actually small potatoes in this operation, that he was doing business with a bigger fish named Javier Ortiz. Based on what we've managed to put together so far, we think Ortiz's men kidnapped Mr. Knowles, although this is based mostly on supposition. Knowles certainly seems to think Ortiz was involved, but he hardly saw anything.” “So…what?” I asked. Something wasn't working out here. “I'm missing a few puzzle pieces.”

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Ruiz nodded. She pulled a notepad out of one of her pockets and flipped it open. “Alvarez was doing a good business at Candy Bar and a few other places in St. Pete, all owned by Mr. Knowles, of course. He was making a lot of money for whoever he was working for.” None of this made any sense to me. I put my hand out against the wall and leaned on it, wiped some of the Florida-induced sweat off my forehead. “I don't get it,” I said. “If Alvarez was doing good business, why cause trouble for Harry?” I hoped “Harry” was indeed what he went by, that he hadn't also given me a fake name. Ruiz didn't react to it. “Horatio Alvarez turned up dead last week,” she said. Ah, we were getting warmer. “Interesting,” I said. “So…you think Ortiz thinks Harry had something to do with Alvarez's death?” Ruiz nodded. “Why would Harry kill Alvarez?” Ruiz lost her composure just long enough for me to tell that she hadn't figured this part out yet either. “Let's ask him.” Harry was staring unfocused at the table when we went back into the interrogation room. “Hypothetically, why would you kill Alvarez?” Ruiz asked him. He blinked. “Cut out the middleman,” he said. “Did you kill Alvarez?” I asked. Harry clucked his tongue and gave me a disgusted look, as well as he could through all the bruising and swelling on his face. “Of course not,” he said. “I was happy to let Horatio peddle his wares in my club, because it kept the customers happy, but I wanted no part of his business. We had an understanding wherein I grudgingly let him do his thing, and he kept it quiet. I honestly have no idea what happened to Horatio. But think about it from Ortiz's perspective. Maybe I take care of Horatio so that I can get a direct line on his profits. Say I want to install my own guy to cut off Ortiz.” “So why would Ortiz come to get you?” I asked. Harry sat back in his chair, looking pissed, his jaw clenched and his eyebrows narrowed. “Someone is still selling drugs in my club. I don't know who it is. Whoever it is, he's really good, keeping everything hush-hush. And he doesn't work for Ortiz, so Ortiz's income from this part of

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the state dried up. Ortiz thinks it's me who's getting the money instead.” He turned to Ruiz. “But I swear, it's not me. I don't know what's going on. And I always know what's going on in my clubs. I have no idea where the damn drugs are coming from.” I tried to stay skeptical through this exchange, but I believed Harry. I didn't know if this was because he was believable or because of our previous relationship, such as it was. Ruiz's face betrayed nothing, so I couldn't get a read on what she thought either. An officer came into the room then and handed Harry an ice pack. He smiled gratefully and placed it over his swollen left eye. Looking at his face made me feel tremendously guilty, like if I had just stayed with him, I could have kept these guys from beating him up. “Can I ask what happened?” I asked when the officer was gone. Harry grunted as he turned to look at me. “Well, after the pleasant conversation we had in the men's room at Shanley's,” he said, eyeing Ruiz, “I went outside for a cigarette. I was maybe out there for three minutes when some goon walked up to me and socked me in the face.” He shivered. “I've never been good with violence. I think I panicked and passed out.” “The shiner, that's from that guy's fist?” “It's a beauty, ain't it?” He pressed the ice pack a little harder against his cheek. “Then what?” “I don't remember a lot of it. I got dragged to some house in the woods, where some other goons kicked me and demanded to know where the money was. I kept asking, 'What money?' and got kicked harder for my troubles.” He regaled me with the tale; then he claimed to have seen Ortiz himself, although Ruiz was quick to interrupt to say that Ortiz had reportedly been in Orlando all week. Harry pointed out that Orlando was only an hour and a half from Tampa by car. Harry then began describing the nature of his injuries, clearly playing for my sympathies, so before I grew too empathetic, I said, “How did you escape?” Harry sat up a little straighter and grinned like this was his favorite part of the story. “They had me in a third-floor bedroom,” he said. “So it's not like I could just go out the window. And there was some guy standing over me at all times. But then they had some kind of staff meeting, and they left me alone, so I”—he glanced at Ruiz—“I went into the bathroom and figured out that I could get from the bathroom window to the roof over the garage, so that's what I did. Then

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I climbed down a drainpipe. I fell the last ten feet, actually.” He wiggled a little on the chair. “The goons confiscated my phone, so I couldn't call anyone. I managed to hobble to the nearest road. But then I…uh…” “He was unconscious when a passing car saw him,” Ruiz said. “I may have been in a little bit of pain,” Harry said. I was pretty impressed with his ingenuity, but my heart went out to him also. I was angry at the guys who had done this to him. Based on the way he grimaced, I guessed he was in a lot of pain. “Bruised ribs,” Ruiz said, reading my mind. “He's got a brace on under the shirt.” “I'm fine,” he said. “Or will be in a few days. It's really not that bad.” “So now what?” I asked Ruiz. “We need to find a place to hide him until I can set up a task force to go after Ortiz,” she said. “I don't want it to go public that he's been found until we figure out what's going on.” “Okay,” I said. “I guess that makes sense.” “And here's where you come in.” I'd been hoping she'd draft me to the task force. I really wanted to get whoever had wrecked Harry's face. It would be good to be part of an investigation, I thought, and to go after some really bad guys. It would distract me from my thoughts; it would give purpose to my vacation; it would— “I need you to keep an eye on Harry,” Ruiz said. “What?” Harry and I asked simultaneously. “I've got a couple of beat cops who can stand guard during the day, but the department is hurting for cash, so I can't get my lieutenant to authorize overtime. I think Mr. Knowles will be more susceptible to danger at night, and I need someone to watch him then too. I've pled my case, but the LT won't budge.” She had to know what a bad idea it was for me to be the one to guard Harry. “Me, really?” My prior relationship with Harry would have been enough to exclude me if I'd been in charge. “I mean, unless you don't feel comfortable…” Ruiz said.

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She was playing me, and I knew it, but I figured I had to be smart about this. Saying I didn't feel comfortable working with Harry was likely to get me kicked off the investigation entirely, and I wasn't willing to let go of it just yet. I looked at Harry, who wasn't exactly shooting daggers at me; he, perhaps, was not opposed to the idea either. “Would it be weird?” I asked him. “Better you than some stranger,” he said. “Not that you're even much more than a stranger, Noah, but…” He grinned at me. “You're a big bad NYPD cop, eh? I'm thinking guarding little ol' me should be no problem, peach.” “I guess I'll do it, then.” Ruiz nodded. “I know this is unorthodox, but we're just not equipped to handle this, and my boss thinks I'm overreacting.” There was something she wasn't saying, but I could only guess at it. I wondered if Ruiz's boss had ruled Harry unworthy of a protective detail. This seemed plausible, given that her lieutenant had also assumed that Harry's disappearance had been due to Harry's picking up the wrong guy. I tried not to think too hard about what this guy's opinions of gay men might be generally. Ruiz said, “We still haven't found a place to stash him, but we will. I'll let you know where that is, what your shift will be.” I took that as my cue to leave. I looked at them both. “All right,” I said. Ruiz told me she'd be in touch. With one last long look at Harry, I left.

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Chapter Six Ruiz called me that afternoon while I was out at a grocery store to tell me that they were going to discreetly check Harry into a hotel and that he'd be, effectively, under house arrest until Ruiz could figure out the next move. Sending him home was not an option, partly because his house was being renovated and thus was uninhabitable, and partly because the police had already figured out that there were men, probably Ortiz's, staking out both Harry's and his sister's houses. Ruiz told me she'd let me know where they landed. So I bought some groceries, mostly snacks and breakfast food, enough to stock the little kitchenette in my suite for the next week or so. I took a roundabout way back to the resort, taking in the nice Florida day, enjoying the sunshine. Part of me had to admit that it was nice to drive by palm trees and houses with flamingos in their yards instead of gray buildings and crowds of people. Even my isolated little block in the Lower East Side looked like the remnants of a war zone, everything gray, all hollowed-out old tenements, nothing like what I saw in Florida. Everything was bright and colorful. I parked at the hotel and just stood there for a moment, letting my skin soak up some of the sun. There had been so many consecutive gray days in New York, just being out in the sunshine was making me feel better, feel lighter. I found myself smiling as I pulled my grocery bags out of the car. I may have even hummed or had a bounce in my step when I walked back into the hotel. I was greeted with an unexpected sight when I got back to my room, namely Harry and Deb Ruiz standing in front of my room door. “Oh no,” I said. “No no no.” Ruiz looked smug and raised her eyebrows at me, and Harry said, “Come on. This is genius. No way Ortiz would ever think to look for me here.” I balanced a grocery bag on my hip as I fished my key card out of my pocket. I shot them both disapproving glares, hoping to communicate that I did not like where Ruiz's line of thinking

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was going. I didn't want them to come inside. It was like my sanctuary had been invaded. I pushed past them and unlocked the door. “He can't stay here,” I told Ruiz. “Just for a couple of days,” she said. “There's a conference in town starting this afternoon. Everything's booked. Or at least”—she looked pointedly at Harry—“all of the places Mr. Knowles is willing to stay are booked.” I walked into the suite and dropped my grocery bags on the kitchen counter. Ruiz and Harry followed me in. “Does that couch fold out?” Ruiz asked. “Yeah, I think so,” I said. While Ruiz went to investigate, Harry turned and gave me a you-really-don't-expect-meto-sleep-on-the-couch look. “You'd have to spend tonight watching him anyway,” Ruiz said after ascertaining that the couch was, indeed, a sofa bed. “Why not here? Knowles is right; this is a good idea. I can't imagine that anyone would look for him here; plus he'd have built-in protection.” That was when I noticed that Ruiz was carrying a duffel bag. She hefted it on her shoulder. “This has some of Mr. Knowles's personal items in it. And I figured,” she said, “that you might not have your weapon with you here.” Actually I did. After what happened with Josh, I never wanted to get caught without a weapon again. I could have taken out Schiffler before he even fired if I'd had my gun on me when he showed up. As soon as he got that gun out, I knew what he'd planned to do with it. I went into my room and extracted my sidearm from my suitcase. It was a SIG P226, a gun that was standard-issue for the NYPD, but I'd bought mine from a retired Navy SEAL, and it had some modifications, so it wasn't really the usual police sidearm. For show, I popped out the cartridge to show Ruiz that I kept it loaded, but pointed out also that the safety was on. “That's a nice piece,” she said, reverence in her voice. “Thanks.” “Shit,” said Harry. “I can't believe I”—he gestured at me instead of saying the words— “with a guy who keeps a gun in his suitcase.” “Normally I keep it on me, but I'm on vacation,” I said. “And a gun doesn't really go with these shorts.”

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He laughed nervously. Ruiz looked back and forth between us. “I think we're good here, then,” she said, and she moved toward the door. “Whoa, wait a sec,” I said. “I never consented to this. This is my hotel room.” “The department will compensate you.” “That's not really the point…” I began. I glanced back at Harry. He sat on the couch and went about making himself comfortable, fluffing up pillows and sprawling his long body over the cushions. Ruiz dropped the duffel on the floor and fished out the gun she'd brought me. I could tell it was an inferior gun, in my humble opinion, a smaller handgun, lower caliber, probably whatever was available. She deftly belted the holster around her hips, then gave me a pointed look. It was clear that I didn't really have a choice. I had volunteered for this, after all. “Fine,” I said, resigned. Ruiz thanked me and then was gone. I turned to look at Harry, who was examining the TV remote. “You,” I said, “will be sleeping on the couch. I'll get housekeeping to send up an extra set of sheets.” “I rocked your world not two days ago, and this is the thanks I get?” he asked. “I have to sleep on the couch?” “I'm letting you stay with me in my hotel room during my vacation so that certain evildoers don't find you. That's your thanks.” Harry stood up. “I see you don't deny the world-rocking part.” I shrugged. “I thought it was a onetime thing. I think it's probably a good idea to keep it that way.” I took a step closer to him. “Besides, can you even… I mean, with the bruised ribs?” “Just a scratch.” I rolled my eyes and reached for his shirt, which I yanked up to expose the brace he had on around his torso. “That's just a scratch?” I said. And then I couldn't help myself. I touched the bandages on his face, the swollen part around his left eye. I kept my touch light. “These are just scratches?” I asked him. “What else?” He closed his eyes. “My knees,” he said. “I scraped them when I fell off the drainpipe.”

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“Harry,” I said. He was being so stupidly brave. I wanted to take him into my arms. I wanted to kiss him and do whatever I could to make it better. But I couldn't get involved. I had to keep a professional distance, and besides, I didn't think I had the emotional capacity to deal with where this was going. I worried that if I put my arms around him, I wouldn't be able to let go. He kept his eyes closed, and he leaned in closer to me, like he expected a kiss. Instead I took a step back. “Like I said, onetime thing. You're staying on the couch.” He opened his eyes and looked at me like he'd won. “You and I both know that's not what you want.” “But that's what's right, so that's what's going to happen.” “All right. Have it your way, peach.” He sat back down on the couch. “You have a hot date tonight, or do you want to see what's on TV?”

*** We watched a couple of hours of TV together and had a pizza delivered. There was awkward small talk and innuendo, mostly on his end. I'll admit I flirted and played around a little, but mostly I just stayed quiet, talking only when he addressed me directly, trying to focus on whatever we were watching and not on the man I was to spend the night with, a man who, despite being covered in bruises, I still thought was beautiful. He picked at the last slice of pizza; then he pulled off a pepperoni and popped it into his mouth. “So you're a New York cop named Noah. What's that like?” “What, being a New York cop or being named after the man who built the ark?” He laughed. “I meant being a cop, but either.” “I don't know. It's…hard sometimes. I put in a lot of hours. It's a stressful job. Hence being on vacation. My lieutenant thought I was burning out.” Harry nodded and started flipping channels. “Is it like on TV? Do you routinely chase criminals down side streets? You put murderers behind bars?” “It's not really like that, no,” I said. “First, I work missing persons, not homicide. I mean, yes, I occasionally get to put a murderer behind bars”—I thought of Artie Schiffler as I said this—“but that's only after said murderer has killed someone I tried to find. That's not really the most rewarding part of my job. A lot of my cases don't get solved. People just disappear off the

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face of the earth sometimes. It can be frustrating. Plus, unlike on TV, there's a lot of paperwork involved.” Harry looked thoughtful for a moment. “I can't imagine how hard that must be.” “Yeah, well.” I didn't really want to talk about it. I was surprised at how much I'd already said. I rarely talked about work with anyone outside the job, excepting Josh when he was alive and the shrink I was required to check in with every few weeks. And the shrink mostly just got an earful about the strange paradox of the job: it was frustrating most days, but it could also be really rewarding too, particularly when we saved the day and rescued someone who wouldn't have been found without us. Of course, the shrink only knew part of the story. I hadn't even told her I was gay. She'd ask about my personal life, and I'd shrug her off. Not really a lie, because for the last eighteen months, I hadn't had a personal life. Harry, bless him, seemed to sense that I didn't really want to talk about the particulars of my job. I could tell by his facial expression that he was burning with curiosity. But instead of asking a deeper question, he asked, “Where's your precinct located?” “Why the twenty questions about my job?” I immediately realized how defensive I sounded. I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Innocent questioning, that's all this was. “I'm with the One-three,” I said. “East side between Fourteenth and Thirty-fourth Streets. Union Square. The Flatiron District, basically. Have you been to the city? Do you know the area?” “I know it a little.” He popped another pepperoni in his mouth. “I've visited a few times. My grandparents were from Brooklyn originally, so I went with them to see extended family when I was a kid.” He started picking the cheese off the slice of pizza. “I've also been weighing whether or not to invest in a restaurant a college friend of mine is starting up. I think it's in Greenwich Village? So I went up there recently to check it out. How close is that to your precinct?” “Close. The Village is just south of it.” He nodded and went back to concentrating on the TV. I leaned against the couch. I didn't really want to talk, and I was getting a little caught up in how surreal the situation was anyway. So little of this vacation had gone as planned already. Now I was babysitting my one-night stand.

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And he kept stealing looks at me with his unnaturally light eyes, as if he were trying to ascertain what else I had lied about. “I only gave you a fake name,” I said. “I didn't lie about anything else.” He nodded. “I didn't ask.” “It's not even like I lied about being a cop; I just didn't tell you. It wasn't relevant. You know the truth now, though. Okay?” “I've barely touched the surface,” he said.

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Chapter Seven I didn't really sleep that night. I kept the door to the bedroom open so that I'd be able to hear if someone came into the room, and I kept my gun on the nightstand. Theoretically I was on watch anyway, so I shouldn't have gone to sleep, but part of me was trying to find some normalcy in this situation, and part of me wanted to go to sleep that night out of spite. This plan was not working; I lay awake in bed, listening for squeaking springs on the pullout couch in the other room, listening for noises out in the hallway or on the balcony. I was on the fourteenth floor of the resort, high enough up that entrance via balcony was pretty damn unlikely, but the mind does strange things in the dark recesses of the night. That must have been how I found myself reflecting on Schiffler's trial. I could see the man sitting there on the stand, his unkempt hair and beard making him look every bit as crazy as the defense tried to paint him. A man so desperate to get his wife back that he was willing to kill a child to get her attention. I wondered at the lengths I'd go to get Josh back. It was an impossible question; Josh wasn't coming back. But would I steal and murder if it would make him come back? Could I harm a child in order to see Josh again? I missed him desperately sometimes, but I didn't think theft and murder were things I'd be willing to do to bring him back either. In the days after his death, when I was desperate with grief, that was a time when all bets were off. But now that time had passed and I'd adjusted to life without him, such as it was, I was desperate to move on more than anything else. I'd made my peace with the fact that he was gone; I had accepted the situation, even though I didn't like it. I would have given almost anything to hold him in my arms again, of course, but more than that, I needed to make the pain stop. Since getting him back wasn't a possibility, I wanted to stop missing him, to stop feeling that longing when I lay awake at night. I'd gone to Josh's funeral but was relegated to a spot in the back with the other cops who had attended, all of them affiliated with the case in some way. I'd been after Schiffler for such a

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long time at that point, and enough people knew that Josh had been my friend, that it made sense to most of them for me to be there, unless you were Mr. Grady, who threatened to throw me out of the church. I stood a fair distance away during the graveside service, and so I didn't hear much of anything, didn't hear the minister's words of comfort. I don't think anything the minister could have said would have comforted me anyway, though, because I couldn't even get close enough to say good-bye. I wasn't welcome at my own partner's funeral. I never cried. I think I moved through the stages of grief in the wrong order, or I skipped a stage or two, because there was plenty of denial at first—I kept expecting Josh to stroll into my apartment and tell me it was all a joke—and then I moved on into anger. I spent whole weeks angry at everyone: at myself, at the Gradys, at whoever thought it was a good idea to let Schiffler out on bail, at anyone who made eye contact with me on the subway, at goddamn Artie Schiffler himself. But I never cried, never let myself feel that much. The anger was safer. It hurt less. That's what I was thinking about when I realized that Harry had gotten out of bed. I lay as still as I could so he'd think I was asleep, figuring he was headed to the bathroom, but instead he stood next to the bed. I felt him looking down at me. I must not have acted asleep convincingly enough, because he whispered, “Please?” I'm a sucker, because I moved over on the bed so that he could climb in with me. “No sex,” I told him, only partly teasing. After a lot of morbid thinking about Josh, I could have used a distraction. He was quiet. When he got settled in the bed, he lay on his back looking at the ceiling. The only light source was a night-light in the bathroom, so I couldn't really see his face, but as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I noticed he wasn't smiling. He looked terrified. Something in me melted when I realized that he was looking to share the bed because he needed comfort and reassurance, not because he wanted to have sex. “Harry,” I said. “No sex,” he assured me. “I just needed…” “I know,” I said. Because I did know. I lay on my side with my head propped up on my elbow, which allowed me to look down at his face. His poor, beautiful face, still bruised and swollen, now looking even worse because he looked so scared and tired.

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I reached over and tentatively put a hand on his chest. He reacted by putting his hand over mine and holding it there. It took me a moment to realize that I needed to hold him as much as he needed to be held, so I slid my arms around him, feeling his warm body against mine. Something about his presence comforted me a lot more than I was expecting. If nothing else, I felt less alone.

*** Harry eventually fell asleep, although I didn't. I was still awake several hours later when he eased back into consciousness. I watched his face as it took him a moment to realize where he was, to remember the circumstances with which he got there. He looked at me, then nodded. “Thank you,” he whispered. “This is not typical procedure,” I told him, keeping my voice soft. “I, in fact, usually make it a point not to share a bed with people I've been charged to protect.” There was a hint of a smile on his face. “I usually make it a point not to share a bed with people who won't have sex with me.” “Harry.” “I know,” he said. He sat up slowly. His dark hair was disheveled and stuck out wildly in several directions. “How did you sleep?” “I didn't,” I said. “You do this a lot? The guard-duty thing?” “No,” I said. “I mean, I have done it before. But I don't do it often.” “Tell me about another time.” I thought about that and tried to choose a good story, something impressive. “There was a woman last year who went missing from her home. She was married to a known member of one of the big crime families in New York, so we were pretty sure she was modeling cement shoes on the bottom of the Hudson, but then she went home for something, and one of my men caught her before her husband did. We hid her in a hotel for a week before we could get her into witness protection. We had two adjoining rooms, with my partner and I in one and this woman in the other. We took turns sleeping there.” “Wow,” said Harry. “Did things work out? Is she okay?”

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“Yeah. Had to move out of New York, but her life is no longer in danger.” “I don't want to move,” Harry said. His gaze wandered to the gun on the nightstand. “You ever fire that thing?” “Yeah.” “You ever kill anyone?” I hesitated. It wasn't a question I liked answering. But perhaps that was all the answer Harry needed, because he nodded. “Big bad NYPD cop,” he said. “Of course you've killed someone.” I'd killed two someones. Both were self-defense situations. Since it was story time, apparently, I figured I might as well explain. “When I was a beat cop,” I said, “I once walked into a mugging. The mugger was just using his weapon to scare the bejesus out of his victims, and it was working, because he had managed to get a guy twice his size to empty his pockets. I saw them, shouted at the mugger, and he turned the gun on me and fired. The bullet went into a stop sign. And then this mugger, who was not much older than maybe twenty or twenty-two, completely lost it and started firing randomly. He got three shots off before I shot him. One of those bullets went into the arm of the guy being mugged.” Harry's expression was a strange mix of awe and terror. “Okay.” “The only other time,” I said, “was a couple of years ago. Shortly after my promotion to detective, actually. I was pursuing a guy who had kidnapped a teenage girl. He, uh, shot her, right in front of me and the detective I was working with. Then he dropped the gun and started running, so I ran after him. Then he produced a second gun and fired at me.” I had to take a deep breath. It wasn't a pleasant memory. “He shot me in the leg, so I shot him before he shot me again.” Harry surprised me. “I was wondering about that,” he said. “About what?” “The scar on your leg.” “You saw it?” I asked. I very deliberately wore shorts that covered my thighs because the right one was marred by an ugly gnarl of scar tissue.

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“When we…” He stopped, then just shrugged. “When we fucked at Shanley's. You may recall that I had my hand on your thigh at one point. I noticed it felt a little funny, so I looked.” “Oh,” I said, surprised that he'd taken the time to be observant. “Anyway, I would never fire the gun unless someone was in danger.” Except in the case of Artie Schiffler. I'd have put a bullet in his brain, no question, if I'd been given the opportunity. I thought it only fair to let Harry quiz me. I hadn't been forthright with him, but more to the point, I'd already learned quite a bit about him while he'd been missing. Not that my research really told me much about Harry, the man. I knew he ran eleven successful bars and restaurants and that he was something of a philanthropist, but I felt like I still didn't really know the substantive things. I just had a feeling in my gut telling me he was a good man. Wanting to change the subject, I asked, “Do your ribs still hurt?” He shifted his shoulders and twisted his torso a little. “Not much, no,” he said. Then he pulled off his T-shirt. “You think it's okay to take this thing off?” He didn't wait for my answer and pulled off the brace. His whole torso was covered in angry purple bruises. I must have gasped or murmured something, because he stopped moving and looked down at me where I lay on the bed. “It looks worse than it is.” “You don't have to be brave.” “I'm not. Really. It hurts a little, but only if you press on the bruised parts.” I supposed that was good news. “No broken ribs, then,” I said. “Because I broke one once, and it hurt like a bitch.” “Shit,” he said. Then he laughed. Slowly he slid back down so that he was lying next to me. “You've really been through the wringer, haven't you?” “Occupational hazard.” “To put it mildly.” He shook his head. “Well, I could never be a cop. I like to limit the times I get the shit kicked out of me to once a decade or so.” He winced as he shifted his weight, like he really was in more pain than he let on. He opted not to acknowledge it. Instead he turned to me and said, “So you own a scary-looking gun, you've used it to kill men, and you've taken bullets in the line of duty. It's all very dangerous. And…uh…kind of sexy.” Now I laughed. “It happens. I'm no more or less special than any other cop.”

