by Peyton Bogue
All of these incidents are enough to make Sage more than a little concerned about Rhys’s behavior, but Rhys continues to insist that he feels fine. When Sage had asked him about it, Rhys had admitted that he feels a little out of control of himself lately, but he promises that he’s alright and attributes his erratic behavior to the approaching full moon that’s two weeks away.
Sage is reluctant to accept that answer, but Rhys just continues to assure him that everything’s fine. Sage just nods and snuggles back into Rhys’s chest after he’s sure he won’t get called back to the precinct again that night, still worried but willing to tone it down a little.
Things seemed to have calmed slightly almost a week later, and Sage and Rhys are walking through the crowded Brooklyn streets that night, both eating their ice cream as they admire the nightlife in front of them, when Sage’s phone rings loudly into the warm air.
Sage was almost positive that he wasn’t going to have to return to the precinct until tomorrow morning, and the sound of his phone immediately makes his stomach coil as he sighs. He and Kai had just finished up yet another case only that morning. They’d finally tracked down the suspect they’d been looking for in the murder of a twelve-year-old boy. Sage hates cases like that. Homicides that involve children always leave him a little raw.
He was really hoping he’d get a break for the night and be able to finally spend some time with Rhys. They haven’t been able to see each other for the past few days, what with Sage and Kai working so hard to find their murderer, and Rhys could immediately tell that Sage was feeling a little abraded and needed to take his mind off of everything for a while when he'd gotten home that night. When he’d suggested that they should walk down the street and get some ice cream, Sage had jumped at the prospect of being able to finally spend time with Rhys and get himself to relax after solving such a gruesome case. He was really looking forward to spending the rest of the night in Rhys’s arms.
Rhys flinches at the sound of Sage’s phone, having been a lot more sensitive to sound for the past few weeks, and takes a little step away from Sage so that Sage can answer the call.
Sage has only been home from work for two hours, and he grimaces when he checks the caller I.D. and sees Kai’s contact picture. It’s likely that Kai is calling him for a work related issue, but Kai also just calls sometimes to make last minute plans, or even just to check-in and see what he and Rhys are doing, so his call could be personal instead of a professional one. Sage is really hoping it’s the former instead of the latter.
“Hey, Kai,” Sage answers loudly over the noises around him.
“Hey, man, what are you doing right now?” Kai’s voice sounds over the speaker, and Sage bites back a sigh.
“Rhys and I just went and got us some ice cream. Why?”
Sage can hear Kai’s indignation even before he opens his mouth. “Without me? What the hell, man.”
Sage can’t help but chuckle and roll his eyes at Kai’s predictable reaction. “Why are you calling me, Kai?”
“Mik’s calling us out to a homicide near Prospect Park. You and I are the closest ones to it,” Kai says, and Sage bites back another sigh, twirling his cup and watching the half melted ice cream swirl at the bottom.
“Alright. Do you need me to come pick you up?” Sage asks, biting the inside of his cheek as dread bubbles inside of his chest. He was really looking forward to spending the rest of his night with Rhys.
“Yeah. I’m at home, though, so we can just head straight to the scene after you come get me,” Kai responds, and Sage can tell that he’s just as reluctant to get drawn back into work as he is, especially when they were supposed to be done for the night.
“Okay. I’ll be at yours in about fifteen,” Sage tells him, tossing his ice cream cup into a nearby garbage bin. He’s still got his gun and his badge on him because he feels more comfortable walking the dark streets with it even though he’s got a two hundred plus pound Alpha werewolf bodyguard at his side, so he can leave straight from the parking lot of their brownstone when they make it back to their building.
“See you then, partner,” Kai responds, before he hangs up with a click.
Rhys is looking down at his ice cream with a scowl when Sage pockets his phone, silent and menacing. Sage immediately understands what Rhys isn’t telling him and gives him an apologetic look.
“I know. I don’t want to go in, either,” he says, grabbing Rhys’s free hand and lacing their fingers together. Rhys’s hand feels overly warm against his, and the heat of his palm makes Sage’s own tingle.
