Cho shrugged, keeping his face neutral. “Wasn’t taking down the big bad alone more satisfying?”
Bristling on the inside, Danny focused on the task at hand. “And where have you been getting your satisfaction lately?”
Frowning, Cho searched Danny’s face for an angle. Danny didn’t try to hide exactly which angles he was interested in. Biting his lip, he glanced down Cho’s body without an ounce of subtlety—he wanted his offer to be crystal clear.
They were next in line.
“Make my morning better, Ice Man. Buy me coffee. Then next time I’ll owe you one. And maybe, some night soon, if you play your cards right…” He trailed, leaned in close again, and whispered softly beside Cho’s ear, “I’ll let you bend me in half like you want.”
Cho visibly shuddered when Danny didn’t pull away.
Jackpot.
“Can I help you, gentlemen?” the cashier asked.
Leaving Cho tongue-tied and gaping, Danny grinned as he turned to face her. This game was satisfying already. “Two large Liquid Lightnings to go, please. Shot of chocolate and whipped cream for his. And can you make sure Esther makes them? She’s the best.”
Danny set his ruined coffee on the counter, which the cashier took with a questioning look, but once she spotted the state of Cho’s jacket, she understood and threw it away.
Cho paid with a professional smile but didn’t say a word.
Once they moved out of line to wait for their order, he caught Danny’s eye. “Chocolate and whipped cream?”
“I hear you have a sweet tooth. Trust me. You’ll like it.”
“Will I now?”
Danny made a point of licking his lips—slowly. “You got a phone?”
Cho’s shock dissolved in favor of an accusatory scowl hidden behind a tight smirk. “Real funny, kid. Almost had me going for a second. You think I’m that gullible?”
Rolling his eyes, Danny shouldn’t be surprised Cho suspected a trap, but his plans had nothing to do with tracking Cho’s location or calling the OCPD.
He took out his own phone and pressed it to Cho’s chest, forcing him to clutch it or risk it falling to the floor. “Here’s mine. Take my number. Call sometime if you want. Or don’t. Whichever. But if you do, I guarantee you won’t regret it.” Leaving his phone in Cho’s hands, Danny grazed the skin of his fingers as he pulled back and held the man’s gaze the entire time to prove he wasn’t joking.
He wasn’t, after all. He needed an outlet, and Cho would be so fun to lose himself in for a while—and then betray once Danny was done with him, just as he’d been betrayed six months ago.
“Winter!” the barista called, which was the name Cho had given with their order.
Leaving Cho standing there, Danny took his time picking up their drinks. He thanked the girl properly, with a slight look of sympathy in his eyes to say that it wasn’t her fault he was back for a third time, then returned to his nemesis.
Cho’s expression was still guarded, wary, but the smile was real, proving his interest and how anxious he was to see where this might lead.
When Danny gave him his coffee, Cho handed back Danny’s phone. They parted ways at the exit, Cho left, Danny right heading toward the precinct. But when Danny checked his phone later, there was a new number saved in his contacts.
Labelled simply ‘Mal’.
Chapter 4
Mal scrolled through the contacts on his phone for the fourth time since that morning, which was borderline obsessive, he knew. Maybe switching from glasses to contacts after the coffee shop had skewed his vision. He still couldn’t believe his eyes when he once again came upon the entry labelled ‘Sparky’ and the phone number he knew to be legit because he’d taken it from Danny’s own cell phone.
He could have left it at that, not given Danny his number in return, but their chances of moving from flirtation to genuine carnal activity was significantly higher if both of them had the option to call.
“And maybe, some night soon, if you play your cards right…I’ll let you bend me in half like you want.”
Mal shifted in his seat at his worktable, his slacks growing tellingly tight at the memory of Danny’s whispered voice, promising things Mal had fantasized about often since their first encounter, but he’d never imagined he’d get to play those fantasies out for real.
