When a half-century old skeleton tumbles out of the wall in the midst of the renovation of Cloak and Dagger Bookstore renovation, Adrien turns to hot and handsome ex-lover Jake Riordan — now out-of-the closet and working as a private detective. Jake is only too happy to have reason to stay in close contact with Adrien, but there are more surprises in Adrien’s past than either one of them expects — and one of them may prove hazardous to Jake’s own heart.

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

Chapter One

It began, as a lot of things do, in bed.

Or to be precise, on the living-room sofa where I was uncomfortably dozing.

Somewhere in the distance of a very weird dream about me and a certain ex-LAPD police lieutenant came a faint, persistent scratching. The scratching worked itself into my dream, and I deduced with the vague logic of the unconscious that the cat was sharpening his claws on the antique half-moon table in the hall. Again.

Except…that boneless ball of heat on my abdomen was the cat. And he was sound asleep…

I opened my eyes. It was dark, and it took me a second or two to place myself. Moonlight outlined the pirate bookends on the bookshelf. From where I lay, I could barely make out the motion of the draperies in the warm July breeze in the front room of the flat above Cloak and Dagger Books.

I was home.

There had been a time when I’d thought I would never see home again. But here I was. I had a furry heating pad on my belly, a crick in my neck, and — apparently — a midnight visitor.

My first thought was that Lisa had called Guy, my ex, to look in on me. That furtive scraping wasn’t the sound of a key; it was more like someone trying to…well, pick the lock.

I rolled off the sofa, dislodging the sleeping cat, and staggered to my feet, fighting the dizziness that had dogged me since my heart surgery three weeks earlier. I’d been staying at my mother’s home in the Chatsworth Hills, but I’d checked myself out of the lunatic asylum that afternoon.

If Guy had dropped by, he’d have turned on the light in the shop below. There was no band of light beneath the door. No, what there was, was the occasional flash of illumination as though someone was trying to balance a flashlight.

I wasn’t dreaming. Someone was trying to break in.

I felt my way across the darkened room to the entrance hall. My heart was already beating way too hard and too fast, and I felt a spark of anxiety — the anxiety that was getting to be familiar since my surgery. Was my healing heart up to this kind of strain? Even as I was calculating whether I could get to the Webley in the bedroom closet and load it before the intruder got the door open or whether my best bet was to lock myself in the bedroom and phone the cops, the decision was made for me.

The lock mechanism turned over, the door handle rotated, and the door silently inched out of the frame.

I reacted instinctively, grabbing the rush-bottomed chair in the hall and throwing it with all my strength. “Get the fuck out of here,” I yelled over the racket of the chair clattering into the door and hitting the floor.

And — surprisingly — the intruder did get the fuck out.

Not a dream. Not a misreading of the situation. Someone had tried to break in to my living quarters.

I heard the heavy thud of footsteps pounding down the staircase back to the shop, heard something crash below, heard another crash, and, as I tottered to the wall light switch, the slam of a distant door.

What door? Not the side entrance of the shop below, because I knew that particular bang very well, and certainly not the front door behind the security gate. No, it had to have been from the adjacent structure. The bookstore took up one half of a subdivided building that had originally, back in the thirties, housed a small hotel. The other half of the building had gone through a variety of commercial incarnations, none of which had survived more than a year or so, until I’d finally been in a position to buy it myself the previous spring. It was currently in the expensive and noisy process of being renovated, the two halves divided by a wall of thick plastic.

Not thick enough, clearly.

The contractor had assured me the perimeter doors were guarded by “construction locks,” and that it was as safe as it had ever been. Obviously he wasn’t familiar with my history, let alone the history of the building.

I leaned back against the wall, trying to catch my breath and listening. Somewhere down the street I heard an engine roaring into life. Not necessarily my intruder’s getaway car fleeing the scene. This was a nonresidential part of Pasadena, and at night it was very quiet and surprisingly isolated.

There was a time when I’d have intrepidly, Mr. Boy Detective, gone downstairs to see what the damage was. That that was four murder investigations, one shooting, and one heart surgery ago. Instead I got the gun from the bedroom closet, loaded it, returned to the front room, where the windows offered a better vantage point, and picked up the phone. The streetlamps cast leopard spots on the empty sidewalk, accentuated the deep shadows between the old buildings. Nothing moved. I recalled a line by Raymond Chandler: “The streets were dark with something more than night.”

Reaction hit me, and I slid down the wall and dialed 911.

I was having trouble catching my breath as I waited — and waited — for the 911 operator, and I hoped to hell I wasn’t having a heart attack. My heart had been damaged by rheumatic fever when I was sixteen. A recent bout of pneumonia had worsened my condition, and I’d been in line for surgery even before getting shot three weeks earlier. Everything was under control now, and according to my cardiologist, I was making terrific progress. The ironic thing about the surgery and the news that I was evidently going to make old bones after all was that I felt mortal in a way that I hadn’t for the last fifteen years.

Tomkins pussyfooted up to delicately head-butt me.

“Hi,” I said.

He blinked his wide, almond-shaped, green-gold eyes at me and meowed. He had a surprisingly quiet meow. Not as annoying as most cats. Not that I was an expert — nor did I plan on becoming one. I was only loaning a fellow bachelor my pad. The cat — kitten, really — was also convalescing. He’d been mauled by a dog three weeks ago. His bounce back was better than mine.

I stroked him absently as he wriggled around and tried to bite my fingers. I guessed there was truth to the wisdom about petting a cat to lower your blood pressure, because I could feel my heart rate slowing, calming — which was pretty good, considering how pissed off I was getting at being kept on hold in the middle of an emergency.

Granted, it wasn’t much of an emergency at this point. My intruder was surely long gone.

I chewed my lip, listened once more to the message advising me to stay on the line and help would soon be with me. Assuming I’d still be alive to take that call.

I hung up and dialed another number. A number I had memorized long ago. A number that seemingly would require acid wash to remove from the memory cells of my brain.

As the phone rang on the other end, I glanced across at the clock on the bookshelf. Three oh three in the morning. Well, here was a test of true friendship.

“Riordan,” Jake managed in a voice like raked gravel.

“Uh…hey.”

“Hey.” I could feel him making the effort to push through the fog of sleep. He rasped, “How are you?”

Pretty civil given the fact that I hadn’t spoken to him for nearly two weeks and was choosing three in the morning to reopen the lines of communication.

I found myself instinctively straining to hear the silence behind him; was someone there with him? I couldn’t hear over the rustle of bed linens.

“I’m okay. Something happened just now. I think someone tried to break in.”

“You think?” And he was completely alert. I could hear the covers tossed back, the squeak of bedsprings.

“Someone did try to break in. He took off, but —”

“You’re back at the bookstore?”

“Yeah. I got home late this afternoon.”

“You’re there alone?”

Thank God he didn’t say it like everyone else had. Alone? As though it was out of the question. As though I was far too ill and helpless to be left to my own devices. Jake simply looked at it from a security perspective.

“Yeah.”

“Did the security alarm go off?”

“No.”

“Did you call it in?”

“I called nine-one-one. They put me on hold.”

“At three o’clock in the morning?” He was definitely on his feet and moving, dressing, it sounded like, and I felt a wave of guilty relief. Regardless of how complicated our relationship was — and it was pretty complicated — there was no one I knew who was better at dealing with this kind of thing. Whatever this kind of thing was.

Which I guessed said more than I realized right there.

Jake’s voice was crisp. “Hang up and call nine-one-one again. Stay on the line with them. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I said gruffly, “Thanks, Jake.”

Just like that. I had called, and he was coming to the rescue. Unexpectedly, a wave of emotion — reaction — hit me. One of the weird aftereffects of my surgery. I struggled with it as he said, “I’m on my way,” and disconnected.

§ § § §

I went down to meet him, taking the stairs slowly, taking my time. From above, I had a bird’s-eye view of the book floor. The register looked undisturbed. I could see where the bargain-book table had been toppled. Otherwise everything looked pretty much as normal: same comfortable leather club chairs, same wooden fake fireplace, same tall matching walnut bookshelves — strictly mystery and crime novels — same secretive smiles on the pale faces of the Kabuki masks on the back wall.

I unlocked the door, pushed open the security gate, which he’d knelt to examine. “You didn’t have to come down. I’d have gone around to the s —” Jake broke off. He rose and said oddly, “Déjà vu.”

I didn’t get it for a second, and then I did. Echoes of the first time we’d met; although met was kind of a polite word for turning up as a suspect in someone’s murder investigation.

Uncombed, unshaven, I was even dressed the same: jeans and bare feet. I’d thrown a leather jacket on partly because, despite the warmth of a July night, I felt chilled, and partly because I didn’t want to treat him to the vision of the seam down the middle of my chest from open heart surgery. Not that Jake hadn’t seen it when he visited me in the hospital, but it looked different out of context. The bullet hole in my shoulder was ugly enough; the incision from the base of my collarbone down through my breastbone was shocking. I found it shocking, anyway.

I said awkwardly, “Thanks again for coming.”

