by Elle Keaton
It was too late, or right-on-time perfect. Adam couldn’t stop himself. All the emotion of the day, of his life, of wanting and needing but never getting, of having two of Micah’s fingers inside him again pressing up and back and forth; he could not stop. His orgasm was a steam train rumbling down the tracks, no stopping it. He held on for dear life, trying to keep one hand down Micah’s pants, his heavy veins pulsing against the palm of his hand. Micah fucked Adam’s mouth with his tongue one last time and Adam blew apart. Micah fucked him with his fingers through the whole thing, then pulled Adam’s pants down and off, positioning Adam on the couch so he could finish. Adam held his legs open for Micah like a whore. He didn’t care that he had come covering his stomach and in his chest hair; he wanted to feel Micah inside him. He needed it like he needed to breathe.
Micah was gentle, kneeling, pulling Adam’s ass up so he was fully exposed. “I’m going to last about five seconds,” he rasped.
“Yeah, I want it,” was all Adam could manage. The smooth head of Micah’s cock pushed against his hole and then breached it. They both gasped. Micah moved forward, trying to go slow, but it was killing them both. Adam pushed back against Micah’s not-small cock and felt him slide all the way home. Micah’s pubes brushed Adam’s ass. He could feel him pulsing inside, and his own spent dick tried valiantly to rise again. He was semi-hard as Micah pounded into his ass, holding his hips in a fierce grip. Jesus Christ, his prostate must have been on overdrive, because in that moment he knew he was going to come again; maybe no juice, but fuck yeah, he could feel it. Micah changed his angle slightly. Adam could see by the look on his face that he was about to go. He wrapped his legs around Micah’s torso and pulled him down so he could suck Micah’s tongue into his mouth. He wanted as much of Micah in him as he could get. One more suck, one more pump and Micah jerked. Adam could feel the warm come filling him and wanted more. He knew Micah hadn’t used a condom; he didn’t care, he wanted more.
Micah lay on him for a few quiet moments. It was kind of gross with cooling come squishing between them, but neither of them could move.
“Did you come twice?” Micah sounded awed.
“Maybe, kind of. Fuck.” Adam could barely form a sentence.
Micah pulled out and stood and, yeah, Adam’s damage deposit was gone, because the couch was unsalvageable. Adam still lay there trying to catch his breath and figure out which way was up. Micah came back with a warm washcloth and a towel, cleaning Adam gently before taking his hand and leading him to the messy bed. The last thing Adam saw before Micah draped his warm body across his back was the digital clock blinking 9:30. His eyes slid shut and he slept like the dead, only waking when someone started fucking pounding on his door again at three am.
Thirty-Six
There was going to be a nasty death.
He came dangerously close to answering the door buck naked. Micah called to him as he stumbled out of their bed, and he detoured to grab a T-shirt (dirty) and boxers (probably dirty) out of his duffel on the floor. The pounding started up again while he was dressing, and he had half a mind to pull out his service weapon and unload it into the door.
Micah, much kinder and quicker than he, was dressed and answering the door before Adam could act on his dark thoughts. The door swung open, and Adam saw Jack Summers with his fist raised, ready to continue trying to wake everyone on this side of the motel. In the dim light thrown by the NO VACANCY sign and the one walkway bulb three rooms down that was not burned out, Adam could see that the man looked tired and haggard. Micah motioned him inside.
Having gained entrance, Jack now didn’t seem to know where to look or what he was in the room for. His eyes kept kind of bouncing off Adam and Micah. Adam figured he had probably never interrupted the sex/sleep of two gay men before. He snickered, tempted to offer Jack a place to sit on the couch. Micah and Jack both looked at him like he was crazy. Yes, yes he was. He pulled on a pair of dirty jeans while he was getting himself under control.
Micah seemed to realize. “What’s going on? Why are you here at”—he looked at the clock—“3:15 a.m., Jack?” he asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence.
“Ah, yeah. Well. The lieutenant needs Adam to come down to the station. She couldn’t get you on your cell.”