Rhys gives him an unimpressed look, looking up from the cup. “Mikalina calls you and Kai in all the time, Sage. She needs to understand that you both have lives outside of the precinct.”
Sage nods. “I know, Ree. It’s because Kai and I are the best at what we do.”
Rhys throws his ice cream away, sticking the hand that’s not holding Sage’s into the pocket of his leather jacket. “Yeah, I know. You’re damn good at your job.” He huffs, but aims a small, private smile at Sage, and Sage gives him a wide grin in return, happy that Rhys isn’t going to fight him on this. He doesn’t know if he’d be able to walk away from Rhys right now if Rhys were to ask him to stay.
“I’ll call you to let you know when I’m heading home, okay?” Sage asks as they reach the entrance to their brownstone, but Rhys just continues to walk past it and out towards the street where Sage’s Camaro and his motorcycle are parked.
Rhys reaches into Sage’s jacket pocket and grabs his keyring that has the key to their apartment and his car hooked onto it, unlocking the car and opening the door for Sage. He hands the keys back before looping his arms around Sage’s waist, looking down into Sage’s eyes sternly. “Please be safe,” he says after a moment, tightening his arms.
“Always am, Ree,” Sage replies, smiling as Rhys pulls their mouths together, feeling the electricity from their kiss light up his insides.
Rhys is reluctant to let him go, but he steps back a couple of seconds later, giving Sage a restrained smile as he tilts his head down to kiss Sage on the forehead. “Call me and keep me updated, okay?”
Sage knows that Rhys really means Call me and let me know you’re safe, but he just nods, undeterred by Rhys’s overprotectiveness.
“I will,” Sage replies as he steps into the car and starts it, then rolls down the window so he can lean out of it and give Rhys another quick peck. “Get some sleep, grumpy,” he tells Rhys when he pulls back. He knows it’s likely with the way Rhys has been acting this past month that Rhys is probably going to stay up and wait for him to get in so that he can know for himself that Sage is safe and whole, but the thought of Rhys not sleeping makes Sage feel disconcerted.
“Be safe, punk,” Rhys echoes his earlier words, moving his hand to ruffle Sage’s hair. He whispers against his lips, “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Sage whispers back, giving him one last kiss before Rhys pulls away, his jaw clenched with displeasure as a brooding frown curls at his lips.
Rhys makes his way back across the street towards the entrance of their brownstone and unlocks the door before he turns back around to wave at Sage.
Sage waves back, smiling despite his slight annoyance at having been called back into work yet again, before he pulls away from the curb and begins the drive towards Kai’s apartment, feeling Rhys’s eyes trail after him until he disappears from sight.
◆◆◆
When Sage and Kai pull up to the crime scene twenty minutes later, they’re pulling into a heavily wooded area that’s pitch black. Sage follows the lights of police cruises around a bend, where a small, rustic wooden cabin greets them.
Sage is surprised to see Mikalina herself outside of the cabin when he and Kai step out of the car. He’d assumed that when she’d called them out here, she wasn’t actually going to be there with them. He closes his car door, locks it, and starts walking towards where she’s standing.
“Lieutenant,” Sage acknowledges
when he and Kai are close enough, accepting the pair of blue latex gloves she hands to him and then Kai.
“What have we got?” Kai asks her, taking the gloves and snapping them on.
“Listen, I know you guys are tired, and I realize that I've been working you really hard lately. It's been pretty busy these past few weeks, and I know we're all exhausted. Let's just get this one over with, okay?” Mikalina says softly, and Kai and Sage nod at her, sharing looks of surprised confusion. Mikalina gives them both a decisive nod as her face tightens and she crosses her arms, motioning with her head towards the cabin. “One of the neighbors called in shots fired. Officers found the door ajar. No sign of forced entry,” she tells them, business-like, as she turns around and begins to walk up the stone steps of the cabin.
