by Gregory Ashe
“Did the messages you received have any specifics?” Shaw asked.
“Like what?”
“Well, anything, really. Any details.”
Yasmin made a face, opened the folder, and spread a half dozen pages on the desk. They were all as she had described them: cut-out words pasted onto copy paper, spelling out a variety of threats: I’m going to get you, No one is safe, Watch your back. Shaw sighed and looked at North.
“Oh no,” North said. “You’re the one who opened this particular door to Batshit Land.”
“The problem,” Shaw said, “is that even if the police wanted to help, there’s nowhere for them to start. You might be the intended target, but you might not—this one says, ‘I’m watching all of you.’ There’s no sign of when or how someone might be in danger. We’re even making the assumption that this is connected to the con. You’re giving the police a black hole of possibilities, and they’d need limitless resources in order to even try to make a difference.”
“But they can’t do this. You’re not allowed to threaten people.”
“You’re right; harassment is against the law, but it’s a misdemeanor. Unless you can give them a viable suspect, they just don’t have the resources to run down something like this.”
Yasmin stared at them, mouth agape, her breath stirring invisible eddies with the smell of cigarette smoke. “Fine. Fine. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? I’m going to hire you: private detectives. Gay private detectives.”
“If I have to hear about how gay I am one more time,” North said to Shaw, “I’m going to shit a unicorn.”
“We’re not gay detectives,” Shaw said to Yasmin. “We’re detectives who happen to be gay. And this isn’t a gay detective agency. It’s a detective agency that helps the LGBTQ community.”
“Or anyone who can pay.”
“Well,” Yasmin said, “I fit both those criteria. I can pay, and I’m part of the LGBTQ community. I mean, I’m straight, but I write about gay men. I’m an ally.”
“We know,” Shaw said. “And we’re really grateful. And we’re looking forward to reading your books.”
North cleared his throat.
“We really are,” Shaw said. “I think North got a little chub just looking at the cover for Spankin’ Angels, and I really liked the description of Marcus the Marquis, especially the part about the Prince Albert—”
“What Shaw is trying to say, in perhaps the most backassward way possible, is that we can’t take this case. We’d like to help you, and I’m sorry this is upsetting for you, but you’re asking us to do something impossible. We don’t have the resources to provide security for an entire convention. Your best bet is to do what the police recommended: remind people to be vigilant, keep hotel staff and security in the loop, and immediately inform the police if anything suspicious happens.”
“What if I have a suspect?”
“You just said you have no idea—”
“We had to ban a convention-goer last year. She was way too aggressive with the men who attended. Objectifying. Sexualizing. She hired a young man, a hustler, to seduce a very well-known author, and then the police got involved because it was a vice sting. It was awful. We had to tell her she was never welcome back at Queer Expectations.”
“Why didn’t you mention this to the police?” Shaw said.
“Because…because I didn’t think of it at the time.”
“Very convenient,” North said.
“I didn’t! A friend just told me that Leslie—she’s the woman I’m talking about—Leslie is planning on crashing the con. And sitting here, listening to you, it all suddenly clicked.”
“What a wonderful coincidence,” North said.
“Exactly,” Yasmin said, straightening in her seat with excitement.
“No,” Shaw said. “He’s being sarcastic.”
“Oh.” Yasmin’s expression fell, then she brightened again. “I can pay you to see if Leslie really is in the area. That’s something you can do, right? You can just try to find her. Come to the convention. See if she’s hanging around. And if she’s not, if she’s safely back in Utah or wherever she normally is, your job is done, and you get paid. Although I really hope you’ll attend the whole convention because you’ll be our local celebrities.”
“Would you give us a moment?”
“What? Oh, yes. Of course. We can even pay you for your time at the convention. Your hourly rate. You really don’t understand—everyone will be so excited.”
When the door shut behind her, North spun in his chair to face Shaw. “No.”
“Hold on.”
“No way, Shaw. This is amateur hour. We might as well be investigating a high-school mean girls club. Samantha told Sarah who told Megan that the boys’ swim team stuffs their speedos.”