Because he’d turned it off so they could get some peace and quiet. The hour indicated an emergency of some kind. Adam hoped no one else had needed to get a hold of him.
“Right. Well. I guess I can tell you we have another body. But Nguyen will need to fill you in.” While Jack was talking, Adam found and turned on his phone. The message indicator showed three unheard plus the earlier ones from Ed. Most from a number he knew too well and SkPD. Fuck. And not the good kind. At that thought, his ass sent him a reminder of what he and Micah had been doing earlier. He smiled. Micah saw him and smiled back.
“You guys are disgusting,” Jack muttered.
“You keep up with that attitude, Jack, and you’ll learn why you are stagnating in a rural police force and I am a federal officer,” Adam bit out.
He felt kind of bad running down Lieutenant Nguyen and her force, but Jack Summers was a farce, a tarnished example of everything wrong with law enforcement. Adam grabbed Micah and planted a big, sloppy kiss on his lips. He heard Jack’s grunt of disgust.
“I’ll see you later, baby; get some sleep. I’ll be back and I, uh, need to do some laundry soon.” Micah chuckled, and Adam led Jack out of the motel room and toward his waiting squad car.
During the short ride, Adam listened to his messages. Although the guy was probably awake, he sent Mohammad a text confirming he was going in and that it was official. As he’d expected, the call back was immediate. Mohammad coughed up a little more information than Jack had. The most recent victim had been identified as Natalia Verdugo from the Center House. Well, fuck.
***
Several trying hours later, an officer dropped Adam off at the motel so he could grab his car. Micah had texted that he should come to his house with laundry and some emoticon that looked like a dirty thought. Adam crammed his dirty clothes into his duffel and tossed it into the backseat. With a heavy groan, he slid into the driver’s seat and put his key in the ignition. He hesitated before starting the car. There was so much in his head.
The SkPD had called because of similarity, connection, proximity, and the fact that the investigation into Jessica Abrahams’s death had been so fucked up and Ms. Verdugo was head honcho at the Center House where Jessica had been known to hang out. Natalia had been discovered, coincidentally, by eagle watchers a few miles from where the first victim had been found, close to where Micah had taken Adam. She had been strangled, although she wasn’t stripped nude like Jessica. Adam learned that she had been the first to come forward suspecting Jessica’s identity. That raised a big red flag.
It was December, but could it stop fucking raining for a day or so? Rain fucked up crime scenes and made Adam grumpy. Grumpier. While he hadn’t been wearing his trademark suit and dress shoes, he still managed to get miserably wet and cold. His good mood from the fuck Micah had given him hours earlier dissipated the longer he spent out in the rain with SkPD’s barely competent crime scene crew. Mohammad promised he was sending a team, but their flight had been delayed due to weather; they were still sitting on the tarmac somewhere.
Deep-breathing tactics could only do so much. Adam was trying hard to be patient and understanding, neither a trait he was known for.
A knock on his car window startled him out of his funk. A young kid was kind of hovering, looking like he’d flee at any moment. He was skinny and had to be colder than Adam, with only a heavy sweatshirt and a beanie to keep him warm. Adam opened his window.
“Yeah?” He sounded like an asshole. Sighing, he tried again. “What can I do for you?”
“You’re that cop, right? The one that’s trying to figure out what happened to Jessie?” Wow, the information hotline was working overtime. The kid was seriously fidgety; any second he was going to bolt.
He had kind of a pointy face smeared with freckles under the beanie, clearly not getting enough to eat.
“I guess I am.” The rain, which up until that point had been a kind of polite mist, turned into a total deluge. Adam motioned for the kid to come around and get in the car.
“Look, kid. What’s your name?” Adam asked after the kid had pulled his door shut with a creak.
“Uh, Kevin. Kevin Whittman.”
“Look, Kevin. I’m tired, wet, and really, really, hungry. My boyfriend is waiting for me with a hot shower, clean clothes, and, I hope to god, a grilled-cheese sandwich. How about you tell me what’s up so I can return to my nicer half?”
The kid, Kevin, kind of looked at him for a half beat. The first thing out of his mouth was, “You’re gay?”
