Eight years was a while to be away from everything. It was long enough to find out that an old high school bully had ended up in prison, and for your former best friend turned boyfriend to have become a bundle of anger and bitterness. The first Blaine could live with, but the second was a harder pill to swallow. What made it stick in his throat was knowing he was the cause of Eric’s attitude.
They had been happy once upon a time. Two years of friendship had bonded them together fiercely, and the months of dating that had followed had been almost perfect. Well, they had felt perfect, but their lives still had a lot of work to do before it caught up to perfection. It had taken Blaine a little while to realize what potential lay beneath their friendship, and he could still remember the moment it had hit him.
An angry Eric, covered in sweat, mud, and a smear of blood over his forehead.
Walking into the Andreas household without warning or fanfare, Blaine wiped his boots on the mat just inside the front door. While the past few days of rain hadn’t done much to cool the abnormally warm spring, it had certainly created a lot of mud. The small house was quiet enough that he could hear the soft sounds of movement further inside. There was another noise, one distant and muffled that Blaine couldn’t quite make out either.
“Eric?” Blaine called. “Sean?”
Sean’s voice floated to him. “In the living room.”
Blaine stepped into the narrow kitchen, eyeing the electric kettle on the counter as it hissed its way toward boiling. He walked toward the dining room and stopped at the edge, where the linoleum of the kitchen gave way to carpet. From there, he could see far enough into the living room to spot Sean sitting on the couch, legs crossed beneath him.
“I was wondering how long it would take until you showed up,” Sean said, flipping the page of the magazine in his lap.
“What?” Blaine asked, feigning confusion.
Sean looked over his shoulder, smirking. “Right, because he didn’t text you to bitch and moan.”
It was strange how similar and how different Sean was to his younger brother. Blaine had seen pictures of the rest of the family, the siblings now scattered across the country, but none of them had the strange dissonance in looks that Sean and Eric did. Sean had the same black hair and dark eyes, and even roughly the same build, though with more bulk than Eric did.
With Eric, there was the sense of a storm brewing behind his dark eyes, threatening danger and awe in the same breath. He was energy and passion, bouncing from one subject to another, gobbling information up with a speed that Blaine found both fascinating and a little unnerving. Sean, however, was the earth and mist to his brother’s fire and smoke. There was a gentleness to Sean, an easygoing and accepting manner that Blaine would have thought at home on a monk.
“He might have sent me something,” Blaine admitted with a shrug.
Sean chuckled, turning his attention back to the magazine. “Mr. I’m an Adult and Can Do What I Want is out back. He wasn’t happy that I told him he wasn’t going to the party this weekend, as I’m sure you already know.”
Blaine kept his face neutral as his thoughts drifted to the profanity-laden texts sitting in his inbox. He could easily imagine Eric thinking that he would have free reign to do whatever he wanted, considering he’d turned eighteen a couple of weeks back. That hadn’t apparently deterred Sean in the slightest. He argued that Eric was still in high school and thus under Sean’s jurisdiction.
And Blaine knew better than to get in the middle.
“I guess that’s that,” Blaine said, stepping back.
“Yeah, it is. And I’m sure the night of the party, I won’t see him gone from his bed, and you wouldn’t possibly know a thing about that,” Sean said dryly.
“Ah,” Blaine managed, freezing in the doorway.
“Make sure you two keep your phones on you, in case of emergency,” Sean said comfortably, never looking up again.
Blaine cleared his throat and backed toward the door before Sean could add anything else. Sean was one of only two people who could reliably bring Eric down from one of his tangents, while Blaine was the other. Blaine did it mostly through...well, he wasn’t quite sure how he managed it, he just let Eric talk, and then Blaine did a bit of talking, and it seemed to work. Sean managed it by being just as stubborn as his brother, but in a patient, calm way that turned him into an ocean breakwater to weather the storm.
Trying not to think too hard about how well Sean knew them, Blaine walked around the house, following the noise he’d heard before. As he drew closer, he realized the sound was a heavy thump. Coming through the trees that lined the garden, he could hear the whish and then the thump. It was followed by a clatter of wood, a smaller sound, and then it would repeat again.
Now he understood what Sean had meant about Eric’s aggressions being taken out. If fighting it out didn’t work, which it usually did, giving Eric a target, then giving him something physical to do would. Sean’s favorite, and Blaine thought it was Eric’s too, was chopping wood.
There was a lot of chopped wood at the Andreas house.
He stepped out of the trees and into the warm, spring sunlight. Blaine’s greeting died on his lips as he caught sight of Eric, tossing two chunks of firewood into the pile. At some point, Eric had taken off his shirt, throwing it over a branch. His entire upper body was coated in sweat, and there was quite the sizable pile of ready to use firewood, a testament to how angry he had been.
Blaine stared, unable to help himself, as Eric bent over, his jeans squeezing against his thighs and ass as he hefted up the next log to be sacrificed. His mouth dried as Eric lifted the ax, adjusting his grip in a practiced motion, and brought it down. Blaine wasn’t sure when Eric had gone from scrawny teenager to someone with muscles, but good lord, was he happy to witness it.