He could afford another minute to muse about Danny Grant before he returned to the schematics for the museum they’d be hitting in a few weeks. Once the heist was pulled off, if a certain electric hero caught wind of it and showed up, that could put a damper on whatever games they played, but it still gave Mal almost three whole weeks to delve into just how debaucherous Danny wanted to get.
They’d left things on a sour note before, but clearly Danny wasn’t holding any grudges. He wasn’t looking for dinner and dancing either.
Mal hadn’t had a worthwhile fuckbuddy in… He’d never had a worthwhile fuckbuddy. He had one night stands. Bad ideas. Never anything consistent. Of course for now Danny had simply made an offer. Consistency was still up in the air.
The screen of Mal’s phone went dark from inactivity, and he tapped the corner of it on the surface of his worktable. Three weeks—nineteen days, to be exact, which Mal always was—before the heist was set to take place and he’d take possession of one of the most lucrative items he’d ever gone after.
The Winterheart Diamond; overly large, worth millions, on loan for only a few short months. He’d been planning this heist since before Thanatos was defeated, as soon as he heard about the diamond’s tour taking it through Olympus City, practically tossing a come-hither wink his direction to please rescue it from its boring captors at the museum.
Maybe Mal would keep this one, prominently display it somewhere in his best safe house. He’d prefer to exhibit such a treasure in his home, but that was where he was more careful, only showing off items he knew could never be traced as stolen.
He wasn’t as familiar with Olympus City’s history museum as other institutions in town, but it was small, which meant fewer exits to worry about and lower security, though they had stepped things up with the diamond’s arrival, including a new night guard. With Lucy having acquired a finely crafted knockout gas from a reliable chemist—no casualties planned, just precision—the final pieces were falling into place. Mal could use a break. A rare, long night in.
He could finish poring over these schematics tomorrow.
“Thai food, Mickey?” Lucy called across the room as she entered the cramped workspace, holding a familiar takeout menu.
“Sounds perfect, Luce,” Mal suppressed a smirk. “I’ll head out after. You know what I like.”
“You’re going home at a decent hour for a change? Usually when we’re this close to a heist, you burn through the night at both ends. And not in any fun way.”
She dropped the menu on the worktable and leaned on her arms on top of it, dressed in a low-cut black top that reminded Mal of her Gaia suit. Lucy’s costume was form-fitting like his but without the high collar, and she wore a more billowy sleeveless cloak with a hood rather than a duster, forest green and patterned with fleur-de-lis.
“What’s his name?” She nudged him with a playful, knowing look.
“None of your business.”
“Ooo, but you’re not denying there’s a ‘him’ involved. Do I know him?”
Mal dropped his phone on the table and fixed her with a raised eyebrow.
“Fine,” she huffed, knowing well when she could and couldn’t swindle more from him. A corner of her lips curled up and she held out a hand. Slowly, a green tendril grew out of her palm like a slithering snake, eventually sporting two perfect leaves and the blooming blossom of a red rose. “Make sure to be a gentleman,” she said as she handed it to him.
Accepting the flower, Mal coated it in a thin sheen of ice from his fingertips like it
had been ambushed by the first frost.
“Jerk,” Lucy scowled.
“Brat.”
They’d been playing this game since she first learned how to make plants grow. “Nice to know I left an impression at least,” she said.
Snatching up the takeout menu again, she pulled out her cell phone and started dialing. The place down the street could have food at their door in ten minutes—and knew not to ask questions or give any details to the police about delivering to a building with an unmarked door at the end of the block like a boarded up pawn shop.
“But if this guy is cute,” she said as the line started ringing, “and you screw him more than once, I get a name.”
“Such a thoughtful, attentive sister I have,” Mal droned.
Lucy stuck her tongue out at him before responding, “Hey, cutie,” into her phone as she left the room.
