Lovers and Other Strangers by Josh Lanyon Recovering from a near fatal accident, artist Finn Barret returns to Seal Island in Maine to rest and recuperate. But Seal Island is haunted with memories, some sweet, some sad; three years ago Finn found his lover in the arms of Fitch, Finn’s twin brother. Since that day, Finn has seen neither Conlan nor Fitch. In fact, no one has seen Fitch. What happened to him? Did Fitch run away, as everyone believes? Or did he meet a more sinister fate? To put the past to rest – and see if there’s any chance of a future with Con – Finn must discover the truth. But the deeper he digs, the more reason he has to fear Con is the only one who knows what truly happened to Fitch…

Body Art by Jordan Castillo Price His lover has betrayed and swindled Ray Carlucci out of everything he valued, including a tattoo business. Hounded by creditors, weary of heart, he accepts the job of chauffeur and body man for the dying owner of a remote estate. The island, minus its wealthy summer colony, is colorless in winter and Ray thinks he understands why staff on the estate periodically desert. But, he’s baffled by, then drawn to, Anton, the eccentric artist who haunts the forest, bringing strange life to bizarre and disquieting sculptures amidst the ice and trees. When the body of a man who once held Ray’s job rises from the frosty earth, Ray wonders what part Anton’s wildness has in the escalating violence.

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Chapter One

If he had been painting the scene before him, he would have used only four colors: Permanent Rose alkyd for the pink streaks in the fading sunset and the reflections in the water; Dioxazine Purple alkyd for the shadows lengthening on the creamy sand, the crevices of the rocks, the glint and gleam of water, the edges of the pier; Cadmium Yellow alkyd to blaze from windows, for the dimples in the sand, to limn the rocks, to gild the tips of scrubby, windblown grass, more reflections in the water; Indigo oil for the tumbling waves, for the indistinct forms of the buildings beyond, for the swift coming night.

For the first time in weeks, Finn felt the desire to take a palette knife and mix color, to pick up a brush and try to capture what he saw. For the first time in weeks, he felt a flicker of something close to interest, to emotion.

Maybe it was the salt air, maybe it was the cold – the briny wind whipping off the ocean stung his face – maybe it was the smell of wood smoke with all the warm memories it conjured. Or the cries of the gulls, the slap of the waves, the mingled fragrance of pipe smoke and car exhaust as he waited in the old station wagon for Hiram to carry his bags from the dock. Maybe it was all these things.

But it was the color he felt most intensely. Luminous color seeping into his consciousness, the hues and values, the shadows and lights, the dull tones, the vibrant – he was waking up. It was not a comfortable process, and Finn huddled deeper into his leather jacket.

Hiram strode to the car and threw Finn’s bags in the back. Coming around to the front, he climbed in behind the wheel. Starting the engine, he glanced briefly at Finn as he backed the car, narrowly missing a leaning tower of stacked lobster traps.

“Guess it looks pretty different after all this time?”

Seal Island didn’t look different at all in the purple dusk, but Finn said, “Three years is a long time.”

“Ay-yup,” Hiram said. “Your uncle Thomas is going to be happy as a clam at high tide to see you.”

Finn’s smile twisted. Everyone was being very kind. Especially considering what a pain in the ass he was to show up with almost no warning.

The station wagon crunched its way slowly over sand and shale, past the shadowy buildings and boats, the faded, peeling signs.

“‘Course Thomas is in France right now. Some art show or another.”

Finn murmured something. He didn’t need to say anything. Hiram was happy to fill in all the blanks. There were a lot of blanks after so long.

“Martha’s arthritis is giving her heck. Well, we’re all gettin’ older. Mr. Peabody’s gone now. Pneumonia. Last month. Miz Landy took over the general store.”

The car reached the surfaced road that ran around the island – smoother in some places than others. By now the amethyst dusk was falling back before the onslaught of night. Finn felt tension growing inside, his stomach knotting up with his fists. It was irrational. Irritating. Fear of the dark? At his age? It was cold, though – bitingly. After a short battle with himself, he reached for the rough plaid car blanket that smelled of a million journeys and spread it over his left leg, which had started aching.

“Not used to the cold anymore,” he muttered, but Hiram took no notice, still palavering about people and things Finn had stopped caring about – tried to stop caring about – a long time ago. Ay-yup, what a pleasant surprise – shock, translated Finn – it had been to hear from Finn. Martha had been in a twitter ever since she got his message. And what a surprise Thomas had waiting for him when he got home. What a surprise it was going to be for everyone.

Finn almost asked then. But it was too much effort, and he wasn’t sure even now he could take the answer, so he smiled politely and stared out the window as though he had newly arrived from another planet, which was pretty much how it felt.

Stands of pine trees stood stark and sharp against the dusk as the car climbed slowly, winding up through the rolling hills. The pines looked black against the lowering sky, but that was an illusion. He’d start with a sketch, using a No. 0 watercolor brush. For the sky and water, he’d use a blend of Cadmium Yellow Medium, Cadmium Red Light, and Titanium White. For the upper sky, he’d choose French Ultramarine, Dioxazine Purple and more Titanium White…

White.

He had a sudden recollection of blazing white walls and the sun bouncing off pale sand – too much light, and a brightness that hurt the eyes. The white beneath a silent gull’s wingspan, the white of the craggy clouds, the white of the tiny wildflowers growing beside the white speckled stone walls.

The lighthouse was on the other side of the island. No need to see it at all if he didn’t choose to – and why the hell would he ever want to see it again?

Hiram was saying, “Miz Estelle won first prize at Union Fair for her wild blueberry sour cream cake.”

Finn felt an unexpected twinge of hunger. “I still remember those cinnamon-sugar biscuits she used to make.”

The old man nodded in heartfelt agreement.

The car turned off the main road and ground its way up the steep last stretch. The house was called The Birches. One of those charming turn-of-the-century, ten-bedroom “cottages,” it stood in a grove of white birches overlooking Otter Cove. Green lawns swept down to the rocks at the water’s edge, ancient, gently tilting pines framed sunsets so beautiful they made the heart ache. In the failing light, the house looked eerily untouched by time.

Hiram pulled up in front of the long front porch. Lights shone welcomingly from several downstairs windows.

“Ain’t no place like home,” he said, and Finn made a sound in his throat that was supposed to be humor but wasn’t.

Hiram got out of the car. The front door of the house flew open, and Martha came bustling down the shell-strewn path as Finn climbed carefully out of the station wagon. Tears glittered on Martha’s wrinkled cheeks, and she hugged him tight, pulling him to her ample bosom like he was a child again.

“Look at you, you young rascal!”

Finn didn’t have to do much more than smile and permit himself to be hugged again; Martha was doing all the talking – although afterward he had no idea of anything she’d said. He was literally overwhelmed with memories and unwelcome emotion.

Hiram went to get the bags, and Finn was being urged inside the house to warmth and comfort – the prodigal returned. By then he was exhausted. He should have brought the cane; he was hobbling badly, not used to walking any distance yet, and the plane flight and boat ride not helping any. Maybe he was more crocked up than he wanted to admit – he was certainly in more pain.

The house smelled familiar. It smelled of baking and wood fire – and the invariable ghostly hint of oil paint, although it had been decades since anyone in the house painted with oils. It smelled like his childhood: safe and warm and loved. He stared curiously as he was hustled past a familiar painted chest, wing chairs upholstered in pale gray roses, white bookcases, well-remembered paintings. It felt odd to see these things again – like he was visiting a museum.

Ushered into the kitchen, he was ensconced in the old rocker and ordered to stay put near the enormous gas stove where Martha had cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the Barrets for the past thirty years. That suited him fine. Gave him a chance to catch his breath and get control of himself.

Martha and Hiram conferred outside briefly – he could imagine how that went – and then Martha was inside the kitchen and chattering a mile a minute, banging pots and pans around to relieve her feelings.

Finn eyed her curiously from the perspective of his years away. She was in her late sixties now, a small, very plump woman with silky white hair – it had been white since her early thirties – and soft dark eyes. Something about her had always reminded him of a dove, though doves were fairly stupid birds and Martha was a far-from-stupid woman.

“Now that you’ve been living in New York, I suppose you won’t be happy with fiddleheads and potatoes anymore? It’ll be fancy curries and nouveau cuisine you’re used to, I reckon.”

Finn laughed – he lived on peanut butter sandwiches half the time – and said, “I haven’t had a decent bowl of chowdah since I left here.”

She stopped chattering then, coming to him, putting her hands on either side of his head. She turned his face to the light, examining him closely. The only damage that showed was the one scar – still healing – on his temple. What didn’t show was the horrific long gash from his hip to the middle of his calf. Torn muscles, damaged nerves, but oddly no broken bones. He had been left with one hell of an ugly seam down his leg, but he knew how lucky he had been. And aside from the scars, he was going to be as good as new eventually. That was why he had to stop dwelling on the might-have-beens. The close call didn’t matter, because he was going to be all right – as soon as the headaches stopped.

Martha was staring into his eyes as though trying to read his mind. He blinked up at her, and her eyes filled with tears again. She kissed him – something he couldn’t remember her doing since he had been very small. She was clearly horrified at herself. Not as horrified as he was, though – not that she had kissed him, but that he had been so moved, his throat closed and he had to look away.

It was only for an instant. Nothing more than the aftermath of the accident – and probably his meds. It did something to you, nearly dying. And dying sometimes felt like the least of it.

“Your uncle Thomas will be here tonight,” she said.

That snapped him out of his self-consciousness. “Uncle Tom? I thought…”

“Why, I phoned him the minute I heard from you,” Martha said a little defiantly – because Finn had expressly told her not to bother Thomas. “Of course he’d want to know! Of course he’s coming home. And while I’m thinking of it, that friend of yours phoned up. Mr. Ryder. He’s coming day after tomorrow.”

The funny thing about the spell the island cast, the silken weave of childhood memories, was that he’d already forgotten he’d asked Paul to come along and lend moral support. Now he wondered why. Paul was going to be a fish out of water here, and Finn was going to have to expend energy he didn’t have in trying to keep him amused. Paul took a lot of amusing.

He brooded over this while Martha rattled cheerfully on, finally surfacing to hear her say, “…Barnaby Purdon retired from school teaching.”

“Do he and Uncle Tom still get together to play checkers once a week?”

“Every Wednesday when your uncle is here. What else? Oh, Miss Minton took first place at Union Fair for her wild blueberry sour cream cake.”

“I heard that. Is she still taking painting lessons from Uncle Tom?”

“No. No, she gave up on that idea. Your uncle Tom doesn’t teach anymore, you know. Too busy judging art shows and writing his books.”

She brought him a mug of coffee. Finn took the yellow cup, sipping cautiously. It was boiling hot, but creamy and sweet – the way he had liked it when he was a kid. Creamy and sweet – and spiked with something.

“What’s in this?” he asked. “I’m on pain pills, you know.” In fact, he urgently needed medicating. His back was beginning to ache – his leg never quite stopped – and his head was starting up again despite the muted light and warmth.

“A little something to warm your bones,” Martha told him. “It won’t do you any harm. Might put a little color in your face.”

Finn raised his brows but kept drinking. It was good. Martha’s version of an Irish coffee perhaps. All at once he was so tired he thought he might fall asleep at the fireside wrapped like an ancient granny in these cedar-scented blankets. Martha chattered comfortably on about this and that person, the changes he would soon see in the island – and of course, in Martha’s view, none of the changes were for the better.

He smiled to himself and sipped his coffee.

His smiled faded as she said, “Mr. Carlyle has a new book coming out.”

She was not looking at him, which was just as well, since he couldn’t think of anything to say.

“He’s not here now. He was in England for the six months doing research for the one he’s writing now. It’s supposed to be a murder mystery about the princes in the Tower. And then he went on a book tour for the last one. It’s hard to keep ‘em all straight. I don’t expect we’ll see him back till next month sometime.”

That was a relief. More than he wanted to concede. “I’ll be long gone by then.” His voice came out flat.

Martha still didn’t look at him. “Well…that’s all right so long as you don’t take three years to visit again.”

She spoke cheerfully, but he could hear the strain and knew that he had to make the effort. For his own sake, if nothing else. Had to prove that he could say it and not…well, what? That he had moved past it. That it was over and done with, chapter closed. Not forgiven, not forgotten…but old history. Con should appreciate that.

So he said, “How’s Fitch?”

And after a funny little pause, Martha said, as though the name were unfamiliar to her, “Fitch?”

“Is he…?” He tried to make his voice light, but he was never good at that kind of thing. Fitch was the old pro at games and deceiving. “Are he and Con… Did they… Are they still together?”

“Fitch and…Mr. Carlyle?” She said it almost wonderingly.