The head of the ax drove through the log with a heavy thump, the blade digging into the stump Eric was using to stand it on. Eric wiggled the ax, shifting his hips to try to gain leverage. Something in Blaine’s stomach flipped at the sight of the lines in Eric’s hips, diving down beneath the waistband of his jeans.
Where the hell had those come from?
Blaine tried to both speak and step forward at the same time, anything to get his mind off where it was quickly trying to go. All he managed was a weird growling noise, and his booted foot coming down on a stray branch that cracked like a gunshot.
Eric jerked, his motion to pull the ax free interrupted by the sudden start. His feet shoved against the soft earth, and with a yelp, he tumbled to the side and onto the pile of firewood.
Blaine winced. “Uh...sorry.”
Eric gave a groan, slipping off the pile and onto the earth with a soft splat. Next came a growl as Eric shoved himself up off the ground, flecks of bark and wood in his dark hair and on his forehead, a red line clear above his eyebrow. His pants were soaked through from the wet earth, and he was spattered with rich mud, up one arm and across his chest.
“What the fuck?” Eric snapped, wiping a hand over his forehead and smearing the blood.
“I said sorry,” Blaine managed weakly.
“I probably have brain damage now!”
Blaine was trying desperately to figure out what he was going to say, but his mind was preoccupied. All his brainpower seemed focused on the lines on Eric’s body that Blaine would swear hadn’t been there before. On the fact that the mud and, God save him, the smear of blood on his face only gave Eric’s furious scowl a rugged appearance.
“Well? Fucking say something,” Eric huffed.
“Uh,” Blaine tried again. “So, what time should I pick you up for the party?”
And by God, Eric’s smile was absolutely gorgeous.
How the hell had he missed that before?
A knock on the door brought Blaine out from his reminiscing. Chief Morgan stood in the doorway, eyebrow raised. Eric, however, took his time, finishing up whatever he was reading before turning around. It seemed like the chief was used to Eric’s charmi
ng personality, however, and rolled his eyes.
“You two are up,” Morgan told them, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.
“For what?” Eric asked.
“Mmm, got the bomb squad heading out right now, and I want you behind them,” Morgan replied.
Eric scowled. “Since when are bombs our problem?”
“Since I told you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It would be if you didn’t have to question everything I said.”
Blaine could tell this was going to go nowhere and fast. Eric might be quieter and far more snippy than he’d ever been before, but he’d bet he was the same curious man who had to know everything. If he didn’t do something, Eric was going to dig his heels in and refuse to cooperate in the slightest until he knew more.
“What do you need us to do, sir?” Blaine asked, ignoring Eric’s glare.
Morgan beamed. “I need you to interview the people who found the bomb. Well, one of them did, the other guy is the one the bomb was intended for. Interview them both, I want to see how you two work out in the field. Hopefully, with more talking than you’ve done this whole week in the office together.”
“Great,” Eric muttered, logging out of his computer.
“And show them that shining personality that charms everyone into talking,” Morgan said, backing out of the room with a grin.
“A ray of fucking sunshine,” Eric muttered.
Blaine watched his partner closely. He wasn’t the same man he’d once known, but there were still flashes of the man he’d been best friends with and fallen in love with. Eric made a good show of hiding it, but somehow Blaine thought the man actually enjoyed the chief’s harassment. Blaine wasn’t sure if the chief knew that, though he definitely enjoyed dishing it out.
“C’mon partner,” Eric said, swinging himself out of his chair.
Blaine wasn’t so sure he liked the sarcastic inflection on the word ‘partner’, but he followed Eric out anyway.
Eric
He stopped the car at the edge of the scene, peering through the windshield. The bomb squad had beaten them there, and he could see them milling about, preparing to get to work. Eric didn’t know if they’d confirmed the bomb as real or not, but that wasn’t why they were there anyway.
“Why do you think the chief sent us?” Blaine asked softly from the passenger seat.
Eric snorted. “Because he hates me.”
“And the real reason?”
Eric stiffened at the unspoken insinuation that he was full of shit. He relaxed an inch when he remembered it was Blaine, and if anyone knew he was being sarcastic, it would be him. His tension returned an instant later when he realized that it was Blaine, and he didn’t want the man to know him.
Jesus, his moods were all over the damn place.
“Because he’s probably wondering if there’s some connection to the arsonist we’ve been chasing all over the city for months,” Eric admitted grudgingly.
“He thinks he’s escalating?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean we’re taking any chances. If this is connected, we need to know as soon as possible.”
So far, the arsonist had stuck to using fire as his main attack on buildings. Unlike other arsonists, however, this one wasn’t content with using an accelerant and matches to start his fires. Each had involved some sort of gadget that was used to start the fires at a designated time. So far, none of the devices had survived the fires they’d created, but what little had survived marked each of them as unique from one another.
And God save them if the arsonist was upping their game from toys to explosives. If that happened, they might find themselves in over their heads. Eric could only imagine the media storm and shit that would rain down on them if they had to bring in outside help.
“Fucking Feds,” Eric muttered, opening his door.
“It’s nice to see the supposed rumors about the rivalry between police and federal agents wasn’t just a story,” Blaine said as he followed Eric.