He nodded.

We stared at each other. These last weeks couldn’t have been easy on Jake, and not because I’d asked him to give me a little time, a little space before we tried to figure out where we stood. He’d resigned from LAPD, come out to his family, and asked his wife for a divorce. But he looked unchanged. Reassuringly unchanged. I think I’d feared… Well, I’m not sure. That he’d be harrowed by regret. For his entire adult life he’d fought to defend that closet he inhabited. Been willing to sacrifice almost everything to protect it. I couldn’t help thinking he’d take to being out like a fish to desert sand.

He looked okay. No, be honest. He looked a lot better than okay. He looked…fine. Fine, as in get the Chiffons over here to sing a chorus. Big, blond, ruggedly handsome in a trial-by-fire way. He was very lean, all hard muscle and powerful bone. Maybe there was more silver at his temples, but there was a calm in his tawny eyes that I’d never seen before.

Under that light, steady gaze I felt unnervingly self-conscious. It was weird to think that for the first time in all the time I’d known him there was nothing to keep us from being together except the question of whether we both really wanted it.

He asked matter-of-factly, “Why didn’t the alarm go off?”

“It wasn’t set.”

A quick drawing of his dark brows. He opened his mouth. I beat him to it. “We haven’t been setting it while the construction has been going on next door.”

“Tell me you’re kidding.”

He already knew I wasn’t. “The city threatened to fine me because we had too many false alarms. The construction crew usually arrives before we open the shop, and they kept triggering it. So I thought…until the construction was completed…”

His silence said it all — good thing, because I was pretty sure if Jake got started, we’d be there all night.

“I think he must have come in from the side.” I turned to lead the way.

He followed me across the front of the tall aisles. I pointed out where an endcap had been knocked over. “Only the emergency lights were on, and he crashed into that.” I nodded to the fallen bargain table, the landslide of spilled books. “And there.”

We reached the clear plastic wall dividing Cloak and Dagger Books from the gutted other half of the building. Staring from one side to the other was like peering through murky water. I could barely make out the ladders and scaffolds like the ribs of a mythological beast. I directed Jake’s attention to the long five-foot slit through the plastic near the wall.

“Good call.” He sounded grim.

I’d have happily been wrong. “The contractor told me that that side of the building would be secured with special locks. Construction locks.”

He was already shaking his head. “Look at this.” He stooped, pushing through the slit in the plastic, and I followed him into the darkened other side of the building. It smelled chilly and weird on that side. A mixture of fresh plaster, new wood, and dust. We picked our way through the hurdles of drop cloths and wooden horses and cement mixers to the door on the far wall. It swung open at his touch.

“Great,” I said bitterly.

“Yep.” He showed me the core in the center of the exterior handle. I discerned that it was painted, though I couldn’t make out a color. “See that?”

I nodded.

“It’s a construction core. That’s a temporary lock used by contractors on construction sites. They’re all combinated the same, or mostly the same, which means that if someone gets hold of a key, they’ve got a key to pretty much every construction core in the city.”

“Better and better.”

He shut the door and relocked it. “As security goes, this is one step above leaving the door standing wide open.”

I swallowed. Nodded.

“Whoever broke in may have been watching the place and knew no one’s been here at night.”

I said, “It doesn’t look like they touched the register.”

“It might have been kids prowling around.” Jake didn’t sound convinced, and I knew why.

“Trying to break in to my flat was —”

“Pretty aggressive,” he agreed. “Again, I think that probably gets back to the mistaken belief that no one was home. No one has been staying here at night for three weeks, right? So it was a reasonable assumption.”

I absorbed that. “This might not have been the first time he was prowling around in here.”

“True.”

“I don’t know that Natalie would notice the slice in the plastic wall. Hell, if Warren were hanging around, I don’t know if she’d notice the Tasmanian Devil bursting through.”

Sort of unfair to Natalie; Jake snorted, grimly amused.

All at once I was exhausted. Mentally and physically and emotionally drained dry. I didn’t seem to have much in the way of physical resources these days, and this break-in felt like way more than I could begin to handle.

Jake opened his mouth but stopped. Through the dirty glass of the bay window, we watched a squad car pull up, lights flashing, though there was no siren.

Better late than never, I guess.

After a second or two, Jake looked at me. “You okay? You’re shaking.”

“Adrenaline.”

“And heart surgery.” He glanced back at the black-and-white. Drew a deep breath. “Why don’t you head upstairs? I’ll take care of this.”

There it was again. That weird new emotionalism. The smallest things seemed to choke me up. Like this. Jake offering to talk to the cops for me.

Except this wasn’t a small thing. Jake, who had hid his sexuality from his brother officers for nearly twenty years, who had been unwilling for people to even know we were friends, who had very nearly succumbed to blackmail and more to keep that secret, was offering to stand here in my place and talk to these cops — and let them think whatever they chose to about us and our relationship.

I’m not sure what was stranger: the fact that he was making the offer or that I was ready to start crying over it.

“I can handle it.”

He met my gaze. “I know you can. I’d like to do this for you.”

Hell. He did it again. It had to be that I was overtired and still shaken by the break-in. I worked to keep my face and voice from showing anything I was feeling, managing a brusque nod.

The cops, a man and a woman in uniform, were getting out of their car. I turned and started back through ladders and wooden horses and scaffolds.

§ § § §

I was sitting on the sofa sleeping with the cat on my lap when Jake let himself into the flat.

I must have been snoring, because the snick of the door shutting seemed to come like a clap of thunder in the wake of a windstorm. The cat sprang from my lap. I straighted, closed my mouth, wiped my eyes, and when I blearily opened them, Jake stood over me, looking unfairly alert for four in the morning.

“Was that a cat I saw running into your bedroom?”

I cleared my throat. “Was it?”

“It looked like it.” He sat down on the sofa next to me — all that size and heat and energy — and every muscle in my body immediately clenched tight in nervous reaction. I didn’t feel ready for…whatever this was liable to be.

I said lightly, “Maybe the building is haunted.”

“Could be.” He seemed to study my face with unusual attention. “Your burglary complaint is filed. Tomorrow, first thing, you need to tell that contractor to get real locks on those doors. In fact, I’d advise you to change all the locks on both sides of the building.”

I nodded wearily. “I’ve been trying to think what he was after.”

“The usual things.”

“Then why not break in to the cash register?”

“An empty cash register? Why?”

Good point. No point robbing the till after the day’s bank drop had been made. I must be more tired than I thought. Maybe Jake had the same idea, because he said, “I thought you’d be in bed by now.”

“I’m on my way. But I wanted to thank you…”

He said gravely, “Don’t mention it. I’m glad you called me. I’ve been wondering how you’re doing.”

My gaze fell. “I’m all right.” There was so much to say, and yet I couldn’t seem to think of anything. “I’m getting there. The worst part is being tired all the time.”

“Yeah.” I could feel him watching me — seeing right through me.

“Jake…”

When I didn’t continue, he said, “I know. I know it’s a lot to ask. Probably too much, although I won’t pretend I’m not hoping.”

Forgiveness. That’s what he was talking about. Forgiveness for any number of things, I guessed. I was talking about something completely different.

I shook my head. “It isn’t — I don’t know how to explain this. It’s not you, though. It’s me.”

He waited with that new calm, that new certainty in his eyes. He was expecting me to drop the ax on him. I could see that. He had been expecting it since the last time we spoke in the hospital and I’d asked him to give me time. That’s what he had expected when he answered my cry for help tonight — what he still expected — but he had come anyway.

Was that love or guilt or civic responsibility? He was the best friend I’d ever had — and the worst.

I said, “This isn’t going to make sense to you, because it doesn’t make sense to me. I know how lucky I am. I do. I know I’m getting a second chance, and even though I feel like utter shit, I know I’m getting well and I’m going to be okay. Better than okay. That’s what my doctors keep telling me, and I know that I should be really happy and really relieved. But…I-I can’t seem to feel anything right now.”

Nothing from Jake. Not that I blamed him. What was he supposed to make of that speech?

I concluded lamely, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“You feel what you feel. You’re allowed.”

It was getting harder to go on. I felt I had to be honest with him. “I was happy enough with Guy, but I don’t want Guy. I don’t want…anyone. Right now.”

There was another pause after he heard me out. He said, “Okay.”

It was that easy. I wasn’t sure if what I felt was relief or disappointment.

I heard myself say, awkwardly, “I felt like I should —”

“Got it.” Was there an edge to his tone? He still looked calm. Actually, he looked concerned. He said, “Why don’t you go to bed, Adrien? I’ve seen snowmen with more color in their faces. You need sleep. So do I. In fact, I’m going to spend what’s left of the night on your couch.”

I said, despite my instant relief, “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know, Greta. You vant to be alone. But unless your need for space prohibits a friend crashing on the sofa, that’s what I’m doing.”

I didn’t have the energy to argue with him — or myself. I nodded, pushed off the sofa, and headed for the bedroom. “There are blankets in the linen cupboard.”

“I remember.”

A thought occurred to me. I paused in the doorway, turning back to him.

