Words failed Denny at the worst possible moment. He didn’t believe Kit. He couldn’t.
Kit snickered, looking away. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay. Uh, and thanks for the offer of your cash. I’ll take that and pay you back somehow. Maybe.” He walked out of the room.
“Bye,” he called as he padded down the stairs. “It’s been great.”
Denny shouted wordlessly at the top of his voice. Five seconds later, the front door slammed shut, the impact shaking the very foundation of the building.
Chapter Nine
Denny jangled the chains against the iron bedstead, raising increasingly desperate shouts of “John? John!”
It took over an hour for his neighbor, who kept a spare house key, to hear and finally respond. When he got up to the bedroom, John looked nearly as embarrassed as Denny felt. He hesitated a moment before he approached the bed, fingers raking his short blond hair.
Though Denny had kicked up the duvet to veil his nudity, mortification gripped him like a vise. So far, his friendship with John had extended chiefly to stilted discussions about football and rugby held over the garden fence. Now he was pushing the poor bloke light-years beyond their mutual comfort zone.
Denny nodded toward his chest of drawers. John retrieved the key, then unlocked and removed the cuffs.
“There you go,” mumbled John.
With a sigh, Denny rubbed his sore wrists. “Mate, let me explain. You don’t know…how…how…”
“Don’t worry.” Having put the cuffs down on the duvet, John stared toward the poster of the cat in the French café. His cheeks glowed the color of beetroots. “I’ll be off now.”
“No, wait. Let me… Oh God.”
Denny scrambled up, bunching the bedding over his groin. John hesitated at the door but did not look back. “It’s all right, mate. Don’t say another word. Just next time, uh, I’d be grateful if you and your friend…uh, when it gets late…um…”
“Yes. Of course. I’m really sorry.” His neighbor had reached halfway down the stairs, so Denny had to raise his voice to a shout. “Do you want a cup of tea? Or a beer? I owe you a beer, at the very least.”
“Maybe another day.”
John closed the door behind him, out of the house long before Denny had struggled into his jeans. In different circumstances, he might have thrown himself back on his bed and bitten his fist in shame. Instead, he acknowledged that the first law of British blokehood—never discuss anything beyond sport—occasionally had its saving graces. He looked to his clock. Nearly two o’clock.
By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, he heard the chug of a van at the end of his drive.
Decision time. Was Kit worth helping? His heart said yes, his head said probably, but he had to think about Laura as well as Jen. If this situation got worse, his colleague could be sucked in to take some of the blame.
He opened the front door, greeted by light drizzle and Neil from the Croydon depot, whom he’d met on a couple of previous occasions. Neil had climbed out of his van, which sported the triangular EBCA logo with its three-whiskered black rat.
A stocky chap, a foot shorter than Denny, Neil was not known for his sharp mind and did not initially prove formidable in his interrogation techniques. Standing beside the roses and broken-down fence that divided his driveway from John’s front path, Denny stuck to the story of his illness, explaining he’d not fastened the safe properly, so the elf had escaped. Laura couldn’t be blamed, as he’d pressured her into it, and he’d not driven over to Croydon himself because he still feared he would be sick. Sweating despite the cold, he effortlessly mustered a semblance of fever.
Neil smoothed his shaved head. “What did the EB look like?”
“Taller than most of ’em. Over six feet, I reckon.” Just then, John opened his front door and looked out. Denny’s face burned again. “He had red hair, bright red hair,” he continued. “You couldn’t miss him. Oh, and he wore a green stripy jumper.”
“Okay. I’ll get a team onto it,” said Neil. “You’d better go back to bed if you’re so poorly.”
They both looked to John, who dragged a green recycling box up his drive to the gate.
Swiveling his critical squint back to Denny, Neil dropped his voice to an undertone so John wouldn’t hear. It wouldn’t do to have civilians hearing talk about elves. “This doesn’t look good. You take an EB home, you blow off your morning shift, and now you lose it? It’s not my place to pass judgment, but you’re going to be in hot water.”
