by Elle Keaton
“Yeah, okay. Like you said, we don’t know each other, but, um, you know you can tell me if you are in trouble, right?”
Joey stared back at him, wild-eyed. They left Joey’s car in the hospital parking lot and drove back to Buck’s shop, where Joey shoved at Buck to get him out of the car. Buck obeyed, and Joey twisted himself over the console to take the wheel.
“I’ll bring it back soon, probably just a couple of hours. I promise.”
Joey threw the car into gear and gunned it out of the parking area in front of the shop, gravel spraying and nearly hitting Buck in the face while he stood there like an idiot. He hoped Joey knew what he was doing and that he would return as he’d promised.
Thirteen
Joey couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. His fingers hurt, he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly. His rabbit brain was in almost complete control, and all it was doing was reminding him how late he was delivering supplies for the man who, no matter how hard Joey tried, was probably still going to die of tetanus. He’d managed to sneak a few minutes on one of the computers during his shift so he could research the infection.
He was so fucked.
Much too quickly he found himself back in front of the sick house. As soon as he set the parking brake the front door opened, one of the henchmen motioning to him impatiently. Reluctantly, every cell in his body protesting, Joey left the safety of Buck’s car and mounted the steps to the front door. The same huge man as the night before waited for him.
He was so fucked.
The patient was much worse than he had been the evening before. His back was perpetually arched in a painful spasm. His jaw muscles were locked, mouth unable to open. Hence the term lockjaw, what tetanus had been called before modern medicine renamed it. In the absence of an IV, his keepers had set up a makeshift gravity-fed water drip into the patient’s mouth, set to drip slowly with the hope he wouldn’t choke on the liquid he needed to survive.
At least he wouldn’t be dying of thirst.
Joey shrugged of his coat and got to work trying to save a man who, for all intents and purposes, was already dead.
Fourteen
“Find My Phone”—best app ever developed. Now Buck just needed to figure out why Joey had driven his car out into the desert of Skagit County at night (with Buck’s phone cleverly dropped between the driver’s seat and the console).
Buck considered it carefully. He did. And he tried to feel bad about disturbing them; he knew, from what Micah had told him last time they’d talked, that he and Adam were heading south to California. They were picking up Adam’s things from storage and maybe spending a little time trying to find Adam’s father’s family.
Luckily Micah answered. Adam was a grumpy jerk at the best of times, although it seemed Micah soothed that side of him. Mostly.
“Hey, Micah. Buck here.”
“Oh, uh, hey, Buck. What’s up?” He could hear rustling in the background. It was then that he remembered it was kind of late. His mother had instilled a “never call anyone after nine o’clock, unless it is an emergency” belief in him.
“Sorry for calling. I, uh, need kind of a favor. Can you run an address for me?”
“What the hell, Buck? I mean, yeah, lemme ask Adam, but yeah.”
He quickly rattled off the address that the app had given him.
“What the fuck, Buck?” Oh, great, Adam had taken the phone. Buck stiffened his spine, knowing that Joey was in some kind of trouble. Adam wasn’t going to bully him.
“Why are you giving Micah this address? I didn’t even have to look it up. What the hell are you up to?”
Oh, not much, just violating someone’s trust in him.
“Buck.” Man, Adam had real skills.
Buck spent the next three minutes explaining to Adam what little he knew.
“So, here’s the thing, Buck. You are right, Joey is in some sort of trouble. From that address, I can tell you it’s probably not good at all.” Buck could hear more rustling in the background, thumping, then some random thuds.
“What do I do?”
“You do nothing. You wait for Joey to bring your car back and you act like nothing is weird. You follow whatever directions Joey gives you. Do Not”—Buck could hear the capital letters—“tell him you called us. Do Not let on that you are worried about him.”
Buck’s heart lodged in his throat. How did he know this was the right thing to do? How could Adam be so certain?
“Buck, you have to believe me. This is life or death.”
