Shades of Henry

by Amy Lane

  “Holy wow,” Lance murmured, getting a good look at the pill bottles arranged neatly in box flats—four shelves of them in the back of the closet. “This is not legal.”

  “And that,” Henry said, pulling his phone out and starting to take pictures, “is why we’re here.”

  At that moment, they heard Mara’s voice raised in the hall. “But Ms. Frasier, don’t you need a key to go in there?”

  Oh seriously? Now? Henry and Lance met horrified glances—and did the obvious thing.

  They dove into the closet.

  “What are you doing?” Lance asked, mashed up between a shelf of polyisoprene gloves and Henry. For a moment his baser animal kicked in and he leaned a little closer to Henry, smelling baby shampoo and Old Spice and danger.

  And there went his libido, right along with the pounding of his heart.

  “Not that,” Henry whispered back, his nose bumping up against Lance’s jaw. He showed Lance his phone screen, and Lance saw that he’d sent the brightly lit pictures of the pill bottles to a Det. Sean K, as well as to Jackson Rivers.

  A text appeared from Rivers: Great. Where are you now?

  Henry’s honest reply surprised him. Stuck in the closet with Lance. She showed up.

  Texting K-ski. STAY PUT.

  Will do.

  Henry kept the phone out, but he cast Lance a meaningful look over his shoulder, and Lance rolled his eyes. Then the outer door to the office slammed shut, and they could hear Summer Frasier tearing through the room, muttering to herself. The pounding on the computer was easy enough to discern, as well as her cry of frustration when it was locked.

  She went through the drawers in the desk, cursing. “Dammit, Robbie—where would you put that shit?” and then they could hear cabinets opening and shutting with force.

  They both knew where this was going. Lance bumped Henry and gave him a worried glare, and Henry nodded, holding out his palm. “Stay. Put,” he mouthed and then, oh God, he opened the door and slid out of the closet.

  Lance gaped in the sudden darkness, his mouth opening and closing in surprise.

  What. The. Hell.

  And outside, Summer Frasier apparently had the same thought.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Oh! Hey, see the hands up here?” Henry’s voice had a note of surprise, nothing more. “You were pretty quick with that thing, there, Summer. I think maybe you should put it away.”

  Put it away? Lance closed his mouth completely, breathed through his nose, and tried not to panic. Put what away?

  “Who in the fuck are you!”

  “Oh, honey, I’ll tell you who I am if you stop waving that thing around. I mean, it’s not very big, but you’re a medical professional. You’ve seen what even a small one can do, right? How’d you get that thing through the gates, by the way? I mean, I had to go through metal detectors—just me and my cell phone here.”

  And he knew. He totally knew what “that thing” was that she should put away.

  Oh dear God. This “loose end,” this “nurse with some extra evidence” was waving a gun around in Henry’s face.

  Lance’s stomach dropped, and he had to work to stay standing.

  Henry had just told him to stay put and had walked out there to face a desperate woman with a gun? Oh God… Lance was seriously going to be sick.

  He swallowed down his nausea and held his breath so he could hear.

  “I came up through the executive entrance,” she sniffed. “Robbie gave me a pass, so I could….” Her voice dropped. “So I could visit when he needed me.”

  And oh, she didn’t sound happy about that.

  “Ah,” Henry said softly. “I wondered about that. I mean, he wasn’t very nice to you. I wasn’t sure if it was an affair or something else.”

  “It’s none of your goddamned business!” Summer shrieked. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “I’m here for the same reason you are,” Henry said. “To find the evidence against you. Except I’ve already found it and sent a picture to the police. Don’t get upset, but they’re on their way over.”

  Lance blinked hard and thought seriously about killing his brand-new boyfriend. He’d said what?

  “Don’t get upset?” Summer’s voice hit an octave Lance wasn’t even sure dogs could hear. “What in the hell—”

  “Look, Summer,” Henry said, his voice low and soothing. “I need you to answer a question for me. Be honest. How did you think this was going to turn out?”

  “Wha—what?”

  “That’s right. Think about it. When did this have a happy ending?”