Sage and Kai glance at each other before following after her, entering the cabin. Sage immediately takes note of how immaculately clean and spacious the cabin is as Mikalina leads them further into what could be a living room. A huge flat screen T.V. is mounted against a stone wall, and the worn brown leather sofa a few feet away from it tells Sage that whoever lives in this cabin spends the majority of their time there.
On the tables next to the sofa, two deer antler lamps emit a soft light into the rest of the room, but all three of them still need to take their flashlights out so they can properly see the rest of the room.
As Sage sweeps his eyes over the room, he sees that there aren’t any family photos on any of the tables or mantles. There’s a Persian rug lying innocuously underneath the coffee table, and the red hues of the tapestry are the only type of color in the living room that Sage can see when he glances around the room again.
“This place belongs to Dr. Steven Aldridge. He’s a military lifer who served as a Major in the Marines,” Mikalina continues, shining her flashlight towards an open plan kitchen. “He retired out here ten years ago.”
“This guy is definitely married to the mission,” Kai says, swinging his flashlight around the room. “This place certainly doesn’t have a woman’s touch.”
“He also has no photos, which could indicate that he also has no family,” Sage adds, following closely behind and shining his light near the fireplace. “Talk about a lonely lifestyle.”
The kitchen they enter is enormous. There's a huge wooden island with wooden bar stools resting underneath it, and the cabinets and the appliances look a little dated, minus the new refrigerator buzzing in the corner with stripes of blood spatter painted on it.
A quick glance at the fridge shows Sage the four bullet holes embedded into the surface of the steel, and another cursory sweep of his flashlight reveals a massive blood pool on a huge area rug covering the stone finishing of the floor, but there aren’t any actual bodies anywhere.
“I thought you said this was a homicide, Mik. Where’s the body?” Sage asks, turning towards her.
“There’s none to speak of,” she replies, huffing. “When officers arrived, they found this pool of blood and evidence of those shots fired. No one was home, and there was no body to be found.”
She shines her light over several bullets lying next to the blood pool on the rug, and Sage bends down to look at them.
He moves his flashlight down to see what caliber the bullets are and brings them up to his face for a closer look. He doesn’t recognize the bullets, so he turns to Kai and shows it to him, asking confusedly, “Do you recognize this caliber?”
Kai takes it and shines his own flashlight on it. He studies it for a second before he shakes his head, frowning. “Six point eight by twenty-nine? I’ve never seen this before.”
He hands the bullet back to Sage, and Sage says, “Yeah, neither have I.” He bends back down to put the bullet back on the floor, sighing, before he shines his flashlight over the rug again. “These casings have rolled all over the floor. It’s hard to pinpoint where exactly the shooter was standing.”
Kai walks towards the fridge, shining his light on the bullet holes. “Easy to place these shots, though.”
“Okay, so, our guy was probably standing here and got shot, right?” Sage asks, moving to stand directly in front of the fridge. Kai steps to the side, watching. Mikalina moves to the other side of the island, shining her flashlight over the blood pool. Sage shines his own flashlight on the surrounding area of the refrigerator, right over the blood spatter. “The spatter here starts to thin out towards the left.” He moves a little, accidentally stepping on glass. He lifts his foot up to reveal a broken beer bottle. “Aldridge probably dropped his beer after he took some of these bullets, and then he collapses in this direction.” Sage shines his light on the blood pool. “And then. . .”
“Nothing,” Mikalina fills in. “No body, no suspect, and no murder weapon. We’ve got our work cut out for us, gentlemen.”
Kai walks towards a large wooden desk adjacent to the area rug, shining his light on the cobblestone flooring, and says, “I’ve got furniture moving disks. Looks like there’s also some scuffing along the floor here. It seems repetitive.”
“Let’s move it,” Mikalina says. Sage and Kai both take up positions on the opposite sides of the desk.
They easily push it in the direction of the scuff marks, and both detectives move to shine their lights at what’s revealed.
“Secret room,” Kai says, moving his hands to his hip and unholstering his gun. “Cool.”
Sage and Mikalina both follow suit, each unholstering their weapons and placing their flashlights in their opposite hands so they can position their guns defensively in front of themselves. If none of the other officers knew about this secret room, it’s possible someone could be hiding behind the door.