Finn remembered belatedly that this was a small island, a backwoods sort of place really, and that while a romantic relationship between two men might be silently tolerated and civilly ignored, it was never going to be openly acknowledged and condoned. But his nerves were on edge, he was tired and much more raw than he had realized; he simply blurted out, “Or did he split?”

Martha said, “Didn’t Fitch come to you in New York?”

“Come to me?” That made him blink. What a funny idea – but maybe not so funny, because Fitch wouldn’t see what he had done wrong, would he? He would expect to be forgiven as he always was by his – his words – better half.

“Didn’t Fitch follow you to New York?” asked Martha again, and she was staring at him hard now, as though only realizing that something was very wrong. But Fitch had always been her favorite. Fitch was everyone’s favorite for all he shocked and appalled people with his outrageous – but God, yes, funny – antics. The things he did and said. It was impossible not to love Fitch.

Even when you hated him.

Finn said, “He didn’t follow me to New York.”

Had that been Fitch’s intention? Had better sense prevailed? It must have hurt Fitch too; he must have felt the same persistent ache that was almost physical pain, the pain of being cut off from your other half. A phantom pain, like losing a limb. It had never happened to them before: a break so deep, so wide, there was no bridging it. Oh, they had fought, fallen out – what brothers didn’t quarrel? Finn had always forgiven Fitch, because…he loved him. And he couldn’t do without him. Until he could.

Until Con.

Because there was no forgiving that. Con had been different.

Not that Con wasn’t every bit as much to blame.

But then Finn hadn’t forgiven Con either. Never would.

Anyway, it was a long time ago. He was never going to see Con again. So what did it matter? As for seeing Fitch…he had always accepted that Fitch knew how seriously he had transgressed, because he hadn’t followed his twin to New York.

And that was just as well, because as lonely as he had been, there was no forgiveness in Finn.

Not then. Maybe not ever. Something had died in Finn that summer. That last day of summer.

But now he sat in the kitchen of the house he had grown up in, the home he had shared for twenty-three years with his twin. Slowly, he worked it out, tried to absorb what it meant. He said, “Fitch isn’t here?”

And Martha shook her head slowly, her bright, birdlike eyes wide.

Reading her expression, Finn smiled reassurance, because it seemed ridiculous – like they were talking at cross purposes and they would soon realize what the other actually meant. In a moment they would laugh as the misunderstanding was straightened out. “You mean no one’s seen him since…?”

“No.”

“No?” He took it in slowly, absorbing it much like the heat soaking into his chilled body or the alcohol wending its way through his bloodstream – a gradual realization that he was warm and tipsy and…alone in the world.

He said carefully, “No one has seen or spoken to Fitch in three years?”

“No.” And Martha looked…frightened. It was her fear that woke Finn to the belated realization that his twin brother was missing.

“Come here, Huckleberry,” Con murmured. His pale hair was wet and dripping from their swim, his bare brown skin shining in the sun. His dark eyes laughed into Finn’s, and his mouth – covering Finn’s – was sweet with the taste of the berries. His skin smelled like the sun and clean sweat and deep water.

From overhead came a burst of laughter -

A hand on Finn’s shoulder woke him. He jerked, opened his eyes, and his uncle Thomas was gazing down him. Uncle Tom was smiling, but his eyes were grave.

“Welcome home, Finn.”

“Hi,” Finn said. It was probably a little anticlimactic after three years, but he was fogged from sleep, disoriented to suddenly find himself in the kitchen at The Birches. He straightened, wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I must have fallen asleep.”

Martha chuckled, although her voice had that strained note again. “Sleep is exactly what you need!”

“Sounds good to me,” Uncle Thomas said, sounding and looking weary. He was tall and very thin with the bony features and red-brown hair that distinguished the Barrets from the rest of the small population of Seal Island. Now in his sixties, he was going silver at the temples, which perfectly suited his image as an esteemed art critic.

“I didn’t intend for you to be dragged home from Paris,” Finn apologized.

His uncle was looking at him as though he were speaking a foreign language. Translation having failed, Uncle Thomas said, “Martha told me about your accident. Said you insisted you didn’t want anyone there at the hospital. You’re all right?”

“A few bumps and bruises.”

“Well, you’re staying here till you’re back on your feet.”

Finn chuckled. “I’m on my feet now.” Or he would be if he could unfold from this rocker without landing on his face.

“You know what I mean.” Uncle Thomas said it firmly; that was the polite fiction they had all played. That Uncle Thomas was actually in charge. He had been, at best, an absentminded guardian, but he was fond of them in his own way, and Finn and Fitch had certainly never lacked for anything growing up. Well, possibly attention. But then they had always had each other, so nothing else really mattered.

“Yes,” Finn said. “Thank you.”

“This is your home,” Martha said sharply. Both men looked at her, having forgotten for a second that she was in the room, and she blushed. But she said stubbornly, “It’s not right, you and Fitch gone all these years and never coming back for so much as a visit.”

“Now, Martha,” Uncle Thomas said in his easy way. “He’s here now.” To Finn he said, “It’s too late for talk tonight. We’ll catch up in the morning. Did you need some help getting to bed?”

“I’m okay. Is it really that late?” Finn looked automatically for the old wall clock, shaped like a ship’s wheel, but it was gone, replaced by an efficient and modern titanium square.

“Nearly midnight,” Uncle Thomas said. “I meant to be here much earlier, but my flight was delayed.”

Nearly midnight? Could that be right? Could he really have been sleeping for over six hours? “Hell. You really shouldn’t have dropped everything to come home for this.” Finn was growing more awkward by the minute. “I didn’t mean to disrupt everyone’s life. I just…”

Just needed time to rest and recover. Time to come to terms with how close he had been to dying. To losing everything. Time to regain his strength and natural optimism; he was still astonishingly, aggravatingly weak. In fact, as he forced himself up out of the comfortable rocker, he was made painfully aware of how feeble he still was.

“Nonsense,” Uncle Thomas and Martha both said – and then looked at each other.

Martha said, “But you’ve neither of you had any supper.”

“I ate on the flight,” Uncle Thomas said, which happily distracted her while Finn stood swaying, biting his lip against the myriad aches and pangs and throbs.

Uncle Thomas said with unexpected determination, “I think I’ll give you a hand upstairs anyway.”

Finn nodded. No point pretending he didn’t need it. Uncle Thomas wrapped a strong arm around his waist, and Finn hung on to him as Martha bade them good night.

“I’m stiff from sitting so long.” Finn explained as they passed slowly through the hall with its lilac sprig wallpaper. “I really am fine now.”

“Of course you are. You’ll be working again in no time.”

Ah. Of course. In this house, the work was paramount. Well, it was to Finn too.

They crossed the dining room with the long formal table and harp-backed chairs where they had all eaten dinner when his grandfather was alive, across the back hallway, and then up the narrow staircase with the gleaming banisters Finn recalled sliding down as a child. Or was it Fitch who had slid down the banisters and Finn who watched? Sometimes it was hard to separate Fitch’s adventures from his own memories.

Uncle Thomas’s voice jarred him out of his preoccupation. “Martha said your friend was killed in the accident.”

Finn nodded tightly.

“Was he…was your friend…?”

Uncle Thomas floundered awkwardly, and Finn said, “He was a friend, that’s all. A good friend. He yanked the wheel at the last minute so that his side of the car took the worst of it.”

The stairs seemed to take forever. Finn could have cried in gratitude by the time they reached the upper landing – then the final leg to his old room, the room that had been his since his teens. Fitch’s room was on the other side of the adjoining black-and-white checked bath.

There was no sign of Finn’s bags, but his pajama bottoms and robe were lain across the foot of the dark wood sleigh bed. He bit back a tired smile. Martha would have unpacked while he slept downstairs. There was no privacy in this house. Lucky thing Finn had no secrets. Not anymore.

Uncle Thomas helped him undress. It was embarrassing, but Finn really was exhausted beyond action now. With his uncle’s help, he pulled on knit sleep pants – and though the older man said nothing, Finn saw his face tighten up at the terrifying scar down the left side of Finn’s body. One inch more, and Finn would have died with Tristan.

“You won’t be warm enough like that,” Uncle Thomas said. “You’ve forgotten how cold the winters are here. I’ll get you one of my pajama tops.”

He was gone down the hallway, and Finn sat looking around the room. Once again he had that weird sensation of looking at an exhibit in a museum. Books and model ships… He stared at the framed photographs on the bookshelves: pictures of himself and Fitch sailing and climbing and fishing and swimming. A skinny eleven-year-old Fitch’s arm looped around his neck in a friendly choke hold, himself giving the eighteen-year-old Fitch an impromptu piggyback. People said they couldn’t be told apart, but Finn never had to wonder who was who in the pictures – not even in the earliest photographs of them.

Uncle Thomas returned with a striped flannel pajama shirt, and Finn shrugged into it, did up the buttons.

“Is it true Fitch left the island when I did?” he asked, eyes on the buttonholes.

“Yes.”

“And no one’s heard of him since?”

“I don’t think that’s so surprising,” Uncle Thomas said grimly. Finn wasn’t exactly sure what he meant. Surely no one knew the full story of what had happened that day? But he was too tired to question.

He crawled into bed, rediscovering the pleasure of clean flannel sheets that smelled faintly of the crisp ocean breeze. Stretching out gingerly, his spine seemed to unkink like a Slinky. He was astonished when his uncle shook the folds out of the quilt at the foot of the bed and spread it over him.

“Good night,” he said politely, wondering if he was about to be tucked in and kissed.

He was spared that much. The bedside lamp went out, and his uncle said quietly, “Good night, Finn. I’m glad you’ve come home.” He went out. The door closed silently behind him, shutting Finn into the darkness.

His heart began to pound, turning over sickly in his chest. Finn waited, sweat breaking out along his hairline as he listened. Through the dormer windows, he could see the mutable darkness that was the sea; stars glittered on the waves, pinpoints of light.

No need for panic. There was plenty of light. Moonlight, starlight, reflected light…

His uncle’s footsteps died away down the hallway. Finn sat up and turned on the lamp.

He relaxed, let out a long breath. In the mellow glow, the books and toys of his childhood looked very old, very fragile.

He stared at the photos of his cheekily grinning twin and whispered, “Where are you, Fitch?”

They have the entire day set aside for us, so please drop by and chat for a bit. There will be plenty of excerpts from new releases and some soon-to-be released stories as well. Probably even a few old but still fabulous stories, too. Stop by any time. Stay as long or as short as you can. Authors will be popping in and out all day.

Over what can love and lust win? Can they win over betrayal? Espionage? Instability? Overthrowing a monarchy? James Buchanan and Jason Edding bring us two stories spanning the universe. Jason continues the Dark Robe Society’s story; Jack and Edge return and bring each other and us to the edge again while Toren and Tees share more than a common goal. James introduces us to Alad and Hirah, both out searching for something when they meet, are they the end of searching for each other? All the heroes are on an edge, but is it The Edge of Desperation?

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18:65hours army-standard

Gray mist undulated around him and Alad hunkered into his greatcoat, cursing the government, the military, the enemy, religion and pretty much anyone else he could blame for stranding him on this rock in the skanky armpit of the far side of the universe. He’d beg for sun, but none existed here, at least not in this season. Perpetual overcast served up with sides of absolute darkness and intermittent twilight haunted his days. He’d be so stoked when he found a ride off this shit-pit.

Alad stepped from slick twisted root to twisted root, a winding, treacherous and living shortcut from one ramshackle walkway to another. Things slithered through the oily water below. Tumbledown bars, whorehouses and low rent lodgings twisted off in dizzying directions, their location due more to where infrequent patches of solid land could be found than actual planning. All of it castoff MDU and MTO prefabs destined for the scrap heap, salvaged and pressed into service to make up the eyesore known as Desperation Alley—the no-man’s land between base and the up-rank civilian settlements. Missing panels patched by biopolymer sheets added off-color dissonance to the grays and muted blue buildings. Shadows flitted behind window openings covered with NatuResin tarps. Here and there, outmoded and damaged shipping containers served as pod barracks: racks of one-bod and two-bod bunks bracketed floor to ceiling for those too drunk or burning to stumble back to base.

Above him, a canopy of steel blue foliage almost three stadion deep hid the makers of all the various scurrying sounds. Large trunks, bleached white by the salts sucked up through the water, supported networks of vines and explosions of flora in colors the human eye couldn’t even register. The whole planet washed out into a charcoal rendering of actual living things. Rotting organic material tainted the air with an ever present miasma of decay. Yesterday was spent searching for companies that would have him and his men. The standard hours akin to daylight today dwindled away in the same futile quest and Alad figured tomorrow would dawn on him humping his ass to various commands. Not even a hint of a future appointment graced his horizon. If he didn’t land something soon, well he’d have no choice but to tell his men to split up, try to find a rack on their own with some squad down a couple of grunts. Trying to place an entire patrol… hard didn’t begin to encompass the problem. Xosh, at this point if some other sergeant expressed interest in his boys, Alad would have gladly let them go on without him.

