Conned: A Bureau Story (The Bureau Book 6)

by Kim Fielding

  “Want company?”

  “No. I’m not sure yet what we’re going to do tomorrow, but in any case, you should get as much rest as possible.”

  Abe sighed. “All right. We wouldn’t be able to do anything interesting anyway.”

  “We’re not dead yet. That’s interesting.”

  Thomas walked to the bathroom, loosening his tie as he went and leaving the door slightly ajar.

  It took a few minutes for Abe to shed the rest of his clothing. He liked listening to the water run; it was a reminder that he wasn’t alone. The sound didn’t even bother his pounding head. Walking slowly, he turned off the lights but left the curtains parted. He cracked open a window, then climbed into the big bed and pulled up the covers. Although he wanted more whisky, sitting up and reaching for the bottle felt like too much effort. He’d just close his eyes and rest instead.

  19

  Thomas couldn’t remember the last time he’d soaked in a tub instead of showering. Now he lay back, stretched out as much as he could, and remembered what Abe had looked like in this very tub. Beautiful despite the wounds, his olive skin contrasting with the white porcelain, his hair teased by the moisture into a soft halo of curls.

  He knew he shouldn’t be distracted like this—visions as if from a fever dream—but he indulged nevertheless. Bathing was unexpectedly relaxing, the quiet sounds of water somehow drowning out bullets and mortars.

  And perhaps he’d earned a few minutes of leisure. Soon enough he’d need to come up with a plan, some way to catch the killer without running out of money or getting killed himself. For now, he closed his eyes and thought about Abe’s compactly muscled body, the way he moved with strength and grace—when he wasn’t recently shot—and the way his tongue worked its own kind of magic.

  Thomas wasn’t yet sure whether Abe was a good man, but he was certainly interesting and complex, and that was good enough. Besides, Abe’s loneliness echoed in Thomas’s own heart—a heart he’d long ago assumed had turned to stone.

  Now, if only he could—

  The bathroom door inched open and Abe appeared.

  He was naked, but that wasn’t what caught Thomas’s attention. Abe was moving with none of his usual agile fluidity. Instead he lurched forward, feet dragging, his back uneven. He bounced off the doorframe but hardly seemed to notice. Then he lifted his right hand from his side and pointed Munroe’s gun at Thomas.

  Thomas went very still. “Abe. You don’t need to do this.”

  But Abe’s lips lifted into a vicious snarl and he pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  By the time Abe realized there was no bullet in the chamber, Thomas had surged out of the tub and grabbed him, bearing them both to the floor in a wet heap. Abe bucked and fought beneath Thomas’s greater weight like a trapped animal, attempting to gouge out Thomas’s eye with one hand while the other bashed him in the head with the pistol. Thomas tried to wrestle the weapon away while also protecting his face and keeping Abe trapped, but everything was slippery and hard to grip.

  A swing of the gun connected hard against Thomas’s temple, graying his vision. Abe took the opportunity to scramble out from underneath him and dash toward the door.

  Fortunately the floor was slick too, and Abe fell face-down. Before he could regain his feet, Thomas threw himself on top, grabbed his wrists, and bent his arms behind his back. Abe still kicked and writhed but couldn’t get much traction. Thomas, using his body weight to pin Abe in place, twisted the gun out of Abe’s grip and brought it down hard on the back of Abe’s skull.

  Abe went suddenly still.

  “Jesus Christ.” Thomas set the gun on the windowsill and dragged Abe’s unconscious form to the bed. Then he retrieved handcuffs from his suit coat and manacled Abe to the sturdy headboard.

  Water and blood—Thomas wasn’t sure whose blood—were everywhere. His face stung, and his head was pounding. He hastily wiped his face with a towel before fetching his Smith & Wesson and his trousers. After getting partially dressed, he pulled a chair near the bed and waited, gun in hand.

  It didn’t take long. Abe shuddered and groaned, and his eyes fluttered open. He tried to yank his arms free, and when they remained fettered, he growled and spat out words in a foreign language.

  “If you want me to understand, you’re going to have to tell me you hate me in English.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Well, good. That I understand.” Thomas shifted slightly in his seat and waved the gun. “Where’s the amulet?”