Mikalina takes the lead, moving with her back to the wall and entering the room, sweeping her gun and flashlight around the small alcove to reveal a set of stairs.
They descend them, guns at the ready, and stand at the bottom of the steps in shock.
There, on the opposite side of the stairs, hung up as if they were on display, are at least one hundred different heavy duty artillery guns.
“Holy shit,” Kai says, shining his flashlight over the guns, holstering his own weapon.
The rest of the space around them is just as meticulous and minimalistic as the cabin upstairs. Each desk surrounding the room is organized and neat, and each tool on the countertops is lined up and in place. There are two bookshelves on opposite sides of the wall of guns, and when Sage shines his light over them, he sees that the majority of them look like manuals and how-to guides.
Sage and Mikalina share matching looks of shock as they all draw their attention back to the gun wall, and Mikalina runs her flashlight over the adjacent walls, over the meticulously organized files on top of the desks, and says smoothly, “No body, no suspects, but if you’re looking for a murder weapon. . .take your pick.”
“Yeah, we’re definitely going to be here for a while,” Kai says, shining his flashlight over the room again.
“Like I said, boys,” Mikalina sighs, turning to look at them both as she re-holsters her weapon. She begins gathering her fiery red hair into a ponytail as she continues, “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”
Sage just barely bites back a groan.
FOUR
“Well, the neighbors were a bust,” Kai says hours later as he hands Sage a hot cup of coffee. “They all said the same thing.”
“Yeah, let me guess,” Sage replies, accepting the coffee with a thankful grin. “Aldridge kept to himself?”
“According to each of his neighbors, the man was a hermit,” Kai agrees, nodding as he takes a sip of his coffee.
“Did any of them float any theories as to why someone would want to hurt him?”
“Nope,” Kai replies, smacking his lips. “Apparently he didn't have any friends or any enemies. But one of the neighbors called him, and I quote, ‘a gentle soul’.”
“Yeah, I’m betting they hadn’t seen that gun room,” Sage sighs. “Well, while you were gone, techies found a secondary sc
ene.”
“Where?” Kai asks, meeting Sage's gaze as he raises his eyebrows in confusion.
“Behind the house,” Sage answers, standing up from where he’d been leaning against the driver’s side of the Camaro.
He’s just gotten off of the phone with Rhys, updating him yet again on when he thinks he might be home. Sage and Kai have been out at the Aldridge cabin all night, and it’s only around nine o’clock in the morning. They’ve been working with the techies to help bag the bullets and start the meticulous process of combing through all of the books in Aldridge’s gun room, but even Sage has to admit that he has no idea why or how this guy was killed, let alone with what.
Rhys was just waking up to start his shift down at his garage when Sage had called him, and Sage is already trying to think of ways to make up for his absence last night so that Rhys isn’t angry when Sage sees him again. Rhys isn’t happy that Sage wasn’t able to come home last night, especially when Sage has been running himself ragged for weeks now. Rhys knows how important Sage’s job is, and he knows how much Sage loves what he's doing, but Sage doesn’t need for Rhys to explain it to him for him to understand that Rhys hates it when Sage’s job becomes so demanding like this. It’s been a stressful month so far, and Sage is exhausted. He’s been on his feet for hours trying to delve into Steven Aldridge’s life. And he’d already worked a rough shift yesterday even before he and Kai were called to the Aldridge's cabin. All he wants to do is sleep.
Sage shakes his head quickly, trying to dispel some of the tiredness that suddenly builds behind his eyes, and starts to lead Kai around the back of the cabin, near an open garage, where yellow crime scene tape ropes off a dark red blood pool in the dirt.
“What do you think happened?” Sage asks him, tilting his head and trailing his eyes over the evidence markers. There’s about a hundred or so empty cartridge casings all over the ground. Sage may be incredibly tired, but he’s awake and alert enough to understand that there aren’t any bullets around the blood pool, and he also knows that there definitely should be.