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“I disagree,” Harry said. I didn't want to talk about myself anymore. Instead I reached over and traced my fingers over a particularly dramatic bruise on the right side of Harry's surprisingly firm stomach. “This doesn't hurt?” “It does a little. I bet a kiss would make it better.” I rolled my eyes. “I told you—” “No sex, I know.” “What really happened? Where did all of these bruises come from?” He sighed. I looked up at his face and saw he was frowning. “The goons decided to play a rousing game of kick the fag,” he said. “Well, before that, one of them asked me if it was true that I like to fuck other dudes, and I answered by telling him he wasn't my type. Probably not one of my smarter moves.” “Oh God.” His gaze ran over my face, like he was examining me closely. “You're in a line of work that's probably pretty rampant with homophobia. I got harassed a time or two by the local PD when I was first getting started in business. It must be hard to be the big macho cop who likes to take it up the ass. I bet it's hard to deal with that on a daily basis.” “It's not,” I said. Harry gave me a long look. “Because nobody knows,” he guessed. I shrugged. “Well, that's a strategy, I guess,” he said. “Me, I prefer to conduct my business out in the open. Well, that, and donating a lot of money to police charities means I don't get hassled much anymore.” I frowned at him. “Don't worry, peach. Your secret's safe with me.” He scooted a little closer to me on the bed. I didn't dare move. “Just goes to show, even the strong and mighty are as fucked-up as the rest of us.” He tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. “What I really want to know is why.” “Why what?”

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“Why be a cop? I get why you keep your sexuality a secret. There's a lot of homophobia in a police precinct, no doubt, but why put yourself in that situation at all? Why work with people who hate what you are?” I grunted. I tried to back away then, but he threw out a hand and grabbed my shoulder, which kept me in place. “I only ever wanted to be a cop. Ever since I was a little boy. And”—I couldn't look at him—“who I am, what I am, it shouldn't matter. I have every right to be a cop. I'm a damn good cop.” “I'm sure you are.” “Who I choose to spend time with outside of work has nothing to do with my ability to do my job, so the people I work with don't need to know about it, all right? It's none of their business.” “All right, all right.” Then he kissed me. I should have seen it coming, but I didn't, and though we had kissed in the bathroom at Shanley's, this was completely different, with both of us facing each other, both of us vulnerable in some way. He was an expert kisser, and this kiss was one of those that made me forget that anything else in the world existed except for his lips on mine. He put a hand on my face and gently rubbed his thumb over the stubble growing on my chin. My body responded against my will. I was hard, and my heart rate sped up. I hooked my leg around Harry's knee, and he pushed his fingers into my hair and thrust his hips against mine. The kiss broke. He made a move to start kissing my face, but I pushed him away. I got out of bed, probably a little too hastily. “I don't see what the problem is here,” Harry said, sounding breathless and also annoyed. “Ruiz knew what was what when she dropped me here. It's not like you're officially on the case anyway. Here I was thinking this was a sexy bodyguard situation, and you've been throwing me these vibes like you want me as much as I want you, but you keep backing off. What the hell?” “I can't do it.” He looked at me for an explanation, but I didn't have one. “I'm on vacation,” I tried.

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He shook his head. “All the more reason to get laid.” I walked over to the dresser and pulled out my gym clothes. “Why are you so uncomfortable with this?” he asked as I went into the bathroom. He raised his voice so I'd hear him through the closed door. “You agreed to this situation.” “You may have noticed that Ruiz didn't give me much of a choice.” “So what's the deal? You a fuck-'em-and-leave-'em type? I don't really think you are.” I changed into my gym clothes and came out of the bathroom. “I can't,” I said. “I don't…” “Spit it out.” “I don't trust myself around you, okay?” This honesty thing was working in strange ways. Harry looked surprised. “Oh,” he said. I slumped against the wall outside the bathroom. “You kiss me and make the whole rest of the world disappear. That can't happen. I need to pay attention and be aware, to have my wits about me at all times. I need to be aware of the whole rest of the world if I'm going to keep you safe.” This was not the answer he'd been expecting. “Really?” he asked. I let my head drop forward. “Yeah,” he said, sitting up in bed. “Yeah, I feel that too.” “I would say we should postpone things until we get to the bottom of this mess with Ortiz or whoever it is who is after you, but the truth is that I'll probably go home to New York after that, and then where will we be? You see why it's better not to start anything?” He leaned back on the headboard, still looking chastened. “I'm sorry. I didn't realize…” I shook my head. “I'm going down to the gym. You stay here. Don't go anywhere. Don't answer the door for anyone. You see or hear anything suspicious, you call my cell phone immediately.” I scribbled the number down on the pad on the nightstand. “Don't do anything dumb. Don't try to be a hero.” “Yes, sir.” He gave me a mocking salute. “I'll be gone maybe half an hour. I just…need to run for a little while. Okay?” “Some sexy bodyguard you are,” Harry said. “Abandoning me like this.”

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“Half an hour. Don't cause trouble for me.” I sat on a chair and pulled on my sneakers; then I pocketed my phone and my room key card and headed out.

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Chapter Eight He was there when I got back, watching TV and eating chips straight from the bag I'd bought the day before. “How was your run?” he asked. “Fine.” It was a decent run—I'd maybe overdone it a little, getting my heart rate ramped up pretty fast, but it felt good to feel my body burn that way—and still, it hadn't done much to distract me from thoughts of Harry. “I took the liberty of grabbing the paper from outside the room,” Harry said. He eyed me for a moment, probably waiting for me to give him hell for opening the door. When I didn't, he shifted the paper on his lap and pointed to a story. “I made the front page. Aren't you proud?” “Yeah?” “Listen to this: 'Local businessman Harrison Knowles, thirty-eight, of Tampa'—I can't believe they printed my age, I'll never live that down—'went missing from a St. Petersburg bar Monday night. The Tampa police department is investigating, though sources inside say there are no concrete leads at this time.' Interesting tactic, making the police seem incompetent.” “It's probably better if no one knows you've turned up. For all the guys who kidnapped you know, you're dead. If you don't surface, they might let it go.” “Sure, sure. But anyway, this is the front page of the Tampa Tribune. It mentions in the second-to-last paragraph all of the restaurants I own. I wonder what this will do for business.” I sighed. “Glad you're staying upbeat about this.” “What else am I supposed to do?” I grunted and went straight into the bedroom, grabbed clean clothes, then went into the bathroom. I showered quickly. By the time I walked out of the bathroom, I had started to think that maybe I should apologize to Harry for being rude, but before I could, my phone rang.

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It was Ruiz. After we exchanged pleasantries, she said, “I think the first step is to go after the guy who's selling at Candy Bar. See if he knows anything.” “Okay. And how do you plan to go about doing that?” “How do you feel about doing a little undercover work?”

*** I felt great about undercover work. If only that were really what Ruiz wanted me for. By “undercover,” she meant that she'd let me in on her narcotics department's sting, and this mostly involved sitting in a van, looking at TV monitors. I begged and pleaded—I'd been involved in stings like this a dozen times, plus I had the added advantage of not being a Tampa cop, and so I would not have been identified if this guy had been busted before—but Ruiz seemed concerned about her department getting sued, and I wasn't, she reminded me, officially on the Tampa PD's payroll. But she needed Harry to watch the monitors as the sting played out, to see if he could identify his kidnappers. I was to be there as backup, but the whole scheme made me feel pretty superfluous. She came by the hotel to fetch us. She had a big tote bag with her when she walked into my suite. She looked me up and down and said, “You're not wearing that.” Okay, I admit, I have not always been the sharpest dresser, but I didn't think there was anything offensive in the fitted white T-shirt and khaki shorts I had on. “What?” I said. I held up a long-sleeved shirt that I'd planned to put on to disguise my shoulder holster. She fished into her tote bag and pulled out a Hawaiian shirt with muted colors. She handed it to me. “Put this on. You'll blend in better.” Harry snorted with laughter behind me. “Yeah, you've got a great body, peach, and that Tshirt doesn't leave much to the imagination.” I shot him a look, meaning to chastise him for continuing to call me “peach,” but instead slid my arms into the Hawaiian shirt. The shirt was huge, fabric billowing everywhere. “Uh…” “It's my husband's,” Ruiz said. Harry laughed again. I glared at him. I took the shirt off and went into the bedroom. I strapped into my shoulder holster and put the shirt back on. It would do. And I guess that

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answered my question about Deb Ruiz's proclivities. I tried to picture a woman as petite as Ruiz with a man big enough to fill out the shirt. It made for an interesting mental image. “All right,” I said, walking back out into the main room and sliding my feet into sneakers. “Let's go.” We put Harry in a baseball cap and sunglasses and smuggled him out to Ruiz's car. We drove to St. Pete, back to the same neighborhood where Shanley's was located. A white van was parked in the back of a municipal parking lot. We all climbed in, and Ruiz gave us the lowdown. A narcotics guy named Ric Almeida was the main point person. He looked about fifteen years old as it was, but after Ruiz sicced Harry and a bottle of hair gel on him, I would have bought that he was a naive club kid looking to score whatever dope was being sold in the back of Candy Bar. We got there around five, which seemed ridiculously early, but Ruiz rationalized that a club kid would want to score drugs before the night started. That, and Florida nights apparently got started a lot sooner than New York nights did. Harry made it possible for us to tap into the Candy Bar security cameras, so the two of us plus Ruiz watched from the van as Almeida went into the back room. He was wired too, so we had an audio feed, but at first all we heard was his heavy breathing. Hardly anyone was in the club at that hour. It all seemed like a bad idea for a sting, like anyone trying to get drugs at that time of night might as well be wearing a Tampa PD uniform. But Ruiz was confident, and even Harry sat there riveted to the monitors, occasionally wondering out loud why there weren't more people in the club. At one point I said, “I probably don't want to know the answer to this, but what usually happens in the back room? Besides drugs, I mean.” Harry and Ruiz both turned to look at me. “You are not that naive,” Harry said. “That can't be legal,” was my reaction. Harry laughed. “Are you going to sit there and tell me that you have some qualms about having sex in the back of a bar?” Of course I couldn't even react to that. “No, I guess not, if that's your thing, but do you really have a room in the back of your club devoted solely to that purpose?” I knew, of course I knew, but it seemed so seedy, hard to really believe.

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Harry shrugged. “Pretend for a moment that you are a gay boy in your midtwenties. That shouldn't be too hard.” I thought of Josh, who I started dating when I was twenty-five. What had gone on before that? Not a whole lot. And I'd never been into the bar or club scene. I'd heard stories, but even my one-night stands were mostly picked up at parties thrown by people I trusted. “Okay,” I said, hoping Harry would keep talking. “You're out for a night on the town. First things first, you want to feel good.” “All right. What do I want to do to make me feel good?” Harry grinned. “Ecstasy is usually the drug of choice now, but I did the occasional line of coke back in the day too.” He shot Ruiz a sheepish look. “I was a teenager in the late eighties. Everyone was doing coke.” She nodded to concede the point. “So you're feeling pretty good. The music's loud, the beat is thumping, you get your dance on.” He demonstrated by throwing his hands in the air and shimmying his hips a bit, though the effect was mitigated somewhat by the fact that he was sitting on the floor of a van. I tried picturing a younger version of him dancing in the middle of some club. I can't say I disliked the image. He went on. “A pretty boy catches your eye, you dance together, he buys you a drink, and you're feeling so good that you can't wait to ravish the, uh…” He glanced at Ruiz, “You can't wait to spend some quality time with the nice young man. But unfortunately you can't take him home. Your parents live there, or your homophobic roommate. And you don't have to, for lo, there is space for you in the back.” “So you would have sex in front of a bunch of other men.” “Not me,” Harry said. “I'm speaking hypothetically.” “Right.” “It's not really legal,” said Ruiz. “There are public-decency laws on the books here. But it's not enough of a problem to cause a fuss over.” Harry smiled. “Really, what's a blowjob in the back of a bar between friends?” “Indecent exposure?” I suggested.

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“Yeah, but it's not hurting anyone. Candy Bar cards at the door. They're all consenting adults.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I know you're not this much of a tightwad.” “Here's your guy,” Ruiz said, gesturing at the monitors. A tall, thin man with dark, greasy hair and an aggressive-looking scar down his left cheek walked into the back room and shot Almeida an alarming grin. Almeida smiled back and shifted his feet, doing a decent imitation of a hopped-up club kid. “Looking to have a good time tonight?” Scarface asked. “Oh yeah,” said Almeida. “This guy I met last night is coming here and—” “Fifty.” Scarface didn't seem interested in the particulars of the cover story we'd come up with. That seemed steep to me, but Ruiz shushed me when I started to comment on it. On the screen, Almeida nodded. He palmed a few bills and shook hands with Scarface. It was clear some sort of exchange had just taken place. Almeida shoved whatever he'd gotten from Scarface into his pocket and said, “Thanks, man.” Scarface saluted him. Then he pulled a gun. “Jesus,” said Harry. “You're a cop. You smell like a cop,” Scarface said on the monitor. Ruiz kept remarkably calm. She looked over at me. “You should go in, talk him off the ledge.” “Me?” Ruiz nodded. “I can't go in there. You might be more convincing than Almeida.” Ruiz explained her plan: I'd go in posing as the lover Almeida was looking to score for; we'd calm down Scarface; then Ruiz would swoop in and arrest him. As I was getting ready to get out of the van, Harry put an arm out to stop me. “No one will buy it,” he said. “What?” He shook his head, then reached over and mussed up my hair. “You don't look gay enough.” I pushed him off. “How does one look gay?” “Boys!” said Ruiz. “We're running out of time.”

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“I'm plenty gay,” I said to Harry, feeling frustrated and offended. I hopped out of the van and walked as quickly as I could to Candy Bar. The club was still fairly empty. I was aware that Harry and Ruiz were watching me on the security cameras. Knowing where the cameras were placed, I made a point to walk a path where I knew they'd see me. I put a swagger in my step, mostly to show Harry he didn't know what he was talking about. I made eye contact with a few of the boys there, including one young man who could not have been older than nineteen who just walked right over to me and grabbed my ass. I smiled and winked at him. Inside, my heart raced. It was kind of exciting to learn boys that young found me attractive. “Hold that thought,” I told the kid. He smiled and walked away. I walked into the back room in time to see Scarface shove his gun in Almeida's face. I screamed. It came out as kind of a girlish squeal, but it caught both men's attention. They turned to look at me. I grabbed at my shirt and twisted a fistful of the material in my hand. “Ric, honey, what the hell is going on?” I have never seen such relief as was displayed on poor Almeida's face. I wasn't sure how to play it, if I should be terrified of the gun—as any well-meaning civilian would be—or if I should pretend it wasn't there. I was feeling brave, probably stupidly so, as I walked over to the two men and slid an arm around Almeida. “What the fuck, man?” I asked Scarface, adding a little waver to my voice. To Almeida, I said, “You gave him the money, love, didn't you?” “Yeah, I gave him the money.” I knew he was straight as an arrow, that he had a wife and an infant daughter at home, and this was reinforced by how stiff his body felt against mine. “Chill,” I stage-whispered. “It'll be okay, honey.” This was my way of calming down Almeida. He nodded almost imperceptibly, and I felt some of his body go slack. I ran a hand down his back and said to Scarface, “Why the theatrics?” “He looks like a fucking narc.” “Oh he does not,” I said, really hamming it up. “He looks quite tasty to me. Hey, I tell you what, I'll take another if it'll make you feel better.” For show, I ran a hand over Almeida's ass. This was not really a hardship, though, because Almeida had a fantastic ass. Still, he looked way

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too nervous. I guess one could attribute that to the fact that he had a gun pointed at him, but he also hadn't so much as touched me, which was making it hard to demonstrate that we were lovers. I was keeping one eye on Scarface, so I saw him raise his gun. I still winced when he shook it at us. “Stop it!” he shouted. “Stop it right now!” “Ric is so not a narc,” I said. “We just wanted to have a good time. You ever have sex while on E? It's sublime.” Instinct told me this was about to go south, that Scarface didn't believe us. He shook his gun at us again. Then he started at a sound behind him. He swung around, and I looked over and saw Ruiz, who must have sneaked in the back door. Scarface lifted his gun and fired at the ceiling. “What the fuck is this?” he shouted. Getting tired of this, I pulled my own gun. Almeida produced a small pistol from an ankle holster. Scarface was turned away from us, but we both trained our weapons on him; then Ruiz pointed her gun at Scarface. “Police!” she said. “You're surrounded! Drop the gun!” Scarface was not a smart man. He fired at Ruiz. He missed. Almeida said, “Drop the gun or we'll shoot you.” “Fucking narc,” Scarface said before he dropped his gun. “Good,” said Ruiz. She lowered her weapon. “You are under arrest for selling a controlled substance and attempted assault on a police officer.” She recited the Miranda warning as she walked toward him, sliding a pair of cuffs out of her pocket. She was about to grab his arm when he pulled a knife. “Motherfucker,” I heard Almeida mumble. Scarface took a wide swipe at Ruiz. She managed to jump out of the way, but he caught Almeida, slicing his torso. Almeida hissed in pain and stumbled backward. Scarface went for Ruiz again, so I shot at his ankle. He howled and fell. The knife slid across the floor when his hand made impact. “Now,” Ruiz said like nothing had happened. “We're adding resisting arrest and actual assault of a police officer to the list. Don't fight me this time, or I'll tell Tobin to shoot you again.” She managed to cuff him and called for an ambulance.

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*** Almeida went to the hospital to get stitched up, and Ruiz followed with Scarface, whose name turned out to be Tommy Stakowski. She put him in a secure room where he could get his ankle looked at. It turned out I'd just grazed him, and there wasn't much permanent damage. I drove Ruiz's car to the hospital with Harry riding shotgun. He didn't say anything the whole ride over. When we got there, Ruiz led Harry over to the room where our scarred friend was being held and had him look at Stakowski through the window in the door. “Anything?” she asked. Harry shook his head. “I couldn't swear to it, but I'm pretty sure I've never seen that guy before.” Ruiz looked at me. “You want to help me interrogate this guy? You can play the bad cop.” “Goody,” I said. I followed Ruiz into the room. “Of course you're a cop,” Stakowski said to me. “You're a pretty good actor. You almost had me fooled with that slutty-gay-boy routine. Almost.” I shrugged. “How long have you been selling in the back of Candy Bar?” Ruiz asked. Stakowski shook his head. “I don't know. A week. I heard there was a vacancy.” “You know Horatio Alvarez?” Ruiz asked. Stakowski looked at something in the distance. “He's the guy who used to have my gig.” “He was also there with Harrison Knowles's permission. Are you?” Stakowski laughed. “You don't expect me to believe that Knowles let a guy deal drugs in the back of his club.” “Do you know Knowles?” I asked. He shook his head. “I know who he is, but I've never met him.” He took a deep breath. “Look, my cousin Scotty, he knew I was dealing, he told me the supply at Candy Bar had dried up and there was a business opportunity there. He said that some guy, I guess another regular at Candy Bar, had put the word out that the position was open. So I filled it.” Ruiz sat down in an uncomfortable-looking plastic chair, but I stayed standing. She had a pen in her hand that she tapped against the chair's arm. “Do you know Javier Ortiz?”

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Stakowski whistled. “I know of him. Never met the guy.” “Have you ever worked for his organization?” I asked. “No,” he said. Then he smiled. I noticed that he was missing a tooth right behind his left incisor. “I'm a free agent.” Ruiz nodded and scribbled something down in the notepad she'd put on her lap. “Are you aware,” Ruiz asked, “that the back room at Candy Bar is Ortiz's territory?” Stakowski frowned. His facial expression made it obvious that he'd had no idea. “I didn't…” Ruiz stood. “Something to think about.” She walked out of the room, so I followed her. Harry was waiting on the other side of the door, his brow furrowed. He scratched his chin when he saw us come out. “Dead end,” he said. “Yup,” said Ruiz. Her cell phone rang, and she stepped away from us to answer it. We just stood there and watched her. I looked at Stakowski through the glass and noticed that he was shifting on the bed, bouncing his good leg and frowning. He'd stepped into some shit, all right. “Almeida's going to be fine,” Ruiz told us. “Eighteen stitches.” “Could be worse,” I said. Harry shot me an appalled look but didn't say anything. Ruiz rubbed her face. “You guys should probably just go back to the hotel. There's nothing else you can do here tonight.” She furrowed her brow and tapped her pen against her hip. “God, this was supposed to be our lead, but instead it's a whole lot of nothing.” I was sympathetic. “You have other ideas?” “Ortiz?” she said. The expression on her face made it clear she wasn't that excited about pursuing that line of inquiry. “Did you know Alvarez was working for Ortiz before this week?” I asked Harry. “I had a hunch,” he said. Not really the answer I wanted. “What a mess,” I said. “Come on, you guys. I'll drive,” said Ruiz.

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Chapter Nine I felt tired when we got back. It wasn't even late, but I was ready to call it a night. It seemed stupid to even bother to make up the pullout bed. Neither of us said anything when it came time to go to sleep either; we simply changed into shorts and T-shirts and slid into bed together. I hoped with everything I had that he'd just roll over and go to sleep, but no such luck. I flipped the light off and settled into the pillow. He spooned up behind me. “Weren't you scared today?” he asked as he slid an arm around my waist. “Of course.” “Could have fooled me.” He sighed. “Actually it's probably better if you don't tell me the answers to these questions honestly. As far as I'm concerned, you are strong and fearless. I feel safe with you. My big, strong, gun-wielding, sexy bodyguard.” The way he said it made me laugh. I tried to revert back to serious quickly, though. “I can't protect you from everything.” “I know, but just…let me wallow in the illusion for a while, okay?” I considered protesting. I needed him to recognize that I was not infallible, that I made mistakes. Josh had died on my watch. But I didn't say anything. He pressed his face into my back. “Are you always this tense?” he asked. “Probably.” “God, no wonder you needed to get laid that night we met.” He backed off a little and started rubbing my shoulders. “I can help you with this, you know.” “I know,” I said on a sigh. His hands were large and warm on my back, and he knew the right places to push to get some of the knots to untangle a little. “Harry, I—”

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“I heard what you said loud and clear this morning, peach. I did. But you know, we took care of a bad guy today. I don't think there will be any further danger to my person tonight. You could, you know, just let go for a little while.” I grunted but didn't stop him from rubbing my shoulders, nor did I stop him when he bent his head and kissed my nape, nor did I stop him when he slid my T-shirt off over my head. It all felt so good, his big hands easing the tension in my muscles, his lips soft on my skin, his scent washing over me. I melted. “Turn around,” he said. So I did. I couldn't resist him anymore. He looked into my eyes and ran a hand down my chest. I got caught up in those light blue eyes of his. “You have such an amazing body,” he said as his hand moved around me. He bent his head and kissed my chest, and I was done. He found the spot on my neck where I liked to be kissed, and I moaned. I snaked my fingers through his messy, dark hair when he bit me there. And then he kissed my lips and did that magic trick that made me stop being aware of anything except the feel of his body against mine, of the intoxicating way he smelled. I felt him hard against me, his cock pressing against mine through our shorts. I surprised myself by murmuring, “Too much clothing,” which pulled a laugh out of Harry. “Couldn't have said it better,” he said against my lips. We wriggled out of our clothes while keeping our lips locked. When we were both naked and breathless, he said, “I've got lube and condoms in my overnight bag. Don't move.” I propped myself up on my elbows when he vanished to the other room. He came back with supplies in hand, and I laughed. “Were you anticipating this moment when you packed?” He shrugged. I got a good look at his body then. It was marvelous; he was so tall, all sinewy muscle and quiet strength. It broke my heart a little that his body was so marred by those bruises, some of which had turned interesting shades of purple and green. And there was also his hard cock, jutting out from his body, begging me to touch it. I wanted it inside me. I wanted to feel everything, all the pain and pleasure he could offer me. “Come here,” I said. He smiled. He dropped the lube and the condoms on the nightstand, then climbed on top of me. I put my arms around his shoulders and pulled him close. When our chests touched, I could

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feel his heart pounding. My own heart was beating at a dizzying pace. I kissed him, pressing my hips against his. He let out sounds that were somewhere between sighs and groans. I loved the sounds he made. He reached between us and stroked both of our cocks in one of his hands. I liked the friction of that, his rough hands on me, the ridges of his cock against mine. I kissed him again, wanting that magic, wanting everything but him and me to just disappear. I was charged up and worried I'd come too quickly, so I pushed him away slightly. He looked into my eyes, and I was touched by the tenderness I saw in his expression. I leaned up and nipped at his lips. I ran my hands over his beautiful face, then down his neck and over his hard nipples and chest, careful not to push on any of the bruises. He took that as his cue to sit up and reach for the lube. Then he pushed my legs apart and kept his gaze on my face as he poured lube over his fingers. He touched me, and I grunted, the liquid cool and slick as he slid it between my cheeks. I wanted this badly. Part of me wanted him to get to it, but part of me wanted this to drag out, for it to last. He slid a finger inside me and pumped in and out a couple of times. It stung a little at first, but soon I ached for him to do more. He had a grin on his face like he had me exactly where he wanted me. I felt totally helpless, desperate for him to get on with it and yet enjoying everything he did. He slipped in a second finger, then bent to kiss me. His lips seemed to dance with mine. I was briefly lost in the sensation of it, my whole body coming alive, sweaty and hot, as he kissed and touched me. My brain seemed to liquefy. I felt him hard against my leg. He pumped his hips a little. That he was as excited as I was, that he wanted this as badly, thrilled me. Then I remembered everything that was wrong here. Harry chuckled near my ear, and his voice sounded foreign. He added a third finger, and I tensed. “Sshh, relax, baby,” Harry murmured. “I know, I just…” I took a deep breath and tried to force my body to obey. This had to happen fast, before I lost my nerve. Before I remembered all the reasons I had for not wanting to have sex with Harry again. I grabbed a condom from the nightstand and rolled it on him. He closed his eyes and pumped into my hand a couple of times; then he moved away. Before I really knew what was happening, his head was between my legs and my cock was in his mouth. He went about sucking me very seriously, concentration in his eyes, but with no

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lack of enthusiasm. His mouth was magical, hot and wet, and the sensation of sliding in and out of it killed my ability to think straight. My body tingled as his hands roamed over my thighs and hips. I couldn't have stopped him if I'd wanted to; it felt too good. His tongue got in on the action, and then he started humming. An electric current went up my spine, forcing my back to arch up. “Jesus, Harry,” I said, feeling those vibrations bring me to the brink. He let my cock out of his mouth and stroked it a few times. He kissed my stomach, then kissed his way up my chest. His mouth was slick and warm and left a trail of goose bumps as it traveled. He bit one of my nipples, and the sensation went straight to my cock, and I was so hard, it hurt. When he was back up at my mouth, he kissed me. Then he said, “You can't know how much it excites me to have my big, strong bodyguard putty in my hands.” “Just fuck me already.” He grinned down, and I felt the head of his cock poised to enter me. He kept it there for a moment. He teased me with his cock as he kissed me. With an urgency that was palpable, I wanted him inside me. I moved my hands down his back to his butt and tried to pull him close. He pushed forward in one fluid movement. I groaned and dug my fingers into his ass as he filled me. I felt that first stab of searing pain that quickly gave way to pleasure as he started to move in and out of me at a leisurely pace. Harry had bigger hands than Josh. He was taller; he smelled muskier. He didn't know the specific things I liked. I didn't know what he liked. It was all new and different. “Stay with me, Noah,” Harry said; then he kissed me and started pumping harder. He slid in and out of me, sending jolts of pleasure through my body with every stroke, his cock moving over the sweet spot. I put my hands on his back and held him, felt his muscles straining. He was propped just slightly above me, one hand holding up his torso, the other stroking my cock, and he looked so serious. There was no pretense of holding back anymore. I bit my lip, felt the point of no return strike, and I couldn't look at him anymore. It was too intense to look in his eyes, too intimate. I closed my eyes, and my mind went blank. I trembled, and my skin felt like it was on fire. I came on a long groan, shooting all over my chest as he continued to stroke me.