“You got a problem with that?” This conversation was already too long.
“No. Um. Me, too. I mean, I’m gay.” The kid had turned bright red with his admission.
Adam had an epiphany or whatever. He started the car and pointed it toward Micah’s house. “How about we both go and see if Micah will feed us, and you can tell me what’s on your mind. If it will make you feel better, I can show you my badge. You can even have a chat with my boss—who is much nicer than I am—and then decide what you want to do. Does that work?”
“Grilled cheese sounds really good.”
Adam smiled because, yeah, grilled cheese sounded really good.
Micah was surprised, but not put out that Adam had brought along a guest. He took a long, thoughtful look at Kevin and came to the same conclusion Adam had: this kid had nowhere to be. Micah grabbed some dry clothes, giving them to Kevin to change into, saying, “These are a bit too small for me. I was going to give them away.” Adam knew that for a lie, as his boyfriend had been wearing those sweats and T-shirt the other day.
When had Micah made the transition to boyfriend in his head? And how had it managed to escape his lips? His inner self shrugged from the corner while he watched Micah in the kitchen chatting with Kevin about video games and the scarcity of decent jobs in Skagit. Even the cat warmed up to the kid. The cat he’d had to wrestle into the carrying case before delivering it back to Micah. Fucking cat.
Wearing dry clothes and feeling the warmth of the house seep into his bones made the short wait for grilled cheese and tomato soup bearable. He tried to make Kevin feel at ease, but Micah was the master. Micah would tell Adam what Kevin had to say in good time; in the meantime they would figure out Kevin’s story.
His story, of course, was one Adam had heard too many times. His ultra-religious-conservative parents had forced him to leave the house when he had come out to them. One day he’d been the middle of three kids and the next he’d been living on the streets. His older brother tried to help him, but he didn’t have much money of his own. Kevin seemed still shell shocked by what had happened to him. It was incredibly painful to hear him describe his life as “before” and “after.” He’d discovered Center House during the summer and had spent as much time there as he could, but until he was eighteen he was afraid to apply for help. Micah seemed to think Washington State had laws allowing seventeen-year-olds to act as emancipated minors and promised to look into it. And by that he meant right that minute, disappearing into his office.
Kevin’s information about Jessica was vague, but more than anyone else had come forward with. She’d been a regular at Center House and had been nice to him. As the summer and fall had wound down she had spent less and less time there, and when he did see her she seemed “off.” Adam again considered that Natalia Verdugo ran the Center House and she had been found dead too. He wondered about the unidentified body from the spring.
“Off, like what?” Adam asked.
Kevin shrugged. Adam wondered if young adulthood required the shrug.
“Well, she seemed weird. I dunno, twitchy. Kind of like she was looking over her shoulder all the time. She coulda been on something, maybe.” He stopped for a second, clearly trying to use the right words. “She was nice to me because she remembered me from church. Not like we were friends or anything, and I know her folks kicked her out a long time ago; she was like thirteen. She told me she’d left town for a while. I dunno know why she would want to come back here.” And didn’t that sum up Adam’s conflicted feelings exactly?
Micah came back into the room. Kevin and Adam looked at him expectantly.
“Yep. I was right. You need to be over sixteen and have a court-appointed guardian,” Kevin groaned, “or a family member or friend who is eighteen years or older petition the court.” Micah was clearly pleased with himself. “Why didn’t they tell you this stuff at the center?”
“I was afraid to ask. Mostly I’ve been couch surfing and stuff. It hasn’t been too hard until, uh, the weather changed and stuff.”
Adam was lost in thought. Jessica had been nice to Kevin because she remembered him from church. Yet when Jessica’s home life had gotten so unbearable that she ran away, or was tossed out, according to Kevin, she didn’t approach her church for help. He supposed a rebellious young teen might not choose her parents’ church as sanctuary, but still, in a community as small as Skagit, where church presence had dominated since time immemorial…He wasn’t sure where he was going with this train of thought, but something wasn’t meshing. The Center House, the memory card with pictures of underage victims and Mitya Matveev who Micah’s dad had been investigation a decade ago…something stinky was going on he didn’t have all the pieces, yet. But soon.