“Okay. Okay.” He clicked off the call with his heart back in his chest but leaden.
It was two more long hours before Joey knocked on the door of the shop. Buck passed the time alternating between obsessing about his friend and staring at the cars he could be working on. Mostly obsessing.
“Hey, I’m sorry that took so long.” Joey started to add to his sentence but cut himself off, frowning. He looked like he was struggling to hold back tears. Buck pretended not to notice while Joey got himself under control, instead fidgeting with some tools he’d left on one of the workbenches.
“Can I give you a ride home?”
Joey looked so grateful Buck hadn’t asked any other questions. It broke his heart.
“I’m staying at my mom’s right now…would that be okay? She’s over by the university.”
Buck didn’t ask why Joey was staying with his mom, he just motioned him back to the car. The trip was excruciatingly quiet, only the sound of their breathing and the road beneath the tires. Conversation had never come easily to Buck. There were all these rules he didn’t get. He’d never understood why people couldn’t just say what they were going to say instead of going all around and about. It drove him crazy. Even though he didn’t know Joey very well, Buck knew he was a chatterbox, so the silence for the duration of the short drive was unusual. Joey took several deep breaths as if he was about to say something, but ended up staying silent.
Ten minutes later, Joey practically bolted out of the car with a breathy, “Thanks for…everything,” as they drew to a stop in front of a stately Tudor in an older Skagit neighborhood. Buck waited, watching until Joey was safely on the other side of his mother’s heavy front door still adorned with a wreathe, before he took Sheila home. He didn’t once think about driving out to the address he had rattled off to Micah. Not once.
Miguel was asleep, or pretending he was. Buck hadn’t told him anything about what was happening. And since he hadn’t responded to Miguel’s jab about Joey the day before, he hoped he was safe from questions. Buck managed about three hours of restless sleep before giving up. He spent the rest of the night awake in his vast king-sized bed, alone as usual, letting worry for Joey wear a groove in his brain.
As a result, when an insistent knock sounded at his front door well before dawn, he was glad to answer. Anything to keep from wondering what was going on, why Joey would be heading out into the county to an address that made Adam revert to his asshole persona.
A tallish blond guy was taking up space on his front steps. Before Buck could open his mouth, the man pulled a leather case out and flashed a federal badge at him. He did it so quickly Buck kind of wanted to see it again, but he did in fact recognize him. This guy had been introduced to Buck at some point last month as Klay’s law-enforcement partner, Carroll Weir.
They sat in Buck’s cozy kitchen nook. He needed coffee and to look out his window into the darkness while Weir talked at him. Before they could get started, Miguel stumbled into the kitchen. He must also have been sleeping lightly, although with the pain medications he was on he should have been dead to the world. He held his bandaged hand gingerly, close to his bare chest.
“Jeez, Miguel, put a freakin’ shirt on.”
“I didn’t know you were entertaining early-morning suits, dude,” Miguel grumped. Weir stared at him for a minute before turning back to Buck.
“Who’s this guy?”
“Aside from my friend?” Buck could be ho
stile when he tried.
Weir rolled his eyes. “I mean, do you want him knowing your business? Neither of you will be able to un-know what Klay wants me to share with you.”
“Joey really is in trouble?” Buck had hoped he might have been wrong, that Adam had jumped to conclusions. “Crud. Yeah, I trust Miguel. Besides, he’s so nosey he’d find out anyway. At least this way you can use your fancy badge to get him to swear to secrecy.”
Miguel paled beneath his olive-toned skin, looking at Weir as if he were a ghost, or the devil. Buck could swear he almost crossed himself, despite the fact that in the entire time they had known each other Buck was reasonably sure Miguel had never entered a church.
“Dude, you need to breathe,” Weir said, noticing Miguel’s pallor.
“I’m gonna go put a shirt on,” Miguel muttered to the floor.
“Not on my account!” Weir yelled after Miguel as he fled down the hallway and back upstairs. Buck was going to have to have a talk with his friend to find out what he was hiding from.