He’d traded half a month’s pay off the bar-code scan in his forearm for a third of a month’s pay in local trade chits on the black-market. Alad needed them to buy off information brokers in the cumshaw data pool. Really, if he hadn’t needed any lead possible, there was no way he’d step into Desperation Alley right now. All the good tips though, they came out of the scuttlebutt haze floating through taprooms, dice dens and sex parlors.

Alad stepped onto the plank walkway that comprised the misnamed Mandera Blossom Highway and huffed. Various beings, each more disreputable than the next, passed him. Alad debated whether to start the search first or fortify himself with the local version of rot-gut to file the edge off the eventual disappointment. Shoving his hands into the pocket of his greatcoat, he stepped into the flow of traffic and let it sweep him towards the quasi-legal establishments.

Heading toward him and away from Desperation Alley, Alad caught sight of another human. Not that humans were uncommon in this area—pisk, they made up sixty percent of the military troops in the region—but by now most were stationed on bar stools or slop shop benches and planning the night’s entertainment.

This guy seemed different. Tall, whip crack lean, his shoulders rolled in a resigned, but still defiant, manner. Black hair shorn in military fashion, longish on top, but buzzed so short it barely rated as fuzz in a halo from above his ears to his neck line, marked him as infantry—what they called the collar cut so that neck armor wouldn’t rub. It set off features so sharp a man could cut himself on his chin. His eyes damn near glowed blue-white like eons old ice flows. All the more striking when contrasted with the cinnamon tones of his skin. A cold and reserved air blew off the man… must have been what kept his pupils from melting.

Alad hadn’t seen anything that enticing in six patrols.

Waffling, unsure, he paused. He couldn’t let his troops down, but xosh, it’d been almost a cycle since Alad allowed himself any real R&R. A little booze-up followed by a little naked bust-up, Alad got hard just working the possibility. The man approached, completely absorbed in whatever drove him from the Alley. Three steps. Two steps. If Alad didn’t act soon opportunity would pass him up. As the man started to walk by, Alad decided; he jerked to the side and bumped the man’s shoulder. The man stumbled on the slick planks, running up onto the roots of one of the many Handoatoa trees.

“Sorry,” Alad mumbled, even though he wasn’t a bit remorseful, and offered a hand.

The indignation boiling through those ice blue eyes radiated such frost it burned. After glaring for a moment, the man took the proffered grip and allowed Alad to help him back onto the walkway. Everything from about mid-thigh down dripped water. Shudo! Alad had forgotten that Handoatoa tended to act like sponges and purged sucked up swamp at the slightest bruise.

“You need to watch where you walk,” the man spat, “subin!”

No telling who this man was. His bearing, even under insufferable circumstances of being knocked into morass of vomited up swamp water, spoke to rank. Nobody however, except the greenest of the green, wore their confetti into Desperation Alley. Too much of a chance someone would roll you for the decorations. Unwritten protocol dictated that no one asked who was who, either. The most anyone traded over was a first name.

“Yeah, I’m clumsy.” He grimaced in mock apology. “Alad,” offering up his name as greeting equaled the first tentative step. “Let me buy you a drink to apologize for the damp boots,” made up the second.

A hard once over ran up and down Alad’s body, those ice colored eyes somehow burning into his gut. “A drink?” This time the words sounded more incredulous than antagonistic. The guy’s nostrils flared as if taking in Alad’s scent. As the air moved, a slight fluttering of the skin on the right side of the man’s nose caught his attention. Xosh, a notch had been cut out of the nasal fold. Alad shivered despite the greatcoat.

Still, the black haired soldier—Alad knew he was a soldier—reeked sex… or maybe fight-lust. Both equaled about the same to Alad. “Yeah, a drink.” Pretending indifference, Alad turned his eyes away. He drew in a deep breath, touched his index finger to his left cheek and slowly brushed it toward his ear. “To apologize for being… clumsy.” The thumb up the bridge of your nose meant you were indiscriminate about your choice of partners. Pinky on your right eye and you wanted the opposite sex. Alad had indicated he wouldn’t be opposed to a hookup with this man, in a way that let everyone pretend nobody suggested anything about sex. Nobody cared about your choice in partners. Saving face in the event of a refusal though, everybody cared about that.

Slowly he eased his gaze back toward the man with the thick black hair. The guy huffed. Alad waited for a signal. Yeah, the guy was leaving Desperation Alley, but hope sprung eternal. Alad also realized he shouldn’t be putting his dick ahead of his boys. Pisk, though, he’d been stumping for days to get placements. Blowing off some juice would help his concentration.

As Black Hair raised his left hand, Alad stepped back and sucked in his breath. The correct hand, but xosh, the man’s pinky and ring finger both were severed at the first joint. Not that Alad hadn’t seen a freighter load of combat wounds. These seemed different somehow; clean cuts, but like they hadn’t healed right. And something that could take off the first joint of the pinky would have clipped the other finger off at the knuckle, so it wasn’t a frag grenade, spinner round or other mechanical mayhem.

Black Hair’s eyes went wide and Alad blinked. He didn’t even have time to register why when a large form slammed into him from the side. His boot skidded on the wet walk despite its grip treads. Alad stumbled. Twisting, he lurched away from the massive ungulate before it ran him over completely. Alad jumped again to avoid a tail swipe, and bumped into another being.

He looked up. Just blast him back to last pay cycle and let him start over. Hazy blue mottled skin, receding thick lipped jaw and nasal folds that covered half the face in snot: Nofre. A yanked, insulted Nofre at that. Of course Nofre were insulted that other beings existed—running into one boded well for a fight.

The Nofre’s two tongues wandered out from between his lips and explored each nostril. He reached out with a thick fingered paw and thumped Alad in the center of his chest. “You pushed me.” The thing’s accent fell so thick Alad could hardly understand it.

Alad stepped back, hands held forward in pacifying manner. “A thousand apologies.” Not that he thought that he owed the Nofre one apology much less a thousand. But reasoning with them was like wanking off to Hesloid porn, never did you a bit of good. “Didn’t mean to.” Nofre were easy to anger, always up for a brawl and harder to put down than an armored transport.

One of the Nofre’s companions, with a deep blue stripe tattooed across his epicanthic ridges and, if anything, bigger than the first, shuffled around towards Alad’s flank. “You did it on purpose.” Another, with a ragged scar cutting across an already flayed face moved off to the right. Xosh, damn creatures were trying to circle and pin him.

“Accident,” Alad gave up a few steps to keep the big oafs from getting behind him, “I swear.” With fists the size of his face, Alad wouldn’t last long in a pummeling by them.

“The Nirapatuat ran by.” A reedy voice on his right came to his defense. Alad spared a glace at the speaker. “They no look where they go.” A rust-colored Disshad, its feather like pelt fluttering in agitation, ambled up. It reached out with a disproportionally long arm and patted Alad on the top of his skull. Remarkable reach since the Disshad barely stood as tall as Alad’s belt. “He fall. You move. He there. It happen.”

“Here my friend.” The black haired man eased up on Alad’s left. Pisk, Alad hadn’t even gotten the man’s name yet and there he was choosing sides on a dust-up. “There is no reason to be angry. It serves no purpose.” He cajoled. His voice, the way he spoke, the patter was almost hypnotic. “Let him apologize as soldiers do. Let him buy you and your comrades a drink.”

“He insulted me.” The first Nofre grunted, shuffled in and thumped Alad in the chest again.

“No, I got pushed into you.” He didn’t have to keep reasoning. It was fairly obvious that the Nofre were looking for a fight.

“Are you questioning his truth?” Barked the Nofre with the scarred face.

“It’s not that he is questioning.” Wary, the black haired soldier eased around to keep the one with the scar in his sights. “There are many versions of the truth as there are eyes to see it.” Although he coaxed, Alad noticed his eyes were bright and shoulders tense. Everyone knew they were about to brawl. “Give a thousand men a drop of water and they will tell you a thousand things they see in it.” Seemed that no one wanted to make the first move. “All of them will be that man’s truth.”

“They too stupid get you pretty words.” The Disshad gagged out the sentence. Well, trust the Disshad to throw the first real insult. Alad had known a couple and they were as eager brawlers as any race. They, unlike the Nofre, thought it was just great fun. They’d pick the side most likely to lose and jump in just to see if they could turn the tide. “You convince you own leg worm,” adding emphasis that even the Nofre would be able to understand, the Disshad brushed Black Hair’s inner thigh with the back of his hand. “That it a female hole, before you change him mind.”

Blue face growled. “Miserable little tree hanger.”

“Dumb herd animal that eats its own dung,” the Disshad retorted.

For some unfathomable reason Nofre resented their lineage. Best way to light one was to point out that they basically stampeded at any provocation. Or chewed cud. Or fifty thousand other truths that none of the race wanted to hear.

The black haired soldier hissed. “Let’s not do insults here.” There was a subtle difference between an angry Nofre and a rampaging one—survivability often hinged on that subtle difference.

“You take his side, tailless simian?” The scarred Nofre reached in and swatted the Disshad. That lit the fuse. The Disshad shrieked and launched itself into its attacker.

The Nofre that Alad had bumped body slammed him. Alad sprawled back onto the walkway and the crowd who’d gathered to watch the initial trading of barbs scattered out of the main path of the melee. The Nofre scrambled over Alad, pinning him. One leg on either side of his body, and the third between his knees, the Nofre’s hand went up. That huge fist slammed hard into Alad’s head. For a moment he saw five of everything. Then Alad brought his knee up, catching the guy in the balls from the back. At least on a human it would have been the nuts. He had no clue where a Nofre’s ‘nads might actually be situated. Good enough though, the blow pitched the Nofre forward over Alad’s head.

Massive hands latched onto Alad’s feet and yanked. As he slid, Alad caught the first Nofre’s knees. The momentum flipped it off the walkway into the water. Since Nofres couldn’t swim, and if the water was deep enough, that one was gone.

Black hair guy kicked up, caught the Nofre goon, the one with his hands on Alad’s legs, across his mid section. Must have been like kicking a brick wall, Black Hair twisted. Fell. Sputtered curses in a language that Alad didn’t comprehend but somehow understood. Scar Guy punched the small of the black haired man’s back as he went down.  Black Hair dropped, dodging the worst of the blows, and weaved. The weight of the punch glanced off. Scar Guy kicked and Black Hair jumped back. Alad scrambled to his feet and waded in, landing punches here and there. Kicks, shoves got passed around like a drill instructor’s wrath.

An elbow slam to the side of his head knocked Alad onto his back. He skidded to a stop on the slick walkway. He flipped onto his knees. The crowd had swelled to catch the brawl and Alad caught the flash of coins in his peripheral vision. They were betting on the outcome. Catcalls and hoots in a dozen different languages egged them on.

The Disshad was all fingers and toes and teeth on the Nofre with the blue stripe tattooed across his eyes. Blue Stripe writhed and pried. Every time he threw the Disshad off, it screeched and wrapped around another part of his body.

An outraged bellow sounded as Black Hair and Scar tumbled into a Vormenta Bondoar. It blasted again. Alad’s ears rang. The Vormenta reared up. Countless segmented appendages flailed and thumped everything in reach. Black Hair danced away, lashing out with his boot at his Nofre attacker. Scar doubled over. Alad launched himself, catching Scar shoulder to shoulder and driving him back. The Vormenta unhinged its jaw, twisted the sinuous neck segments and latched onto Scar’s legs. It whipped around and with a snap slammed Scar into the walk.

There wasn’t much that could put a Nofre down quick. That did it.

Alad turned to see Black Hair straddling Blue Stripe. Once a Nofre was on its back, they couldn’t get back up. Black Hair had one knee in the Nofre’s leg joint and his boot heel pinned Blue Stripe’s palm against a post. With his left hand shoving that ugly face to the side, Black Hair slammed his fist into the soft spot behind the Nofre’s ear slit.

Alad took two steps in their direction and heard it: MP’s whistles.

Xosh

! A buzzing whine shot past Alad’s ear. The projectile slammed into the walk, splintering the wood and splattering a glowing yellow gel around the impact area. “Dye markers!” Yelling, he jumped to Black Hair, grabbing the man’s coat collar, and tried to yank him back and up.

The soldier shook him off. Another dye marker whizzed over their heads and exploded on a Handoatoa. “Come on!” Rank swamp water spewed from the wounded plant. Wet thuds sounded as Black Hair continued to pound.