“Jake?”

He was in the process of tugging off a boot. He glanced up. “Yeah?”

“Downstairs. With the cops. Was it okay?”

It seemed to take him a second to understand my concern. He smiled — the first real smile I’d seen from him in a very long time.

“Yes,” he said. “It was okay.”

Two men: one with memories he can’t escape, the other with memories he can’t recapture — both trusting strangers who lie.

Amnesiac Peter Killian, suspected art thief, can’t understand why LAPD detective Michael Griffin takes his memory loss so personally.

American expatriate Jack Stoyles, exiled in a distant Atlantic outpost, is suddenly in love with a stranger who kisses him — and then dies. With good reason Jack calls his place “Heartache Cafe”.

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

You wouldn’t think it even gets hot in a place like this, but let me tell you, brother, it does. Around the middle of July, the fog clears away, and the sun comes out, hot enough (as they say around these parts) to split the rocks. It’s a different sort of place, not like anywhere I’d ever been before, but when you have to leave home as suddenly as I did, you don’t much care. You just pick a direction on the map and head out and hope things turn out okay. Twelve hundred miles as the crow flies to St. John’s, Newfoundland, from my hometown of Philadelphia; I slept nearly the whole way, never mind the roaring of the airplane engines. Some things hit harder than others, and I’d been dealt a knockout punch.

When we landed at the airstrip in this little town called Torbay, I felt like I’d come to the end of the world. Nothing much to see except trees, black spruce and tamarack and scrub pines, and the red gravel airstrip. I got out of my seat and climbed down, stiff and sore, feeling like I’d been run down by a truck. I guess I was still in shock a little bit. The air was colder than I was used to; even Philadelphia winters don’t have this kind of soggy bite. All I wanted was to get inside the little terminal and maybe get a cup of coffee. I had five hundred bucks, American, in my wallet, a passport and a copy of my discharge papers from the army. I guess I should have felt ashamed, because here was Hitler stomping his jackbooted way across Europe, and there was nothing I could do about it. Unfit for active service. Yeah, that’s me — thirty-eight years old and already broken beyond repair.

This — all of this — was a blur to me. I was seeing other streets and hearing a different accent, and I was remembering walking into Moe’s first thing in the morning for a cup of joe, sitting down at the counter to look over the newspaper before I went outside and took a sharp left toward the waterfront. Maybe that’s what drew me to this place: the promise of cold salt air and the tang of the sea in my nostrils, the bustle of the waterfront, and ships coming and going at all hours of the day and night. I loved the idea that I could do the same, just go whenever I wanted to, anywhere I liked in the world, and not have to answer to anybody. If I felt like it, I could hop a freighter to some other place and work my way across the world. It was something Moe and I had talked a lot about whenever I was in there. You thinking of going somewhere? He’d always refill my coffee cup without my having to ask, and I’d always leave a tip. Thinking of leaving old Philly, huh? Right up until the last, I wasn’t sure. Even after it happened, I figured I could just keep on the way I was, doing all the things that I’d been doing. I figured I was strong enough to take it, right up until I stood on the Delaware River Bridge one morning, looking down into the swirling water and wondering if I had the nerve.

You want to know what stopped me?

Egypt. Yeah, you heard me: Egypt. See, I’d always wanted to go, and standing there on the bridge with the wind whipping me around, I figured if I followed through with what I had in mind, I’d never get to go. I’d never get to see the pyramids and ride a camel and do all that stupid, touristy stuff that people do. Pretty dumb, huh? Maybe, but it was enough to get me down off the bridge before the cops came, and it was enough to make me understand that if I ever wanted to see the pyramids at Giza or stroll the native quarter in Cairo, I had to get out of Philly. I had to go somewhere far away and try my best to forget about it.

“Passport?” She was young and pretty, the girl behind the counter, with dark red hair worn in rolls at the sides of her head. She smiled at me like she meant it. “Welcome to Newfoundland, Mr. Stoyles. If you follow that corridor and turn right, there are taxis out front to take you into town.”

“Is it…” Goddammit, it was starting again. I took a deep breath and tried to get hold of myself. “Is it far, into town? I have a room booked at the hotel, I just…” I fumbled in my pockets and found the scrap of paper. “Yeah, I have a room at this hotel downtown.”

She looked it — and me — over and smiled again. She sure was pretty — and nice, in that way that women hardly ever are anymore. She looked at me like she was interested in more than how much money I had on me or where I was likely to go in life once the war was over.

Listen, Jack — why don’t you come up to Newfoundland with me? They’re building all kinds of stuff up there and the whole place is ripe for the picking.

Frankie Missalo, an old army buddy of mine; we’d both joined up long before the whole thing went to hell at Pearl Harbor. Only thing was, he stayed in while I’d gotten kind of…waylaid. Lots of Army contractors up there, and lots of Yanks like us needing somewhere to get a proper cup of coffee. Come on! Ain’t you always said you wanted to have your own place?

So I did what he said and bought my ticket, and here I was. All I wanted now was to live a quiet life, waiting out the war to the best of my ability and minding my own business. I wasn’t interested in anything but that.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

I spent three days at the hotel while Frankie and me scouted around for an empty space downtown. I’d just about given up hope when a real gem came on the market: a little storefront with lots of room for chairs and tables and a piano. The space was longer that it was broad and flared out nicely toward the back. Already I was making mental nips and tucks, adding a pot of flowers here, some ornaments and paintings there, and over here the bar, with its rows of bottles and a big mirror behind it. I found a cash register for cheap in a consignment store, and when Frankie showed up with a truckload of café chairs and tables, I didn’t ask him any unnecessary questions. I just got busy moving in.

“Whatcha gonna call it, Jack?” Frankie spread his hands out in front of him and squinted. “Whatcha want’s a big sign, neon lettering. JACK’S CAFÉ.”

“Naw, that’s been done. I want something that people are gonna stop for, something that’ll really bring ‘em in.” I slung a towel over my shoulder and came out from behind the bar. “Something catchy, you know?”

“Yeah.” Frankie shook his head and lit a cigarette. “Something like Moe’s Place?”

I faked a punch at his jaw. “Keep it up, mug.” We both laughed. “How about a beer?” I couldn’t stop touching the shiny brass taps; it was hard for me to believe that this was my place, my very own.

“You, ah…” Frankie’s eyes skidded away from mine. “You having one, Jack?”

“Nope.” I got a glass for him. “What’ll it be?”

“Whatever you got’s none too good for me.” He sat down at a table near the bar and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “So, here you are, Jack. Lock, stock, and barrel, huh? An honest-to-God property owner.” He thanked me for the beer as I sat down. “How much trouble they give you about the license?”

“You kidding me?” I sipped from the glass of ice water I’d poured for myself. “They couldn’t give it to me fast enough. Anybody woulda thought I was the Second Coming or something.”

Frankie, a lifelong Catholic, grimaced. “Yeah, cut that, okay?” He glanced around and nervously raked a hand through his sandy hair. “Don’t be bringing bad luck on yourself before you’ve even started.”

I didn’t answer him. Yeah, I’d been brought up in the church, too, but on me it never stuck the way it stuck to Frankie. I’d known him since we were kids, when he was serving at mass and singing in the choir. He wasn’t what I’d call superstitious, but he sure had a healthy respect for the church.

“So tomorrow’s the big day?” He laid the beer glass down.

“Yeah. Tomorrow’s the big day.” I spread my arms wide. “Welcome to the Heartache Café.”

In stories from four different wars and four different locales, four different writers honour men who chose to serve their country. Josh Lanyon, Samantha Kane, Victor Banis and George Seaton look at love when lives are at their worst and men are at their best.

This book is dedicated to those gay men who by not telling continue to serve our country with pride and honor. To those gay men who found the strength to tell and the courage to hold their heads high while being discharged in disgrace. To those gay men who have sacrificed their lives to maintain our freedoms while sacrificing their freedom to be heard.

Till we are judged for the honor and strength of our character and not by the prejudice and weakness of others…

I wish you Fair Seas, Following Winds, Safe Harbor & Silent Running.

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

One of the best pieces of flying advice Bat got was from his brother Algernon who flew reconnaissance at the start of the war.

“Think down to the gunners,” Algie had said. “Treat it like a game. You’re pitting your skill against theirs. It’s a kind of sport, really. And remember, a chasse machine is rarely brought down by Archie. You’re too fast for them. There are plenty of ways to outfox them. The best pilots are the best sportsmen.” He’d ruffled Bat’s hair, adding grimly, “Or the chaps who learn to stop feeling anything at all.”

At the time Bat couldn’t imagine what he meant.

The first two weeks were the most dangerous to a new pilot. They didn’t see anything — and what they did see, they didn’t understand. Shell fire scared the devil out of them and the Hun pilots they ran into were all hardened pros with several weeks experience in Russia or the Balkans. By 1916, the RFC was losing nearly a pilot a day; Gene worked it out once and told Bat the average life expectancy of an allied aviator was eleven days. Of course there were the old hands like Gene and himself who defied the odds. But no one defied them forever.