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I grabbed his ass and pulled him hard inside me. He stiffened and then came so hard, he shook. He gathered me up in his arms as he collapsed onto the bed. He held me there, pinned, for a long time while we both caught our breath. After a while he wordlessly got up to take care of the condom, so I got up to wash up and pee. When I came back into the bedroom, he was lying on the bed looking at the ceiling. I sat on the edge, not sure what to say. “So who is he?” Harry asked. “Who?” He rolled on his side and looked at me. “The man who so fucked you up that you hate yourself a little for what we just did. The man you were thinking about right before I made you come.” “I don't hate myself.” He gave me a “get real” look. “Who is he?” I sighed and rubbed my forehead. I figured it was only fair to Harry to come clean. “His name was Josh,” I said quietly. “We were together for six years.” Harry nodded. He looked hurt for a brief moment but recovered quickly. “Hell of a secret to keep from your boss, huh? So what happened? He dump you? Take up with a twink ten years younger?” “No.” Then I hunched forward. “He died.” And then the floodgates opened. All those tears that I'd held in, the ones I hadn't let myself cry at the hospital, at Josh's funeral, the night I went to see his grave after the headstone had been placed, they all came flooding out then. “Oh God,” Harry said. “I'm so sorry. I didn't know…” I wiped at my eyes. “How could you have?” The tears kept coming. “Jesus, why am I crying like this?” “Talk to me,” Harry said, all the hurt and anger drained from his face. He looked only concerned for me. I couldn't think of the last time someone had looked at me that way. It only made me cry harder.

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So I told him the whole story: about Josh and me, how much I loved him, about Artie Schiffler, about Josh's getting shot, about not being able to see him in the hospital, not being able to say good-bye at his funeral. Harry probably only heard about a third of what I said, because I sobbed through the whole thing. It wasn't pretty crying like in movies either; I was a big, snotty, sobbing mess. Harry put his arms around me and let me cry on his shoulder. I don't know how long I cried, but his skin was slick with my tears by the time I was done. Finally things started drying up, and I was able to get my breathing under control. I realized that I was still there, in Harry's arms, and that he was hugging me fiercely. “Come on. Let's get you into the shower,” he said. He helped me up, then pushed me into the bathroom. I just stood there, waiting to see what he'd do next, because this was certainly not what I'd expected. He started the water going in the shower, then steered me under the spray. He got in behind me and then started to wash me. I shoved my face under the water and let the shower wash all those tears away. I felt him behind me, washing himself too. He put his hands on my waist; then he pressed his chest against my back, his hard nipples scraping my skin. His cock was half-hard as he nestled it between my ass cheeks. He kissed my shoulder, and his mouth seemed to scorch the skin. I didn't think I had anything left in me. Still, my body responded, trembling under Harry's touch. My cock rose. I put my hands behind me and ran my fingers through Harry's hair as he kissed and nibbled on my neck. Our bodies were slippery, and we slid together easily. He grabbed the bar of soap, then ran it over my chest, over each of my nipples, making slow circles. My nipples hardened under his ministrations, as did my cock, which by then was throbbing. Harry lathered up his hands, then tossed the soap back at the ledge of the tub. He ran his big, soapy hands over my stomach, then down to my cock. He wrapped both hands around it and stroked. My already sensitive skin tingled against his. His cock slid up and down the crease of my ass. He picked up the pace, seeming to search for his release while he tried to pull mine out of me. He murmured my name. I liked how it rang in my ears. He bit my shoulder and kept on stroking me, making waves of pleasure course through my body.

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“Come for me, baby,” he mumbled into my shoulder. I didn't think I could. He moved one of his hands up over my stomach and to one of my nipples. He pinched it while he kept stroking me. My knees turned to jelly. I put my hands on the tile in front of me to keep from falling over. I shoved my head under the shower and let the hot water roll down my body. The room was steaming up, and still I shivered, acutely aware of Harry pumping his now-hard cock against my ass, of his hand on my cock, of his other hand on my chest. I was overwhelmed by Harry, by my body's response to him. I concentrated on all the places where Harry touched me. I was warm and safe in his arms, which allowed me to relax enough to let go. I closed my eyes and surrendered to everything Harry made me feel. Then I came, pumping against Harry's hand, shooting all over the shower wall. He groaned and thrust his hips against my ass. I felt him come, hot and sticky, against my lower back. I was completely spent, exhausted and unable to move much. Harry bent over to pick up the soap. He ran his sudsy hands over my body, really cleaning me this time. Then he moved me so that we swapped places, and he thoroughly washed his body. I watched with awe when he dropped his head back under the spray, and I loved how the water ran down his hair, his face, his body. When we were both clean, he turned off the water and nudged me out of the shower. I stood in the middle of the bathroom feeling foolish and embarrassed. I couldn't believe I'd cried so much; then I couldn't believe we'd fooled around in the bathroom, and I was so tired, I couldn't see straight anymore. Harry took it all in stride. He wrapped me in a towel, then pushed me back into the bedroom. “Get in bed,” he said. “Harry, I'm okay now, really…” “Bed.” He rubbed the towel over my skin, then quickly over my head. He walked back into the bathroom to hang up the towels. I complied with his orders and climbed into bed. I was suddenly freezing, my wet skin especially sensitive to the subarctic temperature created by the room's air-conditioning. I pulled the covers up over my body, up to my chin. Harry climbed in next to me, under the covers, but didn't get settled right away. “If you're still awake and you want to watch TV or something, that's okay.”

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“Are you sure?” he asked. “Yeah. I'm…drained. I could fall asleep on a bed of nails in the middle of Times Square right now.” He murmured something that sounded like “my poor peach” before he located the remote and flipped on the TV. “Oh look,” he said. “It's me.” Sure enough, he'd located the eleven-o'clock news, and he was a hot topic of conversation. A reporter said, “Harrison Knowles is still missing. Police are reporting that they have several leads and are confident that the local man is still alive. They urge anyone with information to call the local tip line…” “Rubbish,” Harry muttered. He found an episode of some sitcom and settled in to watch it. He put an arm around me while he sank into the bed, so I turned toward him. I pressed my face into his chest and put my arms around his torso. Then I fell asleep.

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Chapter Ten I woke up alone. The shade was pulled, and the box of condoms on the nightstand obscured my view of the clock, so I didn't have a good handle on what time it was. It took a while for things to come back to me: the night before, crying all over Harry, the fact that I was supposed to be guarding Harry and not having sex with him. I sat up with a start as I realized Harry wasn't with me. I heard the TV in the other room, along with the distinct sound of crunchy food being chewed. Then Harry's soft laughter drifted into the room. I got out of bed, pulled on some clean underwear, and walked into the living room. Harry was indeed on the couch, fully dressed and eating a bowl of cereal. “Ah, Sleeping Beauty,” he said. He gave my body a long look. “How do you feel?” I gave the question due consideration. The thing was, I felt better than I had in a long time, in months even. I felt lighter, well rested. “I'm okay,” I said. “What time is it?” Harry grinned. “Two.” There was sun coming in through the open window next to the couch. “In the afternoon?” I asked. “Afraid so.” He put his bowl on the coffee table and stood up. “Why didn't you wake me up?” I asked as he walked toward me. He raised an eyebrow at me, his “who do you think you're kidding?” expression, before snaking an arm around my waist and pulling me close to him. “You looked exhausted, like you hadn't slept in days.” I hadn't. I did the math: if I passed out during the eleven-o'clock news, I'd been asleep for nearly fifteen hours, all told. I couldn't recall a time I'd slept so well for so long. I leaned my forehead against his shoulder. “I'm so embarrassed,” I said.

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“Don't be.” He tightened his arms around me. “Last night, that was catharsis. It's good and necessary.” More quietly he added, “You hadn't cried for him before, had you?” “No.” I felt him sigh against me. “Do you feel better now?” “Yes, remarkably.” “I'm glad.” I was about to thank him when he put his fingers under my chin and lifted my face. Then he kissed me. He surprised me, because I figured he'd be put off by the fact that I'd spent so much time crying the night before for my poor dead boyfriend. But no, instead he kissed me sweetly, and I put my arms around him, holding on for dear life. I would have thanked him after the kiss broke apart if there hadn't been a knock at the door. I extracted myself from him and went to look through the peephole. “It's Ruiz,” I said. “You might want to put some clothes on.” I ran into the bedroom as Harry went to answer the door. I got myself into jeans and a Tshirt in record time, hopefully fast enough for Ruiz to not suspect that I'd spent all morning in bed. It occurred to me that the fact that I was halfway to formulating a joke about how I'd spent the morning naked without having sex meant that I was probably, at long last, on the road to recovery. I almost laughed. “Good morning, Detective,” said Ruiz when she saw me. “How are you?” “I'm okay.” “You didn't answer your phone this morning.” “You called?” I asked, suddenly panicked. Where was my phone? I remembered it had been in the shorts I'd been wearing the night before, which I was glad I'd thought to put away before I went to bed. Had I left it on the nightstand? I glanced back into the bedroom and saw it there, next to the box of condoms and the bottle of lube. I pulled the bedroom door closed. “Noah was feeling a little under the weather this morning,” Harry said. “Answer your phone next time.” And that was the end of that. She looked at Harry. “You're supposed to be attending the fund-raiser for Senator Mitchell tomorrow evening.”

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“I had been planning to.” He looked at me. “Black-tie affair. Pretentious canapés and expensive wine, you don't even want to know what the price per ticket is. But I like Mitchell. When he was a state senator, he cosponsored a gay-marriage bill. Such things would, of course, never fly in Florida, but I think even if I were not a fervent supporter of the gay agenda, I'd admire his guts for even trying, which I suspect is how he got himself elected to the US Congress.” “I had a crazy idea,” Ruiz said. Harry raised an eyebrow at her. “Yeah?” He sounded eager. “What if we 'found' you in time for you to go to the fund-raiser?” “And then lure the bad guys to a very public event?” I asked doubtfully. “Here's my thought. We force their hands. We lure them out. We have Harry give a press conference where he says he's skipping town for a long vacation right after the fund-raiser. They'd have to come after him, or they'd risk losing him for good. The event will have a lot of security, so it would be safe for Harry to be there. Most of the PD will already be there, plus a few Secret Service agents.” She looked at me. “I don't like the idea of putting the senator or any of the guests in danger any more than you do, but this might be our best option. We brief all of the agents there on the situation, have everyone on the lookout, we can stop this before it escalates.” “I like this idea,” said Harry. “It's ridiculous,” I said, thinking about a dinner I'd had to work back in my beat-cop days. Events like this always had security up to my ears, so Ruiz's point was valid—it wasn't like we could bring Harry down to the local Starbucks and have anything like the same level of protection—but I still didn't like the plan. “It's worth a shot anyway,” Ruiz said. “I understand your concerns, but I have limited options here. If anything, it'll let the bad guys know we're on to them and put Harry back out in the public eye long enough to entice them into making another kidnapping attempt. And we'll be waiting for them this time.” “Come on, Noah. That much muscle? I'll be perfectly safe.” “I think also that Noah should stay on as security,” Ruiz said. “I think I can persuade the department to spring for your ticket.”

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Harry laughed. “You want to be my date?” he asked me. “You were planning to go with your sister, weren't you?” said Ruiz. “Yes, but only because I have found myself unfortunately single for the last few months.” He shot me a sheepish grin. “Although I have to say, I like the idea of walking into the fundraiser with a handsome guy like Noah on my arm. That'll get the old ladies to choke on the olives in their martinis.” “Harry, I really don't think—” Ruiz held up her hand. “Not what I had in mind anyway,” she said. “Too conspicuous. You'd draw too much attention to yourself. I want you to blend into the background, Noah.” “Fine,” I said. “So this afternoon I think will be the ideal time to 'find' Harry. That means you get some time off from guard duty.” While Harry packed, we discussed the particulars of the fund-raiser and how Harry would be found. Ruiz had drawn up a whole plan outlining how it would go down. Harry would be found by a stray motorist (Ruiz's husband had agreed to play this part), after he'd spent two days wearily trying to make his escape. He'd have to look roughened up, which wasn't that much of a stretch. Although the swelling on his face had mostly gone down, he still had that black eye. They were going to make it worse, though. Ruiz said she had a friend who was a genius with theatrical makeup, so the plan was to make Harry's face look a lot worse before making it look like makeup was covering up those bruises during the dinner. My role in this was still as Harry's security, only not that night, because Ruiz had decided it would be a good idea for Harry to spend the night at his sister's. She was graciously giving me the night off. A night off, I was finding as the day went on, that I didn't want. Ruiz started to herd Harry out the door, but he paused for a second and said, “Can I have a minute?” She looked at me, then at him, and nodded. Then she walked out into the hallway. Harry furrowed his brow for a moment before he said, “It surprises me how sad this makes me. Leaving, I mean. After a couple of days trapped in a hotel room, you'd think I'd be tearing down the walls, but…”

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“I know what you mean,” I said. “I'm sad you're leaving.” He nodded. “Well, I'll see you tomorrow night. It's not like this is good-bye forever.” “And I'm back on security detail tomorrow night. After a few more days of that, I bet you'll be pretty anxious to get rid of me.” Harry smiled. “I wouldn't count on that, peach.” Then he kissed me, hard and insistent. I took that to mean that this was not over. And it wasn't. I knew that even then. Not by a long shot.

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Chapter Eleven After Harry left, I went down to the spa at the resort and managed to snag the one open massage appointment. I was, remarkably, feeling pretty limber—good sex and good sleep will do that, I guess—but it was nice to just lie there and let the masseur work his magic. The masseur, a beefy blond guy named Claude, was good too, getting down to the parts of my back that I didn't realize were still knotted up. He was a complete professional, but it came out soon enough that he was also gay. We flirted a little, but his hands behaved themselves. I went back to my room and put a chair out on the little balcony outside the bedroom and just sat there for a while, feeling thoroughly relaxed, letting the sun warm my skin. I was alone again, but I felt content. I looked down at the pool, which was thirteen stories below me, and watched the tiny bodies getting in and out of the water. My vacation hadn't gone as expected, but I was starting to think that Lieutenant Caffity had had the right idea after all, sending me down to Florida. Later that evening I sat on the bed in my room flipping through TV channels, feeling that kind of tired felt after spending all day in the sun. The room was a little chilly—Floridians sure liked their air-conditioning, and every place I'd been since I got there felt like the inside of an industrial freezer—so I fiddled with the thermostat; then I slid under the covers and started to space out a little. I don't think I ever learned how to conduct a relationship properly. Even with Josh, we never dated, not in the traditional sense. We met at a party, through a mutual friend, and then we hung out together in group situations until one night when I hosted a party in my apartment and he didn't leave. He helped me collect plastic cups and throw out empty bags of chips, and we were laughing about something—I can't remember what, probably something that had happened at the party—and then we were kissing. I was, quite frankly, delighted to learn that the attraction

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I'd been feeling toward him for weeks was returned, and so after we started kissing, I dragged him to my bedroom. The rest is history. It felt like particularly ancient history as I sat on the bed in my hotel room in Tampa that night. I closed my eyes and could see Josh so clearly, the way he smiled, the color of his eyes, everything about him as clear and perfect as that first time we'd had sloppy sex in my bed after that party. I felt happy when thinking about him for a change, grateful for those years we'd had together, grateful for everything he had done for me and taught me, grateful for all the good times we had had together. Maybe that was how I finally said good-bye. A part of me would always love Josh and miss him, but when I could think about Josh and feel happy and not like someone was reaching into my chest to pull my heart out with bare hands, I thought that maybe I could be okay. That I could find a way to live. And then, like he'd been summoned, Harry called. “Hi,” I said. “You sound cheery. I disapprove. I want more distressed wailing over my absence.” So I hammed it up a little. “Oh, Harry, I've missed you so. I can't imagine how I'll get along tonight without you.” He laughed. “That's better. I miss you too, peach. Did you catch me on TV this afternoon?” I had. I'd known it was coming, so I had the TV on. One of the local channels interrupted a rerun of Friends to show the gallant rescue of Harrison Knowles. The roughing up he received was mostly just tousling his hair and adding some makeup bruises to his face, and in the footage they'd shown on TV, he'd maybe overplayed his injuries just a smidge. Otherwise it was quite convincing. I told Harry as much. “Yeah,” he said. “One of my better performances.” A little later in the day he'd also given the press conference where he'd said he wanted to get out of Tampa for a while. He'd thanked the police for their good work; then he made a joke about going to Hawaii for a month. “So now I'm 'resting' at my sister's house,” he said, “and there's a whole team of police outside. Jessica is ensconced in her room with her boyfriend, and I am bored out of my skull. How is your night off?”

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“It's okay,” I said. “I'm a little bored too.” “I'm surprised you didn't go out. Lots of cute boys to be found at Candy Bar. Today's, what, Thursday? That's two-for-one martini night.” “Not really my scene,” I said. “Did I mention the cute boys?” “You did, and I like cute boys and all, but I've never really liked clubbing. Besides, there's a limit to how many cute boys I can handle at a time.” “You've got three of them in your room right now, don't you? I knew it. I turn my back for a few hours…” “I was referring to you.” “That's sweet,” he said. “I know I'm adorable, but I'm older than you are, and so hardly a boy.” “Nope, you're a big man. Even better.” Harry laughed, sounding delighted. “We are in a good mood! What brought this on? Happy to get rid of me?” “No, just… I was thinking over some stuff, put some things in perspective. I didn't get a chance to thank you—” “Noah, stop, you don't have to—” “You let me weep all over you.” “Yeah, I think last night you needed security more than I did. But I mean, we're friends, right? Or becoming friends? I just…did what any friend would do. You don't have to get all bent out of shape about it.” “I'm not, just…thank you.” “You're welcome.” Then he changed the subject. We were on the phone for just over an hour, all told, flirting and talking about stupid shit like sports and reality TV, and I didn't want the call to end. It was nice to just talk, even if it was about nothing, and I think Harry found some comfort in that too. When he learned I liked baseball, he reminded me that the Yankees were in Tampa for spring

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training and offered to take me to a game when our current troubles were over. I agreed because what the hell? But soon I felt myself start to drift off. I yawned. “You tired?” he asked. “I guess I am.” “Well, get a good night's sleep. There are fund-raisers to attend and kidnapping plots to thwart.” “Yeah. Good night, Harry.” “Sleep well, peach.”

*** I'd packed a suit, sort of out of habit, but it was in sad shape when I took it out of my suitcase, wrinkled and looking every bit like the cheap suit it was. I tried hanging it in the bathroom when I showered, hoping the steam would knock out some of the wrinkles. Then I used the hotel's iron. It was all to no avail. I hung the suit in the bathroom and looked at it, dejected. It just hung there, wrinkled and cheap as ever. Panicking, I called Ruiz. “What do I wear?” I asked her. She laughed. “It's semiformal. You wear a suit. What do you want from me?” “Is that Noah?” I heard Harry's voice in the background. “Give me the phone.” There was some shuffling and muffled voices through the receiver, and then Harry came on the line. “Are you having fashion troubles?” “No, I just… Well, yeah, the suit I packed is a wrinkly mess. But it's not a big deal. I just had an irrational moment. There are stores around here, right? I'll just buy a new suit.” I was surprised to find that, actually, the wrinkly suit was not the problem in and of itself. It was more that I really wanted to impress Harry, which would have required my showing up to the fund-raiser dressed like I didn't buy all my clothes on clearance. I didn't give a shit about the other guests at the fund-raiser, but Harry was a wealthy man, probably used to things being highend and elegant. “Let me help you,” Harry said. “Don't you have other things to worry about today?”

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“I can take a half hour out of my afternoon to make sure you look amazing. Not that you wouldn't anyway.” I was flattered that he'd offer. I just wanted the name of a store where I could buy something to wear that wouldn't embarrass me. “It's not worth the risk,” I said. “Really, I'll be fine if you could just recommend a good store.” I heard Harry hum the way he did sometimes when he was thinking. “What's your suit size? A thirty-six? You have a thirty-four waist?” “How do you know that?” “I'm very observant,” he said. “Actually I worked in a high-end men's clothing store when I was in college. I got really good at guessing sizes just by looking at a man.” “I guess that would be a useful skill,” I said. “Anyway, I'm thinking traditional—no, more modern. Dark, three-button. It's a shame we don't have time to get it tailored; you'll just have to do with off-the-rack.” “Harry…” “I'll call my guy. I won't even go outside, if that's what you're worried about. It's a store in St. Pete, on Eighth Street. I'll call; you go and try it on. You'll look fabulous. Okay?” He rattled off directions, which I hastily copied on a stray piece of paper. “Harry, you don't have to do this.” “It's not a problem. I want to.” He was silent for a moment; then he added, “I mean, if I have to look at you at this party, I want you to look good.” And there it was. Funny how I wanted the same thing. There was no doubt in my mind that Harry would look just as good as he always did, that he'd be as well-appointed as was appropriate for a dinner like this. I thanked him and got off the phone. I puttered around the room for a while before driving over to the store. I wasn't surprised to find that this place even smelled expensive. It was small and empty too, no shoppers around. I walked up to the counter and said to the clerk, “Hi, my name is Noah Tobin. I think Harrison Knowles called ahead for me?” “Of course, sir. I've got your suit already set up in a fitting room. Come with me.”

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There was a white shirt and a very nice dark red tie waiting for me too. I couldn't bring myself to look at the price tags. The suit was beautiful. It was a charcoal gray, three-button, wool gabardine. I fingered the fabric and knew it was more expensive than probably every suit in my closet combined. I sighed as I put it on. It, of course, fit as if it were made for me. The clerk asked to see it, so I modeled for him. He ran a hand over the seams. “Mr. Knowles got it right, as he always does. The pants are a little long, but otherwise it fits very well, don't you think?” I wondered if Harry sent all his men here to try on suits or how many he'd sent before me. I didn't really want to know the answer, so I didn't ask. “Yes,” I said instead, looking at myself in the mirror. I was already calculating how long it would take me to pay off the credit-card bill for this, because I had to buy it. I couldn't recall when I'd looked so good. It wasn't just the suit, although I liked how it made me look tall and thin and rich. Beyond that, though, my skin looked a little brighter; my eyes looked less tired. I found myself smiling. “It's great.” So I let him pin the hems on the pants, then changed back into my street clothes and let the clerk take the suit. He said he could make the alterations right away, so I waited for him to do that. As he wrapped the suit up in plastic at the counter, I fished my credit card out of my wallet, bracing myself for the great expenditure. Then the clerk gave me a baffled look and said, “Mr. Knowles has already paid for it.” “He what?” “It's already paid for. I can't take your money.” He handed the suit to me. “Have a great time at the fund-raiser tonight.” As I drove back to the hotel, I decided that I couldn't let Harry buy something this expensive for me, not when it was just a temporary arrangement, the thing between us. The sex was really good, but I'd be going home to New York in a little over a week. Although who was I kidding? It stopped being about just sex the moment I'd broken down two nights before.

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Chapter Twelve I got a cab to the fund-raiser figuring I could hitch a ride with Harry or Ruiz when it was over. I'd had a little too much time to think about how this would go down, and I was nervous when I walked into the hotel ballroom. The ballroom was large and tastefully decorated. The windows were covered in dark damask curtains, and an absurdly large chandelier was the room's centerpiece. There was a small orchestra playing soft music in the corner. I guessed that there were probably close to one hundred people in the room. I was surprised when the first person I recognized was not Harry but Angie from the beach. She shot me a huge smile and walked over. She looked spectacular. She'd pulled out a demure navy blue gown, a nice contrast to the bikini she'd been wearing when we met, but it showed enough to keep her admirers wondering what was beneath. “Hi,” I said. “What are you doing here?” “I should ask you the same question, New York.” “Oh, a friend of mine got me a ticket to this thing. Hard to turn down a free dinner, eh?” She nodded. I caught sight of Harry, standing next to a bottle blonde I guessed was his sister. They were near a row of tables, schmoozing it up with a couple of suits. We briefly made eye contact before he looked away again. I was determined to say something to him, to insist on paying him back for the suit, something, but there was no way to get across the room to talk to him without drawing attention to myself. Besides, Angie was saying, “Senator Mitchell has been doing a lot of outreach to public schools in Florida. He invited some local-area teachers to this party, so here I am.” I smiled at her. “Can I buy you a drink?”