Like he’d lost all sense, Black Hair’s blows kept landing around the thing’s eyes, it’s only real vulnerable point. “This Nofre’s a meat stick,” Alad yelled. “Let it go!”

The Disshad scrambled to Alad. “Must go now!” and pulled at the tail of his greatcoat.

Alad pushed him away. “Go! Go on!” He ordered. Not bothering to see if the Disshad obeyed, Alad caught the soldier’s elbow. He yanked, using leverage to pull the man up. Black Hair spun. Those frozen blue eyes locked on Alad. With a roar, he launched himself at Alad and caught him across the chest. They went down. As more shots whizzed over their heads they skidded off the walk into the swamp. Alad rolled away across the set of gnarled roots which broke his fall. He scrambled to his knees. The other soldier erupted out of the shallow morass spitting water. Adrenalin pumped hard through Alad’s veins. From foe, to friend, to let’s just get ourselves killed… the man had vapor locked on combat. “Look ass-head.” Alad pointed toward where the shots had come from. “Military Fucking Police!”

They locked eyes. Another dye marker tore through the foliage. Like he shook off a neuro-block the man shuddered. “Seppe!” He hissed and scrambled up on the roots.

Good enough for Alad. He bolted. Black Hair dashed after him. More dye-filled balls splattered the trees. Alad had no bead on what happened to the Vormenta and Disshad. When MPs showed up, it was best just to bail. Even if they didn’t latch onto you right away, the dye markers would paint you as wanted. That shudo stained skin three layers deep.

Insane trying to outrun the MPs. Their only real chance was that police started firing into the crowd from a distance, figuring to round everyone up and then sort it all out. They dodged and scrambled, hearing the MPs tearing the brush for them. Someone must have seen them duck into the trees. Branches whipped Alad’s face. Black Hair paced him as they scurried up, under and around. Falling farther behind them was the stomp of what sounded like half-a-hand of MPs.

Alad jumped from root to root. No way would he stop until he knew the MPs were gone. Alad heard Black Hair yell. Spinning, he saw Black Hair stumble on the slick bark. Alad grabbed a vine, jumped and grabbed Black Hair’s hand. Alad hung by his fingers from the hard segment of creeper, the toes of his boots barely clinging to the roots, suspended over the water. A smile slipped between them, barely visible in the dim shadows that made up the passage between insipid daylight and full dark. Alad hauled himself back. Black Hair used the grip on Alad’s arm to winch himself up until they stood on the same root.

Chest to chest, Alad tasted the adrenaline seeping off Black Hair’s skin. “Hey.” He stuttered out and then cursed himself silently for sounding like some fry-brained burnout.

Black Hair leaned in and whispered, “Hirah thanks you.”

Alad assumed that was the guy’s name and not some religious figure. He started to give his own name, sort of half realizing he might have already said it, when the vine in his hand twitched. A long, muscular section of body looped behind Hirah. Gold-glowing segmented limbs spread out and snapped shut over his legs. With a yelp Hirah went ass over end and vanished into the canopy. Alad tried to jump. The vine he held wrapped around his arm. With a spine jarring snap, it jerked him up.

Breath knocked from his lungs, Alad found himself nose to undulating eyes of a Vormenta. Its gibbous mouthparts oozed. Alad swallowed hard. Above the Vormenta’s myriad visual apertures appeared the grinning face of the Disshad.

Alad assumed it was a he as he’d never heard of a female Disshad venturing offworld. And it wasn’t too hard to conjecture that the Disshad smiled. The race carried a freighter load of similarities to the extinct great apes of ancient Earth. Well, except for the rainbow colored sex organs on their shoulders… and the fact that their soft, luxurious fur was actually colonies of symbiotic organisms.

The Disshad slapped its oral opening with long, flat fingered hands, creating pops of compressed air. Alad figured it meant that they should be quiet. He was about to hiss it to Hirah when Alad noticed him putting his fingers to his lips. The universal human gesture for shut the pisk up.

As the swamp shushed around them, Alad heard it: MP’s moving through the twisted vegetation. They all clung to the tree, half a stadion up in its branches, and held their breath. The MPs slowly approached then the sounds of their movements dissipated. Finally, Alad remembered to breathe. “Thanks,” he whispered to the Vormenta and hoped it’d understand him.

A series of whirrs, click and groans emanated from the Vormenta, sounding, to Alad, like some archaic machine on its last functioning legs. The Disshad, apparently noticing and comprehending the confusion that must have been written on Alad’s face, translated. “She say she always find humans strange. You never look up. Come have drink with us. I, Pemtch, ask of you. Come, come. Is good.”

Alad slid his gaze toward Hirah. “So you up for a drink? I owe you one.”

“I’m up…” Hirah paused and actually added a smirk, “for a drink.”

“Very much pleasure for me, you have drink with us.” Pemtch grabbed each of their skulls with his huge hands, palms on their foreheads and his fingers reaching to the back of their skulls. Like he played with youngsters, Pemtch tussled with them a bit. “You fight good for human.” The praise sounded like a proud father commending a rather slow child.

As the Vormenta wrapped around them and deposited each onto the damp ground Alad respectfully acknowledged, “That would be a pleasure.”

Hirah added, “Definitely a pleasure.” Since he looked into Alad’s eyes as he said it, Alad figure there was a special part reserved just for him. In that thin moment Alad forgave Hirah for turning on him—justified it as combat rush, it could screw up anybody’s wires. Plus, how he said it, Hirah was accepting Alad’s earlier proposition. Had to be. Then Hirah turned his smile toward Pemtch and Vormenta, including them with, “To have a drink with such warriors.”

Unabashedly borrowing from the literary precedents set by John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation and Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Slovakian Boy is a kaleidoscopic account of handsome young Pavel as seen through the eyes of interested — sometimes too interested — parties of family, friends, and fans. William Maltese’s narrative of a boy’s determined reinvention of himself as a porn god is a sexy romp through a rarely explored realm.

********************************

“Who said—and when did he or she say— that Czechoslovakia, of which Slovakia was then a part, was ‘a faraway country, populated by a people of whom we know nothing’? Want to give it a try, Drahoslav?”

“Neville Chamberlain, British prime minister, 1939.”

“Very good. Although it was actually 1938. And why is Chamberlain, otherwise, so infamous, Andrea?”

“He signed the Munich Agreement which allowed Nazi Germany to appropriate a large part of Czechoslovakia.”

“Yes, he did. And after the Nazis, the Russians. The end of Communism, called what? And why? Bohuslava?”

“‘Velvet Revolution,’ because of its remarkable lack of violence.”

The buzzer sounds.

“Pavel.” I can’t help myself. “Will you remain a few minutes?”

“Yes, Mr. Professor Vodni.”

I’m turned-on by his good looks. There’s something about his dark hair and exquisitely shaped eyebrows—something about his blue eyes, his thick and sooty eyelashes. Not to mention each iris with its own intoxicating black halo.

I’m captivated by his good humor, his air of naïveté.

No matter that he’s probably straight as a stick. He dated Berta Hukvaldy, probably regularly fucked her, until her father got that promotion to Bratislava. I hear the teenage pussy forever whispering what a catch Pavel is. How he’s such a gentleman. All true. I’ve never known him to raise his voice. I’ve never seen him in bad humor.

A very pleasant young man, in superb physical condition because of all that hiking, caving, and varsity ice hockey. I can’t think of anything bad I’ve heard about him, from the faculty or from his peers.

Granted, the kid’s no rocket scientist, but who says everyone has to be? He’ll be the first to tell you he’s not one. He wants a job in forestry, or some other profession that will keep him out of doors, in fresh air and sunlight. Although he knows enough about cars to get a position in some garage, if there were one offered.

I suspect sunlight tans him all over, though I’m not his gymnasium teacher and have never seen him naked. I wouldn’t want to see him naked, either, because I immediately recognize the worrisome prospect of his offering up too much temptation.

He’s my student, I’m his teacher. All sorts of legal and moral complications and implications in that.

I’ve my job to think about. I’ve bills to pay. I’ve a wife to support. I’ve two kids to feed, to house, to send to university. Sex with a student isn’t possible. It’s better to indulge mere fantasies.

It’s because of my fantasies that I’ve asked Pavel to stay after. It’s so I can play sponge and soak up even more details of how he looks, close-up, for total recall later. For when my wife moans and groans and begs me to fill her bottomless pit with passion-cooling cum, and I need a little help to oblige. Or, for when I next perform solo.

I’ll be alone this evening. Mainly here, correcting paperwork, writing the next exam.

My cock is hardening, although I always wear baggy pants to keep hidden all evidence of my cock, hard or soft.

“I thought baggy pants went out of style,” said Mrs. Professor Pribor, who has visually checked out every male basket within a two-hundred kilometer radius and would like a better look at mine.

It’s unlikely Pavel knows or cares what goes on in my trousers. Now or ever.

In-the-closet detective, David Eric Laine has kept his desires secret. Until he meets Christopher Bellamere, proud and openly gay. When a series of horrific torture/murders of gay men leads the police to Chris David is torn between his attraction for the most beautiful man he’s ever met and his fears that he’s a vicious killer.

***************

Chapter One

Saturday, 12:25 a.m., North San Miguel Road, Eagle Rock, Los Angeles

THE JOHN DOE had been dead for days.

Flies buzzed around the corpse, crawling over sunken eyes and up collapsing nostrils. From the doorway LAPD Homicide Detective David Eric Laine could see the skin sloughing off dehydrated muscles. He held his breath against the stench. After fourteen years on the force he figured he had seen it all. But sometimes the doers still managed to surprise him with their brutality.

The body had been posed on its back, legs splayed on the blood-soaked rug, hands already bagged to preserve evidence. He knew death had occurred somewhere else. The lack of blood anywhere but on the carpet, and the body itself, confirmed that. Abruptly he turned away. John Doe wasn’t going anywhere; he could concentrate on evidence the killer might have left behind.

This was no drug buy gone sour, or a bad domestic. The way the body lay in the hot, breathless room, empty eyes staring at a filthy window, told him this was worse. He knew the rug had been used to carry the body to this dump site. Just like the others. David felt a familiar tightening in his gut. He had hoped they’d been wrong about the last body, found less than a month ago in a similar state. He had hoped then that there would be no more.

Now he knew how naïve that hope had been.

Physical damage to the John Doe was extensive. Vivid purple abrasions marred the pale skin above the Adam’s apple and dozens of shallow cuts covered the victim’s chest and arms.

If he was anything like the others, he had been a good-looking youth. So how did he end up in a slumlord’s firetrap, dying to satisfy some twisted freak’s perversions?

David smeared wintergreen under his nose and the smell of decay faded, though he knew it would cling to him for hours, haunting his restless sleep. Assuming he got any in the next forty-eight hours.

He pulled on a Tyvek sterile suit, complete with plastic booties, and ducked past the crime scene tape. Teresa Lopez, the deputy coroner from the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office, nodded at him. A few strands of white hair spilled from under her sterile cap and framed her lined fifty-year-old face.

She smiled at him, but as usual he pretended not to see the question in her eyes. He knew her interest in him was based more on the fact that he was one of the few unattached men she met on a regular basis rather than any kind of physical attraction. He knew only too well how he looked. Either way, that was a road he wasn’t going to travel, no matter how safe it might make him.

Darkness engulfed the apartment when Larry Vance, senior technician for the Scientific Identification Division, ordered the lights cut. He scanned the floor with his handheld ultraviolet light. Vance was little more than a trace himself. Thin and sinewy like catgut, he always seemed able to insinuate himself into small places and find what others couldn’t.

The hiss of traffic on the nearby 134 came through the dirt-spattered window. The only furniture in the room was the threadbare rug under the body and a single ladder-backed chair near the bathroom door.

Officer Kurt Henderson, who had been first responding officer, appeared in the doorway. David nodded at the muscular black cop. They had crossed paths before. David tried not to stare at the striking dark-skinned black man. He kept his face neutral when Henderson nodded at him.

“Where’s the building manager?” David asked.

“Partner’s babysitting him downstairs.”

“Name?”

“Collins. Harvey Collins.”

“Get him.”

Henderson left. Waiting in the hallway for him to return, David reviewed his notes. At ten minutes past midnight, the switchboard at the Northeast Community Police Station on San Fernando Road had received a frantic call. Responding to it, Henderson and his partner had found Collins in the hall and the body in Room 317.

Henderson returned, leading a heavy-jowled Anglo.

“Mr. Collins? Detective David Eric Laine.” David suppressed his sympathy for the traumatized man. Better for both of them if he did this as dispassionately as possible. “I need to clarify a couple of things. How did you come to find the body?”