  Abe said something unintelligible. Little flecks of foam issued from his lips as he spoke.

  God, Thomas’s head ached! He shook it in hopes of clearing it, but one of his eyes was swelling shut and the movement didn’t help. Deep in his heart he’d expected an outcome like this, and yet a foolish part of him had hoped anyway. “Was sex part of the con or did you truly enjoy it?” It wasn’t an important question but he wanted to know.

  “Sinner!” Abe hissed. And then he laughed mirthlessly.

  Which was when Thomas noticed something he should have seen much earlier: although Abe’s eyes were brown, right now they held none of their usual clarity and heat. Instead they were as muddy as a trench in Somme.

  Thomas shot to his feet. “Get out!” he shouted. “Get the fuck out of him!”

  The thing inside Abe gave a ghastly smile. “No. Abe’s gone forever. It’s only me now. Do you want to fuck me too?” It lifted its hips in a lewd invitation and licked its lips.

  “Abe! Damn it all, Abe, you need to fight this. Come back. Birdie! Help me call him.”

  He didn’t see Birdie. And although something might have wavered in the air at his side, it might only have been due to his injured eye. But the dybbuk’s lips drew back and its body thrashed and shuddered so violently that the bed frame creaked and the creature nearly disjointed its arms. It was horrible to watch, even worse than seeing someone die, and Thomas could do nothing but stand nearby with the gun in his hand, quietly and rapidly chanting Abe’s name.

  The dybbuk screeched like a mortar shell in flight, shook once more, and went still.

  Abe wasn’t breathing.

  Thomas shoved the gun into his pocket and shook Abe’s shoulders violently. “No. Don’t give up, damn it. Don’t you dare!”

  Abe drew in a noisy whoop of air and opened his eyes, revealing irises a clear amber-brown and warm as an August afternoon. Thomas wrapped him in a greedy embrace. “Abe, Jesus, Abe, Abe.” He couldn’t seem to find any other words.

  Abe was crying. Sobbing in great noisy gusts, burying his face against Thomas’s skin, body shaking as if he had a fever. Thomas held him until the tears subsided. Then he went to fetch the key to the handcuffs.

  “I could escape from these on my own.” Abe’s voice was hoarse and weak.

  “No need to.” After freeing Abe’s arms—his wrists bruised and torn—Thomas uncapped a fresh bottle of whisky and handed it over. Abe drained it in one long draught.

  Thomas set aside the empty bottle. “I think I need to repair some of your stitches.”

  “Just kill me.” Abe made the bleak plea without theatrics or hesitation, then turned his head away.

  “Not bloody likely.”

  Ignoring for now the mess they’d made, Thomas gathered fresh towels and the items he’d bought at the pharmacy.

  Abe remained silent and immobile while Thomas repaired the torn stitches in his back and bandaged his wrists. The wound in his belly appeared unaffected by their struggles, and he didn’t resist when Thomas tidied him up, moved him to the clean side of the bed, and tucked him in.

  “I’ll call for more towels and linens,” Thomas said. But first, not wanting to terrify whatever unfortunate hotel employee came to the door, he did a bit of doctoring to his own face. Then he swabbed up the water and blood from the bathroom floor. He drained the tub too, regretful that his bath had been interrupted.

  A wide-eyed young woman delivered the bedding and towels, and by the time Tho
mas remade the bed, he was thoroughly done in. Abe had the same thousand-yard stare that Thomas had seen on so many soldiers’ faces. He had once sported it himself, in fact. There had been no easy cure for it, either during the war or after, but the passage of time had helped. As had the occasional comforting word.

  Thomas stripped and got into bed beside Abe.

  “What if I try to murder you again?” Abe murmured.

  “I’ll stop you again.” To emphasize his point, Thomas wrapped his arms around Abe, who sighed and leaned back against him.

  “The gun. Why didn’t it work?”

  “I removed the bullets.”

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t trust you.”

  Abe laughed. “You shouldn’t.”

  “I don’t trust anyone, love, so don’t consider yourself special.” He kissed Abe’s tender nape.

