The Muscle

by Amy Lane

  Grace had to work hard to be thoughtful—it was nice when it was appreciated.

  “We were bugged,” Stirling said, apparently unfazed by the idea that Grace hadn’t topped. But then, Stirling had told Grace in a moment of candor that he hadn’t anythinged, so Grace figured it was all sorts of talking about visiting exotic places to Stirling, No, I haven’t been to Narnia either. Have you been in some guy’s ass?

  Hunter was still on the being-bugged thing, though. “For how long?” he asked, eyes flicking unhappily to Grace.

  “Not that long,” Josh said dryly. “You literally caught Jenkins after he’d installed the feed. We just wanted a good night’s sleep, so we moved here, since our plane takes off early. Did you see him leave, by the way?”

  Hunter shuddered. “In a manner of speaking,” he muttered, and they all looked at him.

  “I do not like the sound of that,” Josh observed, with all the passion of a clinician diagnosing gas.

  Hunter sat down on the edge of the bed Grace had vacated. “I heard a boat leaving in the general direction our guy had disappeared, so went in to check it out.” He shook his head. “Let’s say Jenkins was there, but he was no longer with us.”

  It took about five seconds for Grace to get it. Five, four, three, two, one—

  “He was dead?” Grace burst out, and Josh literally tackled him and put a hand over his mouth.

  “Bite me and I’ll shave your head,” he muttered into Grace’s ear. “Now can we do this quietly, please? We’d like to make it harder to hear what we’re saying, not easier.”

  Grace nodded, and Josh backed off. “He was dead?” Grace asked, his voice squeaking.

  Hunter gave him a kind look. “Yes, Grace. He was dead. His body floated under the pier before I could sound the alarm.”

  “Did anybody see you?” Josh asked, concerned.

  “No.” Hunter sighed and then smiled, tired. “But good news…. The harbormaster wasn’t in his kiosk. I got a glance at the berth manifest. There were only two berths empty. If we can do a rundown of those names, we might have some people to check out.”

  “Awesome.” Josh yawned. “I’ll send them to Mom and the Dads and see if they can look stuff up.”

  “Not me?” Stirling sounded hurt.

  “You’ve got first shift of watching our cameras, buddy. I’m assuming you’re going to want a nap after that.”

  Out of nowhere, Stirling let out a yawn that practically swallowed his head, and Josh laughed.

  “Okay, I’ll mind the cameras. You nap. Early night, guys. I hope that’s okay.”

  Grace peered at Josh closely for a moment, thinking he looked like he used to when they were pulling a job during AP Exams and play rehearsal, all at the same time—peaked and too pale and like the shadows under his eyes were growing caves. Well, it had been a big couple of days. Josh would get color soon. If Vancouver had more sun, he’d be pink.

  Still distracted by Josh’s paleness, Grace grunted and shucked off his trackies and Hunter’s hoodie, which he folded up together and stacked on top of the suitcase before sliding into the bed in his T-shirt and socks.

  “Fine,” he muttered, taking his phone from the charger and pulling up a game.

  “Got any movies on that?” Hunter asked, and Grace nodded, glaring at him suspiciously. “I’m going to go shower. Pull up something not sucky and we can watch it.” A faint smile appeared on his lean mouth. “You willing to let me share your earbuds?”

  And it hit Grace then—Josh might be right. This was the sort of thing Grace had been thinking about on the plane but had been too afraid to ask for.

  “Yeah,” he said, his smile getting wider by the second.

  Hunter winked and disappeared into the bathroom with a change of clothes, and when he came back, that lean body slid in behind Grace’s, and he snuggled backward. Hunter’s arm came around his chest, and Hunter rested his chin on Grace’s shoulder while together they watched an episode of Stranger Things. About fifteen minutes in, Grace thought, I can hear him breathing in my ear. I’ll never be able to sleep like this.

  He didn’t remember the next part of the show, though, because he’d fallen asleep.

  “SO?” TABITHA asked two days later. “What did you guys find out?”

  “Didn’t you talk to your grandfather?” Grace asked, reluctant to come out of the place he’d been. They’d finished rehearsal, and the rest of the cast had gone home. Grace, lulled by the familiar smell of the wooden flooring and dancer’s sweat, had let his mind wander.