“I got a phone call.” Collins said. “I checked it out.” He swallowed and rubbed his bulbous nose. His gaze tracked around the hallway, settling everywhere but on the open door to the apartment.

“What phone call?”

“He said the police were too slow, that I gotta call them.”

“What time was this, Mr. Collins?”

“I always watch the news at ten…KTLA. It was right after that was over. He told me the police had to find this body.”

“So that would have been around eleven, eleven-ten?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“And you waited over an hour to call 911?”

Collins’s jaws worked around something bad-tasting. “Hey, I thought it was a crank.”

This got better by the minute. “Did you recognize the voice? A former tenant, maybe?”

“I don’t think so.”

“When was the last time the unit was rented?”

“Two months.” Collins scrubbed his hand through his thinning hair. “The last guy did a midnight run on me end of June.”

“Anyone look at the place since then?”

“Nobody who’d do this.”

David didn’t pursue the non-answer. He’d get to Mr. Collins’s evasions later. Maybe they were just the usual lies and half-truths everyone tried when faced with suspicious cops. Sometimes he saw the lies before they formed. Sometimes he saw lies that weren’t there at all.

“Place is unfurnished. That the way you rent it?”

“Sure, tenants gotta bring their own stuff.”

“What about the chair?”

“Must been left by the last tenant.”

“The fly-by-night one?”

Collins scowled. “Yeah. Him.”

Lopez, the coroner, emerged from the apartment. Her stained Tyvek suit ballooned off her undersized frame. “We’re ready to bag it.”

David motioned to Henderson. “Take Mr. Collins back to his apartment. I’ll be along later to get a written statement. We’ll get a list of incoming calls, see where our helpful friend called from. See if you can get a list of tenants, too. Past and present.”

His cell phone rang. He held up one finger to stall Lopez.

“Laine here.”

“Davey,” the voice on the other end said. It was his partner, Detective Martinez Diego. No one else had the temerity to call him Davey. “I’m stuck in traffic. Looks like a semi was dancing with a pickup out here.” Martinez grunted. “Pickup lost.”

“Lopez just called me back in to the apartment.”

“How’s it looking?”

“Like our guy.” David glanced at Lopez, then looked away from the friendliness in her dark eyes. “Same injuries. Body wrapped in a rug.”

Martinez swore, then said, “I’m clear here. I’ll be there in two.”

David hung up and clipped the cell back onto his belt.

Lopez raised one silver eyebrow. “Martinez?”

“On his way.”

“So how’d you luck into this?” Teresa glanced over her shoulder at the room behind them. “Spending too much time loafing at your desk?”

“Just finished a drive-by on Drew when the call-out came.” David gave her a thin smile. “I think the watch commander’s words were ‘Sleep can wait. Get your ass over there now, Laine.’”

“They’re working both of you too hard. When was the last time you went home?”

“What year is this?”

“Seriously.”

He shrugged. “Goes with the territory, right?”

David reentered the apartment.

Silver powder coated doorjambs and window ledges, revealing the smudges and swirls of the usual collection of latent prints a place like this collected. SID had set up spotlights. Larry had replaced the UV scan with a handheld vacuum, which he ran over the carpet and floor, collecting and labeling bags of debris.

David scanned the room, along the walls, up toward the unlit ceiling light, then back to the corpse, where the fly feast continued. Then his gaze flew back to the light fixture, a simple white shield over a single light bulb. A shadow on one side drew his eye.

David heard Martinez and one of the EMTs joking and laughing about their respective families before he ducked past the crime scene tape. His Tyvek suit clung to his beefy form.

“You starting this party without me?” Martinez asked.

“Just warming things up.”

Martinez, David’s partner for the last five years, peered down at the body. “Looks like somebody let their party get out of hand.”

Teresa approached, stripping off one pair of stained gloves and replacing them with clean ones. “You’re late, Martinez.”

“We got reporters outside. They wanna know if this is their Carpet Killer.”

Teresa winced. “‘The Carpet Killer.’” She shook her head in disgust. “Whatever you call him, he’s got four now in six months, raped and butchered. The first one we know about was back in March. Prolific guy.”

Martinez paced the narrow confines of the apartment. He elbowed the bathroom open to look inside.

“He likes what he’s doing. Methodical.” David looked back at the light fixture. “And organized. Can we get a ladder in here?”

A technician entered carrying a folded stepladder under his arm. David pulled on his first pair of thin latex gloves and clambered up the rickety steps. He withdrew a thin leather billfold from the fixture.

“I think our doer likes being recognized for his talents.” He held up the billfold. “How can we give him proper credit if we don’t know the identity of his victims?”

Back on level ground, he flipped it open under Martinez’s speculative eyes. The face that stared back at them from the California driver’s license was significantly better looking than that of the damaged corpse at their feet, but the match was obvious.

“Jason Blake,” David said. “Anaheim.”

They both looked at the chair. It had already been printed.

“Check the seat for footprints,” David said.

A technician hurried to comply.

Martinez reached past David and flipped up a second row of various cards. He tapped a plain white card with a rainbow on the upper left corner. “What’s PFLAG?”

“Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays — actually it should be PFFLAG,” David murmured, feeling the heat on the back of his neck when both Martinez and Teresa looked at him.

“Dios, there’s an organization for everything,” Martinez said. “How the hell do you even know that?”

Lopez saved David from answering. David was saved from answering by Lopez

“You better see this before we bag him,” she said.

While Martinez took his initial impression of the corpse, David changed gloves. The powdery residue inside them felt cool against his damp skin. At only 2 a.m., heat already filled the room. The day to come promised to be another L.A. August scorcher. If the body hadn’t been phoned in last night, it would have been found soon anyway. By tomorrow the whole building would have known about it.

He knelt, knees popping in protest. At thirty-seven old age was creeping up on him.

The rich stench ripened in the expanding heat. David loosened his tie and tugged the stiff collar away from his neck. Already sweat saturated his armpits; the hurried shower he’d had earlier that evening seemed a dimly remembered luxury.

“Someone brought him here several hours after death,” Lopez said. “This guy’s careful — and he plans.”

“Scary thought.”

“He’s a scary guy.”

On the other side of the body, Martinez squatted, arms resting on his knees while he studied the corpse. He tilted his head sideways. “Ever notice how much more violent faggots are when they kill each other?” Martinez said.

“We don’t even have any proof our killer’s gay.”

Martinez gave him the look. “Yeah, like some straight mofo’s going to get his kicks this way.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Hey, Lopez. What can you tell us?”

“Rigor has settled out.” Teresa demonstrated by bending the corpse’s right knee. “Livor is almost entirely on the buttocks and feet.” She lifted one foot and indicated the purplish marks on the bottom of the victim’s foot where the blood had settled after his heart stopped pumping, technically known as livor mortis.

“Meaning?” David asked.

“He was in a crouched or sitting position for at least two hours following death.” She ran a gloved hand up the right arm, touching a ring of bruised flesh around the slender wrist. “Bound.”

David met Teresa’s eyes. “Like the others.”

“‘Fraid so.”

“Full rape kit run?”

“Already collected some swabs and I’ll do a pubic comb-out at post. Tox screen, too.”

With a technician’s help Teresa rolled the body over.

“Calliphora activity is only starting,” she said, referring to the fly family most commonly found on corpses. “The first instar is approximately seven millimeters in length. That puts death about three to four days ago. We’ll hatch some of these out to verify species.”

David caught his breath when she finished rolling the body onto its stomach. A seething mass of tiny maggots spilled out onto her gloved hand. Almost gently she brushed them aside, revealing a yawning wound between the dead man’s buttocks.

“Just like the others. Your killer’s penetrating them anally with a knife. And this poor guy was very much alive when he was doing it.”

Turner and Turner: One Good Turn

When his parents get a gander at the sex tape sent by a blackmailer, they offer Kendall Turner a few weeks of “rest” in a cushy clinic. No, he says, and hotfoots it across the lawns of the family estate. KT isn’t his own worst enemy anymore; there’s a new candidate for the title. Suddenly, Kendall’s on the lam, trying to outrun a murder rap. Helping – by locking KT naked in their motel room – is his cousin Turn. KT has some issues: he manages to censor himself only when he lies, he’s been in love with cousin Turn since forever, and he really would rather kill himself than get more rest at another clinic.
The Men of Smithfield: Gobsmacked

Physician’s assistant Mark Meehan’s impulse control takes leave when Mark finds his bank manager, who’s also his boyfriend, in bed with another man. Volatile Mark sets out to chase down his money and patch up his pride with the help of local law enforcement in the person of rock-steady state trooper Tony Gervase. But, Mark’s impulsive scheme for revenge infuriates Jamie and jeopardizes Mark’s budding romance with straight arrow Tony.

**********************************

Gobsmacked

by L.B. Gregg

February 11

I stormed into St. Joe’s at the height of the Ash Wednesday noon mass, still dressed in my scrubs. I pushed through the massive arched chapel doors, bringing with me a gust of cold February wind. Seeing Jamie’s pretentious car parked in front of the church, I lost my shit and had to take action. I figured Jamie was expecting some kind of absolution by appearing at this penitential mass. I could see him seated in the third row, his head bowed. That gloriously tousled mass of golden hair gleamed like a beacon of innocence next to the shining, helmeted up-do of his repressed, miraculously blonde mother.

I bypassed the ushers, ignoring the hello of welcome from Mrs. Banks, my seventh-grade math teacher, and the folded program she tried to place in my hand. Failing to genuflect or splash myself with holy water, which would have sizzled on contact, I marched straight down the center aisle. My red rubber Crocs squeaked my progress in the hushed, echoing chamber of the sanctuary. Heads turned as I passed, no doubt wondering why I stormed the tasteful Moravian tile in the midst of this somber service. This was the kickoff to Lent, and the house was packed with the well-dressed, good citizens of Smithfield. Around me was a crowd of faces I’d known my entire life, but I blocked them out. I’m sure that even Christ’s eye was on me, and our priest, Father David, droning out the glum litany, looked up for half a second before dismissing me. As if he were the voice of reason and I, little Markie Meehan, needed to sit down and get with the program. I couldn’t see that happening.

I slid into the pew behind Jamie, glaring at the back of his head, and struggled with an overwhelming rage. I wanted to hurt him, not engage in some hissed conversation or exchange of keys. Fuck that. I was beyond civility. He wasn’t stepping a toe into my apartment. Ever again. The prick. I could barely look at him.

My hands clenched the book rack, and my fingers brushed against the Bible proudly displayed there. Staring at those once-sweet curls hugging his rough jaw, I slid the good book out of its safe haven. The cracked leather was worn, but its bulk reassuring. Encouraging, even. So I hauled back, fueled by boiling rage, and gobsmacked that bastard as hard as I could — in front of God and everyone — with a resounding thwack!

Jamie pitched forward, his beautiful face colliding with the pew in front of him. He hit it hard, the sound like a puck being whaled on by that high-priced stick he valued far too much. Then he melted onto the tile floor.

My follow-through pulled me over the back of the pew in an awkward nosedive onto the maroon cushions, my head flopping perilously close to Mrs. Dupree’s lap. I pushed away and clambered up, spewing my outrage and fury and maybe a little filth. I had no volume control as the words, In our bed, you bastard! rang through the church. I might have shouted, “You dickhead!”

It grew quiet in the congregation as an entire community sat frozen. I think. I wasn’t really paying attention to anyone but Jamie. And his mother. I had nearly landed on top of her when that thick cushion shifted under her skinny ass. She stood up clutching her pearls; her sour-lemon lips pursed, furiously staring me down with — and perhaps I imagine this — the glowing eyes of demonic satisfaction. Scrambling to pull myself back to my feet, I ignored her.

Any conversation with Jamie was not going to happen here. Filled with uncontrolled fury, and liberated of my usual calm, I felt oddly free. Or just out of my fucking mind.

So I cuffed him again with the Bible.

And then the folks around me came to their senses and latched their rough hands onto my arms in some mockery of Christian brotherhood, saying, “Mark. Calm down.”

“You need to leave.”

“That’s enough.”

No, it wasn’t, but they pulled me from the pew, ripping the Bible from my grip, and drove me back up the center aisle like a heretic. I looked into all those faces I knew, and I should have been shamed. But no, I had nothing to be ashamed of. Not yet, anyway.

Panting and blowing and disheveled, I glanced back over my shoulder as Jamie, limp in his rumpled suit and tie, was helped back into his seat with caring hands. He looked stunned, confused, and gray. Well, except for the blood, of course, which by this point was streaming down that proud nose.