  “I….” She caught her breath. “I wasn’t supposed to even be with him. I… I was just out of school and I was hired in their practice, you see? And one of the other doctors wasn’t there, and Robbie said, ‘Deal with the guy!’ so I did! Only I was wrong, because I shouldn’t have even been there and he almost died!”

  “See?” Henry said softly. “You were in over your head from the start, right?”

  “And Robbie….” She had to catch a sob. “He said if I went… went along… you know, just bend over, Summer, it’ll feel good, I got an itch… and I did, because I’d worked so hard and I’d lose my license and he… he… made the bad part go away.”

  “And you were trapped,” Henry said, his voice low and compassionate, like he knew how she felt.

  Oh God. He knows how she feels. He really, really, does.

  And he kept going. “You couldn’t get out, because you’d screwed up. And you had to keep doing what he told you, because even if he was the one who fucked you in the first place, he was the only one who could keep you out of the fire, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said softly. “I thought… he was so desperate to keep me there, doing stuff for him. I thought he might care for me. I hated myself so badly by then, he could be the only one.”

  “He didn’t give you up,” Henry said. “We caught you first. So if nothing else, you have that.”

  “I… it’s not what you think,” she said hoarsely. “I… the thing I did. Where I screwed up. I prescribed too big a dose. And the guy almost OD’d. And this doctor I work for now—he’s terrible. He almost kills people every day. And I… I mean, I’m already so fucked anyway. I’m trying to keep his patients from getting addicted, because he doesn’t seem to care. And Robbie caught me doing that and said I might as well give him the extra drugs.” Lance heard a terrible weariness in her voice. “I’m so tired. I’m so damned tired. I was so proud, you know? I’d be a nurse. I’d help people.”

  “Sh… here, honey. Give me that. That’s a girl. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Our lives get screwed up sometimes and we just have to clean up the mess and go on.”

  “I’m gonna go to jail,” she wailed. “And I deserve it!”

  “A little bit yeah,” Henry told her, and even in the closet, Lance stifled a laugh. Because that was Henry—dead honest, even while comforting a criminal. “But I’ve got some friends who might make that a little less painful, okay?”

  “What’s gonna happen to Robbie?” she asked pitifully.

  “He’s going to go to jail for a lot longer,” Henry said, voice grim. “I hope that’s okay.”

  “I don’t know.” And she was lost. So lost. Lance could pity her because he imagined that’s exactly how Henry had sounded when he’d shown up on his brother’s doorstep. With a little more asshole thrown in, of course.

  “That’s fine too.”

  “Worrall?” The voice was muffled, but the pounding on the outside door cut through two rooms.

  “Come in, Kryzynski,” Henry called. “She’s unarmed, and she’s given the gun to me. And by the way, nice timing!”

  “We were literally across the street, questioning someone else in the hospital.” The voice got louder as, presumably, the door to the office opened. “And I’ll take that. Ms. Frasier?”

  “Yessir?”

  “Okay. Here. If you like, you can take your sweater off, and we can p
ut the cuffs on in the front. You can cover them with your sweater that way.” There was another clatter as more officers entered the room. “Okay, guys. Go search the closet for the stash.”

  “But don’t shoot my boyfriend!” Henry called immediately. “Lance, come out of there—nobody’s weapon is drawn!”

  Lance peeped out to discover a scene right out of Friday night television. A group of policemen surrounded Henry, who had his arms protectively around a woman in her midthirties with a bony jaw and bold knife-blade of a nose.

  She wasn’t conventionally pretty, no—especially not when her eyes were swollen with tears and she had too much mascara running down her cheeks. She’d sounded a little naïve, a little impressionable, easy prey for a handsome, smooth-talking doctor.

  Henry was right. She was going to do jail time, and she’d certainly get her license revoked. But Summer Frasier’s life wasn’t over, not yet. There were second chances for people who got sucked in over their heads, who did the wrong things because they’d felt too trapped to even see the right ones.

  Henry was living proof.

  “Okay, Summer. I’m going to turn you over to Officer K-ski here, and he’s going to read you your rights.”