Bat knew Jackson was for it from the moment he was up in the air. Bat had given orders to rendezvous two thousand over the field and once they assembled, he’d headed northeast with the rest of A Flight falling into formation behind.

The new fliers got the oldest machines, and Jackson was in one of the battered Spads. It climbed slowly. Tubby and Varlik did their best to shepherd Jackson along, diving under and climbing up again to keep him aligned. Ambrose was on Bat’s left, in Gene’s former position. Cowboy was a dark silhouette on his right as they reached the cloudbank and began to climb.

As they rose into the crystalline air and the rising sun gilded the fleecy floor of clouds beneath them in amber and rose gold, Bat felt a spark of the old joy to be flying once more. All around him the rest of A Flight surfaced at widely scattered points through the drifting cloud cover. Cowboy crested on his right and gave him that little nod.

Bat nodded back.

They formed up once more and turned northward. Far below them were the green valleys, dark forest, shining rivers of France…and then the lines. Although they were too far up to hear anything one could see by the thousands of tiny bursts of light that the day’s business had already begun. Shell bursts and muzzle flashes winked and sparkled miles beneath them. But they weren’t crossing over enemy lines until the replacements had a chance to get the lay of the land; instead A Flight headed west along the sector.

The twinkling lights faded and the battle front — a jagged, winding scar of desert slashed through the green and pastoral land — lay beneath. They were now four kilometers within the French lines. Clouds of smoke bloomed like scarlet-edged roses — interrupted at intervals by puffs of black and white shell bursts.

A Flight turned northward and then back. Bat glanced in his mirror and Jackson was gone.

Just like that he had dropped out of the sky.

There was no time to react for at that moment a patrol of Spads and Fokkers came out of the sun like a swarm of hornets out of their hive. The air was alive with the deafening roar of engines as aircraft maneuvered for position, climbing and dropping, spinning, diving, banking and all the while the webbing of white streamers from machine gun bullet tracers wound around A Flight while they dodged each other’s machines and tried to make sure they fired at black crosses and not the roundels and tail cockades of their own planes.

Bat spared a quick glance for his altimeter, temperature and pressure dials, and when he looked up again a Fokker was coming at him, looming up like a freight train on a motion picture screen as it drove straight toward Bat firing as it came. Bat responded with the familiar surge of aggressive anger, opening the throttle and hurtling forward — and he’d have rammed the other plane if the German hadn’t lost his nerve and dived.

Making a tight turn, nearly on his wingtip, Bat shot after him and managed to settle on his tail, firing five or six rounds while the Fokker zigged and zagged until he finally lost control and plummeted down, engine smoking.

Bat looked around and saw Ambrose in hot pursuit of a Spad, machine guns blazing. Tubby was doggedly chasing another into the blue distance. Varlik was still in one piece, and Heath…

Fuck.

Cowboy glided into place beside him and nodded. Bat tightly nodded back, his mind mostly on Heath. Bit of a surprise, though; generally Cowboy preferred to hunt on his own. He’d stayed with the pack today. Expecting a repeat of Bat’s shaky performance of the day before? He needn’t have worried. Bat had resigned himself to seeing dawn patrol out at the least.

He looked again for young Jackson, hoping that he had missed him in the maelstrom of the battle, but there was no sign of the khaki and tan Spad.

Already the dogfight was breaking up, the Boche planes out of ammunition and raveled out by the wind. Most aerial battles didn’t last longer than two or three minutes as they only all carried enough ammunition to fire for about fifty seconds. But Bat’s fuel tank was still a quarter full, he had plenty of ammo and, unlike Cowboy’s bullet-scarred machine, his plane hadn’t sustained any new damage.

Bat signaled to Cowboy to make for home with the rest of the patrol, and gave her full rudder, heading back to see if he could spot where Jackson had gone down. There was always a chance the boy had managed to land safely.

The wind was kicking up now — rain clouds rolling in from the north.

Cowboy stuck to Bat’s machine — irritating as a burr beneath one’s saddle — but Bat knew he couldn’t endanger the other pilot or risk losing his plane by trying to shake him. In any case, it wasn’t necessary for he quickly spotted Jackson’s shattered plane in an open field. It was in flames.

Bat circled round once more to see if there was any sign of life. There was nothing but fire and smoke.

He turned toward homeward once more.

¹ ¹ ¹ ¹

“So your daddy’s a duke,” Cowboy said, blue eyes watching Bat over the rim of his glass. He drank, set the glass down. His lips were wet from the ale, and Bat had a sudden, uncomfortably vivid recollection of what that firm mouth had felt like pressing his own.

“An earl, actually,” he replied quellingly.

Cowboy was not quelled.

“So what’s that make you?”

“The youngest of five sons.”

Cowboy grimaced. “What do they call you? What’s your title?”

“The Honourable, but no one calls — ”

“What kind of a moniker is ‘Bat’?” Cowboy interrupted. “What’s your name?”

“Aubrey.”

Undisturbed by Bat’s terse response, Cowboy offered that wide, white grin. “Aubrey? That’s sweet.”

“Go. To. Hell.”

Cowboy laughed.

They had arrived back at base after first crawl without further incident. Bat had made his report to Major Chase, grabbed a quick kip, and taken out the afternoon patrol for an uneventful foray behind enemy lines. Now A Flight was done for the day.

Captain Sears, broad shouldered and dark with a long seam of scar down his tanned face, stopped by the table. “Hard luck about…” he trailed vaguely. These days it was always hard luck about someone or other.

Sears was 19 Squadron’s A Flight commander. He shared a friendly rivalry with Bat — Sears currently down two kills. Three if — once — Bat’s morning’s work had been confirmed.

“Jackson,” Bat supplied automatically.

“Replacements?”

“By tomorrow, according to Chase,” Bat said.

Two patrols a day, two hours each patrol. Now and again they put in as many as six hours, but Wing discouraged it. Pilots at the front were burning out fast enough and someone had to be in shape to go up every single day weather permitting.

When they weren’t flying, they slept. Or drank. Or read. Bat had grown very familiar with the works of Zane Grey and Max Brand. Some chaps played cards or wrote letters, but mostly they slept a good deal.

Sears moved off and Cowboy said, as though there had been no interruption, “So what are your brothers doing these days? One of ‘em’s a big muckety muck in the War Office, right?”

“Archie,” Bat said reluctantly. He didn’t feel like chatting with Cowboy. He didn’t want to spend any time with him at all if he could help it. What he’d have liked to do was sleep, but he was still too wound up — and then there were his dreams. “Algie and Cyril are gone — since the first year of the war. Dorian is with the Grand Fleet in the North Sea.”

“And you were at Cambridge when you decided to join up?”

“Magdalene College, yes.”

“What were you studying?”

Bat shrugged a negligent shoulder. “I was eventually headed for the Foreign Office, I suppose. That’s what the pater wanted.”

“You always do what the pater wants?”

Fastening a cool eye on him, Bat said, “Clearly not.”

And Cowboy grinned. He seemed — as usual — very relaxed. His own nerves strung far too tight for far too long, Bat found this…insouciance grating.

He said, “You haven’t yet told me what you did about…him.”

Cowboy’s white grin broadened. “You don’t really want to discuss it here?” He glanced meaningfully around the crowded mess.

No one was paying them any mind. Varlik was once again singing “Roses of Picardy” in duet with the gramophone. Ambrose and Heath were engaged in some drinking game. Tubby was busily cheating at solitaire. Everyone else seemed riveted by the antics of a half-starved monkey that B Flight’s Berckman had brought back from leave.

Bat said slowly, “According to Sergeant Lamb, Orton is supposed to have scarpered. AWOL.”

The smile faded from Cowboy’s face. “You didn’t question him?” he demanded.

Bat shook his head. “Orton was assigned to my bus. Lamb had to fill in for him. He happened to mention it.”

Cowboy was eyeing him with a dark and doubtful gaze. “You know to keep your trap shut, right?”

Bat managed to contain the flash of anger he felt. The unpleasant idea occurred that he could not afford to quarrel with Cowboy. Could not afford to fall out with him. Not given the secret they shared.

Perhaps some similar idea cropped up in Cowboy’s mind. He said, “Why don’t we get out of here and go some place we can talk.”

It was not a suggestion. He stood, waiting. Bat stared up at him — and realized that here too he had no choice.

He followed Cowboy out of the mess, and the last notes of “Roses of Picardy” died behind them as the mess door swung shut.

“Let’s walk down to the lodge,” Cowboy said. “You look like you could use some shuteye. When was the last time you slept? Really slept, I mean?”

“How is that your affair?” Bat burst out, his resentment of this high-handedness growing momentarily.

Cowboy’s big hand wrapped around Bat’s upper arm, warningly. “It’s my affair because if you make some stupid mistake ‘cause you’re too tired to think straight, we’re both sunk.”

Bat roughly freed himself, uncaring of who might be watching — knowing as he did so, that Cowboy had a point. He was too weary to be careful, his emotions dangerously near the surface.