“First of all, you would know, because I remember freshman year you bragging about that water polo player and telling me, quote, ‘Turns out I like the taste of chlorinated balls.’”
North made a disgusted noise. “Shaw, we’ve got four open jobs from Aldrich right now. Four. I honestly don’t know the last time I slept more than six hours in a night, the paperwork keeps piling up, and on top of that, we’ve got independent clients who are willing to pay obscene hourly rates for us to take pictures of cheating spouses. This is a fan convention for romance readers. Gay romance readers. How are they going to pay us? In poppers?”
“Actually, that’s not a bad—”
“This is what we’ve worked incredibly hard for, Shaw. This. What we’ve got right now. We built Borealis from nothing, and it’s finally paying off. Why can’t we just enjoy that things are good right now?”
“We didn’t start Borealis to get rich,” Shaw said quietly.
“Speak for yourself, you fucking trust-fund baby.”
With a shrug, Shaw waited, holding North’s gaze.
Outside, a diesel truck lumbered past the house, engine grumbling as the driver struggled to shift up.
North let out a wild growl. “Fine. Fine. Just shut the fuck up. If you say one more fucking word, I’m going to lose my mind.”
“All I said was that you like chlorinated balls and that you might want our clients to pay us in poppers.”
“You got what you fucking wanted, Shaw, like you always do.”
“You—”
North stabbed a finger at Shaw. “Not one. more. fucking. word.”
Shaw shrugged again.
Wiping his face, North stood. He bent, caught Shaw’s hair, and kissed him. Then he gently tugged on the hair, turning Shaw’s head, and whispered, “If you ever tell anyone how easily you just made that happen, you’re going to need a truckload of poppers to handle what I’ll do to you.”
“Is that a bad thing or a good thing? It kind of sounds like a good thing.”
North scowled, released Shaw, and headed for the door. As he pulled it open, he said, “Ms. Maldonado? We’ll take the job. The contract is standard, and we do require a retainer—” North cut off, and when he spoke again, his voice was tight and hard. “I’m with a client.”
A man’s voice, familiar, carried back to where Shaw sat: “North, North, North. Is that any way to greet your uncle?”
Acknowledgments
My deepest thanks go out to the following people (in alphabetical order):
Austin Gwin, for helping me think more carefully about Nick’s situation in this book and how to make him more believable, for urging me to think about how to make characters distinct and memorable, and for appreciating my ‘low booze bitch mode’ t-shirt.
Anne Justice-Allen, for providing (as always) her expert advice generously and enthusiastically, for thinking about crazy things like what an immunocontraceptive might do in a human body, and for helping me figure out exactly where a dart tip might break.
Steve Leonard, for catching so many little thing (a crumpled ball of foil), for keeping track of open windows and missing texts, and for p
ointing out how the final chapter might be revised to match better with the other books.
Cheryl Oakley, for urging me to think more carefully about Jager and Blake’s relationship, for working on the convoluted plot and how we could make it simpler, and drawing my attention to inconsistencies and continuity errors (like Tean using the paracord!).
Tray Stephenson, for laughing with me about the palliative measures for hemorrhoids, for teaching me the origins of the Dopp kit (even if I stuck with my lowercase d), and for nudging me toward clarity when I let my prose get too vague.
Dianne Thies, for always offering the perfect blend of feedback and encouragement, for pointing out that Jem’s naked (and it’s not a problem), and for helping me brainstorm how in the world to get a hotel key to Tean.
Jo Wegstein, for her usual incisiveness in suggesting clarity in prose, for making me rethink how much text Jem could easily read (especially in a short period of time), and for pushing back against the version of Ammon (even though we may not have agreed completely, I appreciate so much the thoughtful dissent).
Wendy Wickett, for her gentle suggestions that I use more italics, for reminding me that Ammon and Jem have had physical altercations before, and for not cutting off communication when she realized how deeply I’d researched confidence scams.
About the Author
Learn more about Gregory Ashe and forthcoming works at www.gregoryashe.com.
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