  Kryzynski arched an eyebrow. “K-ski?”

  Henry shrugged. “It’s how Jackson has you on his phone. I think he forgets how to spell your name.”

  Lance had seen Kryzynski before, when Jackson had stood bleeding over the building super, the day Lance had stitched him up. He was a midsized man in his early thirties with sandy brown hair and ice-blue eyes. Lance had to admit he’d be a little tempted, at least to crush on him, if Henry hadn’t been standing right next to the guy wearing purloined scrubs and an almost transcendent expression of triumph on his square-jawed face.

  Kryzynski rolled his eyes. “And how is everybody’s favorite pain in the ass?” he asked. “I haven’t seen him since that night.”

  Henry gave an epic eye-roll. “Still planning a party next weekend. You’re still invited. If he doesn’t drop dead, I think it’ll be fun.”

  “Oh my God. He’s such an asshole. He’d better not fucking die.”

  Henry nodded. “That is the general consensus. See you there?”

  And Henry got a brilliant smile and a hand extended in return. “Looking forward to it. Thanks for the assist, Mr. Worrall.”

  Henry took his hand and pumped firmly. “I’m looking forward to doing some more of that,” he said happily, and Detective Kryzynski dropped his hand like a hot rock.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m taking criminal justice classes next semester,” he said smugly. “I’m going to go after my PI license. You know, maybe help Jackson out when he needs it.”

  “Oh, dear God.” The friendly look of camaraderie had changed to slowly dawning horror. “That is a very bad idea.”

  Henry grinned sunnily at him. “Well, between you and me, I think Jackson’s going to teach me everything he knows.”

  “Oh God, I do not need this in my life!”

  Lance could only look at the guy in sympathy. He’d met Jackson Rivers too—the idea that Henry might be training to be a PI in Mr. Rivers’s image could hardly be a comfort.

  Henry clapped him on the shoulder. “Just say thank you, Detective. It’s really all I need.”

  Kryzynski’s low growl of irritation was hardly reassuring.

  IT TOOK an hour of paperwork and answering questions before Lance and Henry got to leave, and part of that was spent tracking down Summer Frasier’s immediate supervisor. Lance hadn’t missed the fact that Summer thought she’d been helping because Dr. Scheideman was too liberal with the opioids. And while the argument of a woman under arrest for all sorts of charges wasn’t necessarily gold, Lance thought it was at least enough to have Mara put in an inquiry.

  “Is it going to go anywhere?” Henry asked quietly after Mara had sent off the email, and Lance shrugged.

  “It usually takes more than one complaint to start any sort of proceedings,” he said, knowing the red tape got even worse than that. “It’s not a perfect system.”

  Henry let out a deep breath. “Well, we do our best, right?”

  “Yeah. It’s going to take someone weeks on the computer with clearance to see if Summer Frasier was telling the truth. But we won’t let it drop.” In-house investigations could get ugly and heated—but Lance was pretty sure Dr. Schearer had his back.

  Henry had winked at him then, and they’d resumed the paperwork part of their day.

  Lance had to admit he was glad Henry had insisted on packing a change of clothes after that. It was his day off, for heaven’s sake. He’d love to spend it not wearing scrubs and his ID lanyard. They changed before they left the hospital.

  “Where to now?” Lance asked.

  “Mm… how about the office.” Henry was staring at his phone. “You can swing by and meet everyone. Jackson’s sister works there as a paralegal, their friend AJ might be there, as well as Ellery. You can see I’m not being befriended by wolves.”

  “They could actually be wearing wool sweaters that make them look like real sheep, and I would not be convinced,” Lance told him acerbically. “Oh my God, Henry, you scared the crap out of me.” That moment when he’d realized Henry was facing an armed suspect was not going to leave him alone.

  “She wouldn’t have used the gun,” Henry said, pausing as they neared Lance’s car in the lot. “She wasn’t even holding it right. It was fine.”

  “Have you ever seen a gunshot wound close up?” Lance asked, knowing the answer was probably yes and not caring. “I’ve seen what a gun can do, whether or not someone knows how to use it—it’s all fucking bad!”