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She raised an eyebrow. “Did you change your mind about that whole gay thing? Let me guess, you took one look at my boobs and you've decided to go straight.” I laughed. “Nope, still gay.” “That's a real shame,” she said. “In that case, you can definitely buy me a drink.” She hooked her arm around mine, and we walked to the bar. “What would you like?” “Something pink and girlie,” she said. “A cosmo?” I smiled at her and ordered us drinks. The bartender placed them in front of me and then moved down the bar to see to the other customers. Angie smiled and took a sip of her cosmo. “So,” she said. “Talk to me. What do you do for a living?” Ruiz and I had talked about a cover, should I have to engage in small talk. She had told me to answer all questions honestly—my cover was basically that I was a man from New York in Tampa on vacation, which hey, sounded pretty familiar—so I said, “I'm a cop actually.” Angie's jaw dropped. “Wow, seriously?” I shrugged. “And you're from New York, right? So you're, like, NYPD Blue and all that?” “I guess. I mean, yes, I am NYPD. Although right now I'm on vacation.” She laughed. “That's great. Only more like NYPD Gay, eh?” I winced. “I suppose. What do you teach?” “Fourth grade.” I had a hard time picturing a woman as buxom as Angie in a classroom, but I supposed in conservative clothes and penny loafers, she might pull it off. “Wow,” I said. We were cut off then when I felt a big hand slap my back. “Hello!” Harry greeted us. “I'm Harrison Knowles. I'm helping to throw this little shindig. I hope you're all having a good time.” I played along and shook his hand, then introduced myself and Angie. Harry took Angie's hand and brought it up to his lips. He kissed her knuckles. “Charmed,” he said. “Harrison Knowles? You own those gay bars in St. Pete, right? Candy Bar and all that?”

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“Indeed,” Harry said. “Have you been to Candy Bar?” “Yeah, I have a friend who's—Yeah, I've been there a couple of times. I like it.” Harry grinned. “Thank you. And you, sir, have you been to Candy Bar?” “No,” I said, figuring the time we busted Stakowski didn't really count. I gave Harry my best charming smile. “I'm here on vacation. But I've heard good things about it. A friend of mine told me just the other night that all the cute boys in the area go there.” I waggled my eyebrows. Harry hooted with laughter. “Apparently not, if you're here now and not there.” I wondered if I should be flirting with Harry in front of Angie. She knew I was gay. She must have known Harry was gay, but this was no way to keep a cover. Angie laughed, though. “Fat lot of good that does me, eh?” She then excused herself to go to the ladies' room. Harry grinned. “She seems nice. You thinking about trying to score with her?” “Funny coincidence. I met her at the beach the same day you turned up. We chatted some. I just ran into her here. Have no fear, though, I told her I was gay.” “She knows you're gay, and she's still hanging out with you at this party?” “No, she let me buy her a drink. Not the same.” “I think,” Harry said, leaning close to me, “that you are so hot, you could get anyone you wanted—male or female.” I shrugged. “You shouldn't have bought me the suit.” “And yet I see you wearing it.” He gave me the once-over. “It looks even better than I thought it would. Totally worth it.” “Let me pay you back for it, at least.” He shook his head. “It's my gift.” “Harry…” He held his finger to his lips; then he waved his hand at the bartender. He ordered a scotch, and while we waited for the bartender to pour it, he said, “Make sure I introduce you to the senator before you leave.” I blinked at the change in subject. “All right, but I don't even live in this state. It's not a big deal if I don't meet him.”

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“Nonsense,” said Harry. “You're a gay man. You can tell him you support his stance on marriage equality.” I frowned. Getting involved in politics was not something high on my priority list. When Harry saw me hesitate, he said, with his voice lowered, “Come on. You and Josh were together for a really long time. You aren't going to tell me that in all those years, you didn't think about getting married, are you?” “I live in a state where it's still not legal to get married. I mean, we talked about it a couple of times, but we were in a committed relationship. I don't know that a ceremony would have changed anything.” Harry looked at me carefully, like he wanted to say something but was afraid I wouldn't like it. “What?” I asked. He sighed. “Don't hate me for saying this, but you know, if you'd been married, you would have had rights. I mean, at the end.” When Josh was in the hospital, he meant. When I'd had to lie my way into his room to see him. We couldn't have gotten married in New York, but New York did recognize legal marriages conducted in other states. Just thinking about it made my heart ache. I took a long drink of my beer, wondering if I'd ever stop missing him so much. “His parents never would have supported it anyway.” Harry just nodded. He turned toward the bar and had another sip of his scotch, then murmured something that sounded like “I'm sorry.” When Angie came back, Harry was back to being all smiles. She greeted us again pleasantly. A man walked up to the bar then and caught Harry's attention. I felt a short wave of jealousy. It became apparent that Harry and the other man knew each other. “Ah, Hector,” Harry said, shaking the man's hand. “Long time no see. How are you?” “I'm all right. How's business?” “Bustling as ever.” Angie was trying to make small talk with me, so I answered her questions while checking out this man. There was something in his eyes that I recognized, that hollowed-out sadness that

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I'd seen so often in the mirror. He'd lost someone close to him recently. If Harry knew this man, he probably knew that, and I wondered if that was how he'd known how to deal with me. But it became clear that there was some serious awkwardness between Harry and this Hector. They briefly exchanged some minutiae about the restaurant business; then Harry said, “Well, I have to go mingle. Such a hardship.” He was joking, but he looked right at me, which made it clear who he'd rather be spending the evening with. It wasn't the suits in the crowd there. I swallowed, but Harry laughed again. “Have a good time.” Hector looked me up and down, then took his drink from the bartender. I found something about him mildly unsettling. I made a mental note to try to identify him before the evening was over. He smiled at me faintly, then wandered off. Dinner was served shortly after that. Angie swapped place cards with someone so that she could sit with me instead of her teacher friends. We were seated with a Florida state representative and his wife and a couple who owned some sort of retail business. Dinner passed pleasantly. We—well, mostly Angie—chatted about how business was going, about local politics in the Tampa Bay area. I was hyperaware of what was going on around me during most of the dinner, keeping my eyes out for any suspicious activity. I looked up and caught Harry watching me a couple of times, and then I saw him notice other people around the room. That was good. He was paying as much attention as I was. After dinner wrapped up, the waitstaff started clearing tables, and people were encouraged to dance. Angie started talking up a slick, Gordon Gecko type, so I excused myself to go find a bathroom. I was washing my hands at the sink when Harry waltzed into the men's room. He grinned at me. Then—pow!—I was in a stall, and he was kissing me hard. I kissed him back, and God, I hadn't even realized I'd been wanting to do this since I'd walked into the party. I groaned into his mouth, and I felt his chest vibrate as he chuckled. He backed away a little, and his face turned serious. He whispered, “I think I saw one of the goons out in the ballroom.” “What? Where?” I felt some shame as I realized that the increased danger only made me harder.

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“I texted Ruiz. She texted me back to say she's on it.” This didn't really ease my fear. “So you followed me in here to, what, make out with me? To distract me from doing my job?” “On the contrary, I'm hiding out from the goon in the bathroom, and I'm hiding here with you, a man with a gun strapped to his back and a lot of badass NYPD training. The way I see it, I'm safer in here.” “Harry, honey, I can't—” He shut up my protests with a kiss and some strategic groping, and the threat of the goon started to fade into the back recesses of my mind. Whenever I tried to protest, Harry just went about seducing me more aggressively, planting kisses on my jaw and sliding his hands under my jacket. I managed to push some space between us. “Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “Goon in the ballroom, what does he look like?” “Short and bald, I don't know.” He resumed kissing my face. “Harry—” He slid a hand down to grab my cock through my pants. His hand was warm, and he applied a distracting amount of pressure. I wanted him badly, but I had to make sure things were safe first. “That guy Hector,” I tried. “Who's he?” “That was Hector Reyes,” Harry said, pressing his crotch against my hips. I realized that I'd even missed how he smelled. Now it was the sweat-and-Old-Spice combo with a hint of tobacco too, like he'd been sneaking cigarettes. “He's my old business partner.” He pulled away slightly to look at my face. He smirked. “Why, you jealous?” “What? No, of course not, just curious.” “Sure.” And then he shocked the hell out of me by dropping to his knees. With a somewhat malevolent grin, he reached over and undid my pants. My last thought as he took me into his mouth was that this was how we were both going to meet our end. That pretty mouth of his would so thoroughly distract me that I wouldn't see the guy who walked up to us and pulled the trigger.

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I was turned on and scared, and my pulse raced. But I stopped thinking because Harry's mouth was magic. This was no mere blowjob; it was a thing of beauty. His mouth was warm and wet, his tongue knew just where to go, and nothing else existed but this exquisite feeling of my cock in his mouth. My heart thudded in my chest. My cock throbbed as Harry traced lines along the shaft with his tongue. My whole body tingled. I bit back a groan and threaded my fingers into his hair. He got his fingers in on the act, dancing over my balls, then moving farther. My knees went weak; my skin prickled. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the wall of the stall and just let him work his enthusiastic magic until I felt a different, tighter sensation. I looked down to see that, indeed, the head of my cock had disappeared into the back of his throat. His throat squeezed me in a way that sent shock waves through my body, down to my toes. I groaned then and came hard, shuddering all over. He kept me in his mouth until my breathing started to slow again; then he put me away and zipped my pants back up. With a flourish, he stood and swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. Then he leaned over and kissed me. I normally get a little squicked by postblowjob kisses, as I don't particularly like tasting myself. But there was something kind of sexy about it when Harry did it. It served as a reminder that my dick had just been in this very mouth, that he'd just performed some sort of wizardry on me. He pulled back and smiled at me, and I, still not really in control of my jellied limbs, slumped forward and pressed my face into his shoulder. “I wish I could return the favor,” I said, “but my knees seem to have stopped working properly.” Harry laughed and put his arms around me. “Just let me have that tight ass of yours later tonight. That's all the thanks I need.” He reached around and grabbed my butt for emphasis. I would have done anything for Harry then. “That hardly seems fair,” I said, picking my head up. “I'd get something out of that too.” Harry grinned. “If you don't think I enjoyed every moment of that, you are sadly mistaken, peach.” Our gazes met. I felt an odd mixture of joy and trepidation, both delighted and worried that whatever was going on between us was about something bigger and more important than just sex. Did Harry feel it too? Was it even possible to fall for someone as hard as I was falling for

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Harry in just a matter of days? I searched his eyes and saw what I was looking for. He felt it too. His expression turned very serious. “Harry, I—” He smiled and put a finger to my lips. “Later, babe. We'll talk about this later. Now I have to go back into that party so that no one thinks it's fishy that I've vanished for so long. Jessica's already acting put out that I keep abandoning her to these political sharks.” “Yeah.” I followed him out of the stall, and we both washed our hands. He gestured toward the door. “I need a minute,” I said, “but I'll be right behind you.” When he hesitated again, I added, “Don't you dare disappear on me this time.” He grinned. “I'll do my best not to.” I watched him go; then I looked in the mirror. I laughed and shook my head despite myself. My hair was wildly disheveled, so I ran my fingers through it to try to tame it; then I splashed cold water on my face, hoping to get rid of the faint flush still on my cheeks. When I walked out, Angie was waiting for me, leaning against the wall outside the men's room. “So,” she said, “you and Harrison Knowles.” “Not what you think.” “Oh please. He's been shooting you looks all night, and then he followed you into the restroom. You guys were in there for kind of a long time.” I glanced at the men's-room door, then looked back at Angie. Since my cover was basically the truth, I said quietly, “We met the first night I was in Tampa. We…uh…spent some time together before he disappeared. And then he invited me to this party, so when he turned up again yesterday, I thought, hey, maybe I should go, try to see him again.” She laughed. “Guess that worked out for you.” We joined arms and started to walk back toward the ballroom. I failed to come up with a good joke but was saved when my phone vibrated in my pocket. Angie was leaning on me and felt it too, so I gave her an apologetic smile before pulling out my phone. “Tobin.”

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“Where are you?” It was Ruiz. “Oh I see, over by the bar. The target tells us we've got a friend, about three o'clock from your position.” I looked. A short, bald guy in a suit was standing where Ruiz said he'd be. I looked around for Ruiz but didn't see her. “I see him,” I said. The bald guy turned, and I caught a conspicuous bulge in his pants. I suspected he was not just happy to see me. He was scanning the room too. I held my breath as his gaze cast over me, and it took a moment for it to kick in that he wasn't here looking for me. I looked for Harry and found him just before Baldy did, standing on the other side of the room, close to the bar, talking to that Hector guy again. Baldy nodded and held his wrist up to his mouth, undoubtedly checking in with whomever he was working for. “Shit,” I muttered into the phone. “Hawk has spotted its prey.” “I know,” said Ruiz. I looked around again and still didn't see her. She was good. “Stop looking around like that and pretend to talk to that woman.” “Hey, before you run off, do you know a Hector Reyes?” There was a pause so long, I got a little scared. “Why?” Ruiz asked. “Is he here?” “Yeah, he's…” Harry was talking to some generic-looking man in an old tux. Reyes was nowhere in sight. “He and Harry spoke earlier. I don't see him anymore.” “Shit, shit, shit,” Ruiz said. “What?” “Nothing, we'll talk about it later. I gotta go. Keep an eye on Harry.” I did as I was told and turned to Angie. I hung up on Ruiz and slid my phone back into my pocket. “Sorry about that,” I said to Angie. “So…” She looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You want to dance?” she asked. “Okay.” I let her drag me over to where other couples were dancing. She put her hands on my shoulders, and I grabbed her waist and we kind of swayed a bit. “Is this weird for you? Dancing with a woman?” “No, not really. It's not unprecedented. I dated women all through high school and into college before I realized, well, you know. Besides, I always thought two men dancing like this together looked a little silly.”

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She didn't respond to that but instead ran her hands over my shoulder and around to my back. Her eyes went wide as her fingers moved over the shoulder holster. “Is that a gun?” she asked in a whisper. “Something's going down, isn't it?” “Nothing you have to worry about,” I said. “It's really not a big deal.” “But you are on duty?” “Not really. I'm on vacation. I didn't lie about that. It's a hard habit to shake, though.” “Yeah, it's totally normal to carry a gun to a fancy dinner party,” she whispered. “I mean, I forget to take off my gun all the time.” I started to protest but really didn't know what to say to her. I didn't want to lie but couldn't risk her involvement in the truth either. And then my phone buzzed again. “Jesus,” I said before I fished it out of my pocket. I kept one hand on Angie's waist, encouraged her to keep dancing while I put the phone to my ear. “Tobin.” “Two of our friends are in the parking lot,” said Ruiz. “Two men who Harry picked out of a photo array, I mean.” “Are they doing anything?” I asked. “Just hanging around the parking lot.” She paused. “Jessica Knowles already left the party. We sent a patrol car home with her, so she's out of the picture at least. Now I think it might be time to get Harry out of the building. Out the back if possible.” “How do I get to the back?” “There's an exit from the ballroom to a hallway off the hotel lobby. If you follow that hallway away from the lobby, there's an emergency exit that goes into a little trash area behind the hotel. You can get from there to the rear parking lot. I'll meet you there.” “Emergency exit?” “The alarm's broken. We've already tested it.” “Okay,” I said. I pulled Angie closer to me. “I'll be out back.” Ruiz disconnected. I slid my phone into my pocket. “I hate to end this early,” I said to Angie.

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She actually looked kind of excited. “There's a sting going on or something, isn't there?” “Not quite.” “Does this have anything to do with Harrison Knowles's disappearance?” She had the good sense to keep her voice down, and the music in the ballroom was loud enough that it was unlikely anyone could hear us. I bent my head as if I were kissing her neck. “Yes,” I whispered in her ear. “We think he might be in danger.” She gasped but didn't react otherwise. She was a good actress too, because she put her arms around me and made it look like things between us were getting pretty steamy. That was my cover, I guess. I was going to have to buy her a hell of a gift later. I took her hand and steered her off the floor, looking for Harry as covertly as I could. Then he just materialized before me. Harry made a show of shaking my hand again; then he leaned in close and, with a smile on his face, said, “If I didn't know better, I'd say you two were trying to sneak off somewhere for some alone time.” “You interested in a little ménage à trois?” Angie asked. And Harry, bless him, got it. “Just tell me when and where, baby,” he said. “Now,” I told him. He nodded. “I just have to say good-bye to a few people.” “Do you have to?” “The senator at least.” “Fast and discreet,” I said. “Meet me by that exit over on the other side of the dance floor.” Harry nodded. When he turned to go, I grabbed his arm, then immediately realized how dangerous that was. I withdrew my hand and added, “You've got five minutes. After that I come for you.” His face was suddenly solemn. He nodded. Angie and I moved toward the exit that went into the hallway off the lobby. We stood there a little awkwardly. “So…uh…after we leave the ballroom, you should probably just go back to the lobby.”

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“Just as well,” she said. “Nothing but stiffs at this party anyway.” She looked around, rocking on her heels. She turned to me. “Let's really throw them off our trail,” she said. Then she kissed me. It had been a while since I'd kissed a woman. And I'd kissed a fair number of them when I was young, mostly in college when I thought that my ability to fuck women meant I wasn't really gay. I figured it was just a matter of finding the right one. Although by the time I was a junior, I'd pretty much given up on that. Still, with Angie's lips pressed against mine, a sensation that was not unpleasant, I found myself contemplating what life would be like if this were what I wanted. I sighed into her mouth, certain that it wasn't, that life would be easier with a woman like Angie on my arm, but I wouldn't be any happier. When we pulled apart, she smiled sadly. “That was a hell of a kiss. Are you sure you're gay?” “Yep,” I said. “No offense.” I looked up then and saw Harry making his way toward us. I cocked my head toward the door, and he nodded his understanding. Angie and I slipped through and waited for him a little way down the hall. I was feeling fairly confident that no one saw us. Harry joined us a moment later. Angie gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and told me to call her, before she turned around and walked back to the lobby. Harry and I made our way down the hall quickly and quietly. I paused perhaps a second too long at the emergency exit, still certain the alarm would go off and reveal our location, but I steeled myself and pushed through it anyway. Then I heard gunfire. “Get down,” I shouted at Harry as I shrugged out of my jacket. I had my gun in my hand in under three seconds. I tossed Harry my jacket and said, “Go back inside.” “And leave you to get shot?” “I'll be all right,” I said. I caught movement behind the Dumpster. Whoever was over there shot at us, and a bullet hit the door frame. I aimed just above the Dumpster and fired. “Shit,” Harry said. I glanced back and saw that he'd gone pale. “Police!” I heard Ruiz shout as she came on the scene. “Drop your weapons! I will shoot you if you fire again!” She was in head-to-toe body armor, which I found impressive and a little

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scary. I supposed she could be a little fearless, was in a better position to yell at the shooters. Unless someone put a bullet in her forehead. She did distract the shooter sufficiently from me, though, and I managed to push Harry back inside, although he kept watching through a crack in the door. The shooter behind the Dumpster rose up and fired at Ruiz. He missed, but I didn't. After he fell behind the Dumpster, I fired again into the trash area. I hoped to draw out the other shooter or shooters, assuming there was more than one. I was pretty sure there were at least two of them. Sure enough, a bullet collided with the building just over my head. “Noah, get down!” I ducked and saw that Ruiz had her gun trained on a row of trash cans. She got off a couple of wild shots, one of which knocked over a can and caused garbage to fly all over. There were some mumbled curses. Behind me, I heard the door open. “Harry, so help me…” I whispered harshly. “Just making sure you're not dead.” “Go back inside.” He squatted down next to me. It was Josh and Artie Schiffler all over. There was some guy with a gun in this parking lot who wanted to shoot at me and who really wanted to shoot at Harry. I felt the panic bubbling up in my chest. But then the shooter stood up and got a shot off at Ruiz. It hit her squarely in the chest. I knew the body armor had caught it because I heard her grunt when she hit the ground, but that didn't mean she didn't have a broken rib or some other serious injury. The shooter didn't make out so well, though. His standing up had given away his location. Ruiz and I both fired at the same time. I wasn't sure which of us hit him, but he went down into the pile of garbage. My ears rang when the shooting stopped. An eerie quiet settled over the area. Ruiz coughed. She pulled her radio off her shoulder and quickly radioed her backup. I stood and scrambled over to Ruiz. “You okay?” “Chest hurts like a mother, but I'm all right.”

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Harry was right behind me. “Go back inside,” I told him. I wanted him out of the line of fire. “You killed all the bad guys,” he said. “We got these bad guys,” I said. “Doesn't mean there aren't more.” When it looked pretty clear that Harry wasn't budging, I sighed. “At least go get my jacket.” He wasn't carrying it anymore. He hesitated but then nodded and went back inside. Ruiz still hadn't gotten up off the ground. She hadn't even made an attempt to sit up. “Backup's on the way.” Almost as soon as she said the words, I heard tires squeal. I looked up and saw a squad car, and right behind it was a black Town Car. “That black car one of yours?” I asked her. She craned her head to look. She shook her head. Someone in the Town Car opened fire. I cursed. A second squad car arrived on the scene and engaged the shooters in the Town Car. An officer scrambled out of the first car and came over to Ruiz, started to help her up. He looked at me and said, “Get the target into the squad car.” I nodded. A bullet whizzed over my head. Keeping low, I ran back over to the door. I opened it and said, “We've still got some friends out here. You will follow me and get into the squad car. You will keep down. You will go straight from here to the car.” “I love it when you get bossy,” Harry said. “I'm not fucking around.” We charged out into the trash area. Harry had listened to me and followed instructions, crouching as he ran to the squad car. The officer helping Ruiz motioned for me to get in the car too. I heard sirens blaring and then saw the ambulance pull into the parking lot. I felt the bullet hit my arm but managed to get Harry into the back of the car. “Head down,” I shouted at him. My arm throbbed, but I ignored it. I climbed into the front of the car. The driver was an officer I'd seen around the squad room. I told him to take off. I heard a couple of bullets hit the car, but no windows broke. The tires screamed as the officer hit the accelerator.

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I was terrified that the Town Car would follow us. I turned to look out the back window. The lights from the Town Car flashed in the window, temporarily blinding me. I looked down and saw that Harry was crouched down in his seat, looking frightened, his head ducked but his gaze searching my face. I opened my mouth to reassure him, but heard an engine growl. I looked up and saw the Town Car move to come after us. The other squad car launched into action, moving to cut off our pursuers. The cop sitting in the driver's seat beside me cursed and jerked on the steering wheel to move us out of the way. Harry yelped as he was thrown backward in the seat. The car rumbled in protest, taking longer than it should have to go forward. The Town Car accelerated. I was sure it was going to collide with our rear fender. I closed my eyes to brace for the impact. There was nothing. Instead I heard tires squeal. I opened my eyes in time to see the Town Car swerve around the other squad car. It hit something and spun out. The other squad car pulled over to the side of the parking lot as the Town Car collided with a streetlamp. The officer in my car pulled out of the parking lot, and soon we were flying down the highway and, seemingly, out of danger. “No one's following us,” the officer said, checking his mirrors. His name tag said Thompson. Everyone in the car seemed to take a breath at once. Then Harry said, “Holy Christ, you're bleeding.” “Just a scratch.” I looked down at my arm. My shirt was torn, but I was pretty sure I'd just been grazed, and I didn't really feel anything. “Hospital?” Thompson asked me. He eyed my arm. Harry banged on the glass between us and said, “Will you look at your arm? I've never seen so much blood.” I looked down. Sure enough, my entire left arm was covered in blood, soaking through my shirtsleeve. Funny, though, it still didn't really hurt. It didn't seem real. Thompson pulled over to the shoulder. When the car came to a stop, I turned around and saw that Harry was white and looking at my arm. Thompson reached over and tore the sleeve right off my shirt. So much for the new shirt. “We gotta get you to a hospital,” he said.

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I really looked this time. The bullet had passed through a fleshy part of my arm, leaving a pretty serious gash. Thompson got out of the car and returned a moment later with a first-aid kit. He motioned for me to take my shirt off, so I did, very carefully. Then my arm started to hurt, searing pain so intense, it started to black out the edges of my vision. Thompson fashioned a tourniquet, then bandaged up my arm. A little late, though, since the bleeding had slowed to an occasional oozing. Satisfied, he turned around in his seat to get the car going. As we pulled back onto the highway, there was a thump in the backseat. I turned around to see Harry had passed out.

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Chapter Thirteen We ran into Ruiz in the ER. She did, indeed, have a broken rib. When I saw her, she was wearing a sports bra and a whole lot of bandaging in lieu of a shirt. The doctor who had seen her attended to me next, while Ruiz and Thompson tried to comfort a dizzy Harry. My wound was pretty minor in the general scheme of things, I thought. I needed stitches, but I didn't need to stay overnight. I don't know how long the whole process took, probably a couple of hours. After I was all stitched up and bandaged, the doctor sent me on my way with prescriptions for antibiotics and painkillers. When I walked back out into the ER waiting room, Harry immediately stood and ran over to me. He threw his arms around me and hugged me tightly. “Oh thank God,” he murmured. “Harry, my life was never in danger.” “You took a bullet.” “It grazed my arm. Just a few stitches. It's nothing.” Harry took a step back and looked at me like I was crazy. “You took a bullet. Trying to save me.” The truth was that I would have done it again. I'd been given a local anesthetic, so my arm was numb in that moment, and it didn't even bother me much. Having been treated for a bullet wound once before, I knew that it would hurt like hell in the morning. But right then it really did seem like nothing more than a paper cut. “What should we do with Harry tonight?” I asked Ruiz, unable to deal with Harry's emotions or the way he was looking at me right then. Well, that, and I was turning over scenarios for how it could have been worse in my head. She pointed toward the hospital exit; then I followed her outside. The hospital parking lot was deserted. “I think sending him home is a bad idea,” Ruiz said, “but I had a thought on that.”