  He’d slept like a baby that night in the hotel. His seat had been next to Josh on the plane, and he’d watched, surreptitiously, as Hunter read his spy novel across the aisle with only the occasional wink in Grace’s direction to show he knew Grace was watching him.

  They’d arrived in Chicago in the late afternoon, and Danny and Felix had fed them and partially debriefed them and then let everybody go to bed because they were beat.

  Hunter had shown up in Grace’s room, uninvited, and had slid in behind him in the queen-sized bed Grace had slept in during high school. It wasn’t a bad room—Julia had done it art deco style, with broad lines and bold colors. It didn’t look like a little kid slept there, and the dorm Grace had shared with Josh hadn’t been bad either.

  He was safe here.

  And when Hunter had wrapped his arms around Grace’s shoulders, he’d felt even safer.

  And now, after an exhaustive seven-hour rehearsal for the upcoming show, Grace was hungry and aching pleasantly and wondering if the family would be discussing what happened in Vancouver without him.

  And if Hunter was going to do that thing they’d done in Vancouver in the hotel room alone again.

  “I didn’t want to bother him,” Tabitha said, sounding sad. “He’s not young, Grace. He was beat last night, and I left him to sleep in this morning.”

  Artur had shown up for the last two hours of the seven-hour rehearsal, putting his seal of approval—or his scowl of “more practice!”—on every dancer in the show. He’d disappeared to the office across the hall to finalize the venue and the ticket sales for the debut in two weeks.

  Grace cast a hunted look over his shoulder before turning back to her. “He was very busy,” he said, “and very surprised to realize you’d talked my whole family into helping him.”

  “I thought that was supposed to be a secret,” she muttered, crossing her arms.

  “Well, someone broke into his room, and when I stopped him, the secret sort of got out.”

  Tabby’s expressive brown eyes widened, and her lips parted slightly. “Uhm… someone broke into the room?”

  “You didn’t get that far?” Grace asked, trying to remember what, exactly, he’d said to Tabitha about the trip during the day.

  “Grace, you had better start at the beginning!”

  Grace let out a sigh. “Maybe you can just come to the family meeting tonight,” he said, rubbing the spot between his eyebrows that felt like it was permanently knitted together. “There’s people. We did things. I’m not good with linear exposition.”

  Tabitha cocked her head. “That’s about as self-aware as I’ve ever heard you,” she said bluntly. “What’s wrong?”

  “Have you ever spent the night with a guy?” he asked, and her eyes got even bigger. He wondered if he’d surprised her.

  “You’ve met Sanjay,” she said, referring to her boyfriend of about a year.

  Grace nodded. “O, he of the amazing velvet infinity-pool brown eyes. I remember.”

  Tabby’s tawny skin grew darker at the cheekbones, and she pulled at her leotard neck. “I may have said that.”

  “I only remember because your last boyfriend—”

  “Kevin,” she supplied.

  “Yeah, he had big brown velvet infinity-pool eyes too.”

  She blew out a breath and fanned her face. “I have a type. Sue me.”

  Grace was diverted. “But when does a type become a fetish?” he asked.

  B
ut she’d apparently had enough. “When I start licking their eyeballs instead of their cocks,” she snapped crudely. “Can we take a right turn back to your point now?”

  Oh! Oh yeah. “Do you like sleeping in the same bed?” Grace asked, hungry for the answer.

  “Yes,” Tabitha said just as bluntly. “Why?”

  “Do you ever get tired of it?”

  “No. I mean, when I’m sick, yes, but most of the time, we don’t sleep together because we have different places and different shit to do. Again, why?”

  “So it’s not weird to like it.”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because I’ve been doing it with someone. No, not the thing,” he added, “although that happened, and it was great, and I’d love more. But the sleeping together—we did that.”

  Her breath caught, and he appreciated that she seemed to get the gravity of the situation. “And?” she asked carefully.

  “I like it,” he said, and he couldn’t believe he’d said it, but it was true.

  “Good,” she said, nodding encouragingly. “Are you going to do it some more?”