  A few moments of silence passed, and Thomas thought how good it was to be alive, even now, under these circumstances. But then Abe said again, as if he’d read Thomas’s thoughts, “You need to kill me.”

  “No.”

  “You can make it an easy death if you want. Smother me with a pillow like I did to H-Helen.” His voice caught on her name. “I won’t fight you.”

  “It wasn’t you who killed that girl.”

  Abe squirmed around in his grasp and pushed at Thomas’s chest. “It was these hands, Thomas. The same hands that stabbed Roy and strangled Zook.”

  “And how many people do you suppose have died at my hands? You saw what I did to Munroe. Do you suppose I got that fast and accurate with a gun by tatting doilies?”

  “But you were a soldier. A policeman. A detective. You killed because you had to.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Abe pushed at him again, but more weakly. “I do. Birdie told me you’re an honorable man. A mensch.”

  Thomas let a chuckle escape. “Has it occurred to you he might be biased? Anyway, if we’re trying to deflect blame, let me point out that you were possessed by a bloody dybbuk. Did you even remember what happened with Gage and the others?”

  “I still don’t,” Abe sighed, falling back onto the pillow. “A few vague flashes and that’s all. I remember what I did to you, though.”

  “You pointed an unloaded gun at me.”

  Abe mumbled something Thomas didn’t understand. Then he turned his head to look at Thomas. “What happens when the dybbuk comes back? Next time it possesses me, I won’t be able to get rid of it. I’ll become a monster.”

  “We won’t let it come back.”

  “I can’t stop it, Thomas! It’s strong.”

  Thomas cupped Abe’s cheek. “And so are you. Anyway, tomorrow we go get the bastard who’s doing this to you.” He’d honestly have preferred to do it tonight, but Abe was in terrible condition and Thomas wasn’t at his best either. He’d have to hope that waiting until morning wouldn’t be too late.

  “I should have figured this out a long time ago.”

  “Nobody wants to suspect a friend of doing such awful things.” And the betrayal would be especially searing for a man who had very few friends to begin with. “I’m the detective. I should have known it was him.”

  “Emil.” Abe spoke quietly. “You don’t suppose Professor Payne also—”

  “I doubt it. I think she found out about the amulet from Townsend and mentioned it to Magnus. And then Magnus hired Gage— Had they met?”

  “Yes.”

  Thomas nodded, annoyed he hadn’t made that connection long ago. “Magnus hired Gage to steal the bloody thing. Then… I don’t know. Maybe Gage got greedy and demanded too much to hand it over. Magnus sent a dybbuk to fetch it.”

  “In my body.”

  “Yeah.” Thomas petted Abe’s shoulder. “Because even on your own you’re strong, and Magnus knew Gage would let you get close.”

  “And I killed Zook because he was a witness. But what about Helen?”

  Thomas remained silent, letting Abe work out the painful truth for himself. His expression changed when the realization dawned. “She was in it with Roy.”

  “Magnus knew her as well?”

  “Yes.”

  Magnus had likely recruited both of them, perhaps not knowing which would have an easier time getting close to Townsend. Tastes varied.

  Abe sighed loudly. “Townsend wants me dead because I set Birdie on him. The cops want me because of Munroe. And Emil is just using me as his tool to get what he wants.”

  That was the sum of it, give or take a few loose ends. It was a grim picture, but not a hopeless one. “You have me on your side,” Thomas reminded him.

  That made Abe smile broadly. He reached over to stroke Thomas’s injured face with a butterfly touch. But then his expression grew more serious. “So where’s the amulet? We can’t let Emil use it. Even before this—really ever since I met him—I knew he wasn’t… he wasn’t a good man. I didn’t realize how bad, though. People have a lot of shades of gray.”

  “What happens if he does use it?”

  “He’ll become a powerful man.”

  Thomas remembered what Townsend had said: mayor first, then governor, then the White House. It would be bad enough if he succeeded at those goals, and a disaster if Magnus did. It would most certainly mean the end of Abe, which was an idea Thomas couldn’t accept.

  “I think I know where the amulet is,” he announced. “Or at least where it was last night. I don’t know if it’s still there.”