Mal held the frozen rose in one hand and picked up his phone with the other. This safe house was the only one within the same ten block radius as his neighborhood. Danny knew the area. Knew Haven at any rate. Likely guessed Mal had a safe house in the vicinity. Likely didn’t know Mal lived nearby as well. But if Mal met Danny at a safe house, there was the chance he’d catch sight of something incriminating, something that might give away his plans for a future heist. Mal never kept anything so blatant where he lived. Which meant it was both the smartest and stupidest idea to invite Danny into his home.
Setting the rose aside, he texted Danny his address, followed by the instructions—1 hour.
Less than thirty seconds later, Mal’s phone buzzed with a response—I’ll be there.
Excellent. Maybe he’d take that Thai food to go.
ß
“What are you grinning at?” Andre asked as Danny walked into the morgue, still staring at his phone and the message from Cho. He hadn’t expected it to be this easy seducing his nemesis. He’d figured he’d wait a few days, see if Cho made the first move, then call if he grew impatient.
Andre sat at the desk in the center of the room where they’d set up a mini lab for him to get CSI work done while moonlighting as Danny’s technician, along with a computer and several tablets to better monitor dispatch around the city. Lynn stood by her station against the wall near the door into the med room, which had a second computer set up to track Danny’s vitals fed through the sensors in his suit. The morgue drawers that once would have held bodies now stored various pieces of equipment and Danny’s costume. They made a good team as civil servants by day and defenders of the city at night.
It helped that getting to their secret lair was as easy as going downstairs from their day jobs and taking a few labyrinthine turns to a locked door no one cared about. That single door led to a series of corridors with many rooms. The main morgue was the largest, down the first hallway amidst the other rooms that were mostly for storage, including the one they’d outfitted to act as their holding cell whenever Danny caught Elementals during the night. Normal human criminals could be dropped off at the precinct steps, but people with powers required more finesse.
“Oh, nothing,” Danny said, pocketing his phone, “just some plans for tonight. I was hoping to skip patrol, if that’s okay with you guys? I’ll still be on call if anything comes up, but it turns out I’m all out of vacation days, so I’m gonna have to get creative for a while.” He pulled on a defeated but accepting smile, which was honestly how he felt, like things weren’t okay, but they weren’t as bad as they’d seemed last night, not with the prospect of seeing Cho later.
It was oddly thrilling. Danny never got one up on anyone. Who better to con than a career criminal, especially when Cho looked like he’d walked out of a male model photoshoot.
“That’s a good idea, Danny,” Lynn said as she approached him from her desk. She squeezed his arm before Andre budged in between them.
“However!” he said. “Quick shop talk before you go. Camouflage’s transfer to the Elemental wing went swimmingly this morning, by the way. You’re welcome.”
“John oversaw everything,” Lynn said with a fuller smile. “Chalk up another collar for your father.”
Danny’s smile twitched.
“Captain Shan might be scary, like scarily intimidating,” Andre held a hand up palm outward to stress his point, “but the guy is pretty cool about ignoring how Zeus basically delivers bad guys like Meals on Wheels through your dad.”
That at least pulled a laugh from Danny. “Hey, as long as Zeus keeps bagging criminals, Shan is more than happy to look the other way concerning the details. And so are his superiors. Did, uhh…” His face fell as he struggled to form his next question, but he hadn’t seen much of his father that day—or the past six months, even though they were both detectives in the same precinct and still lived under the same roof. It had been too difficult to look at his father after his mother’s death. Now the months had stretched on and everything felt awkward. “Did Dad say anything about Camo’s condition?”
A brief silence filled the air.
Eventually, Andre said, “His eyes did that bug out thing they do. You know, with the blowfish face.” He mimicked John to a frightening degree of accuracy as he puffed out his cheeks, put his hands on his hips, and blew the air out slowly.
Danny choked back another laugh.
“We just said it was a tough fight,” Lynn said. “Though, Danny…”
“I know. I should tell him how I’ve been feeling. I’m just always so busy, when I do have time to talk to him it’s usually family night with Stella and Joey.”