He kind of wished Miguel had stayed downstairs by the time Weir was done talking to him. There was no way Joey was involved in shady activity, no matter what it seemed like from the outside. The guy lived with his mother and probably helped old ladies cross the street. Joey was inherently a good person, maybe one of the best around.
Why would he be at a property owned by Mitya Matveev? Matveev, who had tried to kill Adam less than two months ago. Matveev, who Adam and his team believed was behind the deaths of at least three local women. He shuddered. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good.
Fifteen
Joey holed up in his childhood bedroom. He’d been an “October surprise” for his older parents; his mother claimed she discovered she was pregnant with him on the day of his next-oldest sister’s graduation from high school. The house had been built with a large family in mind: there were five siblings, and Joey was the coddled baby of the family. Which he loved most of the time. When he was a teenager he had moved his room from the second floor to the third.
The third floor was just a half floor with a single room. According to his mom, the oldest child left in the house had traditionally gotten that room. Joey figured it kept the more ill-behaved of his siblings from climbing out windows to wreak havoc with their friends. For Joey, it was a place to escape the well-intended, but suffocating, attention from his parents. He’d felt guilty about it, but by the time he was sixteen his folks had been almost sixty so he could rest assured neither of them would come all the way upstairs to check on him on a regular basis.
Therefore, all his movie posters had remained hidden from the scrutiny of his parents’ eyes. They’d always known he was gay, but if they hadn’t, a trip to his room would have dispelled any question. His walls were still papered with Lord of the Rings posters featuring a sweaty Elijah Wood, child pop stars like Nick Cannon, and his secret crush, Tom Felton. He had an old Risky Business poster, too. His eyes fell on his favorite, Jesse McCartney, and he let out a little sigh. The sight of young Jesse usually made him happy.
The comfort he normally found in his old sanctuary was missing today. After Buck dropped him off the night before—without, thank god, asking any questions—Joey had retreated to his room with Xena in tow. Morning had finally rolled around, although this time of year it wasn’t as if the sun was anything to get excited about. Joey had hardly slept at all.
Xena whimpered in her sleep and snuggled harder against him. He reached down to rub the soft fur on the back of her neck. He wished he had been able to sleep. His eyes were gritty and red-rimmed; he had to look like hell. If he was going to get out of the house without an interrogation about life choices he was going to need to leave while his mother was otherwise occupied.
The only good thing about this morning was that it was the first of three days off. Joey had worked almost every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and now he was off until after the first of the year. Since his life was in shambles it didn’t matter; he wouldn’t be celebrating.
He needed to do something about his car. Groaning, he pressed his eyes hard with his fingertips, willing the tears that threatened to overwhelm him to recede. He couldn’t fall apart now.
His phone buzzed where he’d left it on the nightstand. Joey froze. As far as he knew, the scary men did not have his cell number. He stared at the phone. It buzzed again before he could make himself pick it up to check the screen.
There was a text from a number he didn’t recognize right away. Goose bumps prickled up his chest and arms until he stopped freaking out enough to see it was the number he’d called last night. Buck Swanfeldt.
Buck had towed Joey’s car to the shop already. He wanted to know if Joey would stop by so they could discuss next steps.
Fuck. Between breaking his lease for Xena and what were no doubt going to be costly repairs, Joey could hear his bank account shrieking in despair. He was going to have to stay with his mom for a while at this rate.
The thought of moving back in with his mom long-term was pretty depressing, but it wasn’t as horrifying as the image burned into Joey’s brain of the sick man brutally convulsing, back arching, face taut with pain and muscle spasms. Unfortunately, there was nothing Joey could do about the man even if his car had been running and he had all the medication in the world. The man was probably beyond the help of medicine even if his scruffy, uncommunicative, completely terrifying compatriots were willing to take him to the hospital.