  Although it made him wince to do so, Abe propped himself up on an elbow. “Oh? Where?”

  “In your house.”

  20

  Despite his physical pain and psychic fatigue, despite the horror of understanding what he’d done and fearing what would likely come next, a strange peace settled over Abe as he spooned, relaxed, in Thomas arms. They might not survive the night, and if they did, tomorrow would bring new risks. Nothing about their future was certain or safe.

  But right now they lay in bed together. Thomas hadn’t rejected him, not even when he had every right to. Not even when good sense demanded it. Thomas quite literally had Abe’s back, and that was a lovely thing. Especially since Thomas didn’t seem interested in what Abe could do for him. Thomas hadn’t asked for money, the sex had been Abe’s idea, and Thomas had nursed him and cared for him as if Abe were someone valuable and dear. Even if this lasted only a few hours, it was worth dying for.

  But more importantly, it was worth living for.

  “Well, you look like shite.”

  Abe squinted at Thomas, who loomed over the bed. “You’re not much better.”

  “That’s true,” Thomas sighed. “How’s your head?”

  “Between the possession and the thunk you gave me? A bullet might have been gentler.”

  “You think you could eat something?”

  Abe assessed the condition of his stomach. “Yes.”

  “Get dressed if you can. I’ll go fetch us something.”

  Trying not to groan too loudly, Abe sat up. His head hurt, the bullet wound hurt, his muscles were sore from wrestling Thomas, and every inch of his body felt badly used. But, he reminded himself, he wasn’t dead and neither was Thomas, which left them both in better condition than some. “Are we going to relocate to a different hotel today?”

  “Can Magnus send the dybbuk after you wherever you are?”

  “I don’t know.” Abe had given this some thought. The previous times he’d been possessed, he’d been at home, and Emil certainly knew where that was. Last night it was possible Professor Payne had spoken to Emil and mentioned Abe’s location, but Abe had no way of knowing if that was true. “Maybe.”

  “Then there’s not much point in moving. As for Townsend and the police…. I don’t know.” He chewed his lip pensively. “Let’s see if we can find the amulet. We can make decisions after that.”

  We. It was surprising to hear Thomas use that pronoun, considering he had good reasons not to trust Abe. But it made Abe smile anyway. He’d so ra
rely been part of a plural—other than one of the parties being a spirit.

  “Why don’t I join you for breakfast and we can go to my house afterward?”

  “Can you manage that?”

  “I can try.” It was better than sitting around and waiting for something to kill him. “Booze would help.”

  “We’re out. We can get some on the way.”

  One lovely thing about San Francisco was that you could find a blind pig open even at nine in the morning. If your companion had some money, you could purchase several bottles of bathtub gin and then duck into an alley and drink an entire bottle of the stuff.

  “If nothing else kills you, that rot will,” Thomas said.

  “I wish sometimes I could get drunk. Have you ever tried marijuana?”

  “No.”

  “I have, twice. It intoxicates me, but unfortunately it also makes the spirits easier to sense.”

  Thomas shifted his feet. “Do you need to drink more?”

  “Not right now.”

  They went to a little restaurant not far from the Palace, where Thomas ate steak and eggs and stewed tomatoes and toast and complained about the bad coffee. Abe was more circumspect, nibbling at some toast until he was sure it would stay down and then ordering a bowl of oatmeal. The waitress gave Abe and Thomas wary looks at first, but she seemed calmer when they ate quietly and the other diners—working-class men recently off shift, from the look of them—paid them no mind.

  Abe liked to watch Thomas eat. He was neat about it but single-minded and efficient, as if the goal were to consume as much as possible as quickly as possible but without committing an etiquette faux pas. And Thomas was thrillingly handsome even with the marks on his face, his hands were big and solid and sure, and he didn’t seem to mind being stared at.

  Glancing around first to make sure nobody was close enough to overhear, Abe leaned forward. “How do we get into my house without getting arrested or shot?”

  “You’ve a back door on the alley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a key?”

  Abe grinned. “I don’t need one. But the cops won’t be watching the back of the house?”