Eric shot him a dirty look but said nothing. Once upon a time, Eric had loved that Blaine was so unflappable. Coupled with his dry humor, Blaine was as good at weathering bullshit as Sean was. It hadn’t escaped Eric’s attention that he apparently surrounded himself with people who didn’t bat an eye at his temper or his foul mouth. It did, however, annoy him to no end that Blaine was still one of them.
“Since you want to be a smart ass, you can help me interview the guy,” Eric told him as they approached the building.
“That would require you to tell me who we’re interviewing. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to pick someone at random, and wouldn’t that be awkward?”
That was not going to make him smile.
“Anthony Howell,” Eric told him. “Philanthropist and made of money from the sounds of it. It’s going to be him and his security guy that we’re talking to. I guess the security guy was the one who found the bomb in the first place.”
“Two attempts on his life in the past month? Not so sure this is the arsonist,” Blaine said.
Eric stopped. “Wait. You…”
The corner of Blaine’s lips twitched but never quite curved. Eric gritted his teeth, once again refusing to rise to the bait. Blaine had already known who they were coming to talk to, but he’d made Eric tell him anyway. Why? Well, Blaine had always enjoyed teasing Eric, but where it was once endearing, if exasperating, now it just pissed him off.
Anthony Howell turned out to be precisely what Eric had expected of a rich man whose greatest threat to his life before this had probably been a stubbed toe. He was well dressed and handsome, in an ‘I have a personal stylist and tailor’ sort of way.
Howell followed them obediently into the building, away from the car, his huge brick wall of a security guard following close behind. Howell was nervous, understandably so, constantly licking his lips as he answered Blaine’s questions.
“And you had no threats or warning that something like this might happen?” Eric asked, not caring that he cut across Blaine’s next question.
Howell shook his head. “No, other than that...man trying to shoot me a few weeks back, and the letter, no.”
Eric nodded. They had both reports already logged, though it hadn’t been given much attention by the force. Sure, someone had walked up to Howell at a public event a few weeks back, ready to plug the man, but considering the guy worked in public relations, he was bound to piss someone crazy off eventually. The same went for the threatening letter he’d received, again it had been written off as another crazy.
Apparently, it was a very dedicated and intent crazy.
“And you, sir?” Blaine asked the other man.
The other man, an Elliot Remus, had stood nearby, completely silent and watchful as they interviewed Anthony Howell. He was a big man, about the same size as Blaine, Eric noted. His eyes watched the room, but they had no problem holding someone else’s gaze. Eric also noticed a strange moment pass between Blaine and Elliot when his partner had addressed the man.
“Well, Officer…” Elliot began, eyes sweeping down. “Edwards, it’s as Mr. Howell described. After the attempt on his life and the death threat, he brought me on for personal protection. A faint scratch on the car put me on alert, so rather than allow Mr. Howell to enter the car, I looked it over and found the bomb.”
“You have experience with explosives, Mr. Remus?” Eric asked, again interrupting Blaine’s line of questioning.
Elliot shook his head. “Nothing I would put on a resume, but enough to recognize a bomb when I see one. I couldn’t tell you what the trigger for it would have been.”
Eric made a mental note to look into the man’s background just to be sure. From the stiff, wary stance of the man, one that mirrored Blaine’s own, Eric was guessing former military. He knew the man was an independent contractor for private security, but more information would have to be added to the file.
“Anything else?” Eric asked.
Elliot frown
ed. “It didn’t look like a shoddily put together bomb. Either the person who put it there has good connections, or they’ve got a decent amount of knowledge. Other than that, I’m sorry officers, there’s not much more I can add.”
Eric drifted away from the conversation then, letting his mind run over what they knew. It wasn’t much, save that apparently Howell’s previous concerns about his life being in danger were well-founded.
“Well,” Blaine said, shooting Eric an unreadable look. “It sounds to me like you made the right choice in hiring some protection, Mr. Howell.”
“Money well spent,” Howell said.
“We’ll be in touch if we discover anything, and hopefully keep you updated,” Blaine assured them.
Eric looked around the room as the two men muttered their thanks. Anthony Howell had certainly done well for himself in the charity business. Eric didn’t know enough about charities, but it certainly seemed rather fancy for a place that was supposed to be giving money away. The carpet was intricate and soft, the paintings on the walls classy and well-maintained, even the furniture looked like it came out of a specialty shop instead of shipped in pieces.
His eyes flicked to the woman behind the desk opposite the double doors. She was watching them carefully, but her eyes weren’t on Eric. He turned to watch where her gaze led, and it fell on Blaine, who was standing off to one side, looking at his notebook again. Eric checked, and sure enough, her eyes were locked on his partner sweeping over his long, bulky body with a gleam of appreciation.
Finally, her eyes moved to Eric, and he scowled at her. A blush crept up her cheeks, and she quickly found something interesting on her desk.
“Anything else?” Blaine asked, voice soft.
Eric jerked at the soft sound in his ear. He stepped away from Blaine quickly, wondering how the hell the man had got so close without Eric noticing.
Unbreak My Heart (Heroes of Port Dale Book 4) Page 4