And then I found myself excommunicated. They tossed me out those carved arched doors right into the gasping chill of the February midday. My sweat froze to my skin. Alone, exposed, shunned on the front lawn, I was still righteously pissed off. I clenched my fists and began walking back to the car, the bitter cold and wind whipping my field coat open as grit from the sand and road salt blasted my face. My eyes watered, and my nose began to run. I hit the door lock on the Jeep and climbed in. Time to go home and pick up the pieces.

Wednesday, Feb 11

12:30 p.m.

I made it as far as the stoplight at 202 and Milton before my rage subsided and I realized that I wasn’t seeing red from anger. Flashing lights followed me from the Resident Trooper’s Ford Expedition. I slapped my hand on the steering wheel and shook the fog out of my head.

“Crap!”

I had no idea if I’d been speeding, and that was a clear indication that I shouldn’t be driving. I pulled over at the entrance to the Westleigh Condos and dug my paperwork out of the glove box. I watched in the rearview mirror as my longtime friend and teenage heartbreak, Tony Gervase, climbed out of the truck, a look of resignation on that handsome, stern face. His uniform hugged his muscular form. He had that trooper hat perched on his head.

“Oh, crap!”

I must have run the red light. I swear it was pink when I was under it. That was my story, and I was sticking to it. Tony lumbered up, trinkets swinging off his utility belt, those butch boots making my thighs tense. He was an attractive man, and it was hard not to stare. He had that authoritative air some men are into: tall and dark, with thick thighs and arms and a tight ass. A big Italian cop. I’d carried a torch for him in high school, a million years ago, and while he’d been kind, he’d never encouraged my interest. Then he left for college, and I grew up. Mostly. I still thought he was probably the best guy I knew, and maybe more than occasionally admired him from afar. And thought about him at inappropriate times. I used to wonder if there was something inherently wrong with me because he never once took what I had eagerly offered. So I stopped offering. And then last summer, after Tony’s father got sick, Tony disappeared and I walked into the open arms of Jamie Dupree. That bastard.

I waited until Tony tapped on the glass with his knuckle before sliding the window down.

“What seems to be the problem, Offi—”

“Knock it off. What the hell are you doing driving fifteen in a forty down two-oh-two? I’ve been behind you since the green, and you didn’t once look in your mirror.”

Fifteen? Jesus, I had taken lame to an all-time low.

“Sorry. Just spacing out.” And praying that he hadn’t heard a thing yet. It’d only been eight minutes. Not even. Well, maybe more considering how slowly I’d been driving. “I’m on my way home.”

Tony leaned into my window, his strong body filling the narrow space, his hands resting on the car, thick fingers gripping the edge. He was checking to see if I was impaired. “Everything all right, Mark?”

I tried to grin, boyish — winsome, even. I flipped my hair a little. “Yeah, sure Tony. Hey, how’s your mom?” Anything to shift the law enforcement scrutiny I was under.

“My mother’s fine. She seems to like Florida.” Tony seemed immune to my attempt to distract him. Joe-on-the-Job. Was he sniffing my breath? I exhaled sharply at him. He backed away, and I pressed my lips tightly together. Perhaps I’d had too much caffeine with my betrayal this morning? His eyes swept the interior of the car. “How’s Sarah? She have that baby yet?”

I shook my head, forcing myself to appear normal. Evidently news was traveling at a crawl today. Maybe it was the upcoming snowstorm occupying the minds and mouths of the locals as they rushed off to Stop & Shop to purchase batteries and bottled water.

“Not yet. She’s fat and cranky, but don’t tell her I said that.” My sister Sarah had been friends with Tony since the ninth grade. Back when I was still a pesky sixth-grader always underfoot and demanding their attention.

Tony was quiet. He watched me. Was he assessing my mental state? “How are you, Tony? I’ve been meaning to give you a call.” It was weak, but my heart was pounding, and I was trying for a nonchalance I couldn’t possibly maintain for more than a few minutes.

“Sure, Meehan.” He failed to soften the skepticism in his tone with a smile. I tried not to feel guilty, but he was right. I had been either with Jamie or at the hospital for months. As a surgical PA — a physician assistant — my shifts, while often mind-numbing in their regularity, occasionally went out of whack. Today I’d covered a partial shift and was still dressed in my blue scrubs. I’d been driving aimlessly for hours trying to deal with my heartache before I’d entered St. Joe’s.

Tony’s brown eyes, normally crinkled at the edges in laughter, were guarded. “Haven’t seen you around much lately.”

“I’m such an ass. We should hook up for a drink.” Jesus, I had to get out of there. Was that my knee jiggling? “So, look, what’s the deal here? You writing me a ticket or what?”

Tony’s mouth flattened, and he straightened away from the car, offended. I’d been too abrupt, but I had things to do, and I was preoccupied. Remorse hit me just as his two-way radio blasted, and he nodded curtly. “I’ll catch up with you later. Try to drive like a normal person. Say hello to your sister.” He turned his collar up and hiked back to his SUV.

“Tony. Wait. I’m sorr—” Too late. I watched him for a second, feeling like a heel. I’d fucked that up, again. I needed to mend our relationship. But first, I needed to deal with Jamie. I put the car in gear and eased back out onto Milton, Tony’s gaze on me from the truck. I carefully drove the speed limit the quarter mile back to the house.

When Amazon was asked about the missing rankings they responded to one author with:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage

Plainly, we are being discriminated against by Amazon, shoved into the backroom–again.

Not all authors of adult fiction are being targeted but it is widespread and rampant. So if you are looking for rankings and bestseller lists of adult or gay fiction,  it looks like you’ll need to buy directly from the publisher or hit up B&N.

Hopefully next month MLR Press will have the ability in place to buy ebooks directly from the site (with paypal and credit cards through paypal to begin with) and print books soon after that. We getting everything in place for direct sales. We value our readers and now we REALLY like Barnes and Noble.

From Twitter posts:
If you want to protest to Amazon direct, this is their email addy: connect-help@amazon.com
Other ways to get in touch with them: http://clicheideas.com/amazon.htm

Or write to their CEO:
Jeffrey Bezos. The address is 1200 12th Avenue South, Seattle, Washington 98144-2734, United States Phone: 206-266-1000 Fax: 206-622-2405

There is a petition in circulation, see link below:

Becket Merriday is on the trail of a killer who is murdering beautiful young men in the small town of Irenic. What he discovers an ancient race of immortal beings hunted by an incredibly powerful adversary: the angel Mastema. Soon, Beck and his partner, Sean Logan, find themselves at the center of a deadly supernatural war.

*************************

PROLOGUE

Wystan Parish, Virginia

Wait for it. Feel the hint of dew on the air, the cooling of the sidewalks and the diminishing sounds of traffic from the Interstate. Sense the stars hovering above the town, not yet visible but forever there. People were going inside, returning to their homes. Good smells began to drift past him: kitchen and bread and belonging.

A boy was perched on the concrete garden steps leading down from the doors of the rectory. The garden was a sheltered, dark green cove hidden from the road by a wrought-iron fence heavily overgrown with weeds, honeysuckle and boxwood. It was a secret place, damp and quiet, filled with growing things and presided over by an ancient magnolia fully six feet across at the trunk. The boy was dark-haired, with brilliant, wide-set blue eyes vaguely reminiscent of a cat. He closed his eyes, ending their devouring stare, and inhaled deeply before snapping back to attention, his gaze fixed on the patch of sky he could see through the trees to the west. Becket Merriday was an alert child for a seven year old, but his attention had lapsed and he had almost missed it. It always happened so quickly, and he knew from experience that even a momentary distraction could bring failure.

The world was diminishing, not preparing for sleep, but taking a steadying breath before night hammered down with all its native creatures and habits. The evening birds were out. He did not know their names, but they were swift, ratcheting flyers that seemed to come with the red sunset, black arrow-shapes darting in the brazen light of afternoon. The sun itself was gone, sunken without fanfare. The sky still held the light, but there was no glaring source as an author.

He was captivated by small things: the thumb-print blush of smoky-blue in the southern sky, the band of pink to the north, a razor line of fire in the west. He turned his head expectantly as light winds shifted from north to east, carrying a smell he recognized only as distance. A cloud passed, the light dimmed a wisp of a shade, and in the space of one breath to another it happened: dusk covered the small factory town, a brief witching-time between light and shadow.

Beck stared in profound awe and sighed.

He had spent the earlier part of the afternoon in the private library. Father Dane had unlocked it for him with a finger to his lips, well aware of how Father Calvert would feel if he knew that young, careless hands were pawing his revered volumes. Father Dane was much younger than Father Calvert, a new addition to the parish and only recently ordained. Beck trusted him no more than the other priest, but Father Dane only patted his head, made sure he washed his hands, and placidly ignored him with the benevolent, hieratical surety of man utterly convinced that God would take care of His own.

Beck was sure that Father Dane looked at him like he would a mouse that lived under the sink; a small, furtive thing who took great pains not to be noticed, but still needed the crumbs off the table. Lately, Father Dane had begun to allow him to spend hours in the locked, dusty anteroom of the rectory that served as the library, plowing through thick religious treatises and leather-bound volumes of dogma. There were also a few small, neglected chapbooks with crisp, gilt-edged pages describing the evils of sorcery and the fiery end awaiting all heretics. Beck devoured these with the starved hunger of an extremely inquisitive and deprived young mind.

He had read a new story that morning; an exciting one full of monsters and giants and wicked women. Like any boy, he relished such tales, though he was sure he would get into serious trouble if Father Calvert ever found out.

The story was about angels and women and how the children made between them in lust were evil—so purely, irredeemably evil that when such a one was slaughtered, all the demons of the earth had sprung fully formed from its corpse. He liked some of the words in the book, like lust. It was a bad word and he had to remember that, just like he had to remember all the other bad things he must not do or say and all the secrets he must never tell.

He told it to the stillness of the garden, holding the rich, rough sound in his throat and rolling it out with his tongue; “Llllllust.”

“Hello.”

Beck started, jolted out of his ritual, and turned to glare at the intrusion that seemed to spring from thin air. He had heard no one approach.

An elderly woman faced him. Her dress was long and old-fashioned, her white hair knotted into a coil at the back of her neck. One gnarled hand rested on a wooden cane that supported her slight body. Beck thought she looked like she might fall over and blow away without it. Weak, she was. He relaxed. She was not much of a threat, but he had learned that appearances were the least telling thing about people.

“Hullo,” he said warily.

She smiled. “You’re distrustful. That’s good. That’s very good.”

“You shouldn’t be back here,” he said in his thin, strong voice. “This is the Father’s private garden. He doesn’t like visitors back here.”

“Yet here you are.”

“I live here.”

“Are there other children here?”

Beck looked down at his shoes. “Nope.”

“Ah, of course. I’d forgotten.” She nodded as if she understood everything. “I’m very tired. Is there somewhere an old woman could sit?”

Beck glanced back at the church rectory behind him, shook his head.

“Just for a moment? Please?”

Dusting his palms off on his trousers, he hopped down from the steps and led her to an algae-streaked stone bench under the magnolia, feeling the rich loam sink under his sneakers as he walked and wondering if the old lady was going to punch holes in the moss with her cane. He’d be in trouble then, because of course Father Calvert would think he did it.

Though it was not far, the woman had to stop twice to catch her breath, leaning heavily on the cane and casting a weathered eye at him. Beck halted when she did, but offered nothing further.

“You keep your distance, child,” she breathed as she sank onto the bench like a pale, floating leaf, her voice hoarse with exertion. “And you’re ignoring your manners. I know a word.” She looked piercingly at him. “Instinct. Do you know that word?”

Beck shook his head.

“You have an instinct inside of you. It’s like a tiny voice guiding you do to things, or not to do them. Telling you things you never learned but know anyway. At this moment, your little voice tells you not to trust me. Why, I wonder?”

Beck planted his feet and crossed his arms in silent resistance. “Don’t like you,” he stated mulishly.

“You don’t even know me.”

“I don’t care. You ask too many questions.” His nose wrinkled. “And you’re stinky.”

She laughed with a high, tinkling mirth, and Beck stared with his jaw dropped because when she laughed, the light in the garden seemed to grow more intense. Not brighter, it grew deep. The birds stopping singing as the scent of apple blossoms filled his nostrils, and the leaves of the garden suddenly seemed fuller and greener. Perfume flowed from the wild roses and the blooming gardenia and jasmine, and the seed pods of the varicolored four o’clocks swelled and popped as they opened, and every unopened moonflower suddenly unfurled a pallid banner.

Something moved inside Beck, a small, sealed door cracking open an inch to shed a particle of radiance into his soul. Not very much, just enough to let him know the door was there. His shaking hand went to massage his chest, wondering at the feel of it, this strange sense of expansion inside his own skin. He had no words to express it, but he knew that the direction of his life had irrevocably changed.