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I looked at her and waited. “I know an officer who works in narcotics. He's about Harry's height and weight, similar builds. Not quite the right hair, but we could put a hat on his head.” “Interesting,” I said. “So you'd fake out any would-be attackers and also get an officer into the house to keep an eye on Harry's sister.” She nodded. “And as far as we know, your hotel room is still a safe spot.” Ruiz had everything in motion before I could even raise a protest. Once again she wasn't really asking my permission or for my opinion on this plan, she was telling me what she was going to do. After she sent her staff scrambling, I pulled her aside. We stood in the parking lot, out of earshot of anyone. “So this Reyes guy.” Ruiz inhaled. “Yeah, I wish I had known sooner that he was there. He slipped right through our fingers.” “So you do know him?” “He's wanted for questioning in connection to two murders.” “Jesus,” I said. “Is he a suspect?” “Not officially, but he's what we at the Tampa PD like to call a 'scary dude.' You saw him at the fund-raiser?” “Yeah. Something about him didn't sit well with me, so I asked Harry who he was, and Harry said he was an old business partner.” The wheels in Ruiz's head were definitely turning, but she didn't say anything further on the matter, just pushed me back into the waiting room and told me to sit tight while she made arrangements. The rest fell into place. Harry called his sister to let her know what was going on. Ruiz herself went with her narcotics officer to Jessica Knowles's house. One of the officers had gone back to the hotel to get my rental car while I was getting my arm sewn up. Somehow clean clothes appeared, so Harry changed out of his suit. I had a change of clothes in the rental car, so I changed out of my bloody T-shirt and the bloodstained suit Harry had bought for me. Seeing those stains made me sad. Thompson shoved baseball caps on both of our heads, though I still

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thought I was fairly safe—the only goons who had actually seen me were dead, was my first thought—and we sneaked out into the parking lot. Harry insisted on driving. The only car following us on the way back to my hotel was an unassuming SUV driven by Thompson. He stayed in his car after Harry parked my rental car in the hotel parking lot. I called Thompson once we were safe in my room. I figured he'd leave after that, but he soon explained that he and his partner were going to alternate staking out the parking lot all night. Once that was settled, I turned to look at Harry, who still looked pretty freaked-out. “Are you okay?” I asked him. He shook his head. “How can you be?” Was I really okay, though? It would probably be more accurate to say I wasn't really feeling anything, okay or otherwise, because I hadn't really processed what had happened that night yet. I sat on the couch and rubbed my face, trying to find an answer to Harry's question. Honesty had been working pretty well for me so far that week. “I had a moment, when you came outside, where I came pretty close to losing it,” I said quietly. “I had a pretty intense flashback to that night with Josh. But then I got you into the car, and here you are, all in one piece, not even a scratch. So mission accomplished. I'm…” I thought about how best to phrase how I felt right then. “I'm relieved more than anything else.” “But you got hurt.” “And it's going to hurt like a motherfucker tomorrow, but I feel okay right now. Really.” Harry raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. He took a few steps closer. “That was a really heroic thing you did tonight,” he said. “And don't be all modest about it.” I started to protest, but instead I said, “I did what I had to. I honestly felt like a lot of what happened tonight was out of my control.” “It's likely that if not for you, I'd be lying dead in that parking lot behind the hotel. I don't care what you think.” “This isn't over,” I said. “No. But it is for tonight, I guess.” Harry sat next to me on the couch. “I can't believe that any of this is happening.”

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I put my uninjured arm around him and nuzzled into his neck. I found the way he smelled—like aftershave and scotch and, well, like Harry—to be surprisingly comforting. He put an arm around my torso and pulled me close, resting his head on top of mine. Then he put his other arm around me, and we just held each other without speaking for what felt like a really long time. Somewhere in there, though, Harry lifted his head, so I did too, to look if anything was wrong, and then we were kissing. It was a sweet, tender kiss, not particularly sexual but packed with emotion. There was so much about this that wouldn't work. I lived in New York. Harry lived in Tampa. I was a cop who worked too much; he was a playboy restaurateur. I was still recovering from Josh. And I knew enough about relationships that started under intense circumstances; I didn't have a lot of faith that the relationship would hold up when life went back to normal. But on the other hand, Harry was there in my arms right then, and he smelled so good. I knew he could do ungodly things to my body, and I knew also that he made me laugh, that he made me feel emotions after eighteen months of keeping everything on lockdown, and that he'd cared enough to take care of me when I was losing my grip. When our lips parted, we both started speaking at once. Then we each told the other to go first. Then we laughed about it for a few moments, our bodies gently easing apart. Harry leaned back on the couch and sighed. He rubbed his eyes with one hand and said, “This is all so absurd.” “Yeah.” “It's a lot to compute. I mean, I was kidnapped, and all of that still seems like a dream, or a nightmare, I guess. Now people are shooting at me. None of this makes any sense. And to top it all off, I'm here with you, and I've known you less than a week, but I already feel these things for you, stronger than anything I've felt for anyone in a long time, maybe ever, and I just can't even…” He laughed. “Tell me to shut up.” “How do you think I feel?” I asked. “I get fucked in a bar on Monday, and the next thing I know I'm tied up with you, with a kidnapping plot, with drug smugglers, and people are shooting at me.” Then I started laughing too.

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“If you had known when we met on Monday what would happen, would you have still gone with me into the bathroom?” “Yeah, probably,” I said. “Is it wrong that I'm kind of glad you got kidnapped? Otherwise I might never have seen you again.” “Yeah.” “You still seem a little freaked.” “I think I know something that would make me feel better.” He waggled his eyebrows. I laughed. “Do you think only with your dick?” “Most of the time, yeah.” He stood up and held out his hand to me. It occurred to me that I should argue with him some more, talk about the suit, about what we were feeling, pick the fight that would piss him off enough to make him back off. Instead I took his hand and let him drag me to the bedroom. “I'm so hard,” Harry murmured as he pulled me into his arms. “Adrenaline.” I was hard too, my heart still pumping from the events of the evening. I undid the button of his pants and shoved his pants and underwear down to his ankles. He smelled amazing, musky and masculine. I pressed my nose against his thigh and inhaled. He pulled his shirt off over his head and kicked out of his pants. I licked from his thigh, up his stomach, over his nipples. His skin was salty and smooth. His nipples hardened under my tongue. I loved how his skin tasted. The way he smelled had me achingly hard. I wanted to devour him whole. When I was back standing straight, he grabbed my head and kissed me hard, shoving his tongue into my mouth. I reveled in the invasion, opening my mouth wider, accepting him, tasting him. I shoved my fingers into his hair and loved the rough texture of it. “I want you so bad,” I said. “You make me crazy.” He grunted and grabbed at the hem of my shirt. As he yanked it off me, it snagged on my bandages, and searing pain shot through my arm. I gasped. “Oh shit. I'm sorry,” Harry said. I shrugged out of my shirt and let it fall on the floor. I looked at the bandage to make sure I wasn't bleeding again. I didn't seem to be.

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Harry ran his hands lightly over my arm. He bent his head and kissed the edge of the bandage. He closed his eyes as he did it, and looked so sweet as he kissed me. “Is that better?” “Yeah,” I said. “Do it again.” He kissed the bandage; then he planted kisses up my arm. His touch was light, his lips soft. Then he traveled up to my neck. His body pressed against mine. He was hot and a little sweaty and gloriously naked. “Let me help you with these,” he said, pulling on the button of my pants. “Since you're so gravely injured and all.” Harry undid my pants slowly and pressed his face into my stomach as he tugged my pants down. His teeth grazed my skin, making goose bumps pop up all over my body. I stepped out of my pants. “Come here,” I said. Harry rose up, and I put my arms around him, wanting him close to me. I kissed him and pushed him toward the bed. All at once I felt exhausted and sore. And still my body hummed for Harry. It burned where he touched me. I needed him around me, above me, inside me. I turned us around so that I could sit on the bed. I leaned back, careful of my arm now. Harry's eyebrows drew together as he looked down at me. “I'm okay,” I said. “Please, just—” He cut me off by climbing onto the bed. He crawled up between my legs and kissed my chest. I wrapped my legs around his, pulling him closer, and I felt his hard cock poking at my thigh. Just the knowledge that he was this hot for me, as aroused by me as I was by him, had my whole body on fire. He grabbed the lube from the nightstand. “Are you sure?” “Yes.” “I'll be careful.” He kissed me and poured the smooth liquid on his fingers as our tongues tangled. He touched me softly, then slowly slid a finger inside me.

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My arm stung, but the sensation of Harry's fingers stretching me was so wonderful that I was able to put my pain somewhere else. I concentrated instead on the feeling of Harry getting me ready. He went slowly and didn't hurt me. His fingers inside my body were hitting all the right spots, sending quivers up my spine and to my cock. Harry rolled on a condom. I grabbed the lube and poured a healthy amount on his cock; then I stroked him. His cock was hard and slick and enticing under my hand. His face contorted in pleasure, and he made those weird sighing sounds that so aroused me. I put my arms on his shoulders and pressed him close to me. He took himself in hand and the head of his cock pressed against my entrance. “Slow,” I said. I wanted this to last. He eased in. When he was all the way in, he stopped moving. He looked down at me. I looked right back at him. It was intense, looking into his light blue eyes and seeing such tenderness reflected back at me. “If I don't move, I'm gonna go crazy,” he said. I grabbed his ass, which was round and firm and seemed to fit perfectly in my hands, and he started to move, each thrust driving currents of pleasure through me. I took myself in hand and began to stroke at the same pace Harry thrust inside me, and I felt my mind start to go blank. Our eyes met again, and I felt a tightness in my chest, a swell of emotion I hadn't expected. I was aware of our bodies in close proximity, of the fact that he was moving inside me, and I started to lose my grip. He dipped his head and kissed me, and I shook. The passion churning in my chest and my heightened awareness of Harry above and inside me spurred on my body's reaction. I kept stroking myself, yearning for release. The orgasm came on slowly, like a crescendo, a slow build of pleasure. I came between us, on my hand, on both of our chests. Harry groaned and pulled me up into his arms as he continued to thrust in and out of me. Then he babbled something incoherent, and his cock pulsed inside me. We lay tangled up together until it became too uncomfortable to stay that way. Harry kissed my forehead, then got up and vanished into the bathroom. He came back a short moment later with a wet cloth and cleaned me up. Now that I was back on earth, my arm was killing me. The bandages were a little pink with blood, and my arm sang with pain. Harry must have seen me reacting to it, because he tossed me

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the bottle of painkillers I'd brought home from the hospital. He filled a glass with water and handed it to me. “Are you sure you're okay?” he asked, sitting next to me on the bed. “It hurts.” I swallowed a pill. “I feel bad for—” “Don't. I wanted it just as bad as you did.” He frowned and scooted back on the bed. “We should get some sleep,” I said. He nodded and reached for the bedside lamp.

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Chapter Fourteen I woke up the next morning aware of the weight of Harry's arm thrown over me. It took me a moment to recognize that the reason my sleep had been disturbed was that my phone was vibrating against the nightstand. I picked it up and saw it was Ruiz calling. “Tobin,” I said. “All quiet on the Western front?” “Yeah, as far as I know,” I said. “What about where you are?” “As we thought they might, a couple of thugs showed up at Ms. Knowles's house last night. Officer McKutcheon managed to subdue both of them, and we've got them in lockup down at the station.” “Jesus.” Harry grunted in his sleep and cuddled up closer to me. I put an arm around him. Ruiz said, “The good news is that no harm came to Jessica Knowles. She didn't even wake up while McKutcheon cornered and cuffed these guys. That, and we know who they work for.” “Ortiz?” “Well, these are rent-a-thugs who were working for a guy named Pedro Aguillar. He runs an agency in Orlando that's basically hired muscle.” “Oh,” I said, feeling disappointed. “Said agency is hired frequently by Javier Ortiz. It's not proof, but I think Harry was on to something when he fingered Ortiz.” “Yeah, it sounds that way.” There was a long silence before Ruiz said, “How's your arm?” I hadn't been thinking about it, but now that she mentioned it… “It hurts,” I said. “How's your broken rib?”

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“I'll live,” she said. That was kind of what I liked about Ruiz. She didn't want to give it any more attention than I wanted to give my arm. It was a cop thing, I supposed; every cop I'd known who'd been injured in the line of duty always just sucked it up as if taking a bullet was a weakness they'd rather not dwell on. Ruiz coughed and went on, “Anyway, I want you guys to just sit tight today. I'd advise against leaving your room unless you absolutely have to. Harry's face has been all over the local media the last couple of days, and if anyone saw him at your hotel, it would only be a matter of time before—” “I got it.” “If you so much as get a pizza delivered, you answer the door and Harry stays out of sight.” “Deb, I'm not some rookie cop. I understand what has to happen here.” “I know.” “What are you going to be doing?” Another long pause; then she said, “Well, I…” She sighed. “I didn't tell you last night, but Hector Reyes is suspected of being an associate of Ortiz's.” “Crap.” “It could be a giant coincidence. I'm looking into it. In the meantime it's pretty widely known that Javier Ortiz is currently in Orlando. I've made arrangements with the PD there to haul him in for questioning. I'm going to be driving out within the next twenty minutes or so.” “Keep us in the loop,” I said. Harry's arms slipped away, and he rolled over. I felt the loss acutely. “I will,” Ruiz said, sounding sincere. “I will warn you, I honestly don't expect much to come of this. Ortiz is slick, and he has good lawyers. But I've got my guys working on the rent-athugs. Hopefully they'll come up with something we can use to hold Ortiz with until we have enough evidence to make an actual arrest.” “Good,” I said. “That's…good.” “Well, we're not there yet. I gotta go. Call me if anything happens.” “I will.”

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We ended the call, and I looked at Harry, who was lying on his back, awake. I related what Ruiz had told me over the phone, leaving out the stuff about Reyes. I couldn't see a purpose in sharing that information until it was confirmed. Hearing that someone he trusted was thought to be consorting with the people who were after him might freak Harry out, needlessly so if it turned out to be coincidence. “What if bringing in Ortiz doesn't end this?” Harry asked when I finished talking. “I don't know,” I said honestly. “All we can really do at this point is sit tight. We're under strict orders not to leave the room.” “Aw, that blows. I was kind of looking forward to a swim in that weird-shaped pool.” Harry frowned, scrunching up his nose. “The Jacuzzi in the bathroom's the best we can do.” Harry thought this over for a moment. “I accept your compromise. But only if you're naked in the Jacuzzi when I get there.” “I wasn't actually suggesting—” “No, but I was.” I reached over and played with his dark, disheveled hair. “Your life is in danger, but you want to spend the day having sex. You don't think that's kind of inappropriate?” “Hey now, I only suggested naked time in the Jacuzzi. You're the one who jumped from that to sex.” He reached over and ran a hand down my chest, and his fingers lingered over my abs. “However, I think that when one's life is in danger, it's time to make sure one experiences the better things in life, just in case it's the last time. And I can't think of anything better than sex with you.” That was a hell of a compliment, so I leaned down and kissed him so I wouldn't have to figure out how to accept it or decipher what it meant in the greater scheme of things. I tried not to think about how I'd cope when I had to give up Harry.

*** Harry had dumped most of the bottle of hotel-provided shower gel into the Jacuzzi, which made an absurd number of bubbles. I wrapped a plastic grocery bag around the bandages on my arm. It still bothered me, but the painkillers were doing their job, reducing the pain to an

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occasional twinge. I got into the tub. I felt childish, submerged to my neck in those bubbles. Harry was relating some story about the one time he'd experimented with a foam machine at Candy Bar. I was only half listening as he described the dancers being surrounded by bubbles, though I did pause to consider the mental image of half-naked go-go boys covered in suds. It was kind of a fun image. As Harry climbed into the tub, I found myself laughing for no reason in particular, and Harry joined me, pausing only to question what we were laughing at. “Bubbles and go-go boys,” I said. He picked up some bubbles on his finger and deposited them on my nose. “You have an odd sense of humor, peach,” he said. “Not that I disapprove of bubbles and go-go boys, generally speaking.” “Do you have go-go boys at Candy Bar?” “We did for a while,” he said. “It was sort of a volunteer gig. I had a guy on the floor scouting the especially good dancers, and he'd offer them space on one of these block things we had set up for boys to dance on.” “Why'd you stop doing it?” “It became too competitive,” Harry said. “I mean, I enjoyed every minute of the pretty boys arguing over the coveted spot up on the block, but it was affecting the atmosphere at the club in a negative way. So no more go-go boys.” I felt the suds on my nose start to drip, so I wiped them off. Harry settled himself against the back of the tub with a sigh, letting his head rest on the tub's lip. He closed his eyes, so I took the time to admire his profile. Up close, you could see the crow's-feet at the sides of his eyes and the few silver strands that peppered his dark hair. These things made him seem even more handsome to me, and they made him seem more real. I found it hard to believe that a man as exuberant and youthful as Harry would want to be with gloomy old me. I considered the possibility that he was here just because of circumstance and not because of any genuine desire, but deep down I didn't really believe that. Then again it was easy to forget that he was as old as he was since he so often acted young. Or else it was totally normal for guys in their late thirties to enjoy bubble baths, but I kind of doubted it.

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Although maybe he was showing his maturity by keeping it together as well as he was. If I were in his shoes, I would have had a hard time even smiling. I found myself admiring him, but there was something that really drew me to the man I saw then, naked and looking his age as he lounged in the tub. It occurred to me that part of his holding things together was for my sake. I swallowed the painful knot that had built up in my throat. “Hey, Harry.” I reached over and ran a hand over his shoulder, then withdrew it. He looked over and smiled at me. He dunked his head under the water. When he came back up, his head was covered in bubbles. He grinned, and he really was adorable. I reached over to knock the bubbles out of his hair, and he caught my arms by the wrist. He kissed each of my palms, then leaned over to kiss me. He let my wrists go so that he could touch me, and my body came to life under his hands. Suddenly the bubble bath seemed somewhat less childish. And then, of course, my phone rang. I'd put it on the bathroom sink in case Ruiz called. I extracted a hand from the tub and wiped it on a towel I'd put next to it just for this purpose, then picked up my phone. “It's my boss,” I told Harry. He looked nonplussed. I answered the phone. Caffity launched right in. “How's your vacation? Getting into any more trouble with the Tampa PD? I heard they found that guy who went missing.” “They found him,” I said. Harry gave me a devilish look before he started touching me again. He started out playfully, mostly tickling me. I must have made a sound, because Lieutenant Caffity said, “Is this a bad time?” “Sorry, sir. You caught me lounging by the pool. There's a playful child out here.” Caffity chuckled. “Well, good, I'm glad you're relaxing now. I'm calling because Schiffler's sentencing hearing was this morning.” I couldn't believe I'd forgotten. Then Harry moved in close to me, kissing my neck and running a hand down my chest, and then I could believe it. Harry made me forget my own name sometimes. “How did it go?” I managed to ask. Caffity took the strain in my voice as an emotional reaction and said solemnly, “As well as could be expected. He got the max. Prosecution put Mrs. Grady on the stand, and she sobbed about how wonderful her son was, and most of the jury was in tears too.”

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“Good,” I said. “You should know, Noah, that some interesting things came out during the course of our investigation.” “What investigation?” I said. It had been my investigation. Surely I knew everything that had been uncovered. “Earlier this week the DA came to me and asked me to find out if Josh Grady had a girlfriend. Someone young and pretty we could put on the stand. I considered calling you, but you're on vacation, so we did a little digging ourselves.” “Josh didn't have a girlfriend,” I said, trying to push Harry away. He persisted, though, and licked one of my nipples, which sent shivers up my spine. “That's what his parents said. That there was no one in his life. But parents don't always know everything about their adult children, right? So we asked some of his friends. Most of them said the same thing, that Josh didn't have a girlfriend. And I thought, huh, handsome guy like that? Hard to believe.” “It happens,” I said, not sure what else to say. I could only guess at what Caffity was getting at, and his line of thinking made me nervous. “Several of the friends said that Josh was gay.” I sat up straight. Harry, finally sensing that something might be wrong, backed away. He looked at me, searching my eyes for what was going on. “There are a few other things that we uncovered that didn't make it into your report, Noah.” “Like?” “You didn't ever tell me that you and Josh were roommates.” “What?” I asked like an idiot. “I looked over the file again. Josh Grady's last address looked familiar to me. It took me a while to figure out why. It was also your address at the time.” The panic hit me in waves. I reminded myself that I hadn't lied. I just hadn't volunteered all the information. I managed to keep my voice remarkably steady as I told Caffity, “It didn't seem relevant to the case.”

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“So you were living with Josh Grady.” I hesitated. “Yes.” “And thus you know he didn't have a girlfriend. Did you know he was gay?” “Yes.” “Did you know this firsthand?” I supposed there was a certain irony to getting outed while in a Jacuzzi with my male lover. I closed my eyes, and Harry stayed away, giving me space, but I could feel his gaze on me. When I dared look at him, there was nothing but concern for me on his face. “Yes,” I said to my boss. “Noah,” said Caffity. “I'm sorry, sir. It didn't seem relevant to the investigation.” “Except that if you had a personal relationship with Mr. Grady, you should have recused yourself from it. You were not objective.” “You knew he was a friend of mine.” “There's a big difference between his being a friend and his being your…you know.” “Would the outcome have been any different? I handled the case professionally.” I felt sick. “You did. I never noticed anything untoward, which is why I'm surprised this is only coming out now.” “I witnessed Josh's shooting,” I said. “So did a dozen other people. It's not like there was any room for ambiguity.” Caffity was quiet for a long enough period of time that I started to think the call had been disconnected. But then he said, “I suppose this explains a lot. Shit, Noah. I've brought men up on disciplinary actions for less than this. But you're a good cop, and I just… I don't know what to do yet. We're going to talk about this further when you're back in town.” “Yes, sir. Does anyone else—” He coughed. “No. I'm the only one who knows.” “It doesn't affect my job.” “We'll talk when you get back.” Then he hung up.

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I put the phone back on the sink and submerged myself in the tub, careful to keep my arm out of the water. The panic hadn't really subsided at all. “Well, my boss knows I'm gay,” I said. Harry nodded. “It may turn out not to be a big deal.” “He thinks I may have compromised the investigation into Josh's death, but there were other witnesses also…and Josh and I were… It wasn't important.” Harry frowned and pulled me into his arms. “You'll work things out. It's not like they can fire you for being gay.” “No, but I can get in trouble for withholding evidence. And if anyone else found out, they could make my life hell.” “Your life was already hell,” Harry said. “Sure, you weren't getting harassed, but you lived in constant fear that someone would find out your secret. That's no way to live.” I grunted. “Are you out to anyone? Your family?” “Yeah, my family knows. Such as it is.” “What does that mean?” Harry raised an eyebrow. I looked at him carefully. He seemed sincere, and he looked completely nonthreatening, covered as he was in suds. I wanted to keep things light, not to drag him through all my issues. “You sure you want this sob story?” He smiled. “I'm trying to understand you. You were about to hyperventilate there. And I don't get it. You shot two men yesterday and rescued me without even batting an eyelash. But someone starts poking at your personal life, and then you break a sweat. And for what? Your boss knows you once loved a man.” “It's not that simple.” “I know. But you can see why one might be confused.” I sighed and leaned my head back on the edge of the tub. “I'm starting to prune.” “Uh-uh, no. You won't get out of this that easily.” I heard the water swishing around him as he moved, but I didn't look at him. “Here, I'll tell you my sob story first.” I waved my hand to indicate he should talk.

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“I came out to my parents when I was seventeen,” Harry said, “just before I left for college, in fact. My mother blamed my father for my sexual proclivities. He worked long hours, see. He was managing a chain of burger joints in the greater Tampa-St. Pete-Clearwater area that has since gone under, and he wasn't home a whole lot when I was a kid. So I tell my mother I'm gay, and she turns to my father and says, 'See, this is what happens when there's no male influence in the household!'” I couldn't help it. I laughed. Harry laughed too. “Yeah. It took me some time to convince my mother that I'd been wired this way since the womb, but at any rate, my parents pretty much left me alone because they were too busy blaming each other for the fact that they'd given life to poor gay Harry.” “I shouldn't laugh,” I said. “That's awful.” I opened my eyes and looked at Harry, who was nodding. “They're gone now, both of them. They were on their way toward divorcing when their car collided with a semi on I-75.” “God, I'm so sorry,” I said. I supposed that explained how Harry knew what to do with grief. He shrugged. “I was just barely twenty-one when this happened, and I wasn't liking my parents much in those days. Jessica had already kind of picked up the slack. We're close, me and my sister. She's always been happy to just take me as I am.” “That's good.” “Yup. And now the whole state of Florida knows that I'm gay. Hard to keep that a secret when I own several establishments that cater to a particular audience.” He smiled to himself. I guessed we'd moved past the discussion of his parents' death. “So. You go.” “Not a lot to say,” I said. “My father died when I was four. I don't remember him. My mom is still among the living, but she has Alzheimer's. She lives in a nursing home in New Jersey.” “That must suck,” Harry said. “She's still lucid most of the time. She just has these episodes where she loses track of where she is and what she's supposed to be doing. That was… It was not an easy decision to move her in there, but I was working insane hours, and I couldn't keep an eye on her all the time. She can't really take care of herself anymore, and this seemed like the best option, you know?