“Thanks, Neil,” Denny mumbled toward his boots. “Funnily enough, I’d worked that out myself.”
“So blue stripes, you said?”
“No. I believe I said green.” Tired and flustered as he felt, Denny wasn’t yet so far gone that he’d fall for that old trick. Neil should have known better.
Neil narrowed his eyes to razor slits. He didn’t look convinced. “Look, if you’ve let it mind-fuck you, it’ll be better if you come clean straightaway.”
Denny balled his fists at his sides. He hadn’t asked for this burden. It was his daughter’s birthday, for heaven’s sake, and Kit had made him look an idiot. Temptation shuddered through him. Tell the truth.
“I’ve been on runaways for six weeks, and I’ve got a hundred percent record for bringing the buggers in,” snapped Neil. “I’m up for a pay raise next month, and I’m not blotting my copybook for anybody.”
It was the jolt Denny needed. Whether Kit had meant a single word he’d said, the thought of anybody being hunted down for this guy’s promotion made him sick. He wanted to take a swing at Neil, but that wouldn’t help.
He eked tight words from between gritted teeth. “I’ve told you exactly what happened.”
“Oh yeah? So tell me one more time what he looked like. Just to make sure I’ve got it down.”
“You two talking about the bloke snooping about Denny’s driveway earlier?” At John’s interjection, Neil turned sharply. On the other side of the fence, the neighbor clunked the lid of his plastic recycling box into place. Icy rain smattered Denny’s hot cheeks, dousing his exasperation as effectively as John’s interference.
“You saw him?” asked Neil.
“I, uh … I saw a guy running away from there. He was wearing a green-striped jumper and had bright brick-red hair. Got a good look at him, I did.”
“I see. Thank you, sir.” Neil’s tone grew cool. He anchored Denny with a hard stare. “I’ll get on his trail.”
He returned to his van, and after barking instructions into his hands-free comms, he started the engine and drove away.
Denny suppressed the urge to thank John with a crushing bear hug that would have knocked over the fence between them. “Why did you lie for me?” he asked.
John leveled his brows, stuffing his hands in his tracksuit pockets. “I’ll be honest. I’ve, uh…” Only then did Denny notice his neighbor shook violently.
John doubled over in a fit of laughter. “Bugger it. I’ve not had such a giggle in donkey’s years. I got back in after freeing you from your bed, and… Oh, I’m sorry, mate.” Tears of mirth welled in his eyes. Straightening, he slapped Denny on the shoulder, then wiped the moisture from his cheeks. “I were rolling all over me lounge floor, and I really ought to thank you. I needed something to cheer me up this morning.”
Denny managed a chuckle. He must have looked ridiculous, a great bloke like him cuffed to a bed. But Kit got hard just at the sight of him. Kit understood.
Or did he? Denny frowned.
Of course he bloody did. He ran to save me. He lied because he thought it would help.
Denny clung to this belief because he found he simply had to. He’d given too much of himself to Kit, and before that soulless last blowjob, Kit had bent over backward—well, done a handstand—to convince him he told the truth.
John laughed until he wheezed, then braced himself with a frown. “Sorry. I…I hope your boyfriend isn’t in too much trouble?”
The rain gre
w heavier, beading on John’s lashes and trickling off his neat, ski-slope nose. John looked good wet. He was a hot guy, as Denny had noted when John first moved in, though Denny had eyes and thoughts only for Kit these days.
“Yeah, he’s in deep shit,” muttered Denny. “But he’s not done anything wrong. He’s just been misunderstood.”
All remnants of John’s humor disappeared. “I hope you sort things out. You’re a good bloke, Denny. You deserve…y’know. Somebody.” His words cracked, unexpectedly wistful. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I’d better go inside. It’s pissing it down.”
Denny was soaked too, water streaming down the back of his neck. He stared after John, who scuttled back toward his house. Denny’s neighbor was proving a first-rate friend and quietly perceptive, yet John cut a lonely figure. He hunched his lean frame, and reminded Denny a little of himself. Or at least, how he had been before he’d met Kit. Before John closed the door, he cast a nervous glance up the street, almost as if looking for somebody.