He said, “I can’t stay on at the lodge. Those were Gene’s digs, not mine. Not officially.”

“The old lady won’t care, will she? Could probably use the extra dough.”

He thought of Madame Fournier’s kindness — most likely due to the infirmities of age. A God-fearing woman, Madame would not knowingly have sheltered Gene and him if she’d any notion of what they got up to in that little room where her son once slept. There was always a foolish — dangerous — temptation to believe that there was understanding, perhaps sympathy, in silence when in fact all there was, was ignorance.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t care. I can’t stay there now.”

“Don’t be too hasty,” Cowboy said cryptically. “A little privacy would be useful.”

They walked down to the lodge in silence filled only by the crunch of their boots and the occasional song of a woodlark.

“You think the birds talk to each other in French?” Cowboy asked, and Bat smiled, forgetting his earlier annoyance.

“Possibly.”

Cowboy was also smiling. His eyes slanted Bat’s way, and Bat felt his face growing warm though he wasn’t sure why. He looked away hastily. Luminous white mushrooms grew at the roots of the ancient trees forming the leafy tunnel overhead. Wild berries lined the road, glossy purple and scarlet in the gloom. It smelled richly of damp earth and moldering leaves — and the leather of cowboy’s jacket and the soap he used.

“It’s a lot like home,” Bat said suddenly, forgetting his earlier annoyance. “Like Kent. Feels different, though. Feels…French.”

Gene had said you could see the Flemish influence in the village names and architecture.

The red roof of the hunting lodge appeared before them, smoke drifting from the white stone fireplace. Cowboy touched Bat’s arm, and they left the path and cut across the field to the gazebo where they could be assured no one would overhear their conversation.

“I’ll have to think what to do about Digsby,” Bat was saying distractedly as Cowboy pushed open the rickety door. “Gene’s dog. I suppose Madame — ”

He broke off as startled doves took wing through the holes in the roof. The door slammed shut behind them closing them in with the musty scent of decaying wood and dead leaves and bird nests, and Cowboy’s arms went around Bat.

Shocked into immobility, Bat recovered fast and shoved him away. Cowboy eyed him narrowly and then shoved back — harder — pushing Bat against the rough wall, big fists locked in Bat’s tunic, one knee thrust between Bat’s long legs.

Bat’s simmering resentment crackled into life, but beneath the anger was excitement. Part of him welcomed the idea of fighting Cowboy, part of him…

It was confusing. He told himself what Cowboy needed was a good thrashing, and what Bat needed was to deliver it, but…as his eyes met that dark blue gaze, he felt strangely irresolute. Cowboy’s breath was warm against his face. His mouth tingled recalling the feel and taste of Cowboy’s, and he wondered what would happen if he let Cowboy put his hands on him.

The idea alarmed him — but not nearly as much as it should have. In fact, maybe he wasn’t alarmed so much as…stimulated.

Cowboy pulled Bat close again, and Bat knew a kind of relief that he wasn’t being given a choice, that this was taken out of his hands; all he had to do was not fight too hard.

He closed his eyes, raising his face — leading with his chin, in fact. Cowboy’s big hands ran over the long lines of Bat’s body, tugging at his tunic, and Bat groaned, wanting the bulk of cloth removed from between his trembling body and the warm weight of Cowboy’s hands.

“Easy, easy,” Cowboy murmured, like he was soothing a nervous colt, undoing the fastening at Bat’s tunic collar, fingers warm against Bat’s throat.

Bat swallowed hard as Cowboy suddenly pressed a soft kiss in the naked hollow of his throat. He opened his eyes and Cowboy’s face was absorbed, grave. His lashes raised and he met Bat’s gaze. He seemed to be waiting for something.

What?

Seemingly of their own volition, Bat’s hands rose and he responded in kind, shoving aside Cowboy’s heavy jacket, working the fastenings of Cowboy’s tunic — careful of buttons, careful with His Majesty’s property — they couldn’t afford to explain untoward damage. Through the coarse wool of their uniforms, their groins ground urgently against each other, and then their hot mouths met in frenzied hunger.

The night before Bat had been too startled to truly acknowledge what was happening, but now…he was almost stunned by the intimacy of it, the silky rasp of Cowboy’s jaw against his own, the pressure of two mouths, the mingling of breath and saliva, the unaccustomed taste of another man, the slick surprise of tongue —

He was about to suffocate beneath the impact when Cowboy tore his mouth away, breathing hard. His hands slid down Bat’s long, thinly muscled back, finding his way to Bat’s waist band and fly. His hand slipped inside, rough but caressing, feeling Bat up with gentle but thorough expertise. Bat hissed but didn’t speak, didn’t say the words, even as Cowboy worked his way through layers of cloth to bare skin. Then Cowboy’s hard, unsteady fingers found the entrance to Bat’s body.

Bat jumped. “No,” he said hoarsely.

“Hell, yes,” Cowboy retorted a little unevenly.

“No.” And Bat started to fight him.

Cowboy let him go so abruptly Bat staggered, falling back against the wall.

“He’s dead,” Cowboy said. “You’re still alive, whether you like it or not.”

Rage washed through Bat’s body, but then…

“You don’t understand,” he said. “Gene and I…we never…did that.”

Cowboy went so still he merged with and vanished into the shadows, leaving Bat feeling as though he were alone. It was an awful feeling.

“Say something,” he said.

“I’m not sure what to say.”

The bubble of emotion that never seemed to leave Bat’s chest expanded and he couldn’t seem to breathe. He struggled with it.

So it was mostly relief when Cowboy’s powerful arms folded him close once more.

“You must’ve done more than hold hands,” Cowboy muttered. He bent his head and his lips grazed the nape of Bat’s neck. Bat shivered and pressed his face into the strong column of Cowboy’s throat.

Of course they had. They’d held each other, they had kissed, they had — but this, no. Bat, less experienced, had suggested certain things, but Gene had been very clear. And that had been all right by Bat — he’d been slightly ashamed for suggesting it.

Heat flooded his face which he kept it buried in Cowboy’s neck. “We tried to keep to the…the Platonic ideal.”

“Jesus.”

“I mean, we tried — ”

“I know what you mean,” Cowboy said astonishingly. “I read the Symposium. I went to Harvard.”

And it was Bat’s turn to be speechless. He raised his head, staring at Cowboy’s face in the gloom.

Cowboy laughed. “What did you think? I rode in from the plains on Old Paint?”

Hadn’t Cowboy rather acted that way? Was it perhaps his strange sense of humor? “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“What do I care what a bunch of English stuffed shirts think?”

Bat tried to throw him off, but Cowboy held him in place, back to the wall, and despite the cool words his hands stroked the other pilot in long tremulous caresses, warm hands sliding down Bat’s flanks and back.

“Not you. I care what you think,” he muttered.

“Oh, jolly for me,” Bat snarled. But it felt good. Very good to have Cowboy touching him like that. Despite his anger, Bat clutched Cowboy tightly, not wanting it to end, and when Cowboy’s hand slid down over his taut buttocks, he tried not to tense, tried to relax. The brush of fingertips on bare skin felt startlingly nice and started a peculiar ache in his chest. This was something he had not foreseen. That he might enjoy Cowboy’s sexual trespass. That he might welcome it. He struggled with guilt and pain and loyalty to Gene while Cowboy stroked him and whispered soothing things like he expected Bat to start bucking and biting any moment.

“Yeah, you’re beautiful, aren’t you? Sharp and shining like the edge of the sun.” He kissed the corner of Bat’s mouth, his erection thrusting aggressively into Bat’s groin.

And Bat began to move against Cowboy, longing for — needing more. Cowboy’s finger slipped right inside his body and an odd thrill shot through Bat. He shuddered all down the length of his body and half-swallowed a protest.

“Easy, easy,” Cowboy whispered hotly against his ear. “You want it and you need it. Hell, we both need it. It doesn’t have to mean anything more than that. Why should it?”

He kissed away any objection Bat might have made while all the time his finger kept stroking inside Bat’s body, nothing tentative about that touch, fingering Bat up with tantalizing expertise while he kept him pinned against the wall, not letting him move. And Bat turned his mouth from Cowboy’s and heaved in great gulps of air like he’d flown far too high, putting all thought away and opening his thighs to give Cowboy greater access.

Dear God that felt

…it made him melt inside, made him ache, made his body keen silently, desperate for more — much more. Embarrassing sounds escaped him, abject sounds, and Cowboy kissed them all away, smiling, seeming pleased as Bat grew more frantic.When Cowboy withdrew his hand Bat was aware of stinging disappointment. But then Cowboy guided him around to face the wall, and Bat planted his hands against its splintered roughness, spreading his legs, instinctively readying himself.

He heard the rustle of cloth and then Cowboy’s fingers were back but now they were slippery with oil. Blunt fingers cupped his balls, cradling them, caressing, and then one blunt finger traced the quivering entrance of Bat’s body once more.