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Josh came with me to visit her a lot when I first put her in the home, and now I go to see her, and she asks where Josh is. And I don't know what to say to her.” Harry reached over and ran his fingers through my hair. I found the gesture soothing. But I pressed on. “I have an older brother too. He used to beat the crap out of me routinely when we were kids. He lives in Denver now with his wife and children. We talk maybe twice a year and exchange Christmas cards, but I otherwise don't go out of the way to keep in touch with him and vice versa. When I told him I was gay, he said, 'Figures.'” I shook my head. “So typical of him. I found that pretty offensive. We were never close, though.” There was a long, contemplative silence during which Harry looked at me and played with my hair, and I avoided his gaze. Finally I asked, “Why are you being this…?” “Annoying? Nosy? Pushy?” He didn't take his hand away from my hair. “I was going to say amazing. I seem to be going through some kind of breakdown, and you just sit there, all calm and friendly, and you're helping me through it. Why? That's what I don't get it.” “I like you,” he said. “I don't know.” I looked at him and our gazes met, and I felt the same thing I'd felt in the men's room at the fund-raiser. There was definitely something between us that went beyond mere attraction, that went beyond a quick fuck in a bathroom stall. Harry smiled and added, “We're stuck in here all day. What else are we going to do but talk?” A fair point. I nodded to acknowledge it and surveyed the tub. A lot of the bubbles had dissipated by then, and my skin really was getting kind of wrinkly. I made a move to get out of the tub, but Harry reached over and grabbed my head to kiss me. It was a rather aggressive kiss. It was hard not to get wrapped up in it. I was thinking that I didn't really want to have sex. I was emotionally spent and didn't feel like I had a lot more to give. But Harry moved and started kissing my jaw. I groaned involuntarily. “You know, we should really do that. Talk,” I said. “I mean, the suit…” “You can pay for the dry-cleaning bill.” “That wasn't what I meant.”

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Harry sat up and looked at me. “I just wanted to do a nice thing for you,” he said. “You've probably figured out by now, money's not really an object for me. So don't worry about it. If this thing between us doesn't last past next week, I still want you to have the suit. Okay?” I didn't know how to deal with this man. “And that's the other thing. This thing between us.” “Don't think about it now,” Harry said, leaning in to kiss me again. And then my phone rang. I couldn't decide if this was a nuisance or a relief. While Harry went to work devouring me, I glanced at my phone. “It's Deb Ruiz,” I said, pushing him off and sitting up. He sat back and looked devastated, so I leaned over and kissed him square on the mouth to… I don't know. Remind him that I was into it. “Tobin,” I said into my phone. I climbed out of the tub and grabbed a towel, aware that Harry's gaze lingered on my body. I raised an eyebrow at him. “How are things where you are?” Ruiz asked. I managed to get the towel arranged around my waist. “Fine. No movement,” I said. Harry seemed content to stay in the Jacuzzi, so I went into the bedroom. “That's good. I feel a little guilty about sequestering you in that room, but I suspect that you guys have found ways to entertain yourselves.” There was a little bit of a wink in her voice. And then, in one of those moments I couldn't have predicted until it happened, I said, “Yeah, about that.” I walked as far out of earshot from the bathroom as I could. “I don't know how much of a good idea it is for me to continue to be Harry's keeper. I'm getting too…involved.” I heard her let out a breath. “Yeah,” she said. “I mean, you're making cracks about us keeping each other entertained. You must know…” “That you and Harry are sleeping together? Yeah, I kind of put that together already.” “Oh. Well. I wasn't going to let that affect my work on this case, but now I'm worried it might.” “I appreciate your honesty. But there's not much we can do about it now. I'm in Orlando.” “I know. I just thought you should know what the situation is. How's Orlando?”

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“I'm more convinced than ever that Ortiz is behind Harry's kidnapping, but he is, of course, too smart to give anything away. And this Reyes thing is really wigging me out. He was definitely working for Ortiz. I can't figure how he'd be involved in this thing with Harry, but his being at the fund-raiser does not feel like a coincidence. I've got Ortiz sitting in a room right now, but I don't have enough to hold him.” “And Harry's not safe until we neutralize the threat.” “Yup. But I feel like we're almost there.” “Have you gone back to the house where Harry was held?” “Harry couldn't give us an address. He's not really sure where he was held.” “But it couldn't have been far from where he was found, right? What if we went out looking for it?” I sensed hesitation from Ruiz. “I thought of that too, but it's risky,” she said. “We'd have to take Harry with us so he could identify the house, and putting him in a car in close proximity to the people who kidnapped him? I don't know if that's a risk I'm willing to take. And I'm still short staffed, by the way. I've got the narcotics guys helping me out, but that's kind of it. And if you step down—which you have every right to do, and I completely understand your reasons for doing it—but if you step down, that's one less person working for us.” I heard movement in the bathroom and then water draining from the tub. “All things being equal, would you keep me on?” “No,” she said. “Truth be told, I didn't want you involved to begin with. But things are not equal.” Harry came out of the bathroom, naked as day. Without any pretense at all, he rubbed his head with the towel, then tossed it back into the bathroom. He waltzed across the room and draped himself on the bed. Ruiz said, “Look, I have to wrap some things up. I'm trying to talk the lieutenant here into having a team tail Ortiz for a little while. He's been trying to take down Ortiz for years; I don't think that'll be a problem. So at least we'll know where he is. Anyway, I should be back in Tampa in a little over two hours. Then I'll talk to my CO, see what we can arrange. All right?” “Yeah. We'll…continue to camp out here, I guess.”

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“I'm sure you will.” She hung up. I closed my phone and turned to look at Harry. He looked at me expectantly. “No real progress,” I said. “But Ruiz believes Ortiz is behind everything.” Harry nodded and crossed his arms over his chest. “So what's the plan?” “There is no plan,” I said. I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Ruiz is driving back from Orlando, and then we'll see.” Harry surprised me by bursting into laughter. “What?” “This whole thing is driving you bonkers, isn't it?” he asked. “It's bad enough that I make you talk about your feelings, but all this inaction, the waiting around, that's getting to you too.” I flopped onto the bed on my back, near Harry's feet. “This wins some kind of prize for being the most insane vacation I have ever taken.” Without even realizing what I was doing, I took one of Harry's feet in my hands and started massaging it. A few minutes passed before it even registered that Harry had really soft feet. “That's nice,” Harry murmured. “A guy could get used to this.” Now I laughed. “What, hiding out in a hotel room?” He looked at me askance, which I guess was his way of showing me that wasn't what he meant, but he said, “There are worse things. There's food. There's a Jacuzzi. There's a hot guy who gives killer foot massages. Oh God, yeah. Right there.” I indulged him and pressed a little harder. “I suggested to Ruiz that we cruise around the area near where you were found, see if we can find the house you were kept in.” “I am all for this plan,” Harry said. “Ah yeah, right there, just in the arch.” I rubbed my thumb against the arch of his foot, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. “Harry, seriously, it's a big risk. We put you in a car and drive you right up to your captor's house, and you'd be a sitting duck.” Harry offered his other foot, so I started massaging that. “You'll be with me, Noah. Right?” “Yeah, if you want me to be, but—” “So you'll keep me safe.”

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I didn't want him to have such high expectations of me, and part of me wanted to yell that I couldn't keep anybody safe. I concentrated on Harry's foot instead. I said, “I will, of course, do everything I can to make sure nothing happens to you, but there are no guarantees in life.” “Noah.” I kept rubbing his foot. His toes were nice, even, like he got regular pedicures. “Noah, look at me.” I looked up. Harry stared at me with an intensity I hadn't seen in his eyes previously. “You won't repeat your mistakes. We'll be prepared. I trust you.” I did get off the bed then. “Well, that's great. That makes one of us.”

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Chapter Fifteen Despite everything, Harry and I made sweaty love that afternoon, and I lay in his arms afterward, spending too much time contemplating “making love” vs. “fucking.” Because we'd definitely just done the former. I couldn't talk myself out of falling in love with Harry anymore. What that would mean when the second week of my vacation was up, I didn't know, and Harry wasn't willing to talk about it. Eventually we got dressed and fell into each other's arms on the couch. Some adolescent comedy was on the TV, which didn't distract me as much as I'd hoped. Harry, however, was cracking up at almost every joke and pratfall. I was rescued from pretending I was enjoying myself when my phone rang. “You guys free tonight?” Ruiz asked. “Get us out of here,” I said.

*** The Tampa PD owned an unmarked Crown Vic with all windows but the windshield tinted. Harry sat in the back, gazing out as Ruiz drove us into a suburban-seeming area of Tampa where the houses were farther apart and there was a lot of vegetation. The narcotics guy, McKutcheon, rode shotgun, and I sat next to Harry and looked out the window too. Mostly I think I was there to keep Harry calm. The farther we got into this neighborhood, the more visibly nervous Harry grew. “I need a cigarette,” he muttered at one point. “Describe the house again,” Ruiz said. “Light colored,” Harry said. “I think it was a Tudor-style, two-story house, maybe cream colored with dark wood trim. That's how I remember it anyway.” “Doesn't really narrow it down,” McKutcheon said.

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We seemed to be in some kind of Tudor architectural theme park. Occasionally there'd be something wacky like a ranch with vinyl siding, but it looked like someone was trying to make this neighborhood look like the English countryside. They hadn't really succeeded; it was still Florida, and the Tudor houses looked a little silly among mangroves and palm trees and other Floridian flora. McKutcheon said, “Anything distinctive about the house?” Harry closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. “I think there was some pink somewhere. Like maybe the drainpipe was painted pink? And some other trim? Which probably doesn't help you much because this is Florida, but I remember thinking it looked odd to have splashes of pink on an otherwise-fairly colorless house.” Ruiz made a strangled, gasping sound. “I think I know it,” she said. She stepped on the accelerator. We got to a block that was mostly old-looking homes with overgrown yards. Ruiz slowed down to about fifteen miles an hour, slow enough that we could see the houses, but not so slow that we'd impede traffic should a car even come by. There hadn't been a car on the road in the last twenty minutes we'd been driving. She approached a house that was, indeed, off-white with dark trim. And just as Harry said there would be, there were splashes of pink: pink drainpipes on either side of the building, a short wall around the property that looked like it was made of pink stucco, and most surprising, a 1970s-era pink Cadillac. “That El Dorado is a nice touch,” McKutcheon said, referring to the Cadillac. “Looks like the model from 1970. Can't be that many of those registered in Florida.” He pulled a pad of paper out of his pocket and wrote down the license-plate number. “Is this it?” Ruiz asked. “Yeah, I think it is,” Harry said. Beads of sweat had popped up on his forehead. I took his hand, which seemed to help him. He took a deep breath. “Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was the place.” “You were found about half a mile from here,” said Ruiz. Shakily Harry said, “I was kept in one of the upstairs bedrooms. I think that one, the window on the far left. The adjacent bathroom had a window that opened over the garage.”

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Ruiz drove past and parked at the end of the block. The house on the corner looked abandoned, and the only other thing in the vicinity was a vacant lot full of weeds kitty-corner to where we were parked. “Okay,” Ruiz said as she killed the engine. “Jake and I are going to check it out. Noah, you stay with Harry.” I didn't argue with her. She and McKutcheon got out of the car and walked back toward the house. I watched them go until they were out of my line of sight; then I turned to Harry. He was clearly terrified. I'd been working overtime to keep everyone's expectations tempered. I know there are some cops who view themselves as invincible, but I think most cops who have been on the force long enough know that shit happens. You couldn't anticipate everything. I knew this probably better than anyone, and I didn't want Harry to think that I'd always be able to get us out of a bad situation safely. There were too many Artie Schifflers in this world. But watching him tremble next to me, something clicked. Obviously my telling him now that there were no guarantees in life, that we couldn't know that some thug wouldn't run up to the window right then and put a bullet in his brain, was not the way to go. I evaluated the situation. I had my weapon on me. Harry and I were both on high alert, so it was unlikely we'd be caught by surprise. If something were to happen, I was as ready for it as I could be. This wasn't that night with Josh in the bar, when everything had been good, when we were safe and happy, when Artie Schiffler surprised me. “Harry.” He turned and looked at me. I reached over and put an arm around his shoulders. “I won't let anything happen to you,” I said. “I won't let them take you again. You're…you're safe with me.” He looked surprised. He nodded. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I mean, I'm watching and waiting. I'm armed. Ruiz and McKutcheon are both good officers. We've got this situation under control.” He nodded again. “What if…?” he began. I sat back on my side of the bench seat and kept holding his hand. “What if something happens to you?” he asked. He reached, and his fingers grazed over my injured arm.

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“I won't let that happen either,” I said. He nodded. We sat there in the car for what felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes. We didn't say anything, just held hands. I tried to piece together what little we knew about the situation, because it seemed easier to focus on the dangerous matter at hand than on what I was really feeling just then. I knew this: everyone was pretty well convinced that Javier Ortiz was the mastermind behind Harry's kidnapping, but it seemed a little silly to focus on him if we were parked on a street on the outskirts of Tampa and Ortiz was in Orlando. We knew Ortiz was making money from Horatio Alvarez, who was selling drugs in the back of Harry's club. Except that Alvarez was dead, and the Stakowski idiot had stepped into the void, cutting off Ortiz's income. It seemed to me that the real key here was who killed Alvarez. Ortiz was more a means to an end. Whoever killed Alvarez was the person who was the real threat to Harry. “What did you know about Horatio Alvarez?” I asked. He looked startled. “Not a whole lot. I mean, Candy Bar had been open for about a year when I started hearing rumors from the staff that there was a lot of drug use in the back room. It was all small-time stuff, though. Mostly poppers, some weed, sometimes some ecstasy. I didn't really think much of it until Alvarez approached me one evening and basically said he was going to sell in my club, and he'd give me a cut if he was the only game in town. I figured, hey, if it keeps the customers happy.” This wasn't what he'd told Ruiz initially. “So you did take a cut?” Harry frowned. “A very small one,” he said. “A pittance, really. I have a good guess for how much money he brought in a night. He was only giving me a small fraction of that.” He shook his head. “I know I'm an old man, but come on. I spent a lot of time in places a lot seedier than Candy Bar when I was Alvarez's age. I know what these things cost. I didn't really want to know what he was up to, and that's the truth. I wasn't looking to profit from it, which is why I didn't haggle with Alvarez over my cut. When people asked where to score, I pointed them to Alvarez, and he gave me a fistful of cash at the end of the nights he worked. Otherwise I wasn't involved with him or his operation at all, which probably sounds suspicious to you.”

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The cop in me thought it was fairly suspicious, but I trusted Harry to tell me the truth. “It doesn't. I get it,” I said. He gave me a halfhearted smile. “You were a twenty-two-year-old gay kid once too, eh?” I shrugged. My experiences with recreational drugs were limited to some brief experimenting in my early twenties. Once I figured out that ecstasy was fun but also a guarantee that I wouldn't have an orgasm, it kind of lost its appeal. “What happened when you found out Alvarez was dead?” I asked. “I didn't actually know until a couple of days after it happened. I heard through the staff that there were complaints that he hadn't been around. Then I saw an article in the paper about it. The article ran only maybe two or three days before…” He gestured at me. “Any ideas about what happened?” “No.” He looked out the window. “I mean, the man dealt drugs for a living. That's a pretty dangerous profession. There are a lot of possibilities.” “But the theory is that Ortiz thinks you killed Alvarez.” I considered this. “I suppose it's plausible that Ortiz might think you and Alvarez argued over your cut, since even you say it was laughably small. Like maybe he figures you wised up to what you should have been getting, and you had an altercation that ended with Alvarez dying. Do you know how Alvarez died?” “I believe the paper said he was found in a parking lot on Central Avenue in St. Pete. Someone shot him, I think. I couldn't tell you anything more than that.” His eyes widened. “I can't believe I'm even having this conversation, frankly. Shit, Noah, I just run a couple of bars. I never expected to get tangled up in anything like this. I've never even held a gun, let alone fired one.” My free hand instinctively moved to my gun, which was holstered to my hip. I said, “It's probable that Alvarez's death is a coincidence, that this is all a big mess that Ortiz misinterpreted.” “Yeah,” said Harry. “What the hell am I going to do? I can't keep hiding.” I opened my mouth to answer but was interrupted by a huge bang outside the car. Then several loud shots rang through the air. The noise came from the direction Ruiz and McKutcheon had gone. “Jesus,” I said. My pulse kicked up several notches.

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“Were those gunshots?” The words came out sounding a wee bit hysterical. Harry ducked his head. They were definitely gunshots. I pushed Harry down. He knelt on the floorboards. A quick glance through the back window didn't tell me anything. The view of the house was obscured by a lot of foliage. My first priority was keeping Harry safe, but McKutcheon and Ruiz might have needed me also. Not knowing what to do intensified my panic. I broke out in a cold sweat. I hunkered down with Harry and held a finger to my lips. We sat and listened. A few moments went by with no sound. Then we heard a barrage of gunfire, definitely more than one gun involved this time. “I don't know what to do,” I said. “Go help Ruiz,” Harry said. “Will you be okay?” “I'll stay in the car.” I reached over and pulled his phone out of his pocket. I set up a text message that said 911 to send to my phone. “Anything happens, you hit Send immediately. Then call 911. Okay?” He nodded. Then he kissed me. “Come back in one piece.” “I will.” I got out of the car. I could still hear the occasional report from a gun, but things had quieted. I worried this meant Ruiz was down or that the shooters had escaped. I jogged through the yard of one of the neighboring houses. At the edge of the property I crouched down. I moved slowly through a wooded area next to the house Ruiz and McKutcheon had gone to. I spotted them through the trees. The bald man we'd seen at the fund-raiser had Ruiz by the arm and was shouting something I couldn't quite hear. He had a gun in his hand, presumably Ruiz's, because she was now empty-handed. She wore a terrified expression on her face, and I think it was the only time I'd ever seen her without complete control over a situation. McKutcheon stood a few feet from them, his gun trained on the man, but the man kept jerking Ruiz around so McKutcheon couldn't get a clear shot.

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Thinking that maybe I could, I moved as quietly as I could through the trees. I needed to let McKutcheon know I was there so that he wouldn't shoot at me, but I also thought taking out Baldy would be the hint that I was friend, not foe. Baldy shouted at McKutcheon to back off. McKutcheon repeated several times to let Ruiz go. Ruiz had a wound in her leg that was bleeding badly, and she whimpered every time Baldy jerked her around. “You stay the hell away,” said Baldy. “I know you've got that fag Knowles stashed somewhere. Turn him over to us, and I'll let this bitch go.” I sneaked out of the woods. I managed to catch McKutcheon's eye, but he stayed resolutely still, not giving away my presence. I did have a clear shot, but I didn't want to kill this guy—he might have information—I just wanted to disable him for now. McKutcheon said, “Shut the hell up. I've radioed for backup. They will shoot you. The police, as a general rule, have no mercy for people who shoot cops.” “Fuck you,” said Baldy. “You invade my property, fling around wild accusations—” “Backup should be here,” McKutcheon said, “right about now.” I took that as my cue to fire. I hit Baldy in the shoulder. He let go of Ruiz to grab at his wound. He spun around to find out where the bullet had come from. McKutcheon had him this time. He relieved Baldy of his gun and cuffed him. I went to Ruiz, who had fallen on the ground. I knelt next to her. “You all right?” “Flesh wound,” she said, gesturing to her leg. “Yeah, I've been there.” To McKutcheon, I said, “Is there really backup?” The sirens blaring in the distance answered my question. McKutcheon took a few steps away and radioed to dispatch that he had an officer down. “Is anyone else around?” I asked. My gut told me we weren't out of danger. Baldy grunted. “If anyone else is in the house, they're keeping quiet,” Ruiz said. “What happened?” I asked her.

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“He surprised us. We were casing the house, working out the best way in, when someone fired out of an upstairs window. He got me in the leg before I even had a chance to pull my weapon. Then the bald guy here ran outside. We shot at each other before he grabbed me.” “Do we know anything new?” I asked. “It all happened too fast.” I turned to Baldy. “Who do you work for?” He was resolutely silent. I stood and walked over to him. I repeated my question. Then I raised my gun at him and said, “I don't work for the Tampa PD. There's no code of ethics keeping me from shooting you in the damn chest. Ruiz will back me up that it was self-defense. Who the hell do you work for?” He bared his teeth at me but then spat and said, “Hector Reyes.” “Oh shit,” Ruiz said. My phone vibrated in my pocket. It said 911. “Harry,” I said to Ruiz. “Go,” she said. “I'll be fine.” I grabbed the gun that lay on the ground and handed it to her. Then I took off at a run toward the car. When I got there, Harry was giving his would-be attacker a hell of a fight. A man with dark hair and a body shaped roughly like a refrigerator was trying to pull Harry out of the car. Harry wasn't going easily and had the advantage of having more leverage, being inside. Neither seemed to see me approach, but I don't know that it would have mattered because I was panicking more than thinking. I aimed my gun at the attacker and shouted, “Freeze!” They both stopped moving. The attacker looked at me. Harry swung his legs out and kicked him behind the knees. I wanted to cheer. The man tripped and fell backward. I ran over to him. He appeared to be unarmed. I pressed the barrel of my gun against his forehead. “I will not hesitate to shoot you in the head,” I said. “So don't give me a reason to.” The man held up his hands. McKutcheon arrived on the scene with a swarm of other cops. “Neighbor called 911,” he said. He got cuffs on the man. “Is Reyes here?” he asked.

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“Yeah,” the man mumbled. Harry got out of the car and stood up behind me. “Good work,” I said. “Did you recognize him? Was he one of the guys who held you captive?” He nodded and looked dazed. He uttered a raggedy, “yeah.” “Stay here,” McKutcheon said. I stayed with Harry by the car while the area around us hummed with activity. McKutcheon and the other cops raided the house while Ruiz and the bald man were loaded into ambulances. Things around us were frenetic. People ran, lights flashed, and cops were everywhere. Harry stood perfectly still, looking unfocused at something in the distance. “Are you okay?” I asked. He closed his eyes. “This is not my life. None of this is real.” I reached over and ran a hand down his back. He opened his eyes and looked at me. There was a plea in his eyes. “Let's get out of here,” I said. “Maybe we can get one of these cops to drive us back to the station.” Harry rubbed a hand over his face. He seemed to snap out of his daze, but he looked weary. “I just want this to be over.” “It will be soon,” I said. I flagged down a cop and arranged a ride for us back to the station house. Before we got into the car, Harry reached over and squeezed my hand, then let it go again. “Thank you,” he whispered.

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Chapter Sixteen To say there were things I'd done in my life that I was not proud of was an understatement. I'd bungled cases, made bad decisions, kept secrets I shouldn't have. Hell, I lived a terrified life, constantly afraid that someone would find out all my secrets, afraid of what would happen to me if any of my fellow officers found out I was gay. Shame is funny that way, I guess. In some ways I think it made me better at my job: more aware, more conscious of people's body language, of what was going on around me. That this had become my modus operandi was not something I was particularly proud of, but I hadn't known how else to get the job done. It was strange, then, to be here, in my element, in a precinct in Tampa, surrounded by officers who knew I was gay. I was operating without that shame hanging over me, and I felt better than I had in years. Of course, I wouldn't have to work with any of these people again after that week, which made it easy to let the occasional suspicious glance roll off my back. McKutcheon approached me and said, “You probably know this case as well as anyone. You want to sit in on some interrogations?” “Let's do it,” I said. We went into the room where the man who tried to attack Harry sat. His real name was Rocky Johnston. He looked surly and pissed off. McKutcheon tapped his finger on the table. “It would behoove you to cooperate with us, Mr. Johnston. Tell us why you were in the house and why you tried to pull Harrison Knowles out of a car. Don't bother lying. Detective Tobin here was a witness.” Rocky looked at me. “The boss saw you in the car with Knowles, you fucking faggot.”