Change

, the uninvited guest that destroys what once was. He had experienced change once. Change was being left crying on cold stone steps in the snow. Change was when gentle hands left you and never touched you again, when everything you knew went away and never came back.

This time, change was welcome at his door. He relaxed visibly. “Who are you?”

“Call me Claire.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “That’s not your name.”

Beck reached for the caution he had felt toward her and realized it had vanished. He moved to the bench and sat beside her. A length of silk-embroidered lace from her scarf lay on the stone, and Beck picked it up to admire the pattern. It was an intertwined circle of birds, their wings clasped together.

“What’s that other smell?” Beck asked. “Not the apples.”

“You don’t like it?” He pulled a face and she smiled. “It’s called lavender. I thought all old ladies wore it.” She waved her hand in the air and the cloying, soapy smell faded. “Better?”

He nodded. “It smells like a funeral. When they bring the coffin in, the thing inside smells like that.”

“People?”

He dropped the scarf and shrugged, suddenly diffident as he fidgeted with his thumbs. “The thing inside. It doesn’t move anymore.”

“It was once a person, Beck. Like you.”

Now he looked at her straight, his eyes accusing. “Not like me.”

She sighed. “No, Beck. Not like you. I’m sorry I said that.”

The light had faded from the garden. Twilight had fallen without their notice and the enclosed area was sunken in tones of mauve and ash. He scooted a little closer to her. “I missed the nightfall,” he said, his face drooping into lines of childhood woe.

“There will be other nightfalls.”

“They’re all different. That’s why I can’t miss one.” Bright tears shone in strange blue eyes that seemed longer and narrower than was natural. They were the color of sapphires. “I have to remember them all, all the ways they’re different. Then when I feel bad I…” he trailed off.

“When you feel bad,” Claire prompted.

“When I feel bad, I can take them out again. All the little…” he groped for a word.

“Details?”

A nod. “The details. The nightfalls. They keep me safe.” He clasped his hands together so hard that his knuckles turned white.

She reached over and held him as he trembled, her spidery hand on the back of his head, but he did not cry. After a moment, he pulled away. A neon street lamp sputtered and crackled to life in the alley, and the bloated glow reached into the garden, scattering the darkness. Something bright winked from the old woman’s sunken breast. Beck looked at it.

“What’s that?”

She removed it without hesitation. It was a charm necklace, an incised disk of gold on a steel chain, about the size of a quarter. She dropped its weight into Beck’s palm and he turned it over with his finger. It was very lovely. On the surface of the raw gold, pitted and dark in places, was a tree in a circle. The fine lines of the branches were grooved and shaped to resemble bark. The tree was leafless and crowned with fire, and a snake twined around its bole. Beck saw none of its flaws, only that the patina of extreme age covered the charm in a shimmering aura of secrets.

Secrets that might speak to him.

Claire smiled as Beck’s fist closed over it greedily. “It is yours, Beck.”

“Really?” Hope melted into glee, yet still no smile. He would never really learn how to manage that, only to construct an expression that resembled the real thing. The feeling, though… yes. He knew what joy felt like now.

“Oh yes. It’s entirely yours now.” She looked around the garden then and checked the angle of the sky. “It’s getting late. The old priest will be missing you soon.”

A shadow filled Beck’s eyes at the mention of Father Calvert, kindly Father Calvert, whom everyone spoke so well of. Claire rose and he stared because the cane had vanished. The old woman moved without a trace of stiffness or age.

Beck stood up, suddenly afraid. “Don’t go!”

Claire smiled and extended her withered arm to brush a strand of hair from his eyes, which was glossy black and shining as spider-silk. “We will see each other again.”

“Again”

seemed to roll in the night like faint thunder. She gave his hair a last caress before she turned away. The intricate, wrought iron garden gate that led into the narrow alleyway lay just beyond the reach of light from the street lamp, and Beck heard the gate creak as it opened. Claire’s heels clicked on the pavement for several counts before they suddenly ceased. There was no fading sound of her step as she got further away.

Beck rushed to the gate, for once gripped by a more primal fear than darkness. He jerked it open and saw that the alley was empty. He did not bother running out and looking for her. He knew what he would find.

The boy closed the gate and locked it, and in the dark gloom under the eaves surrounding the gate, he reverently spilled the golden charm into his hand, brought it to his mouth, and kissed it.

~ ~ ~ ~

“Where is that child?” Father Calvert murmured as he moved aside the pale, smooth lace of the Battenberg curtain with a fingertip, letting the cool touch of its softness slide over his knuckles. Beck was already an hour late. His lips pursed in amusement. Beck was always running off somewhere, elusive and quick as a little lizard, always drawing attention to himself.

The parish had been given the annual sum of fifty thousand dollars in return for feeding, housing and educating Becket Merriday. The money arrived the same day every year, in a vellum envelope hand-delivered by a brisk and unsmiling attorney who answered no questions. Calvert had called their office once, digging for information, and had been so coldly shut down that he had never tried again. Beck’s benefactor wished to remain anonymous, he was told, and it was a private matter that he was being paid not to pry into, wasn’t he? Calvert had hung up the phone shaking with outrage. He himself had not agreed to the arrangement, but had inherited it, so to speak, from the elder priest in place before him. That priest had died three years ago, and Calvert felt no particular loyalty to any contract the man had made with Beck’s mysterious guardian. He often had thoughts that Beck must be a senator’s by-blow or some rich heiress’s secret, and that whoever owned the little rat could probably afford a whole lot more than they were paying to keep Beck out of sight. At any rate the boy was certainly born out of wedlock. The Church had not taken a hard stand on bastards for some time, but Calvert had his own opinions.

Calvert waited five more minutes at the kitchen window, humming quietly as he watched several dusty sparrows pick for grubs in the dead leaves. He finally left, heading for the quiet hall that led to the rectory, certain that he’d find the boy huddled in some corner with a book. Predictably, as soon as he opened the door to the dimly-lit rectory, he heard a scuttling sound behind the bookcase. He smiled and closed the door, silently pushing the lock into place, double-checking to make sure it held.

“Beck?” he called softly, creeping around the tall bookcase, the air so still he could hear his own heartbeat in his ears. “Are you hiding, angel? I’ve got something for you.”

He looked down and saw a small, dark head bowed over a book, and two childish legs drawn up to a thin chest that shivered and heaved. Beck held the book clasped to him like a shield, arms crossed over its cover. Calvert knelt and gently pried the book away from Beck’s grasp, who reacted by drawing up into an even smaller ball. Calvert set the book aside and carded his fingers through the black silk of Beck’s hair, sighing deeply when his penis twitched at the contact. He felt his member grow stiff and poke at the restraining fabric of his briefs, and he scooted closer. “Sweet angel,” he crooned.

“Lustful priest.”

Still on his knees, Calvert jerked back from the boy and whirled, shocked by the unfamiliar voice and dismayed that a stranger had invaded his sanctuary, someone who could have seen anything.

He turned back to hiss at Beck to hide somewhere, but stopped, his jaw hanging open, when he saw that neither Beck nor the book was behind the case. It was empty, with only the sweet ache in his groin for evidence that the boy had ever been there.

His eyes darted around the room, searching. The rumpled carpet led a red trail to a hunched shape outlined against the window. Outside, the streetlamp dripped sour yellow luminance into the rectory, coalescing around the dim form of an old woman who leaned heavily on her cane. Calvert relaxed slightly and stood, consciously smoothing his robes. Only an old lady, probably hard of hearing, too. Whatever she had seen, he could talk her around. He’d always had a way with women and kids.

Calvert wiped the perspiration off his brow with the end of his sleeve as he began to approach the old woman. She was older than he first thought, yet he could have sworn it was a man’s voice he heard. Confusion and fear made his charming voice less kind than he was wont to speak in public.

“Can I help you with something?”

“You have helped yourself to quite enough that is mine.”

Calvert frowned. Just my luck, he thought. Why do all the crazies find their way down here? You’d think there was something drawing them. Why don’t they go uptown, where they can at least get a meal?

“Excuse me, but just how did you get in here?”

The woman advanced, moving away from the leprous light, her cane clicking on the wooden floor with a sound that reminded him of a prowling dog. “In the old days, we knew what to do with men such as you. Faithless priests are no novelty. Still, confession is good for the soul.”

His heart began to pound. She had seen something. “Now, just wait a moment—”

“But then, it was so much harder to hide it in those days; lack of faith.” She stopped and stared at him, her hair pulled back from her face in two white waves and her old eyes knowing and jaded, seeing inside him. “We would take a man like you and hang his skin from the branches of a poisoned tree. But first, we would cut a hole in your belly, pull out a length of your guts, and strangle you with them. This we would have done while your feet roasted over a pit of coals.”

Calvert recoiled as much in fear as in startled offense. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave!”

She laughed. It was not the reedy titter of an old woman, but the full-throated laughter of a healthy man. Calvert gasped and took several steps back. His hands worked, fingers curled into fishhooks as he dug at his belt for the solace of his rosary, but that thin comfort evaporated when the woman began to change.

Calvert’s jaws opened and closed before his mouth cinched into a drawstring purse of disbelief. The woman’s washed-out hair darkened and smoothed as new bones jutted up from her collar, forming broad, square shoulders. Her body plumped and filled out, a wind battering her skin and bones from within.

“Oh God!” Calvert choked, backing up, tripping over a ribbed edge of the blood-red carpet and falling hard on his rump. Fear scalded his bowels as they let loose.

“Llllust!”

A bass roar now, a bull-voice that called down sin from the pulpit.

Calvert began to babble. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee oh God, be with me God, be with me!” as he held the small wooden crucifix to his mouth, almost eating it in his terror, as the choking stink of his own shit reached his nostrils.

He could see the man now. Not the nightmare monster he had feared would leap, bloody muscle and skin ripped aside, from the old woman’s bones, but a man with pale blue eyes and pure black hair that curled at the sides of his long face, dressed in a long black cassock and Roman collar. His beauty made him all the more terrible.

The man stretched out his hand. “He was mine.”

Calvert felt his heart trip and seize, and he panted, feeling a chill begin in the center of his chest that grew and quickly seeped into his arms and down to his fingertips. The cold became pain, and pain became howling agony as he flopped and screamed, mouth dripping pink froth from bitten lips, slapping at his chest, vainly trying to put out the fire. The last thing he saw as the muscles of his heart burst and showered his chest cavity with bits of molten lava, was the rise and sweep of two pale curtains that shuttered away his last view of the world.

They looked like wings.

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When his parents get a gander at the sex tape sent by a blackmailer, they offer Kendall Turner a few weeks of “rest” in a cushy clinic. No, he says, and hotfoots it across the lawns of the family estate. KT isn’t his own worst enemy anymore; there’s a new candidate for the title. Suddenly, Kendall’s on the lam, trying to outrun a murder rap. Helping — by locking KT naked in their motel room — is his cousin Turn. KT has some issues: he manages to censor himself only when he lies, he’s been in love with cousin Turn since forever, and he really would rather kill himself than get more rest at another clinic.

************************

Chapter One

“Be sensible, Kendall,” my mother said in the patient tone that can drive me to a seething rage in three seconds flat. “In the video you are, to put it crudely, tanked.”

To put it even more crudely, I’d been tanked enough to let a guy I’d been stupid enough to trust – for a few months anyway – ream my ass until I gave in to his exhortations to squeal like a pig.

The video ended, with a curious delicacy, while I was still just bleating: Ah! Ah!

Helpless noises. An aural demonstration of my pathetic, nonpredatory status. But not as bad as the next moments would have been.

I suspected I had the family’s go-to guy to thank for that delicacy. The guy standing behind me, out of sight but never long out of mind. I’ve beaten off to dreams of Turner Scott since high school.

He’d disappeared the week he graduated, showed up three years later for just long enough to pull my nuts out of the fire, and disappeared again until a few weeks ago – when he’d taken his place at Father’s side as if he’d been there all along.

He must have brought this little home movie, must have shown it to my parents and my nauseatingly perfect big brother. Nobody else would have edited it to spare the last cowering molecule of my dignity.

But he could have just pitched it into the river. Jacksonville has so many bridges he had to have crossed at least one to get here. Thinking about that suppressed any hydraulic reaction. Or gratitude, for that matter.

Father clicked off the monitor and folded it flat into its compartment on his mahogany desk. The back was veneered with a copy of the 1609 La Florida map. He rested neatly buffed fingertips on the gleaming wood for a moment, then steepled his fingers and regarded me.

Mother spoke for him. “You must agree to counseling.”