Stella had been Danny’s sister ever since his parents adopted her after her family died in a robbery-gone-wrong. His father had worked the case. Danny had already known her from school at the time, both of them in the same fourth grade class. It was an easy transition to love her like family, nurtured for almost two decades.
Joey was different. Danny’s father had been fostering the teenager for the past six months, because the same explosion that took Danny’s mother had also taken Joey’s. His mother had been an engineer at the power station. John and Danny weren’t allowed to work the case, but Stella had ended up as Joey’s social worker.
It all hit so close to home—literally—so it had been a no-brainer to take Joey in rather than send a near-adult into the chaotic throng of the system.
The amazing thing was, Joey didn’t blame Zeus for his mother’s death. He worshipped Zeus, having no idea that his hero was also the man who moped around the house whenever he was home. Joey only blamed Thanatos for his tragedy.
Danny knew the blame was shared.
“I don’t want to bring everyone else down with my problems,” he said. “Joey already thinks I act like the world revolves around me. Admitting I’m falling apart won’t help.”
Lynn and Andre’s matching looks of concern hit Danny like a smack to the face.
“I’m not falling apart,” he said on reflex. “I’m not falling apart right now. I’m okay. Really. If I need to, I’ll talk to Dad and Stella. I promise. Now what else did you have to tell me?”
“Oh! Right!” Andre brightened, dashing over to Lynn’s desk, which was perpetually more organized than his own. Danny followed and his attention was drawn to the glass window he’d nearly shattered last night. They’d have to get it replaced eventually. For now, the crack looked like a jagged scar, symbolizing everything inside of Danny that was broken.
He felt his smile waver as he stared at it but summoned the expression back when Andre held up the black suit they’d taken from Camo.
“I have some ideas about this suit. Our friend Camouflage is no slouch. This thing mimics his natural chameleon abilities like something out of a Metal Gear Solid game.”
Lynn stepped around Danny to take over. “Since his powers work the same way as an animal that can blend in with its surroundings, it only works on the surface of his skin.”
�
�Which explains the shaved head,” Danny nodded.
“And the suit,” Andre broke in, “is how he can use his powers to their fullest without having to walk around naked. Which, obviously, fortunate for us, but also unfortunate because…” He let the suit flop back onto the desk.
“It won’t work on just anyone.”
“We think we can fix that,” Lynn said. “The reflectors in the suit are an impressive piece of tech. We might be able to synthetically mimic Camo’s biochromes to create a stealth suit for you.”
“Camouflage,” Andre corrected.
“Camouflage,” Lynn imitated to exaggeration.
They all laughed.
“Great work, guys,” Danny said. “I’ll have my phone on me if you need anything. Still on for takeout and Heists tomorrow night?” he turned to Andre.
“You bet,” Andre said. “Cops won’t know what hit ‘em, son.” He swung his arm back for a hand slap, which they completed like clockwork—front, back, fist bump. But before Danny could head out of the morgue, Andre asked, “What did you decide, anyway? Hobby or…recreation?” he waggled an eyebrow.
“Andre…” Lynn shook her head at him.
Danny couldn’t stifle his grin. “Bit of both? But it’ll definitely help me blow off steam. See you guys later.” He waved, feeling lighter with every step he took out of the precinct and into the cool evening air.
ß
Virgil Laboratories wasn’t an obvious target for a theft, not unless someone was a mad scientist looking to build something bigger and badder than whatever they’d used to break into the facility. But that was for small minds, limited thinkers. There was more to a place like Virgil Labs than tech and chemicals for the sake of science; there was what the individual chemicals and parts could be sold for on the black market.
The place was a veritable fortress after several run-ins with Elementals and unexplained thefts over the years, but those losses had been meager, simple, nothing for too many stockholders to worry over. This theft, however, would cause quite a stir and garner some significant funds for Olympus City’s newest criminal element.
Lovesick Gods Page 5