“Ready as you’re going to be,” Cowboy said. “Just relax…that’s it…”

Bat swallowed dryly. He knew a moment of dizzy alarm. What was he surrendering to? What liberties was he allowing Cowboy? The big American was warm and solid all down the length of his back, the open flaps of his tunic tickling Bat’s bare skin as he leaned over him, his breath hot on the nape of Bat’s neck, his knees pressing into the back of Bat’s, hard hands locked on his hips. Cowboy’s cock lanced lightly between the cheeks of Bat’s arse, and the implicit threat, the tease of alarmed pleasure focused Bat’s thoughts. This was no betrayal of Gene. This was lust. Animal lust. Nothing to do with what had been between himself and Gene, and perhaps he did need it — this disconcerting proof that he was still alive. He didn’t care if it hurt; he rather hoped it did.

Bracing himself as Cowboy’s cock pushed slowly into him, Bat was astonished to find his body grudgingly accommodating the larger man’s organ, though he had to grit his jaw to keep from crying out. It did hurt. Not unbearably so, however, and the pain freed him of guilt.

Slowly, slowly Cowboy shoved deep into Bat’s body until Bat could feel the softness of hair against his buttocks. Cowboy thrust against him once, and Bat shivered. They were locked so tight that he could feel Cowboy’s heart hammering against his back.

He wriggled, pushing back a little, trying to find himself a bit of room to breathe. To think. But one of Cowboy’s hands moved its grip from Bat’s hip, coming beneath his belly and finding his cock, closing around it with easy expertise, pumping as though caressing a rifle. That helped, and again Bat’s body responded eagerly, his cock filling and lengthening.

Cowboy kissed the back of Bat’s neck and it was sweet. Bat relaxed into Cowboy’s hold, resting his forehead on the wall, smelling the biting pungency of wood and sweat.

Cowboy was thrusting into him now, steady, rhythmic thrusts, his heavy cock like a piston pushing into the cylinder of Bat’s body. It was unbelievable — unbelievable that Bat would allow this, and yet he was standing docilely permitting Cowboy to take him. Cowboy was grunting fiercely in Bat’s ear and oddly it began to excite Bat: the honesty of that rough animal pleasure. He groaned into the knotholes of the paneling.

“Yeah, that’s right, Aubrey,” Cowboy rasped. “That’s right, sweetheart. You know it, don’t you? You know you belong to me now.”

Bat shook his head. “Y-you’re…fucking mad,” he jerked out as Cowboy shoved into him, but Cowboy laughed.

“You’re only fooling yourself.” He used his knee to push Bat’s legs further to give himself better access, making Bat take him more deeply, and astonishingly Bat acquiesced, pushing back on Cowboy’s engorged organ with a helpless moan.

He let Cowboy fuck him, submitted to Cowboy’s rough and thorough possession until his legs felt weak and wobbly. Then Cowboy changed his angle, drove into Bat one more time and it was like lightning striking.

A white blaze lit up Bat’s body, nerves igniting. His breath caught, he shuddered all over, releasing his seed over the larger man’s hand, flooded with physical sensation — and unexpected emotion. At nearly the same instant, Cowboy groaned deep down in his chest and grabbed Bat tight against his torso, spilling blood-hot semen into him. That splash of liquid heat recalled Bat to himself.

What had he done? He had given into the basest of desires. He had let Cowboy use him, mark him like a wolf spraying its territory. He knew only too well what Gene would make of such brutish behavior, and yet…he felt very little. Perhaps he was simply numb.

Bat slumped against the wall, panting. After a time Cowboy’s cock slipped out of him.

Bat’s limbs were trembling — hands too — and his cock was suddenly unbearably sensitive. The odd thing was Cowboy seemed to understand that and he became tender — almost woman-tender so that Bat could have wept with humiliating gratitude. It was unmanly but he wanted this, wanted to be gentled, cared for. He breathed quietly against his arm as Cowboy cleaned him off with his soft linen handkerchief and then tucked him back inside his trousers. Then he drew Bat against him and they sat down — half collapsing on the faded old cushions of the dilapidated furniture.

For a time they sprawled there and Cowboy rocked Bat against him in a funny soothing way. Bat closed his eyes. The traitorous wish occurred that he and Gene would have done this, and then, even more traitorously, he realized he wanted nothing more than to sleep against this strong warm body and not think anymore.

Cowboy kissed his hair and his face and rocked him some more and Bat let himself drift.

He must have fallen deeply asleep because the next thing he knew Cowboy was saying softly, “Rise and shine, Aubrey. I gotta get back and you need some real sleep.”

Bat blinked at him, nodded, and sat up. He ran a hand through his hair.

“All right?” Cowboy asked, and though he spoke brusquely, there was some remaining trace of that unexpected tenderness in his voice.

Bat nodded again. He had no words to express his confusion, his astonishment at what he’d done — what they had done.

They rose and dressed quickly, and then Cowboy went back to the air field and Bat let himself into the lodge.

Madame greeted him with pleasure and Digsby with outright joy. It was not until Bat had been persuaded into sitting down and eating a bowl of hot stew that he realized that Cowboy had still not told him what he had done with Orton’s body.

Dark Horse was Josh Lanyon’s first foray into writing for the m/m romance market. It also turned out to be one of his readers’ favorite tales.

In a Dark Wood and Ghost of a Chance explore the terrors of houses haunted by something far worse than ghosts: the toxic product of guilt and shattered memory.

British agent Mark Hardwicke is on the run from a mission gone horribly wrong, looking for shelter and care. But, in I Spy Something Bloody the only man who can offer that shelter and care is also the only man that Mark seems determined to push from his life.

This collection includes the bonus short story A Limited Engagement, written for a collection whose sales support funding for marriage equality in the United States.

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

In a dark, dark wood there was a dark, dark house…

Years ago I read on the Internet about this creepy old house in the eastern woods — there were even photos — and then when the idea came to write this story and I tried to find the page again, I couldn’t. Which seemed appropriately eerie. Anyway, Tim’s problems came as a revelation to me. I kept trying to write away from them, but they just wouldn’t go away.

“We’re lost.”

Luke came up behind me. I pointed, hand shaking, at the cross carved into the white bark of the tree. “We’re going in goddamned circles!”

He was silent. Beneath the drone of insects I could hear the even tenor of his breathing although we’d hiked a good nine miles already that autumn afternoon — and no end to it in sight. My head ached and I had a stitch in my side like someone was jabbing me with a hot poker.

I lowered my pack to the ground, lowered myself to a fallen tree — this time not bothering to check for ant nests or coiled rattlers — lowered my face in my hands and lost it. I mean, lost it. Tears…oh, yeah. Shoulders shaking, shuddering sobs. I didn’t even care anymore what he thought.

“Tim…” He dropped his pack too, sat down next to me on the log. He sounded sort of at a loss. After a minute he patted my shoulder. Awkwardly.

I turned away from him and tried to wipe my face on my shirt sleeve.

Feeling him fumbling around with his pack, I watched him through wet lashes. He pulled out his canteen, unscrewed the top and offered it to me.

I took the canteen, swallowed the warm stale water, handed it back. Wiped my face again. Perfect. My nose was running. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t like I had a shred of dignity left.

First dates. You’ve got to love ’em.

But I mean, what kind of fucking sadist chooses camping for a first date?

Fast forward to the end of this one: we’d shake hands at my brownstone door — assuming we got out of this field trip into Hell alive — and he’d promise to call, and with equal insincerity I’d say I looked forward to it.

I’d never see him again — and that was the only bright side to this whole — literally — walking nightmare.

Luke pulled a cloth out of his pack and wet it with the canteen. “Here, look at me.”

I looked at him. He wiped my face with the wet cloth, shocking me into immobility. His own face was serious, his hazel eyes studied me. I closed my eyes and he gently swiped my eyelids, washing away the sweat and tears.

“Better?”

I lifted my lashes, got my lips steady enough to form words. “Oh, sure. Great.”

“I thought you were a travel writer?”

“I’m not an explorer! I write about comfortable hotels with clean sheets and hot water. My idea of roughing it is a two-star restaurant!”

The corner of his mouth tugged as though, against his will, he found this just a little bit comical. What the hell could be funny about any of this?

“Listen, we’re not lost.”

I opened my mouth and he said, “I don’t mean I know where we are. But I can get us out of here, if that’s what you want. I’ve got a compass and we can start walking east and be back to civilization within a few hours.”

I swallowed hard. First off, there was no place in New Jersey that even remotely qualified as “civilization,” but that was beside the point.

Luke said, “And, for the record, we’re not going in circles. Look again at that carving on the tree. It’s not a fresh cut. Look at the edges. They curl, but they’re worn. It’s not your mark. At least, it’s not the mark you made today.”

I blinked at him stupidly.

He said, “I think it’s your mark from twelve years ago.”

§ § § §

Flash back four days ago to a dinner party at my best friend Rob’s place in Manhattan. Rob’d gone all out: Chinese lanterns hang over the table, shadows bobbing against the wall, all of us fumbling around with chopsticks, and the Peking duck from Chef Ho’s exquisite. I’d had three cocktails too many and Rob was egging me on.