I crossed my arms and worked at not digging my fingertips into the cashmere of my jacket sleeves. Unless I went back to accepting an allowance, I couldn’t afford to replace the jacket. I could barely afford to clean it. But living poor was better than living with Father, I reminded myself. Father has ten fingertips. Thanks to him, I have nine.

I cleared my throat. “Certainly, Mother. Have you already identified someone willing to help with your unseemly interest in the details of your adult son’s sexuality?”

Neither of my parents was capable of turning purple, but eyelids dropped and lips thinned. A white line traced Father’s mouth. Score.

In this family, you take what victories you can get. Then you watch for the retaliation.

I paced to the window overlooking the north lawn. Wilson and his temps had stretched colored strings, dug lines of holes, erected lines of poles, moved a perennial bed, and still were nowhere near finished transforming the yard for next week’s Autumn Festival for the Arts. Two of the men were bulling up to one another now, bumping chests and generally doing everything but whip out their dicks and a ruler.

Wilson waved a chart at them, one of his detailed blueprints of where every plant and wire belonged in this yard. The largest man snatched the chart from his hand. Wilson decked him.

Not my problem. I leaned one shoulder on the window frame and faced the real predators.

From his sleek desk, Father watched me, waiting for a weakness to evince itself. People considered him Mother’s slightly coarse backup, fund-raiser, what-have-you. Most people, of course, were lucky enough not to know him well. I hadn’t made the mistake of underestimating him since I was six years old.

Mother in her champagne-tweed suit stood between him and the Louis XV escritoire. Her face would make a Barbie’s look like a Greek tragedy mask. She hasn’t gone psychotic since the last time someone suggested that mid-November chanced being just a little too cold to be outdoors, even in Florida, and proposed moving the festival from our yard to an indoor setting in Avondale.

Today she ran her fingers along the edge of a discreet lacewood tissue dispenser, then along a rapidly ticking gilt clock presented by some grateful arts faculty somewhere. Agitation. Was she embarrassed by the graphic display? Or was time a problem right now?

The floridly engraved grandfather clock to my left swung its pendulum in slow counterpoint to the gilt clock, one measured kshink for every three gilt ticks. Like a wolfhound and a rat terrier wagging their tails.

Frosted fingernails paused on the tissue dispenser. She was trying to decide whether to try an emotional con job. My sister (strategically absent this afternoon) was immune to that tactic, but we males sometimes reacted as desired.

Sometimes. Wasn’t going to happen today.

Her fingers stilled, then fluttered over the clock. “We haven’t been snooping, Kendall. This came with a request that boiled down to…blackmail.”

Blackmail? Again? But that took balls. Len must have acquired a pair along with his new boyfriend.

I crossed my ankles. “How gauche. Turn, of course, has taken care of the matter. Did you break his kneecaps, Turn? Or just explain how easily you could?”

Mother’s lips thinned again. She referred to him as Scott. My calling him anything else came under the heading of being difficult.

She’d explained to Dean and me the concept of a shirttail relative when Turn first appeared in our lives, and she’d tried to have his name changed. One of her few failures. Whatever Father might see in Turn, Mother would never forgive him for daring to exist.

Much less for besting Dean in at least half their competitions.

She tapped the lacewood box. “Think of mice, Kendall. If you see one, you know more are hiding close by. We cannot assume this is the only recording. We must take preemptive action: A few weeks of inpatient therapy – in a nice, open setting, of course – then a few weeks of intensive outpatient therapy. I am told this is the accepted standard. Afterward, you can do volunteer work, helping others as you were helped.”

The gilt clock ticked rapidly. Open setting. Open setting. Open setting.

I blinked, but couldn’t hear ticking – just the impossible words. The carrot. A facility that promised I would never be locked in a small, bare room without a generous blood level of chemical placidity. The stick would be a less-open facility.

Of course, none of them are all that open once you get inside.

Mother smiled without deepening a single wrinkle. “We have it all arranged.”

All arranged. Including the media packages, no doubt.

A semester of my life, if not a year. How twisted would my mind get before I could convince those people I was happy and straight enough to be let loose on society?

When I was finally free, the only graduate program willing to let me resume my studies would be one where the department head owed the size of his/her paycheck to annual gifts from the Turner Trust. Graduating with credentials like that would sooo enhance my job prospects.

I could hear the toilet gurgling now.

I glanced at the only door, now flanked by my brother and Turn. They looked like light and dark paint jobs on the same model. Dean was sandy blond, like me, but had Turn’s heavy shoulders and ripped musculature. They both had the deep-set, silver-blue eyes that looked down from Father’s portrait, and his father’s portrait. They’d competed in love, academics, athletics – in every possible way – until Turn’s disappearance.

I remembered hiding on the garage roof that night, watching while he loaded his computer, a manila folder thick with papers, and an armload of clothing into Mick Wheeler’s Cherokee. I remembered wishing I were older than fourteen, so I could leave with him. The next day, nobody knew where he’d gone.

Father had forbidden anyone to trace him. “He’s a Turner, after all. Give him a little independence, a chance to mature. He’ll have the sense to come back.”

I’d gotten very drunk the night I found out Father was right.

Now he and Dean stood like bookends, a team. Between me and the door.

Dean couldn’t pin me without a fight. Dean and Turn together could duckwalk me anywhere they wanted, without wrinkling their suits.

I hoped my suit would hide my sweat. In some socioeconomic strata, a man can make a fool of himself without his family being able to do a thing about it.

My family, however, made arrangements.

Unless I agreed to whatever had been decided, I was to be declared a danger to myself or others. I was to go away for what used to be called a little rest, and was to emerge heroically humbled: the prodigal eager to help other unfortunates.

Did that mean other gays or other drunks? Drunks, I decided. Drunks have less of a voting bloc. Drunks don’t organize nasty publicity campaigns. Either way, the prospect sucked.

Sweat tickled along my spine, prickled in the small of my back. I held my breath for five heartbeats and released it over the course of ten heartbeats before I looked at Father. “Have you ever considered the consequences of going too far with your arrangements? Have you ever wondered where I would draw the line?”

He looked back blandly. “Have you ever wondered where I would?”

A cold droplet inched down my spine. How much could they do to me? My shortened pinkie finger throbbed in memory. “I appear to have worn out my welcome. Good night, all.”

I swung my weight off the window frame and headed toward the door, as if oblivious to the two big men who could take one step apiece and block it.

My brother took that step.

My heart thudded; storm clouds pulsed in my eyes.

Turn raised one stop-sign hand and looked past me to the hereditary units. “Let me take him for a drive. We can talk on the way.”

My brother frowned, looking at me and then past me. This wasn’t in the script. I held my breath, and my position. The units behind me would be communicating with their eyes. Nothing I could say or do would improve matters.

I had to get out of here. Away from them.

I held still, breathing by the numbers as sweat ate through my antiperspirant.

Turn’s shining silver gaze fixed over my shoulder, either monitoring or taking part in the Eyeball Telegraph.

Out of here! Out of here! ticked the gilt clock.

Wait, said the old one. Time it right.

Dean’s phone buzzed against his Italian leather belt. He started.

I snatched open the door and hit a jog, fear winning over dignity.

Father spoke. “Take care of him.”

He meant me.

I ran.

The driveway’s pea gravel crunched under my kidskin oxfords and under the shoes of a single follower. I saw the image we would make in manga style, pictured myself turning to confront my follower, and snorted. I could outrun either of them, but my two years (on and off) of tai chi lessons didn’t exactly equal their six-plus years of fierce dojo competition.

Wilson stopped in my path, chart in one gloved hand and a bright yellow cement bag poised jauntily on his shoulder. He sidestepped.

At the same time, I sidestepped – to the same side.

I play soccer. I constantly dodge guys who want to tackle me. Why am I square-dancing with this lunk?

I tacked left and Wilson quick-stepped out of my way. He wasn’t as stupid as he looked.

I sprinted past him, heading for the line of parked vehicles beyond the garage: Dean’s new truck and Turn’s gleaming Lincoln and my secondhand Kia.

The brief dance had cost me. A shadow’s head bobbed at the level of my shadow’s knees.

He’d get me when I stopped to open the car door. Luckily, I had keyless entry. I clicked the Unlock button on my key tab.

The headlights didn’t flash, meaning the lock didn’t open.

I clicked again, cursing the dying battery. Cursing myself for not having replaced it this morning. Yesterday morning. Hell, on Monday after standing for ten minutes in the rain outside the Turner Lab at school, clicking until the locks popped open.

They popped just as I reached the door.

Weight slammed me against the car. My breath gushed out, and I saw stars.

The weight rolled to the side. I clung to the cold metal, trying to breathe.

Turn pulled me off the car and tight against him, like I was his teddy bear to hug – a stunningly intimate gesture. He’d die if he knew.

He didn’t spare me a glance, though, as he took the key from my hand and muscled past me to the driver’s seat. His silver-blue Turner eyes roved left and right, tracing the horizon. “Go around. I have to drive, KT. Don’t argue.”

He hadn’t left me breath to argue with. I dashed around to the passenger side and fumbled with my seat belt.

He took it out of my hands and clicked it for me. He wasn’t driving me to any mental hospital; instinctively, I knew that.

He was in combat mode for some other reason. Something had happened. Something bad.

“Lower your seat, KT. All the way. Hold your head below the window. No, you’re too tall – looks suspicious. Got a cap? Put it on. Tell me you haven’t defused your air bags.”

My passenger seat didn’t raise or lower. Only the driver’s seat did. This wasn’t a limo. The back right window was a piece of Plexiglas Len had cut and installed for me. “I’m lucky to have working air bags. Why would I mess with them?”

“Good. Cap.”

While reaching into the back for my cap, I saw him pull a remote from his pocket. “Dude, we’re way out of range for the gate ope -”

The gate was sliding aside. Did Father know Turn could do that? Dean didn’t know, or he’d insist on a high-powered remote of his own – and Dean would not have resisted showing it off to me. I took a breath. “What’s happened, Turn? Who called just now?”

“They’ve already found Leonard Stewart’s body.”

Body? I sat up. No fucking way! Len can not be dead.

I thought of my parents’ tenseness, their too-calm faces, and Dean’s visible jumpiness. Yes, way.

Then I saw red. “You killed Len? For what? For fucking me?”

He flicked me a glance. Amused. The fucker was amused!

“I take it the outrage means you didn’t do the job on him either. So, if you were a detective instead of a budding ethnobotanist, whatever that is, who would be your prime suspects?”

Me. I’d be second in line behind his current boyfriend until someone found out about the blackmail. When that came out, I’d jump to the head of the line. But I’d bring along Turn, the man who’d beaten the living shit out of the last pair of guys who’d tried to blackmail the units over me.

My vision contracted to a tunnel, me to him. He hadn’t actually denied killing Len. He’d been gone a long time. Had he needed a strong show of loyalty to win back his place at Father’s shoulder?

“Right. You and me,” he said, although I hadn’t voiced my thoughts. “We need to get out of the immediate arrest-zone and give the processes a while to work. Then, when the lawyers say it’s safe, we can voluntarily go by the police station for questioning.”

Processes. One end of the machine opens to let people voluntarily walk in. The other end shits sausage links. Don’t ever ask what happens in between.

The tunnel threatened to close in on me. I’d been jailed once, overnight, though the rest of the guys from the party were bonded out within an hour. When I’d called for help, Father told me I’d get a lot of growing up done in one night behind bars.

I guess it depends on how you define growing up.

I’ve had three surgeries to reduce the scars. People say the remaining lines look like premature wrinkles. Trust me – they don’t. Most of my right cheek is still numb. I’d taught myself to eat and enunciate as though nothing had happened, but I couldn’t fully pucker my lips.

Tunnel vision wasn’t going to help. I did breathing exercises, mental tai chi, until I could see. Good thing Turn had the wheel. Moss-draped live oaks and 1920s-era houses make San Marco a scenic neighborhood to drive in, but too many drivers here like to keep one foot on the gas and the other on the dotted centerline.

Turn threw me a glance. “You okay, KT?”

“Define okay.” I hadn’t dropped into a blind panic. Which might have surprised everyone. One could almost think the units had choreographed that scene to tip me over.

“They said you go into fight-or-flight mode at the drop of a hat these days.”

I shivered. So that scene had been choreographed to send me off the deep end. Why? And by escaping it had I jumped from the barbed wire into the quicksand?

For a murder charge, they can hold you until trial. Especially if you have a record of not showing up for a hearing – even if you were heavily sedated in a hospital at the time of that hearing.

Even with a lawyer, things can go wrong. Even with parents desperate to get you out, which I couldn’t be guaranteed of, the processes can take too long.

I finished a cycle of slow breathing before I spoke. “We are fucked.”

He nodded. “Pretty much.”