Denny didn’t have time to figure out what, if anything, bugged John. Grateful though Denny was to the guy, he’d enough to worry about. He’d like to believe he deserved Kit, as John had suggested, although whether that would be a reward or a punishment remained to be established. But he must protect Kit as well as make quality time for his daughter that evening. Now that John had freed him from his bed and Neil had gone for the time being, the thought didn’t stress him as it might have.
He smiled.
There were now two people in his life who needed him.
* * * * *
He chose a black hooded top, pulled it up beneath his cycle helmet, and set out on his bike for the center of the suburb. He took his mobile but left his comms unit behind—he was a lone agent now—and drew on the best of his stalking skills, checking out the cinema, the department stores, the station, and numerous boutiques—all the places an elf might go for shopping and human contact. Pounding the pavement, he glimpsed his reflection in a pane of glass and rolled his eyes. Hangdog and rough-looking, he’d not yet found time to shave.
It stopped raining by four o’clock, but even shop windows filled with trendy golden party dresses and flambé-pink stilettos seemed shadowed in gloom.
Denny laughed at the absurdity of it all. He’d known Kit for less than twenty-four hours, and he missed him like crazy. Every time a white van passed, his heart beat so hard he feared it might burst, although he spotted none with the EBCA logo. Yet. He knew Neil would persist, sweeping the local area thoroughly before widening the net. Maybe others had joined him. He didn’t want to know.
When he showed Kit’s picture on his phone to a female assistant in a clothes store, recognition sparked on her freckled face, and his hopes leaped. She told him Kit had been in buying jeans, but at least two hours had passed since. He thanked her and left, trying to temper his buoyed optimism. Since that sighting, the elf could have caught a train or bus to nearly anywhere in London, or even crossed to the Kent side of the suburbs on a tram. Kit’s best chance would be to head back into the city center and hide himself among the crowds of commuters and tourists, and part of Denny prayed he had. A niggle in his guts told him otherwise, that Kit would not want to roam too far from him. Or that might just be his wishful thinking.
He hurried through the shopping streets until a musical-instrument emporium caught his interest and ignited a fizzing fuse of suspicion. Kit loved music, but surely he wouldn’t want to busk right now and attract too much attention? Denny pushed the door open, which rang an old-fashioned bell, and showed Kit’s photo to the elderly shopkeeper who waited behind the counter.
“Oh yes, I remember,” said the old man. “He was a nice lad, quite chatty. Bought a few bits and bobs and said he’d be back another day to browse through the sheet music. Asked me if I had anything by Simon and Garfunkel or Herman’s Hermits.”
Denny thanked the man through clenched teeth, and not just because he’d never been a fan of sixties music.
Please don’t do anything too conspicuous, Kit.
As he left the music vendor’s, he noted the neighboring shops had started closing.
So be it. He’d have to trust Kit to look after himself for a little while.
At quarter to seven, he arrived at Saritha’s. He didn’t quite succeed in putting Kit out of his mind for the next hour, but his good spirits didn’t waver while he played with Jen and read her a bedtime story.
Involving elves who ran rings about the monsters who hunted them with huge butterfly nets.
He couldn’t help wondering how this tale had sneaked through the government censorship, which suppressed literature that in any way resembled the truth about EBs. Then again, like most underfunded government schemes, the execution proved patchy at best.
Thank heaven.
He thought little more about Kit till he’d kissed Jen good night and closed the bedroom door gently behind him. He stepped out into Saritha’s open-plan apartment. She hurried from her gleaming kitchen area, wearing a low-cut aquamarine top that flattered her curves and her chestnut-brown eyes, her ebony hair tumbling loose. She offered him a smile, and he experienced a burst of heartfelt gratitude.
“I want to apologize,” she said, leaning casually against the back of one of her walnut-finish dining chairs. “About yesterday. I’d had a lousy day in the office, but it wasn’t fair to take it out on you when circumstances were clearly out of your control. You’re a good dad, Denny.”