“Tim, tell the story about the skull house, come on!”

I laughed, shaking my head.

“Come on,” Rob urged. “Luke wants to hear it. Luke! Tell Tim you want to hear about the skull house in New Jersey.”

Across the table and two faces down there was this very attractive guy, a few years older than me, with dark hair and crinkly hazel eyes. He gave me a wry grin.

This was Luke, the cop who Rob kept trying to fix me up with. “A cop?” I always said doubtfully. “I don’t know.”

“He’s a detective, not a beat cop,” Rob always replied. “He doesn’t give speeding tickets.”

Speeding tickets being kind of a sore subject with me. “I’m not really into cops,” I always said.

“You’re not into anybody,” was Rob’s standard answer. “And nobody is into you, which is your problem. One of your problems.”

And that’s where the conversation ended, except that night Luke was actually present and could speak up for himself.

“Sure, Tim,” he said. “I’d like to hear.”

He had a nice voice, not at all the voice cops use when they’re slapping a parking ticket on your windshield or asking you to pull out your vehicle registration. He had very white teeth and a very nice smile. Did he know Rob wanted to set us up? Er — fix us up, I mean. He probably did, and he’d probably been resisting just as hard as me. He’d certainly kept a polite distance all evening.

I gave Rob a look that promised all kinds of retribution that I wouldn’t remember once I sobered up. He just laughed and poured me another scorpion.

“Come on, Tim,” someone else urged.

Someone else I didn’t know. Rob knew everybody and everybody knew Rob. Most of them didn’t know Rob as long as I’d known him, which was since we were the two most unpopular guys in Trinity School.

I gave in to peer pressure — not for the first time — with a sigh.

“I was thirteen and I was staying with a friend in the Pine Barrens for a couple of weeks during the summer. There wasn’t a lot to do. Mostly we went swimming in this little lake and we spent a lot of time prowling through woods.”

I glanced over at Luke. He set his glass back down, but his lashes lifted and he caught my eye. I couldn’t look away. He didn’t look away either. It’s like tractor beams locking on. People were going to notice. My face felt hot, but that was probably the spicy sea dragon bass.

Managing to tear my gaze away, I said, “Anyway, one day we wandered farther into the woods then we were supposed to go. We get really turned around. Totally lost. Oh wait, I’m forgetting. There was supposed to be this house, see, where — I don’t remember what the exact story was now — the Boogey Man or somebody like that was supposed to live in the heart of the woods. And when hikers or nosey kids like us disappeared, The Forester was supposed to have grabbed them.”

“The Forester?” Luke asked. Everyone else chuckled, reaching for glasses or forks. Only Luke was paying close attention.

I focused inward. “Uh, yeah. I think that’s right.” Weird. I’d forgotten that he was called the Forester.

“So, anyway, we wander around, lost. We’re afraid we’re going in circles, and it’s getting dark. I start marking the trees, making a little cross with my penknife in the bark, which is all white and shimmery that time of evening.”

My heart started to thud against my ribs as it came back to me: the deepening shadows, the ghostly trees, the creeping chill of the woods closing in on us. “And then all at once there’s a house right in front of us. Two stories, really old, falling down. There’s a tree growing out through a big hole in the roof.”

I gestured with my hands trying to make them see this creepy old house being claimed by the woods. “It has an ornate portico thing and little gable windows. Some of the other windows are broken, some of them are still there. The front door is hanging off its hinges…”

I stopped. For a moment it was like I was back in the woods. The smell of moldering house and weird animal scents and…the woods. The hush of evening — even the crickets were silent.

Too silent.

Rob laughed. He’d heard the story before — always when I was drunk. I don’t tell this story sober. I couldn’t help stealing another look at Luke. He wasn’t smiling anymore; his brows were drawn together like he was studying me from a distance and not sure about what he was seeing.

“I took a step forward and something crunched under my foot. When I looked down it was part of a skull.”

Laughter, some expelled breaths, Luke still stared, still frowning. “Skull or a bone?”

“Skull.”

“Human?” someone else asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “At the time we thought so, but we kind of wanted to think so, you know? I don’t think it was.”

I did think it was human, actually, but I sure as hell didn’t want to admit it.

“So what happened?” a woman asked. The light from the blue lanterns bounced off her glasses and made her look blind. A blind lady insect.

“Nothing. We freaked out and ran home.” I laughed. It wasn’t a convincing laugh, but everyone else laughed too.

Everyone but Luke. “Did you tell anyone?”

I shook my head. “We weren’t supposed to be there. We were afraid…”

We were afraid all right, and getting into trouble was only a little part of it.

“Did you ever go back?” the woman asked again.

Even her voice has a kind of insect whine to it. It hurt my head. I reached for my glass. “No.”

“Do you think you could find the house again?” Rob asked slyly, looking from Luke to me. “If you had to?”

“No.”

Luke asked, with a funny smile, “Would you want to try?”

In Dangerous Ground a casino robbery finds government agents Taylor and Will playing a game of cat-and-mouse with remorseless killers in the wilderness of California’s High Sierras.

Snowball in Hell introduces police detective Lt. Matthew Spain and reporter Nathan Doyle, men thrown together by murder. But, in post-WWII Los Angeles consequences of their attraction are serious, even for good guys. Lanyon fans take note: It’s around Matthew and Nathan that Lanyon builds his new mystery series.

Writer Tim North assures his lover, homicide detective Jack Brady, that there’s little danger in researching a sensational Hollywood murder committed decades before either of them was born. But, with Cards on the Table, Tim discovers that he’s very, very wrong. This collection includes the bonus short story In Sunshine or In Shadow.

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

Chapter One

The card was wedged under the brass 17 on my apartment door when I got back from my morning swim. For what felt like a long time I stood dripping on the welcome mat, staring at the slightly crooked number and the colored rectangle beneath.

A tarot card.

Finally, I removed the card, examined it. A castle in flames, a man and woman plummeting to the cliffs below, and the words The Tower.

Not good. Even if I turned it upside down so that the man and woman seemed to be doing handsprings through the clouds and lightning, it still looked pretty ominous.

I told myself that someone was playing a joke on me.

Funny stuff.

Only a handful of people even knew I was writing a book about the Aldrich case. For that matter, who would care if they did know? It was dead news in every sense.

I stuck my key into the latch and stepped into my apartment, eyes adjusting to the gloom. Dusty sunshine poured through the arched living room window. Everything looked just the way I’d left it an hour ago. In the kitchen alcove the old dishwasher was steaming, stereo lights flashed from the entertainment center, and the screen of my laptop, which sat on the coffee table, offered a gently rolling view of star-lined outer space.

I walked through to the bedroom. The bed was stripped, sheets piled for laundry in the doorway. The mirrored closet doors were shut. I got a look at my face as I moved to open them, and was irritated to see that I looked worried – hazel eyes narrowed, tanned face grim, body tense.

Jesus.

The last year had turned me into an old woman.

I slid open the closet doors, jumping back as a box of photos tumbled from their precarious perch on the shelf above and dumped snapshots across the carpet.

A photo of me – in a gold-sequined sombrero, no less – and Jack celebrating my thirtieth birthday at Don Cuco’s landed by my bare toes.

I stepped over the pictorial retrospective of my life and moved on to the bathroom, poking my head inside. Another glimpse of my frowning face in the cabinet mirror – and, by the way, I really did need a haircut, I reflected, momentarily distracted by the wet spikes of my chlorine-bleached hair. The shower dripped noisily. I yanked back the curtain with a plastic rustle.

Nothing.

Okay, bathtub ring, but otherwise nothing sinister.

Of course nothing sinister. Nobody had broken in. Why would they?

But why would someone leave a tarot card on my front door?

I went back to the kitchen, poured a glass of OJ, and drank it slowly, studying the tarot card.

Was someone trying to tell me something? Was it some kind of clue?

More likely it was just some kind of weird coincidence. Right?

And even if it wasn’t a weird coincidence…what was I supposed to do about it? It wasn’t exactly a lead that I could follow up. And I couldn’t picture myself going to the police over something so…vague. There was no defined threat, and I had absolutely no suspect in mind.

I could always talk to Jack.

I stared out the window over the sink at the row of second-story apartments, red doors and turquoise railings glimpsed through the tangle of ivy and bougainvillea.

Jack Brady was a homicide detective with the Glendale PD. We’d gone out a couple of times. Slept together once. We were still on friendly, if distant, terms.

The blinds to Jack’s apartment were up so it looked like he might be home.

I stripped off the swim trunks, tossed them over the shower rod, pulled on a pair of jeans and a clean T-shirt, stuck the tarot card in my pocket, and headed upstairs to Jack’s apartment.

I could hear Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps playing behind the scarlet door. The smell of something spicy drifted out the open kitchen window. My stomach tightened, but it had nothing to do with hunger – not for chili, anyway. I’d liked Jack a lot.

I knocked and the door opened. Jack stood framed in the doorway. He was about thirty-five, just over medium height and built, gray eyes and dark hair. He had a small white scar over his left eyebrow and a dimple in his right cheek when he smiled. He was not smiling now. Music and the aroma of garlic and onions wafted around him.