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“Language,” McKutcheon said. He made a tsk sound. “Need I remind you, Mr. Johnston, that Detective Tobin is a police officer, and you are under arrest for assault. You call him a name again, I'll throw you in jail right now, and we'll sort this out tomorrow.” Rocky grunted. “The boss saw the detective get out of the car and ordered me to go down there and get Knowles.” “Why?” I asked. He shot me an angry sneer. This man really hated me. “I don't know. I just do what I'm told.” “Why were you keeping Knowles to begin with? Why kidnap him?” McKutcheon asked. Johnston sat up straight, his shoulders tensed. “Boss sent us out to that fag bar on Monday, told us to grab Knowles and bring him back to the house. Then we were supposed to hold him. I don't know why. Nobody gave me a damn reason. I just do the job and get paid.” McKutcheon suddenly looked tired. He rubbed his forehead. “Who is your boss? Who gave you the order to grab Knowles?” “Hector Reyes.” I looked over at McKutcheon, who nodded gravely. “Okay,” he said. “Don't go anywhere.” McKutcheon walked out of the room and signaled for me to follow. “I can't decide if this is good or bad,” he said. “What?” I asked. We walked back into the squad room, which was loud and bustling as other officers rushed around. “Detective Thompson is questioning Hector Reyes. Better him than me.” “Who is Hector Reyes?” I asked. I, obviously, already knew the answer to this question, but I needed to know why McKutcheon was so afraid of him. “Scary guy,” he said. “He's wanted for questioning on two counts of murder. So our raid today was kind of fortuitous. I think you were the key. He must have been watching the car and didn't recognize you as being on the police payroll, so he didn't think you were a threat. And he probably thought we were idiots for bringing Knowles with us to begin with.” “Yeah,” I said. We were idiots. Fortuitous or not, I felt like we'd fumbled the whole operation that day, and we'd put Harry in harm's way. I guess you could have argued that Harry

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volunteered, but I was running the possibilities in my head. What if he'd been shot? What if I hadn't gotten back to the car in time? Not to mention that I'd been close enough to Hector Reyes at the fund-raiser to grab him. “I know that Reyes and Knowles go back some ways,” McKutcheon said. “I think they used to own something together, a restaurant in Tampa. I don't know why they parted ways.” “So if Reyes is involved in this, it stands to reason that none of it is just bad coincidence.” “No, I don't think so.” Thompson came out of an interrogation room. “Lawyered up,” he said, referring to Reyes. “He's not talking anymore.” “You find anything out?” McKutcheon asked. “He says Ortiz is the mastermind. I'm not sure I believe him. Anyone hear from Ruiz?” An officer whose name I didn't know said, “She's in surgery, but the doctors think she'll be fine.” McKutcheon turned to me. “Knowles is camping out in the break room on the second floor. First door at the top of the stairs. Could you find out what, if anything, his current relationship with Hector Reyes is?” It had been sort of fun to wallow in the illusion that the cops here respected me despite the fact that I was gay, but moments like this convinced me that I was just being kept around because it helped their case. There was a limit to how much I could be offended by this. I wasn't a member of their precinct, after all, and I disliked it when other officers crowded in on my turf. So I tried not to feel annoyed as I climbed the stairs. I found Harry asleep on a couch in the break room. I sat at the edge of the couch and took a deep breath. I rubbed his shoulder and kissed his forehead. “Harry, honey, wake up.” His eyes flew open, and he inhaled sharply. “Noah,” he said. “Oh God.” He surprised me by throwing his arms around me and hugging me close. “You rescued me. You kept me safe.” “I told you I would.” “Yes,” he said. “So what's going on?” I eased away from him a little. “What do you know about Hector Reyes?”

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“Hector?” He looked confused. “We…uh… used to be business partners. My first foray into the restaurant business, actually. A steak house on Busch Boulevard in Tampa. It was called Uppercuts. Clever, yeah? It's not there anymore. I think it's an Olive Garden these days.” “Okay,” I said. “What's your relationship like now?” He frowned. “I haven't heard from him in a while. Oh wait, he was at the fund-raiser the other night.” I held back a groan. If only we'd known. Harry didn't seem to hear me. He went on, “I wouldn't say we parted on good terms, but he's been cordial for the most part. Or he was at the fund-raiser. I saw him there and said hello. I mean, you remember that, right? He wasn't terribly talkative. Then I saw the thug; then I gave you a fairly awesome blowjob in the men's room, and then I forgot all about Hector.” He shot me a mischievous grin. And this was why cops shouldn't work cases involving people they've slept with. My body responded to the mere mention of that blowjob. It was a struggle to bring my focus back to the matter at hand. “Didn't I see you talking to him after that?” Harry rubbed the back of his neck as he thought about that. “Yeah, I guess you did. He came up to me again later. Innocuous small talk; nothing more that I can remember. He asked me about a new place I just opened, mentioned the positive review he'd read in the paper.” Harry wasn't lying to me, he genuinely hadn't remembered. Which meant he didn't consider Reyes as much of a threat as the police did, had not the first clue that Reyes meant him any harm. I filed that away for the moment. “Why did you part ways?” I asked. “Why are you asking? Is he involved in this?” Harry backed off a little, sliding away from me a little on the couch. “It's a theory,” I said. Then I thought better of it. “No, I'm lying. You were being held in his house.” Harry's mouth fell open. “You're kidding.” “I wish.” “Shit, wow. You think you know someone, right?” He sat back on the couch and rubbed his forehead with his left hand. He took a deep breath. “Hector and I had some philosophical

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differences. I wanted to beef up the bar in the restaurant, try to attract more young people, keep it open later hours, make it more of a nightspot. It was always a dream of mine to run a bar or restaurant that was the place in town to be, you know? Hector was more of a teetotaler. He wanted to run a family restaurant. Ha. 'Family.'” He put his hand down and looked at me. “He never said anything, but I always kind of suspected that Hector was uncomfortable with me too. I mean, I knew he was when we met, but I figured, he came from a conservative family. He probably hasn't known many gay people, if any. He'll get to know me, see that I'm fairly safe and nonthreatening, and he'll get over it.” “How did you meet?” “I spent some time in my early twenties playing at wanting to be a chef. I went to culinary school briefly but didn't finish. I figured out fairly quickly that I'd rather run a restaurant than cook in one. I met Hector at the school. He still had illusions of being a great chef, and he definitely could cook a good, solid meal, but he didn't quite have enough creativity to make it in a five-star restaurant. A satisfying steak dinner, though, that he could do. We got to talking one day, and a partnership was formed.” “But it didn't last.” Harry shook his head. “When we started arguing about how to run the steak house, I figured I'd just let it lie and started looking for other opportunities. I bought Shanley's around that time. Hector thought it a great travesty that I wanted to turn it into a gay bar. At the time I figured, you know, there's a large gay community in St. Pete, but hardly any gay bars, so this was a niche market I was filling. Why should Hector have cared?” He sighed. “He had just gotten married, his wife had a baby boy, and suddenly Hector got it in his head that I'd be a bad influence, I guess. I told him that I was letting go of the idea to expand the bar at Uppercuts, but he thought I was, generally, taking the business in the wrong direction, so I sold him my share of the restaurant and used the money to open Candy Bar. The rest is history, I guess.” “Okay. Is it possible he has some sort of vendetta against you?” “I honestly don't know,” Harry said. “Like I said, he's been cordial. I mean, our business relationship ended, but this was five years ago, and everything was on the up-and-up.” He shook his head again. “His involvement here doesn't make sense to me. Particularly not now.” “Hector is in custody downstairs,” I said. “He won't talk until his lawyer gets here.”

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“Really, Noah, I don't know what the hell is going on.” I looked at Harry for a long time. He didn't seem to be holding anything back. “I believe you,” I said. “Good.” He took my hand and threaded his fingers through mine. We sat there together for a few moments. Then he said, “I just want things to go back to normal. I feel like everything has spun completely out of control. My stomach has been tied in knots for days. I swear if it weren't for you, I don't know how I would have gotten through all this.” I felt awful, because his telling me this felt like a burden, like weight on my shoulders. I felt like I was suddenly responsible for Harry's happiness, health, and well-being. And yet I wouldn't have traded the last week for anything. I leaned over and touched the side of his face. It was almost all healed, the bruises faded to a faint discoloration. He was breathtakingly handsome even so. He smiled slightly and looked down. I leaned my forehead against his. “We'll fix this,” I told him. He didn't respond. I put my free hand under his chin and lifted his head up so that he had to look at me. And God help me, professional ethics be damned, I kissed him. It was an explosive kiss, one of those kisses that feels like a competition to see who can devour the other one first. I held on to him as if for dear life as he pulled me into his arms. Unfortunately I remembered fairly quickly that we were on a break room couch in a police precinct, and that the man who was very probably responsible for those bruises on Harry's body was sitting downstairs in an interrogation room. “Whoa,” I said as I pulled away. “I have to get back to McKutcheon with some of what you told me.” “We need to get out of here soon,” Harry said. His voice sounded rough. It didn't take much to grasp his meaning. I felt that need too. “Yeah, we need to go,” I said. “Can you sit here for a few more minutes? I'll try to wrap things up.” He nodded. I walked out of the room contemplating how Harry could make me feel like nothing else in the world mattered but us. That's what I wanted that night, just to be with him, wherever that might be. My hotel room, Harry's house, wherever, as long as I could spend the night with him. I found McKutcheon in the squad room and related what I'd learned. He didn't seem to like it. “There's still something missing here,” he said.

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“It's all starting to look less like a coincidence and more like a plot.” “Yeah.” He scratched his chin. “I'd bet money on Reyes setting the whole thing up. Taking out Alvarez, talking Stakowski into working the back room, maybe even tipping off Ortiz that something unkosher was happening in the back room at Candy Bar.” “Here's what I don't get,” I said. “How do we get from Reyes as a family man who owned half a steak restaurant to Reyes being wanted for murder?” McKutcheon frowned. “Yeah, about that. Those two counts of murder for which Reyes is wanted for questioning? His wife and son.” “Jesus. What the hell happened?” “It wasn't my case. I don't know the details. It was a big deal on the local news when it happened, though. This was maybe eight months ago. All I remember is that the wife and son were found dead in Reyes's apartment, no sign of a break-in or anything. Then Reyes fell off the map, so he was always a suspect, though the detective in charge of the case didn't really want him for it. The case is still open as far as I know.” “Is that enough to keep Reyes overnight?” “Yeah. The homicide detective who worked the case is on the way over here, but he still can't do anything until Reyes's lawyer shows up, which could be a while. We plan to keep him overnight.” I mulled this over. “Is it possible that Reyes blames Harry for what happened somehow? Is that why he could have set all this up?” “It's a possibility. I don't think we're going to find the answer to that tonight, though.” “Can I take Harry home?” The question sounded weird after I said it. Where was home? Harry's home? The hotel room? My apartment in New York? But McKutcheon seemed not to notice. “I'll drive you both back to the hotel. I mean, I think he's out of danger now, but we still don't have all the pieces put together. It's probably better if you stick with him for a little while longer. Is that okay?” Such a strange situation I'd found myself in. “That's okay,” I said.

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Chapter Seventeen I felt tired once I got into McKutcheon's car. Harry looked exhausted too. We rode to the hotel in silence punctuated by the occasional chatter on the police radio. Harry was a good sport when we got back to the hotel, pulling on his baseball hat and sunglasses, and we went inside together. He held my hand in the elevator. Once we were back in the room, I just wanted to go to sleep. Without telling Harry what I was doing, I went into the bedroom and shed all my clothes; then I crawled into bed. He followed me and did the same, curling up behind me in the bed. I felt content there. Just being in his arms made the world stop turning long enough for me to feel like maybe I had control over things again. He kissed my shoulder and said, “What you did today, that was pretty remarkable.” “Just doing my job,” I mumbled, not really wanting to talk about it. Hadn't we had enough discussions? “That's why it was remarkable. Is this normal for you? People getting shot, kidnapped?” “I'm a cop.” Although honestly my job was not like this on a normal day. A lot of police work is boring and frustrating. Being a detective especially is tiring and often unforgiving and unrewarding. It's making phone calls, talking to people who don't know anything, and sitting around waiting. It's not often as adventurous as it looks on TV. I rarely got shot at. Harry needed to talk about it, though. “You were really going to kill that guy. The one who was trying to pull me out of the car.” “If he'd hurt you, I would have.” “And that's remarkable.” I rolled around to face him. How had I come to care so deeply about this man in so short an amount of time? “When I told you today that I wouldn't let anything happen to you, that wasn't a hollow promise. I really meant it.”

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“I know.” He smiled. “That's not the sort of thing you would just say. You've been telling me all week that you can't protect me from everything. And that's true. But I know that you will do everything in your power to try, and that means a lot. You've done so much for me.” My first thought was that I'd done nothing. I'd done my job. I'd kept Harry out of danger. And that felt like nothing compared to everything he'd done for me. “Do you even know how great you are?” I asked him. “This afternoon I even thought to myself, this week has been completely insane, and I'm stressed and tired and I can't believe I got involved in this mess, but at the same time I don't think I would have changed it.” “No?” “No. This time with you, it's been great.” “It certainly is nice compensation for getting kidnapped.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “It's not just that.” I laughed. “You know what you've done. I've worked out so much of my old shit this week. You helped me. I'm…grateful.” He was quiet for a long time. His gaze darted over my face as if he were trying to read the lines there. He reached over and smoothed down some errant strand of hair on my head. “Do you think about him? Josh? When we're together?” “No,” I said. “Maybe the first night, but not anymore. When we're together, it's just us.” He nodded. “And you have no regrets?” “About us? No. Harry, I… You taught me how to live again. I've just been going through the motions this last year and a half, but this week I really lived. And that's what Josh wanted for me. That's what he told me right before he died. He wanted me to live, to find a way to have a life without him. Thanks to you, I think I have.” Harry blinked, and it took me a moment to notice the tears in his eyes. He smiled and ran his fingers through my hair. “This is an intense moment we're having here, peach.” “Yeah.” And then, because it was true, I said, “I love you. I don't know how that's possible given how short a time we've known each other, but it's how I feel, and—” He cut me off with a kiss. It was hot and tender, and I could taste stale coffee and Harry's own je ne sais quoi. He put his hands on my back and held me. “God,” he said. “I love you too. How the hell did that happen?”

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I laughed, maybe partly to cover up the fact that I felt like crying. “What are we going to do next week when I go back to New York?” I asked. He just smiled. “Don't worry about it tonight. We have each other tonight.” I've heard of people having these whirlwind love affairs: life, love, sex, death, the whole cycle of a relationship all in the span of a very short amount of time. If that's all there was with me and Harry, I could live with that. If this week, or two weeks, down in Tampa was all we would have together, I could still count them among the most intense and amazing weeks of my life, and I'd go home a changed man, a less fearful man, a complete man again. I didn't want to live without him, but I knew that I could. So that night, lying in bed with him, just gazing at him, I thought, well, if this is all we have, all we were meant to have, then I want this now, and I want it to be as great as it can be. Harry's entreaty to not worry about it seemed reasonable. I didn't really want to think about it anyway. I wanted Harry to work his magic, to make everything else go away. He kissed me again and pressed his body against mine. We lay together, our limbs tangled, our bodies hard, our lips hot, and I was happy to let the minutes tick by. Harry got me to groan and buck my hips against him. I wanted him with a fierceness I never expected, a craving that I suspected would never be satiated. I could have devoured him. I pushed him away slightly, then bent my head to lick his neck. His smooth skin tasted salty. I couldn't keep myself from inhaling either, so much did I love how he smelled, like sweat and good scotch. I loved his body too, was entranced by it, wanted to get my hands on every part of it, wanted to just get lost in the skin and the muscles, the curves and straight lines. I kissed his chest, slid my tongue over one of his hard nipples, and his whole body vibrated when he moaned. I trailed kisses down the lines of his ab muscles, just kept kissing until I got to his cock. I took his cock in my hand and stroked it; then I kissed one of his balls. That scent that was all Harry was more intense between his legs, and I would have been content to stay there for a long time. I pressed my nose to his hip bone; then I moved my head and took one of his balls into my mouth. Harry gasped and grabbed my head, muttered something incoherent when I moved to suck on the other ball. I took turns on them for a while, gently sucking, rolling them over my tongue.

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Then I took his cock into my mouth, liking the hard smoothness of it. And I thought: this. This was what I'd been missing all those months. Smelling, tasting, being with, loving a man, feeling him writhe beneath me, both of us alive and enthralled. How could I have ever thought I could live without this? Harry made a strangled sound. “Noah,” he whispered. He moaned, and then he lifted my head off him. “Come here.” I climbed up his body and lay next to him. He was sweaty and panting. I worried that I'd done something wrong, and that must have been reflected in my face, because he kissed me and said, “I was getting too close. I want to come inside you.” He reached around me and grabbed the lube from the nightstand. I felt his fingers start to explore, to prepare me, and I kissed him hard to encourage him, to let him know how much I wanted him inside me, but I didn't want to say it out loud. I was done talking. We needed to just do, to feel, to make love like this was our last night together, which I sort of suspected it was. He pressed two fingers inside me, then three. He curved his fingers, grazing them over my prostate, sending jolts of pleasure through my body. I arched my back and twisted a fistful of the sheet in my hand. Still, this was more about being together than it was about sex. He held me close as he touched me, and our hearts thumped together where our chests touched. We kissed, and I loved how he tasted. I took a condom from the nightstand and rolled it on him. I pushed him back on the bed. I took the lube from his hand and poured some on his dick, stroking it for good measure. He sighed and let his arms settle over his head, as if he'd never been happier. He grinned at me. He seemed to understand that I didn't want him to speak. I tossed the lube aside and straddled his legs. I sat with careful slowness, and I felt the burn as he entered me. The look on his face was pure bliss, and I wanted to give him this pleasure, wanted him to feel like I felt. I was stirred up, my heart raced, and I loved the feeling of him inside me, of us joined together. Once he was all the way inside, he reached up and pulled me to him, and he kissed me as if he were trying to extract my last breath. Harry pushed against me, so I began to move my hips, to slide up and down him, and he groaned. I was in control. I sat up, propping myself up by my hands on his chest, and I moved, setting my own pace, making this happen on my terms. Harry slid in and out of me, brushing on

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every nerve ending, sending ripples through me. His muscles seemed to jump and strain through his skin. Under my hands, his nipples hardened. His arms quivered. He gazed at me, and the look in his eyes was intense. My face felt hot as he looked at me, but I didn't look away. I loved that I could make him feel this way, that I made him sigh and grunt and moan. Harry's hands roamed over my chest, down my arms, over my stomach, up my legs. My skin prickled everywhere he touched me. My stomach clenched in anticipation of his finally touching my very hard cock, which seemed to strain toward his hand. He slid his hand across my chest, making my nipples hard, and then finally, finally he took my cock into his hand and stroked. His gaze roamed over me like he was trying to memorize every inch of my body. I adjusted myself so that I could feel his cock brush against that sweet spot inside me. I knew that plus his stroking me would have me coming all over him quickly. I picked up the pace, and Harry seemed to stop breathing, but his gaze never left my face. He looked at me and touched me and stroked me. My trembling body was so close to flying apart that just the smooth slide of his skin against mine was enough. I came in bursts over his hand and chest. He pulled me back down to him and kissed me; then he shifted his hips and pumped into me hard before groaning against my mouth. I could feel his cock pulsing as he came. We lay together without speaking for a long time afterward, and I was perfectly content with that, feeling like we'd said all there was to say. But apparently not, because right before he fell asleep, Harry murmured, “Love you, peach.” He was out before I could formulate a response.

*** I woke up the next morning tangled up in Harry. The sound of my phone vibrating against the nightstand pulled me out of my fog. I wanted to throw that damn phone off the balcony. Moving as little as possible, I picked the phone up. The caller ID said it was Ruiz. “Tobin,” I said into the phone without bothering to extract myself from Harry. He opened one eye and glared at me before he closed his eye and tried to go back to sleep. “It's Deb.” “How's your leg?”

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“It's okay. I have to stay in the hospital for another day or two while they monitor me or whatever, but the bullet passed through the fleshy part of my leg. I'm thanking the good Lord that I inherited my mother's thunder thighs right now.” “That's good, I guess. I heard you were in surgery.” “Bah,” she said. “They had to repair some blood vessels or something. I'm fine. It doesn't even hurt.” “It will when your pain medication prescription runs out.” “How are you?” she asked. “Fine. Has McKutcheon filled you in?” “Yes, and it's a damn shame I can't be there to interrogate Reyes. I talked to the homicide dick in charge of that investigation this morning, and he filled in some of the blanks for me. You know what happened to Reyes's wife and kid? They were mutilated, Noah.” Ah, Ruiz. Such a reliable buzzkill. “Yes, McKutcheon told me the basics.” “Anyway I was just calling to check in. McKutcheon or Thompson will give you status updates. The homicide dick is Adam Fisher. He's working over Reyes now, from what I understand.” “I am very interested to find out what he has to say,” I said. “I thought you might be. I am too, but I'm stuck in this freakin' hellhole of a hospital.” “I took a bullet to the leg once. It's not a picnic.” “No. Well. Oh I got a call from Orlando. Ortiz has been brought back in. Someone either here or in Orlando, it wasn't clear to me who, found a connection between Reyes and Ortiz. No one's really telling me anything, but I think we're in the clear. Is Harry there with you now?” “Yes.” “Don't let him go home until you hear from Jake McKutcheon, who's in charge now. But I think it's just a matter of time at this point.” “Okay. I'll try to stop by to see you before you leave the hospital, but if I don't, it's been good working with you. You run a hell of an investigation, Deb.” “Thanks,” she said. “We couldn't have done this without you either.”

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I was probably more touched by that than I should have been. I cleared my throat so I wouldn't sound emotional and said, “You should tell that to my lieutenant. Seems I'm in some hot water with him now.” “I might just give him a call, then,” she said. I was kidding, but I wasn't really looking forward to having to face Caffity when I got back to New York. “You don't have to do that.” “Maybe not, but I have nothing to do for the next two days.” I got off the phone and looked down at Harry, who smiled at me sleepily. “Come here, peach,” he said. He was so beautiful in his rumpled state, with disheveled hair and stubble on his chin and something wicked in his impossibly light blue eyes. I sank into his arms. “They're interrogating Hector Reyes now,” I told him. “Fuck him,” Harry said. “No, wait, actually I want to fuck you, so let's just forget all about Hector Reyes.” “Deal,” I said.

*** Harry spent a good portion of the morning on the phone with the managers at his various businesses. It was fun to see him in action: talking seriously, solving problems, being assertive and powerful and a little bossy. He'd told me he had good people working for him, so business had gone on as usual while he was unable to work, but now he had to put out the few fires that had sprung up in his absence. I tried to find ways to keep myself busy while he worked. I made us breakfast in the little kitchenette; then I flipped around the channels on the TV without finding anything interesting to watch. Then I read a cheesy sci-fi novel out on the balcony for a while. Harry took the occasional cigarette break with me, letting me read, although it was more fun to peer at him from over the book, to watch him blow smoke rings or just to admire his profile. Still, I was getting restless and nervous. After the night Harry and I had had, part of me wanted for the case to be put to bed once and for all so that I could enjoy the end of my vacation with him without the investigation and the constant threat hanging over our heads.

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McKutcheon came by several hours after Ruiz's phone call had woken us up. He looked wiped out. He said that they'd been working on Reyes all morning and hadn't managed to get much of anything. None of the other men they'd arrested had talked either. “Let me talk to him,” Harry said. McKutcheon turned his head and looked at Harry at the same time I did. “That's not a good idea,” McKutcheon said. It was a damn bad idea. Not the sort of thing I ever would have allowed if I'd been in charge of the investigation. But Harry looked determined. He said, “I want him to tell me why he came after me, and I think he will. What harm can he do if he's disarmed and sitting in a police precinct house?” “There are rules, protocols, and his lawyer's not letting him—” McKutcheon said. “Let me.” “We're all going to get reprimanded when this case wraps up. Not a damn thing has been done by the rules.” He shook his head. “All right, I'll bring you down to the station, but you have to do as you're told, and as soon as it looks like there will be trouble, it's over. Got it?” “Yes, fine,” said Harry. I didn't like this plan one bit, but I went along with it. We followed a resigned McKutcheon back to the police precinct in the rental car. Harry talked the whole way about needing to face this head-on to make it end finally. I was less convinced.

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Chapter Eighteen To everyone's surprise, when Harry asked for a few minutes with Hector Reyes, Reyes dismissed his lawyer. Harry and Reyes sat in the interrogation room, facing each other. McKutcheon and I took turns watching. “What's going on, Hector?” Harry asked, looking intently at Reyes. Reyes scowled. “Fuck you, Harry.” “Look, I think there's been a misunderstanding.” Harry scratched his chin. “Why the hell are you so mad at me?” “It all started with your crazy scheme to build a bar at Uppercuts.” Harry did an admirable job of keeping his face neutral. “What started?” Reyes glanced toward the mirrored glass. “You pulled out of our deal.” “You bought out my shares. We didn't want the same things for the restaurant.” “I got offered a deal, and I took it.” Reyes pushed away from the table, his chair screeching as it slid across the floor. “I wanted to save the restaurant. Now Mariana and my son are dead.” “Wait. What? Whoa.” Harvey put his hands up. “I didn't have anything to do with that.” “Didn't you?” Reyes stood and slapped his hand on the table. “If you hadn't backed out of Uppercuts, none of this would have happened. I wouldn't have needed to do what I did.” He stormed over to the mirror and pounded on the glass. “That's it! I'm done. Get me the hell out of here.” McKutcheon went into the room and grabbed Reyes by the wrist, then led him away, leaving Harry sitting dazed in a chair. I went into the room. “Are you okay?” I asked him. “He blames me. He thinks I'm responsible in some way for what happened to his wife and son.” He shook his head. “Uppercuts closed not long after he bought out my shares. He must

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have gotten into something bad then. And whatever it is, his family wound up dead because of it.” I guess that made sense in a twisted way. If Reyes couldn't manage the business and attributed its failure to Harry's leaving, I could see how he might feel a little resentful. Tack on some good old-fashioned homophobia and Harry would be a pretty easy scapegoat. Harry kept talking. “A lot of violent crime around these parts is drug related. And if you're right and he set me up to get in trouble with Javier Ortiz, that means he knows Ortiz.” “Yeah,” I said. Harry stood up. He stretched, throwing his long arms over his head. He was tall enough that he could touch the ceiling of the interrogation room. He dropped his arms and said, “I don't think he's guilty of killing his family, but he's definitely mixed up in something that's not aboveboard.” We walked back out to the squad room. McKutcheon was sitting at his desk, tapping a pencil against his blotter. When he saw us, he stopped tapping. “I don't like any of this,” he said. “I agree that it's likely that Reyes is messed up with drugs, probably through Ortiz. Maybe he's not guilty of killing his family, but I want him for Alvarez.” “I never would have thought this guy was capable of murder,” Harry said. “You didn't think he would kidnap you either,” I pointed out. Reyes shut up after that, refusing to speak with anyone. McKutcheon said he would look into the Reyes-Alvarez-Ortiz connections. There wasn't really anything left to do after that. Harry and I got into the rental car, and I had him direct me to the hospital where Ruiz was recuperating. She was awake when we got there and seemed pretty happy to see us. She was also champing at the bit to get the hell out of the hospital. She asked what had happened, so we filled her in. “I was so sure it was just a stupid misunderstanding,” Ruiz said. “Why didn't you mention Reyes sooner?” “How could I have known?” Harry said, looking chastened. “How are you really?” I asked her.