Xena was delighted for Joey to snap her new fancy leash on for a walk to Swanfeldt’s Auto and Body. He snuck out of the house while his mother was distracted by an advertisement for the upcoming garden show in Seattle. Joey was going to be the last person to tell her she couldn’t fit any new plants in her yard. It was already an exercise of taking one out before adding another.
The walk was almost pleasant—or would have been, if he hadn’t been on the verge of a nervous breakdown. At least it wasn’t raining. The fog that had rolled in late the night before had finally dissipated under the meek sunshine. It would have been nice if Joey didn’t constantly feel the weight of strange eyes upon him. The back of his neck was in a relentless state of itchy awareness. Joey knew someone was watching him. He tried surreptitiously glancing around while they ambled along to see if he could spot someone or a familiar car, but he only succeeded in adding a painful kink to his neck.
Sixteen
Buck had needed to drag several fan heaters out of storage to heat the shop. He normally only used them when doing paint work, but when he’d arrived to trade Sheila for the tow truck the place had been a refrigerator inside. The furnace had punked out entirely. He was going to have to replace it, but no techs were available until after the first of January.
Which was why he didn’t hear the pounding on the side door and barely noticed the screech it made when Joey forced it open. Yep, needed to have that door fixed, too.
Despite expecting Joey, Buck was surprised at the sight of him. And the huge dog hugging his side. Buck liked dogs in general. This one regarded him skeptically, its tail falling slightly until Joey petted it on the head, saying, “It’s okay, Xena.”
“Xena?”
“Warrior Princess. Yep.”
“I didn’t know you had a dog.”
Really, Buck? His inner critic mocked him: This is what you focus on? The dog?
“I just adopted her the other day.” Joey continued to stroke Xena’s soft-looking fur. She trembled and cuddled as close as she could. “She’s been at the shelter I walk dogs for. Pretty sure she planned on me taking her home the minute she laid her brown beauties on me.”
The dog did have expressive eyes. Right now, they were telling Buck she was worried about her human friend.
Being around Joey made Buck’s skin tighten and twitch. Almost as if in a literal sense Joey was a magnet, while Buck was made up of iron filings that pulled desperately and inexorably toward him. Buck would later swear that he always knew where Joey was in relation
to him. Joey was his true north.
“So, you called. Um, texted. About my car?”
“Whose car?” were very nearly the next words out of Buck’s mouth. Managing to stop them at the last possible second, he stuttered before trying again. Idiot. Adam had encouraged him to try to get Joey to let Buck help him. To get close. The problem was, Buck did want to get close. He’d spent most of the last few days trying to figure out how to get closer to Joey. Now he was being asked to, and his stupid brain was as blank as…well, as blank as any blank thing. Car. Right, car.
“I don’t have good news about your car. My opinion: I wouldn’t waste any more money on it. It has a terminal case of being a lemon. On the other hand, if you want to encourage a vampiric relationship between your car and your wallet, I’ll be happy to see what I can do.”
“Vampiric.”
“Yup.”
“Fuck me.”
Oh, yes, Buck would like that. A very inappropriate image of Joey popped into his head. Naked and panting for Buck and what Buck wanted to do to him. With him.
The way Joey was staring at him gave Buck the distinct impression that he had a pretty good idea what Buck had been thinking about. Was still thinking about. His dick, which had never reacted to anyone on its own accord in the history of Buck’s existence, chose that moment to chub up. Joey’s eyes flickered again. Buck was mortified. Joey had to have seen the twitch of his stupid coveralls. When his beautiful hazel eyes flicked up to Buck’s they were filled with very real heat.
For the first time in his life Buck didn’t think; he acted. Responded. He shushed his inner editor, reaching out to pull Joey close enough so Buck could bend down and touch his lips to Joey’s lush ones, their bodies touching from chest to hip to thigh. For a few short moments that all it was, a gentle press of lips. Until Joey opened his mouth and tentatively ran his tongue along the crease of Buck’s lips, his grip tightening on Buck’s biceps.