“Hey, Tim,” he said briefly, neutrally, after a pause.

“Hi, Jack,” I said. “Could I talk to you for a minute? I could use some advice. Professional advice.”

He hesitated – just long enough for me to realize I was making a mistake. Jack was the one who’d lost interest in pursuing a relationship. We were neighbors, not friends, and this was probably the equivalent of complaining to a doctor you’d met at a party about that pain in your neck.

“Yeah, sure,” Jack said, and he stepped aside, nodding for me to come in.

Worse than looking pushy, gauche, I realized this might seem like I was coming up with an excuse to see him again. So instead of coming in, I took a step back and said, “You know, on second thought, it can probably wait.”

“Whoa!” He caught my arm as I turned away. “What’s this?” He was smiling now, his eyebrows raised.

The feel of his hand on my arm reminded me vividly of our one and only night together. The warm sure slide of his palm stroking my belly, knuckles brushing the sensitive skin between hip and thigh, long strong fingers closing at last around my dick…

I let him draw me into his apartment.

Jack closed the door and I looked around curiously. Tidy as a monk’s cell. A stark black and white print of the desert hung over the fake fireplace. There were a few pieces of generic guy furniture, a number of paperbacks – mostly nonfiction and mostly true crime – on a low bookshelf. Nothing had changed. Jack had changed, that was all.

“Did you want a beer?” he asked, going behind the counter that separated kitchen from living room.

“Sure.”

Jack returned a moment later, handed me a frosty cold bottle, fingers grazing mine, and then he dropped down on the couch across from me. He took a swig.

He wore Levi’s and a yellow muscleman T-shirt that displayed his hard, tanned body to perfection.

“So…what’s the problem?” He grinned and the dimple showed for a moment. I wondered if a dimple was a liability for a cop. Did bad guys ever make the mistake of overestimating that mischievous crease in Jack’s lean cheek? “Jaywalking tickets piling up? Somebody finally haul you in for disturbing the peace?”

“Er…no.” I set the bottle on the glass-topped table, leaned on one hip, fished the tarot card out of my pocket, and put it face up on the coffee table.

Jack studied it, one eyebrow arching. “The Tower?”

“Yeah. Someone stuck it on my door while I was in the pool this morning.”

“Yeah, I saw you swimming,” he said absently, reaching for the card, careful to only touch the edges. His gray eyes lifted to mine. “And you see this as…what? A threat?”

“I don’t know. I know it seems a little…” I raked a hand through my still-damp hair. “I think it has to do with the book I’m writing. About the Aldrich case. The Tarot Card Murder.”

His face showed no comprehension.

“I guess it’s supposed to be a joke.” I added doubtfully, “But it happened then, too.”

“What happened then?” he asked. “You’re not making a lot of sense, Tim.”

“Are you familiar with the Aldrich case?”

“No.”

“No?”

He looked a little exasperated at my tone. “I’m not familiar with every homicide case that ever took place in the LA vicinity, no.”

“Well, it’s just that it was kind of a high profile case. And it’s still unsolved.”

“I’ll try not to take that personally.”

“Back in nineteen fifty-seven, a starlet by the name of Eva Aldrich was stabbed to death at a big Hollywood party. The only clue was a tarot card pinned on her blood-stained dress.” Like one of those old press cameras, my memory flashed on those gory old black and white crime scene photos. There had been one shot of Eva’s discarded and bloodstained high heel lying a few feet from her body. There was something poignant – something I couldn’t shake – when I thought about that frivolous little pump splashed with her dying blood.

“And you’re writing a book about this?”

I assented.

“You’re writing a book about a homicide that took place back in nineteen fifty-seven?” Jack was expressionless. “And you think…what? You’ve got some geriatric killer stalking you?”

I felt color rise in my face. “I don’t know what to think,” I said evenly. “It’s kind of a weird coincidence, don’t you think?”

“Maybe. Who knows you’re writing this book?” He stared at the card, and then he stared at me. His eyes were just the color of the ocean when the mist starts rolling in.

“My publisher. The people I’ve interviewed so far.”

“And this card, The Tower, that’s the card that was pinned to the decedent’s – this Aldrich woman’s – dress?”

“No. The card pinned to her dress was the sixth card in the major arcana, The Lovers.”

“Not the same card?”

“No.”

“I see.”

“Look, I know it sounds silly. But…”

But what? I was the kind of guy who jumped at shadows? I didn’t have a sense of humor? I had too much imagination? I wanted attention? The unflattering possibilities were plenty.

He studied me for a moment, then straightened, arching his back a little like he was stiff – or bored with sitting there talking to me. “Okay. Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll do some checking for you. See what the unofficial word is on this cold case of yours.” He shrugged a broad shoulder. “It can’t hurt.”

I nodded, tension draining from my body. Maybe he was just humoring me, but I knew enough about Jack to know that if he said he’d check, he really would. Realizing I hadn’t touched my beer, I tilted the bottle to my lips. Jack watched me steadily. It made me uncomfortable.

“Have you uncovered any new info on the case?” he asked.

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Maybe it is a joke.”

“Where’s the humor?”

He shrugged and checked his watch. It wasn’t pointed, just remembering that he had somewhere to be.

I set the bottle down, stood up.

“Can I hang on to this?” He nodded to the card lying on the tabletop once more.

“If there were any prints I messed them up handling the card.”

“I noticed.” He offered that half grin. “It never hurts to check.”

“Thanks, Jack.” I moved toward the door. “I know this isn’t really anything for the police. Unless something else -”

“No problem.” He held the front door for me.

As I stepped out onto the shady walkway he said awkwardly, “I’m glad you stopped by, Tim. Really. I – uh – I’ve been meaning to call.”

“Oh, shit yeah.” I shrugged. Smiled. No big deal, this. “I’ve been busy myself.”

§ § § § §

Back in my apartment, I circled from room to room, trying to settle enough to get back to work. I wasn’t sure what had me more off-kilter, seeing Jack again or finding the tarot card.

After a few minutes, I sat down on the sofa with a copy of Roman Mayfield’s The Mystery of the Tarot, thumbing through until I found the description of The Tower.

Mars’ martial light shines upon The Tower, the card of war. The dark masonry of a structure built of lies crumbles beneath the lightning flash of truth. The Tower represents “false concepts and institutions that we take for real.” In a reading, the querent is often shaken when The Tower appears, expecting to be blinded by a shocking revelation. Sometimes the catalyst of reading forces the querent to face a bitter truth or knock down beliefs rooted in the concrete of self-deception.

Was someone trying to tell me I was heading for a fall?

Absently I listened to the flap of palm tree leaves outside the open window, the distant rush of traffic from the Hollywood Freeway, listened for something else too. Something that didn’t belong. There was nothing to hear but the normal sounds of apartment living: splashing and laughter from the pool, someone’s stereo playing too loudly, another bout in an ongoing argument between my neighbors on the left.

And if I listened very carefully I could hear Jack humoring me. Okay. Tell you what. I’ll do some checking for you.

That was nice of him, seeing that he hadn’t been interested in keeping up the friendship – let alone something more.

Odd to think of him watching me swim. Couldn’t have been for more than a moment – just long enough to decide he didn’t feel like a morning swim.

If I closed my eyes I could feel his broad hand on the small of my back guiding our bodies closer, the comfortable friction of bare skin on skin, the solid rub of our erections. I could feel the tickle of his chest hair, the unexpected softness of his mouth…

But it hadn’t been perfect, by any means. We’d both had too much to drink that night, and after we’d rushed past the feverish preliminaries of getting naked and getting between the sheets, there had been the usual awkward moments of trying to get into sync with each other, fitting our bodies together, finding a rhythm.

The warmth of him, the salty taste of him, the clean scent of him.

Abruptly, I sat up and started clicking away on my laptop, like I could tap and type away from memories. It was just a couple of dates. Jeez. Get over it.

I remembered I still had clothes in the laundry room washer.

The bad news – besides the rent – about living in one of those atmospheric 1940s LA apartment buildings was the little inconveniences, like parking in the back with the winos and homeless folk, the lack of any kind of security, and a laundry room that any Hollywood scout would immediately peg for a horror movie location.

Buried in the jungle of hibiscus and jasmine behind the pool yard, the laundry room was down a short flight of stairs. The overhead bulb was usually burned out because no one ever remembered to turn it off. There were three washers and three dryers to service the entire complex; I’d learned to take advantage of it during the day when most of the young and not-so-young professionals were working.

Carrying my laundry basket down the steps, I automatically flipped the wall switch, and, of course, nothing happened. It didn’t matter because there was enough daylight from above so that I could see to scoop soap into the battered machine.

It was warm and noisy with the sudsy washers filling up and the dryers tumbling. I put the lid down on my sodden clothes and turned to get the previous load I’d left in the dryer. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement.

I glanced swiftly toward the stairs.

A shadow filled the doorway. The door to the laundry room slammed shut.

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.

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

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?”