He breathed deeply of her spicy cooking, the scent of which filled the flat. “I kind of deserved it. And forgetting to call this morning was bad form.”
Saritha shrugged. “To be fair, I’d left my phone off, and we were in too much of a hurry to get to school to notice. So you’ll take Jen somewhere nice tomorrow?”
“Of course. Wherever she wants.” He’d not forgotten he’d promised to treat his daughter to a trip out the next day. He’d just not found the mental space to deal with it yet.
Freedom fighter? He needed superpowers just to juggle his life.
“I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” he added truthfully. “By the way, you look stunning.”
“Thanks. Brandon’s due over any minute, and I’m doing dinner.”
Brandon was Saritha’s city-boy banker partner. Wedding bells had been on the cards for some time, and she keenly awaited a proposal. Maybe it would come tonight, or tomorrow when he took Jen out.
“You look knackered,” she said, not unkindly.
“Yeah. Work’s been pretty tough.”
“Want to chat about it? I can pour you a glass of wine. Viognier or pinot noir?”
He shook his head. “No, thank you. Not a good idea to drink when I’m on the bike, and I’d best get on.”
When he turned to pick up his cycle helmet, she hurried over and touched his arm. “Look, I know it’s not my place to interfere, but you’re always shattered these days, even when you’re not on nights. Heaven knows, it’s just some security job—and for the bloody government of all things. Why don’t you look for something in the private sector? The pay will be better, and, well, Jen and I want to see you happy. And to see more of you would be nice.”
“Maybe I should.” He experienced an overwhelming urge to share a little of his burden. “I…I’ve started a new relationship, and you know, it’s been hard, what with other pressures.”
“Seriously? You’re with somebody?” Her face lit up with delighted surprise. “Make it work, Denny. Let’s both give Jen a bit of security for a change. What’s her name?”
“His name is Kit.”
Saritha’s smile brightened to megawatts. “Hallelujah! I always thought you’d be happier with a guy. A girl can tell these things.”
Although Denny was proud to announce he was hooking up with a man, her ebullience chafed on his nerves. “You think a guy would best put up with my ‘disgusting habits,’ then?”
She leaned to kiss him on the cheek. He’d rarely seen her in such a good mood. “I’m so
rry I said that. I think we both said stuff back then we regret. You and I were never supposed to be together, but you deserve to be happy.”
“You’re not worried…about Jen having a gay dad?”
“I’d like to believe it wouldn’t be an issue these days, but I suppose I might be naive.” She sighed, smoothing her expensive top. “Still, I managed to survive a posh Surrey primary school thirty years ago, a girl who looked different with an Indian dad. I think I can help Jen deal, if she needs me. Besides, she’ll have three dads and just one mum. Will do wonders for my ego.”
Saritha flashed another smile. Denny liked the idea too, but his ex was mentally rushing things. “Let’s see how things work out.” He kissed her back. “I’d better go.”
She sidestepped neatly about him and opened the door. “See you tomorrow morning, then. Eleven, say?”
Yes, he needed superpowers. “Absolutely. Looking forward to it.”
“Will you bring your boyfriend? I mean, I don’t mind, and as long as Jen doesn’t mind, I don’t see any—”
“We’ll see.” Denny offered her a terse farewell nod and hurried into the lobby. When he reached the forecourt, Brandon’s black convertible pulled up. Denny sidled past to fetch his bike and disappear off into the night.
He needed to find his boyfriend.
Chapter Ten
As Denny cycled down the narrow hill road toward the high street, a white van slowed behind him. The noise of the engine grated in his ears and vibrated through his guts. He dared not look directly at it. At the first chance given by the oncoming traffic, the van driver revved up the motor to overtake. Denny dropped his head forward, desperate not to be seen. From the corner of his eye, he recognized the black EBCA logo, the three-whiskered rat washed in the white light of the street lamp.
The emblem still blazed in his mind’s eye ten seconds later, when the second van sporting it drove past. When the third van chugged by, Denny’s temper flared. Neil must have summoned half the patrol vehicles in south London to the area.
Catching Kit Page 9