Micah broke into his grim musings, informing Adam he was calling Brandon.
“What? Why?” Adam irrationally still disliked the guy, even though he had kept Micah safe until Adam had found him.
“Brandon is the local lost-soul collector.” Micah chuckled. “I’m not his only project. Stephanie runs their farm and distribution of produce; Brandon has his degree in sociology. He acts as a resource for a lot of people in the area. Anyway, he and Steph will put up Kevin for the night, under the radar, and we’ll go from there. As a single, out gay man, I am not the best choice while Kevin is under eighteen.”
Kevin frowned.
“True, it sucks, kid. Lucky for you, you’ll be eighteen soon even if we can’t get the emancipation through,” Adam said.
Brandon arrived twenty minutes later and swept Kevin away with him, promising to touch base in the morning. Adam reluctantly appreciated the man’s dedication and drive, and wondered aloud why he didn’t run the teen center.
“Brandon prefers to, um, operate outside the strict confines of the law. The way he sees it, the center is busy with kids who can be helped by them. Think of Brandon as Skagit’s own underground railroad for abused teens and young adults. The last resort for those with no safety net.”
“Do you think Jessica ever reached out to him? How do kids find him?”
“Brandon operates much like people who try to get the homeless into shelters. He takes the van around offering to drive them to shelters and doling out food from the farm. He has informants who call if they think someone is in serious trouble. He works with a couple of young lawyers who offer their services pro bono.”
Damn it, Adam was going to have to start liking the guy.
Thirty-Seven
Three o’clock in the morning was never the time to be awake, thinking.
He’d left Micah’s the night before with excuses about work, then sat in his pathetic motel room missing being at Micah’s. With Micah. Stubbornly refusing to admit to himself that leaving was the wrong thing to do, insisting he was perfectly fine on his own. Always had been.
He twisted around again and the ceiling swam into focus, sheets wrapped suffocatingly around his lower legs. Adam’s stupid brain had used the word again: boyfriend. He wanted so badly to reach out and grab what Micah was offering. He’d never understood that desire before now. Micah would eventually grow tired of Adam’s emotional constipation. There was nothing three o’clock in the morning could change about that truth.
> By 8:30 a.m. he was ready for a visit to the lawyers’ office on the other side of town. Soren Andersen had called and left a message asking him to stop by. That reminded Adam about the stack of letters he’d found at Gerald’s with their address on it. It was still sitting in the glove compartment unopened. He’d meant to look at them but with everything going on the letters had slipped his mind.
He sat brooding in the chill of his car outside the staid offices of Andersen and Meiier until it was time for his appearance. Appointment. When he had been here before, the visit had been short and sweet; he’d hardly had time to warm the seat cushion before he was being handed several sets of keys and being escorted to the door.
Their office was sterile, with white walls, and smelled vaguely of cinnamon. He spotted a bowl of those scented pinecones sitting on a side table. The receptionist was in her fifties and looked pretty damn good.
Monica was her name. Monica said to have a seat and Mr. Andersen would be with him in a moment; sorry for the delay. Adam was, too, because he needed to get to the motel where the team was going to be staying.
An hour later, Adam was back in his parked car clutching a white business card in his hands. He turned it over and over between his fingers. It was the card of yet another lawyer, this one in Seattle. This lawyer handled family issues, including reuniting adoptees with their biological family members. He honestly didn’t know how much more of this he could take.
Adam had a brother. A younger brother. A younger brother named Seth who was trying to find his father. Adam was so fucking fucked up. He started the car, and for some reason instead of turning left at the end of the block, toward I-5 and the team, he turned right.
The letters he had left unread in the glove box had been forwarded from the same lawyer, explaining that a young man named Seth Culver was attempting to contact his biological father, believed to be Gerald Klay. The letters had never been opened, as far as Adam could tell. Had his father known about Seth? Had he tucked the letters away to look at another time, but died before he had the chance, thus never knew he had a second son? Both were tragic thoughts.