  “That would be nice,” he said, biting his lip. “I… I keep waiting for him to leave.”

  A brief smile flitted across her face. “But honey, you deserve someone who stays.”

  Grace wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know why. I’m a terrible person.” At that moment, his watch flashed a text, and he sighed. “My ride is here,” he said without looking. Josh had business in the city, and he’d promised to pick Grace up. Technically Grace owned a car—a Kia Sportage, because it came in a color that had matched his hair for a whole three months. But he didn’t really like to drive; he always ended up places he shouldn’t be, and he’d forget where he’d been going in the first place. He and Josh used to live about six blocks away from Aether Conservatory, but after their adventure clearing Josh’s dad’s name, they’d moved back into the mansion. Grace liked it there—he wasn’t complaining—although he suspected Josh kept the apartment in Chicago because… maturity and things.

  “Okay,” Tabby said, looking bemused. “I’ll ask Grandfather if he wants to come by to eat.”

  “You can come by without him,” Grace said, nodding, and she nodded back.

  “I can. Grace?”

  He paused in the act of scooping up his dance bag before he ran out the door. “Yeah?”

  “You’re a good person. This guy who was with you in Vancouver and now here—he’s lucky.”

  Grace shook his head. “His last boyfriend died.” He let out a sigh. “I’m probably just a phase.”

  And then, before she could answer, he ran out the door and down the stairs, shouting, “Bye, Dance Master!” before he disappeared.

  When he got outside, he was surprised to see that it was not Josh in the waiting black SUV, but Hunter.

  “Where’s Josh?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Josh was doing some legwork,” Hunter said mildly. “He apparently knows a policeman who works organized crime, and he was looking for dirt on Sergei Kadjic. I was with him, but it was time to pick you up, and I was available, and apparently this guy will only talk to Josh.”

  Grace scowled. “Wasn’t Sean, was it?”

  “No,” Hunter said, frowning. “Nick Denning, I think.”

  Grace relaxed. “Nick’s okay. He has a wife and kid. The other guy just wants back in his pants.”

  Hunter gave half a laugh. “Grace, how do either of you know cops?”

  Grace frowned. “I don’t know. Josh talks to everybody. Asks them their life story. Then, when he needs information, he knows who to call.”

  Hunter chuckled. “Yeah, that’s how he roped me into this merry band of thieves. Can’t say I object.”

  Grace suddenly thought about it—Hunter’s life before Grace. It wasn’t something he was used to doing. “So,” he said suspiciously, “what were you doing when he found you beating up muggers in the garage?” The sting had been his idea, actually, but he’d had a dress rehearsal the day their friend had offered to be a mark.

  “I thought I was beating up muggers,” Hunter said, negotiating traffic in the Loop with ease. Grace sighed. Everybody drove better than he did.

  “I mean with your life,” Grace snapped, feeling off-kilter. “Were you between assassin things? Were you planning a coup? What?”

  Hunter let out a sigh. “I was getting over losing Paulie,” he said, his square jaw hardening as Grace eyed his profile. “And I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life.”

  “So you met Josh and…?”

  “And I kept taking classes, for one thing,” Hunter said, his jaw loosening up now. “And I realized I’ve got skills. Yeah, they’re often used for violence, but that doesn’t have to mean they’re bad.”

  Grace digested that for a moment and sighed, staring out the window. “You could probably run for office,” he said, completely unironic. “You’re pretty honest.”

  “Yeah, well, I was raised honest,” Hunter said, which was unsurprising. He was so straightforward. It was probably one of the reasons he was so good at disappearing in plain sight. Nothing to see here, folks, just a man doing a job. “There weren’t a lot of opportunities in the middle of the heartland,” he continued. “I wanted to see the world, know people I hadn’t grown up with my whole life. Hello, military.”

  Grace sighed again, and Hunter pulled to a stop in front of a brick building that had public service institution written all over it.

  “Hey,” he said softly. “What’s wrong?”

  Grace shook his head. “I’ll go get Josh,” he murmured and slid out of the door before Hunter could question him further.

  His conversation with Tabby notwithstanding, he couldn’t help but feel that Hunter had more important things to do than him.