  “Well, yeah,” Henry said, and he had the same absurdly gentle tone in his voice that he’d used when talking Summer down from the ledge. And goddammit, it was working! “Yeah, guns are bad. But that’s why we need to talk people into giving them up and not shooting them, right?” He turned toward Lance in the bright hot of what was still an early morning. “C’mere.”

  Lance tried to resist, but Henry tugged on his hand and pulled him close. “You think this makes it okay?” he asked, wanting to melt against Henry anyway.

  “Yes.” And there, in broad daylight under an unforgiving sun, Henry leaned in and kissed him. “I do,” he whispered, smiling. “This makes everything okay.”

  Lance thought there needed to be more. He followed the kiss, harder, parting Henry’s lips and taking his mouth unapologetically. His blood was rushing hard through his veins and a vortex of anxiety was opening up in his chest and Henry was the only thing—the only thing—keeping him from disintegrating into a puddle of fear.

  And then Henry responded like wildfire, sweeping through Lance’s body, consuming him, evaporating the fear and leaving a solar flare in its wake.

  Lance moaned and collapsed limply against his chest. “This is so not fair,” he said. It wasn’t. “You’re so good at what you just did. And you need to do it. And I’m going to be afraid every day for the rest of my life.”

  Henry regarded him with a faint smile, the lines in the corners of his eyes reminding Lance that he was an adult, and one who had chosen a hard life of service and loved it, and needed the same thing now.

  “But will you also be happy?” Henry asked. “Because I’m happy right now. I… I didn’t actually know that a relationship could make me happy. Is that enough?”

  Lance closed his eyes and took his mouth again, pulling back only long enough to say, “Yes,” before he all but devoured Henry against the side of his car.

  They finally separated when the heat got too much, and Lance hyped up the AC as they drove through the heart of Sacramento to Ellery Cramer’s office on F Street.

  “Hope you’re prepared for a hike,” Henry said. “Ellery has clients right now, and the parking is for shit.” He directed Lance to a spot by a meter on the side of a tree-lined street, and proceeded to be as good as his word by walking two more blocks without
another parking place in sight.

  “You weren’t kidding about the hike,” Lance muttered. “Yeesh. How far is it to get coffee?”

  “Another block,” Henry said. “Jackson has a skateboard that he keeps threatening to use. Ellery tried to pay me to get it out of the back of his car and throw it away, but I’m sort of on Jackson’s side here. I’m thinking I’ll buy one of those razors—”

  “And a helmet!” Lance protested.

  “No. No helmet. Anyway, it could come in very handy.”

  “You’re going to make me old fast,” Lance said seriously. “Fast. So fast. There’s going to be no milestones. You’re going to give me a heart attack. I’m going to wake up at thirty with gray hair and arthritis and a heart condition and I’m going to say, ‘That’s okay, kiss me again, and at least I’ll die happy.’”

  Henry’s chortle as he turned into a parking lot next to a green Victorian that had been converted into office buildings was not reassuring. They took a left and then another left before Henry guided him up a flight of stairs that landed right by the elevator.

  “Accessible,” Lance said approving.

  “Yup. They’ve worked hard to make it friendly.” There was already pride in his voice.

  There were three doors on the second floor, and Henry opened the one leading to the corner offices. Lance entered an obviously newly refurbished space, pleasant, done in muted blues and mauves, with a colorful area rug on a hardwood floor and comfortable fabric-covered couches.

  There was a basket of toys in the corner by a sturdy, child-proofed end table, and Lance’s heart did a little stutter. There would be children in this room, hoping their parents wouldn’t be going to jail for most of their childhood. There would be mothers concerned about the adults they raised. There would be hope and despair in this room, just like there was in the ER or the ICU.

  This was what Henry wanted to be a part of. Something important.

  “Henry, how you doing? Still pissing people off?”

  Henry turned diffidently to a stunning and curvy African American woman who sat behind a receptionist’s counter that led to the back offices. She wore her hair in loose waves with bright magenta ends, and was dressed in one of those sleeveless shell/skirt combos that made every professional woman Lance had ever met as intimidating as hell.