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“All right. My husband's been here pretty much nonstop to keep me company.” I couldn't tell by her facial expression if this was good or bad. Probably it was both. “I just sent him out to get real food.” I sort of wanted to stick around to meet the man big enough to fill out the comically large shirt I'd borrowed a few days before—and didn't that feel like a lifetime ago?—but Harry got a little antsy, so I told Ruiz to get better, and we went back out to the parking lot. “Well,” I said. “What the hell do we do now?” “This Reyes thing is still completely incomprehensible to me. I need to… I don't know. Think about something else for a while. You think it's safe to swim in the pool at your hotel?” “Maybe,” I said, not sure if it was. Yes, Reyes was in custody, but Ortiz's men were still out there, and they probably hadn't gotten the memo that Harry wasn't involved in his recent income loss. I drove back to the hotel, arguing with myself about whether it was a good idea. I finally settled on “yes,” given that Ortiz hadn't found us yet. It was a private pool, behind the hotel, and only guests had access. When I pulled into the hotel parking lot, it was deserted. I parked and said, “Let's go swimming.” “Or sunbathing. You're a little pasty, peach. Your coworkers won't respect you if you don't come back from Florida with a tan.” “If I even have a job when I get back.” He waved his hand dismissively. “So stay in Florida.” “Harry.” Could I have stayed? Gotten a job with Ruiz and McKutcheon at the Tampa PD? I bet they would have taken me on, but I also suspected that a lot of the goodwill I'd encountered was due to the fact that I was not a permanent member of their staff. And I liked Florida well enough, but it wasn't New York. It wasn't my home. I loved Harry, but I still didn't really see a future for us beyond the next week, and I couldn't fathom picking up my whole life in New York and relocating just for him. I had other things to consider: my job, my mother at the nursing home in Englewood, my friends. Nor would I have asked him to relocate to New York just for me. He had a whole life here in Florida, all those successful businesses. We were at an impasse.

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I looked at Harry. He said, “Really, I want to see the looks on all the boys' faces when it turns out the hot guy napping by the pool belongs to me.” So we were back to kidding around. “Or girls' faces,” I said. “Feh.” He got out of the car, so I did too. I hit the button on the remote starter, and the click it made as the doors locked was incredibly loud. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn't the door that made the sound, but that, actually, we were being shot at. Instinct made me duck. “Harry, get down!” I shouted. He stood dazed for a moment, but then obeyed and crouched down behind the car. This was a smart move because, as far as I could tell, the shots—for there was a series of them, one of which put a hole in the back window—were coming from the driver's side. I'd shoved my gun in the glove compartment when we went to the station house earlier, so I scrambled around the car as quickly as I could. I unlocked the doors again and slid into the car to retrieve the gun. As I was ducking back out of the car, another bullet went through the driver's-side window, and the glass exploded. Harry started hyperventilating. “Stay with me, Harry,” I said. I handed him my phone. “McKutcheon's number is programmed in there. Call him right now.” I heard Harry comply. He managed to gasp out the necessary information. Meanwhile I crept toward the trunk and peeked up to see where the shooter was. As soon as my head popped up, another shot was fired, and this one took out the driver's-side rear tire. I did see, though, that our shooter was behind a palm tree about fifteen feet away. There was a lull, so I stood and got a few shots off. None of these were enough to do anything more than chip the bark off the tree, unfortunately. I crouched down again. Harry said, “McKutcheon's on the way.” He gasped for air. “Please don't get shot.” “We're at a standoff.” “You think if you told him you're a cop, he'd back off? Isn't the penalty for shooting a cop a lot worse than for shooting a civilian?”

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“Yeah, but this guy probably already knows that and doesn't care.” We heard another series of shots ding against the car. The shooter took out every window in the car. Shards of glass rained down on us as the passenger-side windows shattered. I had a fleeting thought about insurance on the rental car. Taking stock of the situation, though, I realized that, if the windows were shot out of the car, that meant I wouldn't have to shoot through them also. I raised my gun and fired through the backseat. I heard him shout. Feeling confident that I'd hit him, I peeked through the back windows. He'd moved slightly away from the tree and was clutching his arm. Then he saw me and let go, shifting his gun to his good hand. He aimed, then fired again. The bullet whizzed over my head. “You get down,” Harry said, pulling on my sleeve. “I can get this guy,” I said. “The cops will be here any minute. It's not worth the risk.” I glanced at Harry, who was looking at me, a plea in his eyes. He had a tiny cut on his cheek, and he was having a hard time catching his breath. I would have stopped shooting to make Harry happy, but we were still in too much danger. “I just need to keep him on the other side of the parking lot. If he moves over here, we're dead.” I checked my weapon. “I only have two rounds left.” This had Harry hyperventilating again. I reached over him and maneuvered the passenger-side mirror so that it was pointing toward the tree. I could see our shooter there, having some difficulty reloading his gun with one hand. Two rounds left, but I could make one of them count. I got up on my knees, carefully aimed through the car's windows, and fired. My bullet hit exactly where I wanted it to, the shooter's hand, which caused him to shout, “Motherfucker!” and toss his gun. It skittered across the asphalt and hit the rear tire of the rental car. Unarmed, he turned and ran. He tripped on something and fell forward. “We're safe for now,” I told Harry. Harry, however, didn't calm down until we heard the police sirens wailing a moment later. I risked peeking in time to see a black-and-white tailed by an ambulance pull into the lot. McKutcheon got out of the police car and sent his partner toward the downed shooter. I stood up and waved him over.

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“It's a real shame what happened to this car,” he said, looking it over. I helped Harry stand up, but he was still gasping for air. McKutcheon whistled and waved his hand, and one of the paramedics trotted over to us. “I think he's having a panic attack,” I told the paramedic. He nodded and made Harry sit down in the car. I told McKutcheon what happened. He nodded and surveyed the damage to the car. “This guy's a shitty shot.” “You learn anything more today?” I asked. “I've got security tapes from Candy Bar that put Reyes in the back room there three weeks ago, and he's talking to Alvarez on the film. And I've got records from the SunPass toll device in his car that he's been to Orlando several times in the last two months. I mean, it's circumstantial, but I think the pieces are coming together. But this guy…” He shook his head. We walked over to the ambulance. Two paramedics got the shooter on a gurney while the third put an oxygen mask over Harry's face. Harry, still panting, waved me over, so I went to him, and he grabbed my hand. As he squeezed it, he seemed to calm down. The paramedic raised an eyebrow at us but didn't say anything. McKutcheon walked over to the shooter. “Who sent you?” The shooter just grunted. McKutcheon let out a long-suffering sigh. “Detective Tobin didn't shoot you in the head. I know you can speak.” The shooter spat out, “Pedro Aguillar.” “Good job. Why were you shooting?” “Aguillar told me to take out Harrison Knowles. He pissed off Mr. Ortiz.” “Bingo.” McKutcheon tapped the side of the gurney. “Take good care of this one, gentlemen,” he said. Harry started breathing normally again, so the paramedic took away the oxygen mask. He gave Harry a thumbs-up before hopping into the back of the ambulance with the shooter. McKutcheon dispatched one of the uniforms to go with them. They sped off. “Aguillar. Runs the rent-a-thug organization often used by Ortiz?” I said to McKutcheon. “Yep. And now we can arrest Ortiz.”

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“Is this over yet?” Harry asked. McKutcheon's phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, then raised a finger at us before he walked away to take the call. I turned to Harry. “Are you all right?” He nodded. “Sorry I freaked out.” “People were shooting at us. It's been a long, stressful week. It's okay to freak out. I'd think less of you if you didn't.” He hugged me then, a tight hug. I put my arms around him and held him while McKutcheon talked on the phone. When he hung up, I eased away from Harry. McKutcheon walked back over to us and said, “That was Ruiz; they agreed to let her out of the hospital.” “That's good.” “And she's been doing some digging of her own. Made some phone calls while she was stuck in bed this morning. I don't know how she did it, but she has an eyewitness who puts Ortiz and Reyes at a restaurant in Orlando the day before Knowles was kidnapped.” “That's good news,” I said, not really sure what else to say. “Yeah. So as I see it, you've got two options. I take you to a safe house where you hide out for a couple of hours, or you come with me back to the precinct and watch some justice happen in action.” “Whatever Harry wants to do,” I said. McKutcheon and I both turned to look at Harry expectantly. “Let's go to the precinct.”

*** By the time we got there, Ortiz had already been arrested and was on his way to Tampa. Ruiz, accompanied by a very large man who I could only assume was her husband, had beat us to the precinct. She had her leg in an elaborate-looking splint and was hobbling around on a cane, but she was as spirited as ever, barking orders at subordinates.

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Harry and I mostly watched from the sidelines. For the most part, my job was to keep Harry calm. By that time it was a role I was perfectly content with. We sat together on the couch in the break room or at Ruiz's desk, and we didn't really talk. They arrested Pedro Aguillar, who tried to play it like he was a free agent, but once it became known that Ortiz was in the building, he admitted to being hired to send someone to take out Harry. Ortiz, for his part, wasted no time fingering Reyes, who it seemed owed Ortiz a pile of money. Ortiz denied being part of any plot, but he said that Reyes had come to him with information about Alvarez's death. Ortiz still thought that Harry had killed Alvarez to get a direct line on the drug money at Candy Bar, or so he said, but he was sure to say also that it wouldn't have made sense to kill Harry if he wanted to get that source of income back. Ortiz was the bigger fish, so the DA ultimately decided to cut a deal with Reyes. I suspected Ortiz had been behind the deaths of Reyes's wife and son, and I think the other detectives agreed. An attorney named Amanda Conklin showed up to do the deal with Reyes on behalf of the DA's office. Ruiz and I went in with Conklin to talk to him. “You want to deal with us,” Ruiz said, waddling over to a chair and plopping herself down in it. Conklin also sat, but I remained standing. Reyes didn't seem particularly convinced, but his lawyer asked, “What are you offering?” Conklin said, “We've got your client on kidnapping. Say we knock a few years off the sentence. He does the minimum. Ten years.” “Ten years?” Reyes said. “That woman in Palm Springs who kidnapped her ex-lover's kid got thirty years,” Ruiz said. “Ten is pocket change.” “The kidnapping charge is a snap to prove,” Conklin said. “Can't let that go. I can drop the conspiracy to commit murder, though. Because if you don't cooperate, that's what you're getting charged with.” “Harry Knowles is still alive,” Reyes said. He didn't sound happy about that fact. “Give us a minute,” Reyes's lawyer said. He leaned close to his client, and they whispered to each other for a moment. Reyes balked, and it sounded like he hissed at the lawyer, but finally he nodded, and the lawyer turned to us. “We'll deal.”

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“Good.” Conklin pointed at Reyes. “You give us Ortiz, you get a shorter sentence. You give us nothing, we go to trial for the whole shebang.” Reyes nodded. “I've been working for Ortiz for three years,” he said. “He came to me first when Uppercuts went under. He had a restaurant he was using as a front for all manner of illegal things, mostly drugs. He needed someone to manage it, and he offered me an obscene amount of money to do it.” It occurred to me that Reyes was just a bad manager. Uppercuts went under without Harry because Harry had been right about the real profits coming from turning the place into a night venue. That, and Harry had the people skills necessary to keep customers; something I found lacking in Reyes. Harry was good at what he did, and he worked hard at it; it had become increasingly apparent to me that most of his success was well deserved. After he left Uppercuts, things started falling apart for Reyes, so Reyes was ripe for the picking when Ortiz needed a restaurant manager. “We were losing customers,” Reyes said. “Ortiz accused me of fraud. He came to me one night and told me I was fucking up on purpose. I wasn't, it was just…the restaurant had to be good, had to get regular customers in order to work as a front, had to look legit. Ortiz was already under suspicion for some old crime, and the FBI was sniffing around. But it was in such a shitty location, we never got that many diners.” A likely excuse, I thought. I could tell that Ruiz and Conklin weren't really buying it either. But Reyes went on: the new restaurant became a money hole for Ortiz, a liability, and Ortiz threatened to punish Reyes unless he figured out a way to turn a profit. When he didn't, Ortiz had his family killed. Or so Reyes said. I believed him, but I wasn't sure if Conklin did. “How much money was being lost?” she asked. “I don't know. He was moving something like three million dollars in coke through the restaurant each month, and he had a regular customer base, but a lot of it wasn't selling. Bad economy. I don't know. Then the restaurant wasn't doing that well either. We weren't even bringing in enough money to pay the staff's salaries.” Reyes lost it when he talked about his family. He cried a little as he recounted how he came home one evening to find his wife dead on their living-room floor. He went underground after that, pledged allegiance to Ortiz. And then, of course, he began plotting against Harry.

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“Why did you go to the fund-raiser?” I asked. Reyes looked up, startled. Then his face fell into an ugly frown. “I saw on the news that you guys found him. I don't know how he got out of my house.” “You intended to kill him?” I took a step closer to him. Ruiz cleared her throat. “I don't know,” she said. “No, I was just going to give him over to Ortiz.” “And Ortiz would have killed him,” I said. It was hard to keep the anguish out of my voice. Reyes shifted his shoulders. “I don't know what Ortiz would have done.” “Not your problem after that, eh?” “Tobin,” Ruiz said. “Shut up. Mr. Reyes, tell us about the fund-raiser.” Reyes frowned again. “I knew security would be tight, but Ortiz was pissed at me for losing him. I had to get him back right away.” Ruiz nodded and wrote something down. Conklin rolled her eyes. I didn't think Reyes was stupid, just scared. He confirmed that for me when he added, “I wasn't on your radar. You were too busy watching out for Harry. No one stopped me when I walked in.” Reyes went on for a while after that, mostly spouting nonsense, and Conklin and Ruiz just let him, so I sat there with my arms crossed and listened. He didn't say anything substantive, but it was clear he still blamed Harry. That was the odd thing there. He spoke of Harry with such disdain. I don't think it would have mattered if I'd put up posters saying that Ortiz was the bad guy. Reyes still would have argued that, if it hadn't been for Harry wanting to turn Uppercuts into a damned nightclub, none of this would have happened. “It's dirty money, what he makes,” Reyes said. “Serving drinks to those people.” Ruiz gave me a sly look before saying, “What people?” “You know. Queers. He runs all those gay clubs. I know what goes on in the back rooms there. Drugs and sex. It's an abomination what they do back there.” I'd already overstepped once in this interview, and I probably should have kept my mouth shut. But instead I said, “So you have a problem with how Harrison Knowles makes his money.” “I wouldn't serve any faggots in my restaurant. I certainly wouldn't let them defile themselves under my roof.”

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“You ran a restaurant that was a front for a drug-trafficking operation, and you're getting high-and-mighty about drug use at Harry's clubs?” I asked. “Not drug use. Sex. Out in the open in front of everyone. Men having sex with each other. Most fucking disgusting thing I've ever heard of.” I almost laughed. “Too bad Conklin already made a deal with you. We could up the charges to a hate crime.” “What hate crime?” Reyes asked. “I'm just saying it's against nature. I mean, Harry's a good businessman, sure. I liked him enough to go into business with him in the first place, didn't I? But Harry's a fag. He was always rubbing it in my face when we worked together. Like he wanted to fuck me too. I told him no, many times.” Somehow I doubted this. “Gee, yeah,” I said. “Those fags are totally disgusting.” “Yeah. These women are all soft and sympathetic toward Knowles because he's a goodlooking guy,” he said, gesturing toward Ruiz and Conklin, “but you're a real man; you understand me.” And then I did laugh. “We're getting off topic,” Conklin said, rubbing her forehead. “This is really not an appropriate line of questioning, Detective Tobin.” “Tobin's gay,” Ruiz told Conklin. I would have been angry if not for the astonished faces on everyone in the room. “It's not relevant anyway,” I said. “We've got what we need here, right?” Conklin smirked, then made her face neutral again. She stood up and said, “Yes.” “And you,” I said to Reyes, “you'll call off the dogs. I want some reassurance that Harry will be safe.” He nodded but said, “Why do you care? You fucking him?” I didn't answer but instead opted to leave the room. Conklin and Ruiz followed me out a few minutes later. “I'm sorry,” I said to Conklin. “I shouldn't have provoked him.” “I kind of get why you did,” she said. “I'm going to get a list of associates of Ortiz,” said Ruiz. “Start tracing who else might be out there who is a threat to Harry, but I think this is over now that we've got Ortiz.”

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“Although now might be a good time for Mr. Knowles to take a vacation,” said Conklin. “I hear New York is great this time of year,” Harry said behind me. I turned to look at him. “I've been thinking about expanding my operation anyway. Tampa is small potatoes. If I could get a restaurant going in New York, then I'd really have made it, yeah?” “Really?” I asked. “Yeah,” he said. “I think I told you, I was in talks a few weeks ago with this college friend to look at a restaurant he wants to open up there. We didn't come to an agreement, but now seems like a good time to try to pursue that harder. Or to do my own thing. I don't know.” Ruiz and Conklin got lost in their own conversation, so I turned to Harry. “Are you serious?” “Yeah. I've always liked New York. I mean, I'm not, you know, making any promises, but I could certainly go check it out. And if it works out, who knows?” I shook my head. I could hardly believe it. “I love you,” I said. He smiled. “Right back at ya, babe.”

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Epilogue Six months later

I unlocked the door to my apartment and went inside. I found Harry on my couch, arguing with someone on the phone. He was wearing a suit and looking as handsome as ever. He grinned at me when our eyes met, but he didn't change his tone with the caller. “That's ridiculous,” he said. “No one's going to pay that price, not in this economy. Come on, Alexei. How long have we known each other? You're always telling me I'm your best customer. The new restaurant being in New York is not a reason to price gouge. Because I can get a better deal somewhere else.” He waited while the person on the other end said something. “That's more like it,” he said. “It's a deal. I'll call you first thing in the morning.” When he hung up, I walked over to the couch and sat next to him. I fell into his arms and said, “Hello, handsome.” “Hello, yourself. How was work?” Work was, and had been, fine. Mostly. When I got back from Tampa, I'd been fearing the worst, either that I'd get fired for breaking protocol during the investigation into Josh's death or that Caffity would have told the whole precinct that I was gay. That struck me as being worse, because then I'd catch hell from everyone and not just my lieutenant. I went into Caffity's office first thing on the first day back at work and sat across the desk from him, bracing myself against that uncomfortable chair. He'd cut right to the chase and said, “I'm not happy with how this played out. You should have been upfront with me.” “I know, sir,” I'd said, “but—” He'd held up his hand. “I've been thinking about this. You should have taken yourself off the case, but I thought to myself, if it had been my wife who had been shot, I would have wanted in on that investigation too. So what you did was wrong, but I understand why you did it.”

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“It was never my intention to keep secrets from you,” I'd said. “I didn't want it to come out this way either. But you know how cops are, and I never thought what I did outside this precinct was relevant.” Quietly Caffity had said, “It's our secret. So long as this never happens again. If you ever walk into a case where you have a personal relationship with the victim, you remove yourself from the case immediately. I won't tell anyone here you're…you know. I completely understand why you wouldn't want that information to get out.” “Thank you, sir,” I'd said, not sure he did understand. Our relationship was strained for a while after that, but he'd started coming around again once I got back into the flow of working. We handled a high-profile case well together, and I seemed to be back on his good side. My personal life became a “don't ask, don't tell” situation. I couldn't decide if this was a relief or a frustration. Meanwhile Harry bounced between Tampa and New York. Actually the day after Reyes made the deal, we got on a flight to California and spent four days in San Francisco. We spent most of our time making love in our hotel room, but occasionally we made our way into the outside world for some really good dinners. Once I even let Harry take me dancing. He followed me back to New York and stayed for a couple of days at the end of my mandatory vacation period, long enough to attend some meetings about his potential new restaurant, before he flew back to Florida. It made for an interesting way to ease into a relationship. We'd spent the first two weeks we'd known each other together almost constantly, and then suddenly I had to do without him for weeks at a time. But as the months went on, he started spending more time in New York than Tampa, to the point where he'd basically moved into my apartment. I can't say I minded much. Reyes made his deal with the DA and would be spending the next five to ten years in prison. Ortiz hadn't been tried yet, but Ruiz told me Reyes's testimony should be sufficient to put him away for a while. If anything, Ortiz was implicated in the deaths of Horatio Alvarez and Mariana and Filipe Reyes, the kidnapping of Harrison Knowles, and his goons were responsible for a handful of gunshot wounds suffered by the Tampa police and yours truly. And all this didn't even scratch the surface of the drug trafficking Ortiz was involved with. His getting himself implicated in this particular investigation allowed the police to obtain

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warrants to search property owned by Ortiz that no one had been able to search before, and cops in Tampa, Orlando, and Miami dug up a lot of shit on Ortiz. He was involved with some truly terrifying men, just to begin with, but the Miami PD, it turned out, had been trying to find a way to cut off Ortiz's supply for years. Ruiz told me that the stuff they were unearthing now was just a drop in the bucket, that what had started as a little kidnapping case had blown open Pandora's box. Part of me wanted a piece of that action, but I knew better too. It wasn't anywhere near my jurisdiction, and more to the point, I had Harry, which was all I'd really wanted when I got involved in the case to begin with. Ruiz and McKutcheon promised to call me with regular updates, so I stayed in the loop that way. It was likely I'd be called as a witness at Ortiz's trial as well, but I figured I'd deal with that when the time came. Either way I was back in New York, where I felt I belonged. I caught a couple of interesting cases that ate up a lot of my time, but I was working on making the balance of work and my personal life seem a little more even, especially when Harry was in town. Harry, for his part, was supportive in ways that went above and beyond what could have been expected. When he started spending more time in my apartment, I started taking down the old photos of Josh, but he insisted that I keep at least one. I did leave out a photo of me and Josh standing, arms around each other, on the top of Mount Washington. It sat on a shelf on one of the bookcases in my living room, there but not in anyone's line of sight unless they went looking for it. Then one weekend when I was feeling especially blue, Harry drove my car out to the cemetery in Westchester where Josh was buried, and he stood at a distance when I sat down across from the headstone. I sat there for probably half an hour and told Josh everything. Told him about me and Harry, about how I'd found the way to live again. I felt some guilt even, like I was betraying Josh by falling in love again, but just sitting there on the grass, knowing Harry was nearby, I felt a strange serenity wash over me, and I knew that, wherever he was, Josh was looking down on me and applauding how I'd gotten on with my life. I did have a bad moment on the second anniversary of Josh's death. I knew it would be bad and warned Harry to stay out of town, but he came anyway. I spent most of the day in bed crying. It was really not a good scene, and Harry kept his distance but stayed in the apartment, leaving me to my grief, but there if I needed him. I told him afterward that it didn't seem fair to

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expect him to take care of me when I was sobbing over the lover who had come before him, but he just smiled at me and told me he loved me and he wanted to help me move on. So I took it one day at a time. I had bad days every now and then, but the good days outnumbered them. I'm not sure that I can completely take credit for Harry's increased presence in New York. I'm sure I was part of the city's appeal, but he also stumbled into a dream opportunity running a new restaurant with a lot of buzz. I don't know how he did it, but he got an up-and-coming chef who was already gaining a reputation for innovation and creativity; then he found this hotshot mixologist to head up the bar, and a week before the place was set to open, he already had a long list of reservations. So when I came home from work that day, he was sitting on my couch in a suit, making finishing touches. I hadn't known he was coming, so it was a pleasant surprise to find out that I wouldn't be spending the night alone. He kissed me and asked me again how work was. “Okay,” I said. And things were getting better. “I'm getting a new partner, a guy who was Chicago PD, just moved to New York.” My old partner and I had suddenly stopped getting along, so it was just as well. He'd been promoted out of the precinct a few weeks before. I strongly suspected that he'd found out somehow that I was gay, and he'd agitated for the promotion to get away from me more than he really wanted to move up through the rank and file of the NYPD. If that were really the case, good riddance. This new guy sounded promising. He'd be new and different, anyway. Turned out that new and different sometimes agreed with me. “Interesting,” said Harry. He looked thoughtful, but then he smiled and said, “I just got a good deal on the plates I wanted.” I smiled. “Excellent. I wasn't expecting to see you tonight.” “Last-minute meeting with one of the investors. I didn't know about it until this morning. I thought about calling you after I booked my flight, but then I thought it might be more fun to surprise you.” I kissed him. “It's a good surprise.”

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“So I was thinking,” he said. “The investor I met with today suggested I try this restaurant on Twenty-first Street. Scope out the competition a little. It's allegedly the new hot place to eat. You want to go out?” I'm ashamed to say I hesitated. Most of Twenty-first Street was in my precinct and in the heart of gay Chelsea. The thought passed through my brain that I might run into someone I knew. Then I thought, fuck it. I couldn't live half a life, always worried that someone at work would find out this deep, dark secret that wasn't even that deep or dark. I knew also that this was part of Harry's life, trying new restaurants, looking at the competition, schmoozing and talking to people. Plus he just loved being out, loved fine food and fine wine; he loved dancing and striking up conversations with random strangers. If I wanted him to be a part of my life, then I needed to be a part of his. “Yeah,” I said finally. “Let's go out.”

Kate McMurray Kate has been writing since she could hold a pen. She’s a nonfiction editor by day. Among other things, Kate is crafty (mostly knitting and sewing, but she also wields power tools), she plays the violin, and she dabbles in various other pursuits. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.