  He found Josh in a tiny office, talking to a harried-looking man with messy brown hair and stubble. Nick Denning looked like every cop Grace had ever seen on television, except Nick also had baby burp on his tie.

  “So Jenkins was one of yours before he started doing personal security,” Josh was saying as Grace slipped in. Nick looked up and waved, a small smile gracing his lips. What Grace hadn’t told Hunter was that Nick Denning was the only cop who had ever caught Grace and Josh in action. The good news had been that they’d been getting evidence on a school trustee who’d been blackmailing his female students into inappropriate relationships. They’d turned their evidence over to Nick, and he’d found a legitimate way to make a case. Since then, Josh and Grace had trod very carefully in Nick’s territory. He was a friend.

  “Old-school,” Nick said. He looked pointedly at Grace, who closed the door behind him. “Nobody talks about him. He took early retirement when IAD told him they were looking at some of his old cases. Why? What’s he done now?”

  Josh grimaced. “Well, word is he got dead. Not sure how. But before that, he was working security for a local tech firm that kept getting its tech stolen. I was figuring that if we knew who his contacts were before he left the force….”

  “You might know who he was funneling tech to.” Nick sighed and dragged his hand through his messy hair, and then, at six in the evening, seemed to notice the baby burp on his tie. “Have I been running around all day with that?” he asked them both.

  “Happy fatherhood,” Josh said, eyes crinkling in what looked like sympathy.

  Grace knew it was sadness. Josh’s last boyfriend, Sean, had been a closeted cop. Sean’s defection to his old girlfriend might have hurt Josh, but Josh’s unrequited—and unmentioned—love of Nick Denning probably hurt more. It was funny how Josh, the son of criminals, a criminal himself and a skilled one at that, seemed to gravitate toward the law-and-order guys. Sometimes Grace felt like he’d spent their adolescence telling Josh to stay away from guys who would bust them, while Josh had been pulling him away from the really dangerous guys the cops should have been trying to stop.

  “God. It does nothing for my image,” Nick said, and then, lik
e he was finally safe, he let the goofiest smile sneak through. “Little goober has started making these sounds when he wakes up. Just sits there and makes his mouth move and then looks surprised when vowels come out. It’s amazing. I could watch him all day!”

  “Yeah,” Grace said, “I know what you mean. Once I watched Josh blow snot bubbles for over an hour.”

  Josh did a slow horrified pan to Grace, who gave him an unrepentant grin. Keep him from getting too sentimental—Grace was good at that.

  “I disown you as my friend,” Josh said, eyes round.

  “You can’t.” Grace stretched out his arms and spun a lazy pirouette. “It’s in the contract. So was Jenkins working for Kadjic, or what?”

  Now Nick was staring at him with round eyes. “You think Jenkins was working for Kadjic? Which one?”

  “Sergei, and we don’t think that,” Josh snapped, eyes narrowing. He shook off his sadness—and his irritation with Grace like Grace knew he would—and turned to Nick to clarify. “I think he and Kadjic wanted the same thing. Whether or not he was working with Kadjic or for an opposing party remains to be seen.”

  “What was the thing?” Nick asked, and Grace felt his features melt into blankness at the same time he watched Josh’s do the exact same thing.

  Nick looked from Grace to Josh and raised both eyebrows.

  “Guys. Not even a hint? It’s me!”

  “And you have a baby,” Josh said. “And Jenkins ended up dead. This is bad shit, Nick. Don’t go poking around until we have a chance to tell you where the snakes are.”

  Nick stared at them, eyes narrowed. “You guys are what? Sixteen?”

  “I’m almost twenty-two,” Grace said with a straight face.

  “In ten months,” Josh agreed, and Nick let out a sigh.

  “Okay, guys, how’s this? I’ll look into who had Jenkins in their pocket. You two give me any pertinent info that will help me find the guys weaseling tech. Whose tech, by the way?”

  “Lucius Broadstone’s,” Josh answered, so easily Grace knew he had no worries about Nick betraying their new friend or whatever. Gah, sometimes Josh trusted so easily! Grace wondered how he did it.